Goebbels's Totaler Krieg speech
example · historical: Joseph Goebbels, Sportpalast speech 1943 ·
retold in 9 talks
After Stalingrad, Goebbels held a mass rally at the Sportpalast and promised the crowd not victory but ever greater suffering, deprivation, and total war, and the crowd shouted 'Yes!' Žižek reads this as surplus enjoyment at its purest: consent to suffering as a form of libidinal excess.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 9
“Do you want a war so total that you cannot even imagine how total will it be?... And the crowd shout 'Yes, yes, yes.' This is surplus pleasure at its purest.”
“The first half is a pretty good analysis, like working class is exploited by strong state corporations... And then all of a sudden the tone changes because the Jews are exploiting us”1:52 "Trump is more Stalinist than Stalin himself" | Slavoj Žižek & Owen Jones (Part 1)pub. 2025-07-26 · 18:26
“Do you want total war? Do you want it, if need be, even more total and radical than we are capable of imagining it today?”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 4 jobsuses
surplus enjoyment
×4
jouissance
×3
Mehrlust / Mehrgenießen (surplus enjoyment)
×1
superego injunction to enjoy
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Joseph Goebbels6Samo Tomšič2Wolfgang Streeck2Darian Leader4Nancy Pelosi2François Truffaut2Terry Gilliam2Aaron Bastani1
alongside works
Every retelling 9
After Stalingrad, Goebbels held a mass rally at the Sportpalast and promised the crowd not victory but ever greater suffering, deprivation, and total war, and the crowd shouted 'Yes!' Žižek reads this as surplus enjoyment at its purest: consent to suffering as a form of libidinal excess., illustrating surplus enjoyment,fascism-populism,jouissance
1:52 "Trump is more Stalinist than Stalin himself" | Slavoj Žižek & Owen Jones (Part 1)pub. 2025-07-26 · 18:26
Varoufakis notes that Goebbels' early speeches start with a valid liberal critique of corporate exploitation of the working class, only to suddenly pivot to antisemitism ('the Jews are exploiting us'), illustrating how fascism can masquerade as liberal populism., illustrating radicalized liberalism,fascism-populism
In the 1943 Sportpalast speech after Stalingrad, Goebbels asked the crowd whether they wanted total war, more total than they could imagine. The crowd answered yes to pure suffering, no positive promise given. Žižek reads this as the purest example of surplus enjoyment: enjoyment of suffering itself beyond any pleasure., illustrating surplus enjoyment,jouissance,fascism
Žižek shows footage of Goebbels' February 1943 Sportpalast speech after Stalingrad, in which the crowd ecstatically consents to maximum hardship and total war. The expression on Goebbels' face is one of perverted satisfaction, not joy, but joy in utter pain. This is surplus-enjoyment at its purest: excessive enjoyment provided by renunciation itself., illustrating surplus-enjoyment,ideology,fascism-populism
12:34 29.04.2023 Leipzig Slavoj Žižek "Die Paradoxien der Mehrlust: Ein Leitfaden für die Nichtverwirrten"2023-04-29 · 45:24
Žižek analyzes Joseph Goebbels' 1943 Sportpalast speech, where Goebbels promises unimaginable horrors with a face full of 'intense mystical enjoyment.' The crowd's enthusiastic 'Yes!' demonstrates 'Mehrlust', enjoying the prohibition/horror itself., illustrating Mehrlust / Mehrgenießen (surplus enjoyment),fascism-populism
At the Berlin Sportpalast in early 1943 Goebbels promises only more total suffering, and the crowd cries yes, an illustration of enjoyment in pain and the surplus twist in pleasure., illustrating surplus enjoyment,jouissance