I’ve seen this particular quotation floating around a lot over the past several weeks, for obvious reasons. It’s from an interview with Herman Goering during the Nuremberg Trials:<\/p>\n
\nOf course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The quote is cited frequently by the anti-war crowd — which seems a bit incongruous, perhaps, but, see, Goering here is supposed to of a kind with all those Evil US\/UK Conspirators who, naturally, are “dragging the people along” into a war.<\/p>\n
Eugene Volokh has some interesting commentary<\/a> on this quote, which he (wisely) verified first as real via Snopes<\/a>, where the full quote (with the interviewer’s questions) is given.<\/p>\n
\nThis broader passage, I think, provides some important context, though one can see it in the original version, too: Goering is trying to justify what happened — what the regime he ran did — by suggesting that all the regimes are the same. England, America, Russia, Germany; democracy, Parliament, fascism, communism; it’s all the same; all war is just regimes manipulation their foolish citizens. The German decision to start World War II, by this logic, is the same as the British and American decisions to resist the Germans.<\/p>\n
So that, I think, is the problem facing those who use the quote: Their proposed moral equivalence between Goering’s Nazi Germany and America only works if they are also willing to accept Goering’s moral equivalence of Nazi Germany and Roosevelt’s America and Churchill’s England<\/b>. And if they are, like I am, repelled by the latter moral equivalence — if they think that Americans really did deliberately endorse a war against Germany, or that, even if they were influenced by their elected representatives, their elected representatives were properly doing their job by exercising such leadership — then what’s the point of citing as authority a man (a monster) who was asserting it?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
There’s a reason I’ve bumped Volokh up into my Gotta list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve seen this particular quotation floating around a lot over the past several weeks, for obvious reasons. It’s from an interview with Herman Goering during the Nuremberg Trials: Of course…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4778,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/06\/the_boys_from_g.html","url_meta":{"origin":3788,"position":0},"title":"The Boys from … Greenland?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 6-Jan-04 5:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone always thinks of Nazis fleeing Germany for Argentina or Brazil. But it seems, instead, the plan for the top leadership was to flee to Greenland. A German navigator has...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4382,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/12\/just_plain_folk.html","url_meta":{"origin":3788,"position":1},"title":"Just plain folk","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 12-Sep-03 9:26am","format":false,"excerpt":"A fascinating -- and disturbingly fawning -- Homes and Gardens article from November 1938, on \"Hitler's Mountain Home\" at Berchtesgaden. All visitors are shown their host's model kennels, where he...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4471,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/26\/worst_of_the_wo.html","url_meta":{"origin":3788,"position":2},"title":"Worst of the worst","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 26-Aug-03 8:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"Right Wing News has a survey from 39 right-of-center bloggers (of 125 inquired), identifying the \"Worst Figures Of The 20th Century\". For what it's worth, I don't think the list...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":440,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/15\/loot.html","url_meta":{"origin":3788,"position":3},"title":"Loot","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 15-Apr-03 7:28am","format":false,"excerpt":"And a bit more on the subject. Andrea links to this site, which seems to be a clearing house of stories on the museum looting. There's both tragedy and overwrought...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3659,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/11\/left_is_right.html","url_meta":{"origin":3788,"position":4},"title":"Left is Right","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 11-Oct-02 12:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The New Republic's Jonathan Chait builds a heck of a case why liberals should support a war on Iraq. 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