“do you want total war?” albert speer and the economic mobilization of the third reich

“DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?”

Albert Speer and the Economic Mobilization of the Third Reich

World War II in Europe

The Krupp Steel Foundry in Essen(1912 postcard)

Postcard of the Krupp Works

sent home by a French soldier in

1923

Hitler has traveled to Essen to

congratulate Gustav Krupp on his 70th birthday, August 7, 1940

“Comrade of Labor, You are

Fighting with Us: Preserve Your

Strength!”

“As we fight, so should you

work for victory!”

(ca. 1942)

“DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?”(Goebbels at the Berlin Sports Palace, February 18,

1943)

Hitler and Martin Bormann greet the Nazi Gauleiter

at the “Wolf’s Lair” in East Prussia, February 7, 1943.

They have all just been appointed “National Defense

Commissars” as part of the “Total War” campaign

Albert Speer observes naval exercises with

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, 1943

(Goebbels decreed maximum press

coverage of Speer’s achievements)

Albert Speer’s plan from 1942 to grant industrialists

“self-responsibility” (see Speer, pp. 208-12)

Albert Speer and Robert Ley hand out the “Knight’s Cross” to businessmen who have boosted arms

output, June 1943

The wheat harvest in downtown Berlin, August 1943

“Ready to strive for victory, women do their manly duty in Germany’s arms factories” (March 1940) See Speer,

219-21

A German farmwife must plow the field and tend her small child, spring 1940

Young, unmarried women report for labor conscription, summer 1940

“Get Rid of your old Cloth and

Shoes!”(recycling

poster, May/June 1943)

“Woman as Air Raid

Warden!”

Robert Ley addresses some of the 7 million “foreign work comrades” laboring in German

factories in August 1944

Russian women conscripted for labor, fall 1941,

and their barracks in

eastern Germany

Conscripted workers from

many countries, deployed for

labor on the big agricultural

estates of East Elbia, 1942

“The Enemy Sees Your

Light! Maintain Blackout!”

(1941)

Residents of Hamburg spend the night in an air raid shelter

“Where is Frau Brylla?”

A soldier on leave finds his

home a heap of rubble in

Hamburg in 1943

“The Jew:Warmonger,

War-Prolonger”(1942/43)

“Mothers, Fight for Your

Children!”(ca. 1944):Goebbels’ appeals for

further struggle became ever

more terrifying, with German

women depicted as victims

“VICTORYor

BOLSHEVISM”(1944)