Hitler on the Campaign Trail
Hitler on the Campaign Trail
By Michael C. Moynihan
Republican and Democratic politicians are reviving a favorite Nazi debating point this election season
Nevertheless, providing historical context for the recent spate of ‘big lie’ accusations, the Associated Press told readers that ‘Nazi leader Adolf Hitler believed the ‘big lie’ had a greater chance of being believed.’ Well, not exactly. Hitler believed that the Jews believed the ‘big lie’ had a greater chance of being believed.
Nor can the reference be attributed the to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, whose only reference to a ‘big lie’ comes in a 1941 speech attacking Winston Churchill: ‘The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.’ This is only at slight variance with the Hitler citation, as Goebbels’ ministry routinely argued that the English government and media were manipulated by Jewish power.
As historian Randall Bytwerk, an expert in German propaganda, observes in his brilliant excavation of the ‘big lie’ myth, ‘only an incompetent propagandist warns his audience’ that he will embark on a massive campaign of manipulation and lying. Bytwerk, who tracks the proliferation of the bogus Goebbels quote on his blog, explains that while it is ‘widely believe[d] that the Nazis brazenly proclaimed their duplicity, they in fact proclaimed the opposite’ in their propaganda.