Europe in the Year 2000 by Dr. Joseph Goebbels. A selection of fourteen articles penned by National Socialist Germany’s Minister of Information between January 1928 and April 1945. It includes his important “The Art of Propaganda” lecture before a 1928 NSDAP officers’ seminar, and his very last published article, “Resistance at Any Price,” published on April 22, 1945, just nine days before his death.

The article topics range from explaining the secrets of successful propaganda to an analysis of Adolf Hitler’s speaking style, and from an in-depth explanation of what he viewed as the primary cause of the war—the Jewish lobby—through to what the world would look like after the war had ended.

It is the articles dealing with the latter topic which reveal Goebbels’ prescience: the two articles “The Future of Europe” and “Europe in the Year 2000” contain many predictions which the present-day reader will find surprisingly accurate. He predicted that Europe would be unified, that Germany would once again play a leading role, that the British Empire would collapse, and that the petty nationalist inter-European squabbling of his time would be looked back upon as a historical anachronism.

"I am convinced that, just as we look back with some amusement on the narrow-minded conflicts between German provinces in the 1840s and 1850s, our posterity in fifty years will look back with similar amusement on what is going on today in Europe. They will see the 'dramatic battles between nations' of small European states as family squabbles. I am convinced that in fifty years we will no longer think in terms of nations, but of continents, and that entirely different, and perhaps much larger, problems will concern Europe.

"Germany will not be occupied by its enemies in the year 2000. The German nation will be the intellectual leader of civilized humanity. We are earning that right in this war. This world struggle with our enemies will live on only as a bad dream in people’s memories. Our children and their children will erect monuments to their fathers and mothers for the pain they suffered, for the stoic steadfastness with which they bore all, for the bravery they showed, for the heroism with which they fought, for the loyalty with which they held to their Führer and his ideals in difficult times. Our hopes will come true in their world and our ideals will be reality. We must never forget that when we see the storms of this wild age reflected in the eyes of our children. Let us act so that we will earn their eternal blessings, not their curses." 108p-sc