Hermann Goering Liveblogs World War II: May 20, 1942

Hermann Goering:

Of each of you individuals of the home front I demand the same hardness as is displayed out there at the fighting lines. This includes, above all, that same hanging together which can be found out there in the fighting lines, forged with blood. With proud contempt we shall refute all enemy propaganda, for it consists of nothing but lies, after all. Those who are sending this propaganda to us are the same men who could perform in this same theater in the streets of Berlin during the period of the System. Just as his newspapers at that time, proficient in lying, were full of lies, in the same manner the Jew is lying today, denying the blue of the sky, just as he did then, with the only exception that he can not do it today in our midst, thank God. So he tries to force this garbage originating from his brain by all possible means of propaganda upon the German people. He is mistaken….

The people… will abide by the war laws which had to be passed…. They have been decreed because they were necessary in order to uphold the life of a German people and to assure its victory…. Because the leadership is doing all in efforts to take care of the people, therefore the people has to be sufficiently well behaved and decent and to have understanding and confidence in the action of the leadership. There are always the same few, who exclude themselves from the community. We know them since the war period, yes, we know their previous attitude….

The time has passed when the German people could be fooled; as was the case in the years of 1917-18, and when it finally perished because of its foolishness. We are quite well aware of the fact that the German people are willing to bear the necessary hardship of this war and to hold out during the war, irrespective of its duration, with stern determination. The Fuehrer expressed gratitude and appreciation for this to the German people recently in the session of the German Reichstag. But in this hour the German people, all its fronts and all its classes, have all reason to thank the Fuehrer, and his titanic performance should be visualized by them.

He is the foremost and greatest producer of arms in our war production, he is the brilliant, heroic commander of our armed forces; above all he is the guarantor of German victory. A little while ago I gave you a demonstration of the tremendous shocks to which the Fuehrer is exposed. I showed how strong he has been and how able to bear the hardest, yet to conduct all to a good end as he has mastered all obstacles from whatever source they may have come, as he has exterminated weakness where he has been present. Such a Fuehrer is the guarantor of victory, and the German people, and no other one, has such a Fuehrer. And alone for this reason, we may look forward with a proud sense of security toward the outcome of this fighting, as one of victory…