On 12 December 1941, five days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, made a revealing speech in Berlin to Nazi leaders, both Gauleiter and Reichleiter; and Josef Goebbels recorded in his diary what had been said: ‘With regard to the Jewish Question the Fuehrer is determined to make a clean sweep. He prophesized that if they brought about another world war, they would experience their annihilation. This was no empty talk. The world war is here. The annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence. This question is to be viewed without sentimentality. We’re not to have sympathy with the Jews, but only sympathy with our German people. If the German people has again now sacrificed around 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign, the instigators of this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their own lives.