Content note: Photograph of Nazi swastika banners and a mass audience at a 1943 speech. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Totaler Krieg – kürzester Krieg (Total War – Shortest War): the Sportpalast rally of 18 February 1943
The Berlin Sportpalast during Goebbels's 'total war' speech, under a banner reading 'Total war – shortest war'. The hall was filled with a selected audience whose answers to his ten questions ('Do you want total war?') were broadcast as the voice of the nation, while the speech itself argued that defeat would mean Bolshevism overrunning Europe.
Propaganda techniques used in this photograph
- Date
- February 18, 1943
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Joseph Goebbels), with the NSDAP Gau Berlin
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- Nazi Germany
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Nazi Germany
- Leader
- Adolf Hitler
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- War and the military, Home front, Media and information
- Event
- World War II
- Regime
- Nazi Germany
- Leader
- Adolf Hitler
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 27, 2026
- Rights
- CC BY-SA 3.0 DE (German Federal Archives)
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J05235 / Schwahn / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Text on the object
Original (German) · read from the image, not independently checked
[illegible] OTALER KRIEG – KÜRZESTER KRIEG
[illegible] otal War – Shortest War
The photograph's left edge crops the banner's opening letter; the visible text reads 'OTALER KRIEG – KÜRZESTER KRIEG'. The full slogan is widely documented elsewhere as 'Totaler Krieg – kürzester Krieg' ('Total war – shortest war'), but the cropped letter itself is not legible in this image and is marked illegible rather than assumed.
