“The Führer spoke to the entire German people. On the evening of the historic 30th of January anniversary, the Führer gave a big speech to the entire German people in front of thousands of compatriots and numerous soldiers in the Berlin Sports Palace. It became a cutting reckoning with the plutocratic warmongers and an enthusiastic commitment to the greatness and power of National Socialist Germany. - Our picture shows the leader after entering the lectern, where hurricane-like cheers roared upon him, which initially made it impossible for minutes to speak.”
The Soviets recovered 250,000 German and Romanian corpses in and around Stalingrad, and total Axis casualties (Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians) are believed to have been more than 800,000 dead, wounded, missing, or captured. Of the 91,000 men who surrendered, only some 5,000–6,000 ever returned to their homelands (the last of them a full decade after the end of the war in 1945); the rest died in Soviet prison and labour camps.
In a German population that had known little other than Hitler for ten years, faith in his abilities ran deep. Nazi propaganda was all-pervasive. Belief in the 'German destiny' and all the associated Nazi ideas had a pseudo-religious aspect. But for more and more people in Germany, cracks began to develop in their faith.
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