Goebbels Didn’t Say It

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. [Falsely attributed to Joseph Goebbels]

Thursday, April 12, 2012

An Outline of the Problem

Some years ago I (Randall Bytwerk) got an e-mail from someone trying to track down the Goebbels quotation at the top of the page. Since I’ve read a great detail of material by Goebbels, it did not sound right. After considerable effort I could find no source for the quotation, even though at the time tens of thousands of web pages cited it. I talked with my colleague Quentin Schultze and we decided there was something interesting going on. We’ve now been following the spread of the quotation for three years and will soon publish the article mentioned in the previous post. We’ve decided to keep up on the interesting spread of a fabricated quotation on this blog. Here’s the situation as discussed on my German Propaganda Archive: ============================================================ “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Last I checked (December 2011), this shows up on 500,000 web pages and twenty published books (most of which are vanity press productions, evidence for the value of publishers who still believe in editors). It is attributed to Joseph Goebbels. No one ever gives a citation to the source. A fair number of web citations are to “Joseph M. Goebbels.” That wasn't his middle initial. One book credits it to “Joseph Goebbel.” There are several hundred pages in German that cite the statement, but none give a source, and one site (perhaps the earliest) notes that is “retranslated from English.” Goebbels wouldn’t have said that in public. He always maintained that propaganda had to be truthful. That doesn't mean he didn’t lie, but it would be a pretty poor propagandist who publicly proclaimed that he was going to lie. I know of no evidence that he actually said it. I haven’t read everything Goebbels wrote, but I have been through a lot of it. Goebbels actually accused others of using the technique. In a 1941 article titled “ Churchill’s Lie Factory,” he wrote: “One should not as a rule reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. 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.” He accuses the English of the “big lie,” and suggests that, were he to use such a technique, he would not publicly announce it. The quotation usually seems to be used by those on the political left and right, who find it helpful in to associating those they don't like with the Nazis. ====================================================== What has happened since then? That is the subject of future posts. Posted by Randall Bytwerk at9:20 AM Email This BlogThis!Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Labels: Discussion

15 comments:

AnonymousMarch 24, 2013 at 10:42 AM so did Goebbels say it or not? ReplyDelete Replies Reply

Randall BytwerkMarch 24, 2013 at 11:54 AM No, he did not. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

UnknownApril 16, 2013 at 9:09 AM Have you had any luck with finding the source? Is there proof that he did or did not or only speculation? ReplyDelete Replies Reply

Randall BytwerkApril 16, 2013 at 9:32 AM It is impossible to prove a negative. However, it is not speculation. No one has provided a source. The first citations are dubious. Is is therefore extraordinarily unlikely that Goebbels said it. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

jgfoxJune 7, 2013 at 10:22 AM Thanks so much for your investigating this "quote". I have used the pseudo quote in the past.
I don't want to use a false quote in order to refute those who lie.
Thanks!
PS I just corrected someone who used it on Huffington and gave your site as a great resource. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

ParidellOctober 27, 2013 at 3:11 AM So did I, in the comments for: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/fort-hood-ignored-nidal-hassan-now-warns-of-tea-party-terror-threat/ ReplyDelete Replies Reply

AnonymousJuly 6, 2015 at 4:20 PM then who did? ReplyDelete Replies Reply

Randall BytwerkJuly 6, 2015 at 4:26 PM The first citations we can find are two Internet sources in 2002. Neither gives a source. They took it from somewhere else. We contacted one of the people who cited it. He had no idea where he got it from. So who said it? I wish we knew. It just wasn’t Goebbels. ReplyDelete Replies

Brian OleniaczSeptember 5, 2021 at 5:12 AM Can you name the sites where you found those first citations? I would like to use those as original sources for the quote in my repudiations of its authenticity. Delete Replies Reply

Randall BytwerkSeptember 5, 2021 at 6:08 AM It’s in our article, available here. If you don’t have access, I’ll dig it up and post a screen shot. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42579187 Delete Replies Reply Reply

T I G E RJune 20, 2020 at 9:24 PM Thank heavens for your blog. I'm fed up with spurious quotations from Goebbels(especially), Hitler, Goring, Churchill, Stalin et al. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

AnonymousJanuary 21, 2021 at 5:37 PM This is the sort of blog we need in the eta of memes. It seems I have heard this quote attributed to Goebbels: "A belief is a collar to which a leash can be attached." Goebbels might well have agreed with this sentiment, but I can find no instance of him saying or writing it. Nor have I had any luck finding the original source. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

Randall BytwerkJanuary 22, 2021 at 8:07 AM Can you give me any kind of example of it in use? I did a Google search and could not find it. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

Yusup SaeppudinAugust 12, 2021 at 9:06 PM Eventually, we should not just believe anything we find on internet.
Critical research is indeed vital to separate between the truth and the lie.
This article of yours is really enlightening. ReplyDelete Replies Reply

AnonymousApril 29, 2023 at 10:21 AM You should be author and publish books to enlighten people on this subject. ReplyDelete Replies Reply Add comment Load more...

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An Outline of the Problem

Some years ago I (Randall Bytwerk) got an e-mail from someone trying to track down the Goebbels quotation at the top of the page. Since I’v...

About this blog

“Goebbels didn’t say it” is an attempt by two professors to put a small dent in the amount of nonsense on the Internet. We want to reduce the incidence of a fabricated quotation by Joseph Goebbels.