Background: The 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life shocked most Germans, even those who were beginning to have doubts. It took six days before Goebbels delivered this speech to the German public. It was carried by all radio stations and printed in all major newspapers. He presented Hitler’s survival as evidence of divine providence and assured Germans that new weapons were coming that, together with their hard work and faith, would bring victory,
The source: Joseph Goebbels, “Der Wille der ganzen Nation: Unbeschränkter, vorbehaltloser Einsatz aller Mittel und Kräfte zum Sieg,” Völkischer Beobachter, 27 July 1944, pp. 1-2 and 28 July 1944, p. 1. The issues are available on ANNO.
by Joseph Goebbels
My German people’s comrades!
I owe the German people a report on the events of 20 July and the consequences to be drawn from it. Countless letters from the entire country have asked me to do that. I believed that it was necessary to wait a few days until the full details behind these shameful events could be clarified. That has now happened. There is nothing more to conceal or cover up. The events speak so clear and and unmistakable a language that one can let them speak for themselves. I will make a sober and unvarnished report of the facts. They give the German people every reason for strengthened confidence in the coming victory of our just cause, which is under God’s protection.
Our enemies will scarcely be able to flatter themselves with the hope that this base and treacherous act against the Führer and his state will bring them even the slightest advantage. I am convinced that there is no misfortune and no danger that will not in the end work in our favor.
When I was informed by a telephone call from the Führer’s headquarters last Thursday afternoon of the horrible crime that had been committed against the Führer and his closest military aides, I felt as did all Germans who heard the news over the radio several hours later. It seemed for a moment as if the earth was shaking under my feet. I had apocalyptic visions of what the success of this cowardly and despicable attack would have meant for our people, indeed for all of Europe. A disaster we today cannot imagine would have overcome countless millions of fine German workers, farmers, soldiers, and intellectuals, unleashed by the hand of a base criminal who in the service of a small clique of ambitious mercenaries and reckless gamblers lacking all conscience would have put an end to everything that we value in our life on this earth.
But then my heart was filled with an almost religious and reverent thankfulness. I had felt that before, but never as visibly and clearly understood that the Führer’s work is under the protection of Providence. A powerful divine fate towers over all human ability and shows us that his work, no matter how great the difficulties it encounters, must be finished, can be finished, and will be finished.
Two of my ministerial colleagues were meeting with me as the news came in from the Führer’s headquarters. I realized immediately that no one on the staff of the Führer’s headquarters could have committed this crime. What reason would a worker or any decent German have to raise a hand against the Führer, who is the hope of the nation, to whose life and work we owe everything? This nefarious attack could only have been committed by a deeply evil and depraved person, and I knew where to look for him.
Around 4 p.m. in the afternoon, the small treasonous clique behind him begin to spin their web.
The assassin, one Count Stauffenberg, had arrived in Berlin on a courier flight and brought the false news that the Führer had been killed in the attack and that these criminal adventurers could get to work.
They had undertaken the attack to free the German Wehrmacht from its oath, which they believed in their blind insanity could then easily be brought to their side and used for their despicable plans. Under the pretense of defending the political leadership of the Reich, they used their brief control of the forces on Bendlerstrasse [the location of various Wehrmacht offices] to order the Berlin Guard Battalion to seal off the government district, but that put an immediate end to their subversive activity. They had forgotten that the Berlin Guard Battalion, like all units of the German Wehrmacht, was made up of fanatic National Socialists. Its commander Major Remer did great service in the lightning-fast suppression of this oath-breaking disloyal clique. He hurried to me and explained the situation.
The whole despicable plot was over after scarcely an hour.
Major Remer was connected to the Führer directly from my desk and received from him clear and direct orders for further actions. This telephone conversation was one of the most moving experiences of my life.
A young German army officer who had proven himself at the front and been awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves had the honor to receive direct orders from the mouth of his Führer and supreme commander, and at an hour in which independent, cold-blooded, and rapid action was required. The order was to beat down the traitors and arrest the criminals.
Within a few minutes the Guard Battalion was back from the government district and assembled in my courtyard. At Major Remer’s request I spoke to the men, explaining the facts clearly. I saw an outbreak of rage and anger like nothing that I had never seen before. I will never forget that hour.
Immediately after my speech the officers and soldiers gathered their pistols and rifles and prepared for action. From all sides came the the plea to leave this task to no other formation, to let them have the honor of washing away the shame that the treasonous clique had brought to the German military uniform with the blood of the traitors.
The Guard Battalion receives its orders
The Bender block was occupied without a shot being fired. Everyone had already risen against the traitorous group. It was already disarmed, sitting helplessly and alone in an office, attempting desperately to play at government. A general who previously had distinguished himself only by trying to sabotage each major decision was the head. A colonel-general relieved of duty and pensioned off years ago because he suffered nervous collapse and crying fits at the slightest challenge was supposed to take on the civil leadership of the Reich. He came, therefore, in civilian dress, his only qualification for his new office. Another colonel-general, who was expelled from the Wehrmacht after a cowardly retreat on the Eastern Front and was denied the right to wear the uniform, was to have lead the German army. The treasonous assassin Count Stauffenberg was the political adviser. There were also a few insignificant bit players who were immediately arrested without any resistance.
A court martial was convened that condemned the obviously guilty to death. The others were taken into custody. A detachment of the Guard Battalion carried out the executions immediately. Then the whole affair was finished.
Spare me from giving you further details. They are so shameful for the participants in the plot that they could only confuse matters. Basically, it seems to me that an attempted Putsch of a group of criminals who wanted to soil the memory of their fallen comrades and attack the fighting front from the rear was beaten down by the army itself.
No officer and no soldier needs be ashamed that he bears the same uniform that these gamblers wore, and who were unworthy to wear it. A class is not discredited because there are a few criminals within its ranks. The uniform of the German army represents the hundreds of thousands of German soldiers who died a heroic death at the front for Führer and fatherland and who every hour risk their lives at the front for the life of the nation, not these adventurers. Incidentally, I met so many fine and deeply loyal National Socialist officers and soldiers of the army Thursday afternoon and evening that I believe I am also able to make a confident judgment on this point.
Unwavering Loyalty
No troop unit, either at the front or in the homeland, wavered even for a moment in loyalty to the Führer, to the government, to the German people during those critical hours. All, whether officers or soldiers, outdid each other in the strong desire to wash away the shame and defeat the disloyal band of traitors.
It hardly needs to be said that those who deserve justified punishment will receive it, if they have not already received it. Not only the German people, but above all the German army demands that. It wants to be free of the last miserable remains of a reactionary backwardness, from those dubious figures who still live in the seventeenth century, who do not and cannot understand our people’s state, who can never forgive the Führer who as a son of the people opened the way to becoming an officer, that a brave soldier receives the same medals as an officer. Nor can they accept that in our regime only achievement counts, not name, birth, or fortune. If they cannot free themselves from that standpoint, they do not belong among the leadership of the people, also not in the military sector.
I have heard all the reports and descriptions by witnesses, have seen the room where the attack occurred, and can only say that if the saving of the Führer from the greatest danger is not a miracle, there are no longer any miracles. The assassin was sent to the daily situation meeting by the arrested generals with a false report. He took the explosives into the room in a briefcase and with the excuse that he needed set it down placed it in an unguarded moment directly at the Führer’s feet. Colonel-General Korten, who stood directly behind the Führer, was seriously wounded and died of his injuries on Saturday. Participants in the meeting were thrown many meters through the window by the force of the explosion, their uniforms torn to shreds.
There was only one place in the entire room that was relatively untouched by the enormous detonation, and that was where the Führer was sitting at the map table. The fragments of the map table were scattered throughout the room, but the Führer himself, aside from light bruises, burns, and scratches on his forehead, was completely uninjured. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a person who believes in history. That means that I believe that history has a meaning and has its own logic, even if that sometimes does not become clear until later. That also makes me immune to the danger of doubting, even if only occasionally, that despite all the difficulties we will ultimately emerge victorious in this war. My faith in the deeper meaning of history found renewed proof on 20 July. Historical materialists may laugh about that, but I am nonetheless firmly convinced that fate took the Führer under its gracious protection in this tragic hour because it wants him for a great future, and I am convinced that the whole of our people is of the same opinion.
How is it possible that such a dark day could give a people so powerful a drive forward?
Enemy newspapers wrote two days after 20 July that the insurrectionists were slowly running our of ammunition that that they would soon have to capitulate, which supposed saddened the Berlin population. But in Berlin and throughout the entire Reich, their was only a single million-fold prayer of thanks to the Almighty for protecting the Führer and saving him for his people.
The world cannot understand that, which is why we are always misunderstood. That the traitorous clique did the same is more proof that they entirely misunderstood our people and had no deep relationship to it. It is simply absurd that it would leave the Führer in the lurch, or follow a criminal clique that wanted to forcibly remove him.
20 July was the opposite of a sign of our people’s moral decline. Many thousands of letters have told me that countless people who did not know each other hugged and embraced each other on the streets and public transportation when they heard the the Führer had been uninjured in the attack. No one concluded that his miraculous rescue meant that we should reduce or hinder our war efforts. All understood the day as a sign of fate, that no effort could be too great to make in our struggle for our lives.
That brings me to the
that we must draw from these past events. We face a world of hate-filled enemies who as the events of 20 July once again prove will shrink from no measure, however insidious and base, to defeat us.
The Führer in this battle is truly to be compared with Albrecht Dürer’s knight battling death and the Devil. We must go through this hell of obstacles, burdens and dangers before we again again breath freely and reach freedom at the end of the path. There can be no doubt that we will succeed. We must succeed, else we are all lost.
It is clear that in this fateful battle for our lives we may not hold back anything at all, but rather must use everything we have without reservation. The whole people wants that. It is ready to give its last, everything it has, if necessary, in this war. That deserves admiration. The task of leadership is to turn readiness into action and to create organizational and legal conditions to ensure that the burdens are fairly shared and that each bears as much as he is able to bear.
That is doubtlessly not the case today. We have an enormous reservoir of strength that is being used to a considerable extent, but is in no way near exhaustion. That cannot be. The war demands our whole strength, and if we use it victory is sure.
The Führer told the German people in his midnight speech on 20 July that he has entrusted party comrade Reich Minister Himmler with the leadership of the reserve army in the homeland. He will see his task, in addition to reorganizing the entire apparatus of the reserve army, in sending strong well-trained home army units to the front, and raising and and training numerous new division. We have no doubt that party comrade Himmler will accomplish this task in his usual energetic and comprehensive way. He has all necessary skills and a rich store of experience. Our forces at the front will be rapidly reinforced and the front itself will receive the stability and strength that it urgently needs for the coming months. The relevant problems will be attacked with National Socialist energy. Success cannot and will not be lacking.
Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production party comrade Albert Speer through his tireless efforts and his brilliantly thought out and implemented simplification process has increased German armaments production to a degree that is astonishing. Enemy air attacks have done no significant damage to our war production. They have not hindered the enormous increase from month to month in weapons and munitions. This process of intensification continues and is nowhere near its peak.
We require great masses of labor, above all from Germans, who are always the foundation of an armaments factory. We must replace the young men leaving the armaments industry for the Wehrmacht, for the the strengthening of the front with soldiers and weapons goes hand in hand if success is to be assured.
It is necessary to use and apply the strength of the German homeland to a much greater extent than has previously been the case. That goes without saying. The areas under air attack prove every day how many unnecessary things we can give up without harming our labor strength and our ability to work. They must be an example to the entire people of what can and must be done. I do not believe that our enemies will rejoice and see in these measures evidence that we are declining. That is in any event a matter of indifference to us. Today war is the demand of the hour. At home and at the front so much strength will be found that it will not be all that difficult for us to face whatever the war situation brings with sovereign mastery. Coming months will show how little reason the enemy has to gloat.
The Führer signed a decree yesterday that will appear in the press today. It orders the entire government, including the Reich railway and the Reich post office, as well as all public offices, facilities, and businesses to find ways to more effectively use their workforces. This may be by shutting down or reducing activities less important to the war effort and simplifying organizations and procedures in order to free the largest number of forces for the Wehrmacht and armaments production. Further according to this decree, all of public life must adjust to the requirements of total war. All public organizations should act in ways consistent with total war, in particular withholding no resources from the Wehrmacht and armaments production. In other words,
total war will become practical reality.
This powerful transformation with its comprehensive tasks will be in the hands of the Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War. He receives broad authority from the Führer. At the suggestion of the Reich Marshal, the Führer has assigned me this task and named me Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War.
No fear of difficulties
I am well aware of the difficulties that await me in fulfilling the Führer’s assignment. I do not shy away from them or hold back in fear. I know that I can depend on the support of the whole people. It would be too early for me to reveal my program, although my ideas and plans are largely complete. I will take on my tasks with sober seriousness and act without regard for person or class, serving only the higher purpose.
Enormous amounts can be saved
I hope and wish that I have the necessary knowledge, but also the necessary imagination and improvisational ability. There is so much strength that we can save such that I am not worried about the success of my work. I lead the Reich capital, which since the heavy air attacks of last November of the past year has a much simpler standard of living than before, but has not lost its energy, eagerness to work, war morale, even its humor. None of us has been cold or gone hungry. Everyone has their job, their bed, and a roof over their head, even if now and again rain comes through the roof. I flatter myself that I have implemented a simplification process with my own colleagues without any dangerous frictions. My experiences show that we can save an enormous amount if we want to, and above all if we must.
I will use my authority to spread the burdens of the war fairly and give all who are able work important for the war effort. Laws and regulations will make it clear what the individual must do and not do, and what his duty to the fatherland is.
I do not believe that that will lower our war morale, but rather than it will rise powerfully. I know that countless millions throughout the country will cheer this sentence the moment I speak it. There must be justice, above all during war. When all share to the same degree the burdens of a hard age, they carry them lightly. Only in that way will we become a true people’s community that today bears in common the sacrifice of the war and at its end will share the fruits of victory.
I promise the German people to leave nothing undone over the next few weeks to make the homeland ready for war in every way. Some things will take a bit longer, still others even longer, but with everyone’s help we will master the last and greatest difficulties.
I depend particularly on the support of the party. The Führer has given the head of the party chancellor, Reichsleiter party member Martin Bormann, the task of supporting the measures he has ordered with the
assistance of the party
using the authority he has received.
Party comrade Bormann and I have long agreed on what must happen. The party will be the engine of entire transformation process. Primarily, it will have the task of freeing soldiers for the front and workers for armaments production. It will fulfill the task with its usual energy and its old revolutionary elan. I know that there will be competition between the Gaue, counties, and local groups to see who is in the lead. If our enemies believed that we were at the end, they will soon learn to their horror that in many areas we are just beginning.
The situation at the fronts, particularly on the eastern front will soon change because of these measures, and much in our favor.
The war will have a new face
and our enemies’ shouts of triumph will stick in their throats. They believed that 20 July was a fatal blow. It has only shaken us. They, not we, will feel the consequences.
Things were always that when when the opponents of National Socialism played their last trump. In August 1930 the filthy tool of the then Prussian Ministry of the Interior instigated a party revolt. Three weeks later we went from 12 to 107 seats in the 14 September 1930 Reichstag election. A traitor again tried to split the party in November-December 1932. Eight weeks later we were in power. There was a major personnel crisis in our government in February 1938. Five weeks later the Ostmark returned to the Reich. Each time our enemies believed that National Socialism and the Führer were finished. Each time they were bitterly disappointed. Such problems were always signs of our health, not of illness. That will be true here as well. I not only feel that, I know it. I read it in the yes of the many people I meet. They all have the feeling that things will soon more forward again, and not from any accident, but rather from our own strength.
One more thing:
We recognize the temporary technical superiority of the enemy in some areas. We have long known that we can defeat the other side not by surpassing their production, but only though the creation
of new means and methods in technical warfare.
It is not a matter of catching up with them in areas in which they are ahead, but to surpass them. That has happened over the last two years in the most varied areas of war technology. The results of these decisive developments will show up more and more on the battlefields. The use of our V-1 is a kind of introduction to that.
What is decisive with these developments is that they are wholly new, and that we can reasonably expect that they will present the enemy with entirely new facts for which they will be unprepared.
Today the British public cries for defenses against our V-1. That is understandable, for the critical advantage of this weapon is not that it is an unmanned flying bomb, but rather that it renders the whole enemy defensive system useless. The same will be true with other new weapons that we will soon use in the most varied areas. We have not only overcome the advantage that the enemy previously had in this or that area of military technology, we have surpassed it. The results of this development are still small in scale, but larger parts are already being manufactured.
[This edition went to press before Goebbels had finished his speech. The following conclusion appeared in the 28 July 1944 edition.]
I would be embarrassed to speak this way if the facts did not justify it. Recently I saw
modern German weapons
and my heart not only beat faster, but for a moment even stopped
. I say that not to boast or bluff. I have always been sure of the final success of our cause, even during the most critical phases of the war. We do not need the evidence of technology to persuade us of the certainly of our coming victory. We believe in it because we believe in the German people. And there is a series of historical reasons that relieve us of the danger of doubting our final success. Still, it is encouraging to have such a firm view affirmed by real facts. That is true in the area of our armaments production in more than one the case.
German inventive genius has passed its test
The world had to wait a long time before it announced itself again. It will soon happen. It is decisive that we produce these technical discoveries in sufficient amounts and put them at the disposal of the fighting front. All possible preparations must be made so that there is never a shortage. That is not possible without the help of the entire people. If the whole of the nation joins in a great effort, these problems can easily be mastered. Then the enemy side will not be at the top of the peak, as their leaderships always maintain, but rather are at its bottom. Developments over the coming weeks and months will prove that anew. In any event, we can look calmly at the measures that have been accomplished, and those still to come.
It would be wrong, and would contradict the whole meaning and purpose of my remarks, if the German people would put its hopes only or largely in the coming victory of our weapons. That could result in a weakening rather than a strengthening of our national strength in the face of coming decisions. I will not tire of repeating what I said at the beginning of of world-spanning struggle. The war is an historic even that can be overcome not only through military, political, or economic efforts, nor only through morale.
Only the combined effects of all these forces joined with the total efforts of the whole nation guarantee success. It was never true that a single weapon was decisive for victory.
Weapons, hands, and hearts must all be used
to assure victory.
We welcome the favorable developments in military technology with deep satisfaction even as we must wait a while until their full realization, but that may not be a reason for us to reduce other other war efforts in the slightest, but rather they must be increased, doubled where possible, and we must call the whole people to that.
We must not only endure the present hard times in which we have to defend against the assault of almost the whole world, but we must draw from the situation additional strength for the following difficult time. Our enemies will leave nothing untried to defeat us. We must leave nothing untried to hinder them. We must strike them whenever we can, and shrink back from not a single blow that we receive in turn, not even batting an eyelash.
Each must strive to surpass the other in attitude, in morale, at work, in eagerness for battle and steadfastness. The harder it is for us, the more firmly we must believe and fight fanatically.
That is the whole story of 20 July. I believe that the German people has more reason to be satisfied than our enemies. The Führer steers our state as always and leads people and nation with a sure hand through all the storms and turbulence of this war. Our people is brave, upstanding, and hard-working. It has but one thought: to fight and to work so that victory will be ours. It thanks the Almighty that he graciously protected the Führer and prays that he continues to do that.
We all want to surpass each other in love and loyalty to him and his historic mission. It is in our hands to soon give the war a new direction. The requirements for that are at hand. Let us reach for them! The Almighty could not give us a clearer sign than the miraculous saving of the Führer. He wants us to earn the victory for which he will one day give us the laurels. Let us get to work with an eye to the future that will be ours!
Last edited 15 July 2025
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