Big lie

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Adolf Hitler in the early 1920s, about the time he began writing Mein Kampf (1925)

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth, used especially as a propaganda technique.[1][2] The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his book Mein Kampf (1925), to describe the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic.

According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder. Herf further argues that the Nazis' big lie was their depiction of Germany as an innocent, besieged land striking back at "international Jewry", which the Nazis blamed for starting World War I. Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held power behind the scenes in Britain, Russia, and the United States. It further spread claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany, and used these to assert that Germany had a right to annihilate the Jews in self-defense.

Use on behalf of Nazi Germany

Hitler's description

Hitler claimed that Jews had spread the "big lie" that General Erich Ludendorff was responsible for the country's loss in World War I.

The source of the big lie technique is this passage, taken from Chapter 10 of James Murphy's translation of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. (The quote is one paragraph in Murphy's translation and in the German original.)

But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true within itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[3]

In 1943, The New York Times contributor Edwin James asserted that Hitler's biggest lie was his revisionist claim that Germany was not defeated in war in 1918, but rather was betrayed by internal groups.[4]

In enacting the Holocaust

According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder.[5] Herf further argues that the Nazis' big lie was their depiction of Germany as an innocent, besieged land striking back at international Jewry, which the Nazis blamed for starting World War I. Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held power behind the scenes in Britain, Russia, and the United States. It further spread claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany, and used these to assert that Germany had a right to annihilate the Jews in self-defense.[6]

The Cold War historian Zachary Jonathan Jacobson describes its use:[7]

Adolf Hitler first defined the Big Lie as a deviant tool wielded by Viennese Jews to discredit the Germans' deportment in World War I. Yet, in tragically ironic fashion, it was Hitler and his Nazi regime that actually employed the mendacious strategy. In an effort to rewrite history and blame European Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, Hitler and his propaganda minister accused them of profiting from the war, consorting with foreign powers and "war shirking" (avoiding conscription). Jews, Hitler contended, were the weak underbelly of the Weimer state that exposed the loyal and true German population to catastrophic collapse. To sell this narrative, Joseph Goebbels insisted "all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands."

In short, Nazi fascism hinged on creating one streamlined, overarching lie ... the Nazis built an ideology on a fiction, the notion that Germany's defeat in World War I could be avenged (and reversed) by purging the German population of those purportedly responsible: the Jews.

Goebbels's description

Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi Germany's Ministry of Propaganda

Joseph Goebbels also put forth a theory which has come to be commonly associated with the expression "big lie". Goebbels wrote the following paragraph in an article dated 12 January 1941, sixteen years after Hitler first used the phrase. The article, titled "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik" (English: "From Churchill's Lie Factory") was published in Die Zeit ohne Beispiel.

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.[8]

Alleged quotation

The following supposed quotation of Joseph Goebbels has been repeated in numerous books and articles and on thousands of web pages, yet none of them has cited a primary source. According to the research and reasoning of Randall Bytwerk, it is an unlikely thing for Goebbels to have said.[9]

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.

U.S. psychological profile of Hitler

The phrase "big lie" was used in a report prepared around 1943[10] by Walter C. Langer for the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile. The report was later published in book form as The Mind of Adolf Hitler in 1972. Langer stated of the dictator:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.[11]

A somewhat similar quote appears in the 1943 Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behaviour and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender, by Henry A. Murray:

... never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.[12]

21st-century use in Eurasia

The Government of China has falsely called the Uyghur genocide (2014–present) a "big lie" perpetrated by hostile forces.[13][14][15]

Andrew Wilson of the European Council on Foreign Relations described the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as "the War of the Big Lie. The Lie that Ukraine doesn't exist. The Lie that Ukraine has no right to full sovereignty because it is a puppet state of the West. The Lie that A invaded B because C is to blame – the West, the expansion of NATO, the USA's global hegemony."[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Big Lie | Definition of The Big Lie by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of The Big Lie". Lexico Dictionaries | English. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 2021-01-17.
  2. ^ "Definition of Big Lie". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 2021-06-13.
  3. ^ Hitler, Adolf (March 21, 1939). Mein Kampf. Translated by Murphy, James. Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-23 – via Project Gutenberg.
  4. ^ James, Edwin L. (11 April 1943). "Hitler's Biggest Lie; The Fuehrer's lies are legion and colossal; his biggest is that Germany was not beaten in 1918. Hitler may be planning to use that lie again. Whatever Hitler's purpose in taking up the lie of an undefeated Germany, the record of the collapse is clear. Hitler's Biggest Lie". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
  5. ^ Herf, Jeffrey (2006). The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II And the Holocaust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 211. ISBN 978-0674038592.
  6. ^ Herf, Jeffrey (2005). "The "Jewish War": Goebbels and the Antisemitic Campaigns of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 19: 51–80. doi:10.1093/hgs/dci003.
  7. ^ Jacobson, Zachary Jonathan (21 May 2018). "Many are worried about the return of the 'Big Lie.' They're worried about the wrong thing". The Washington Post.
  8. ^ Goebbels, Joseph (12 January 1941). Die Zeit ohne Beispiel. Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP. pp. 364–369. Das ist natürlich für die Betroffenen mehr als peinlich. Man soll im allgemeinen seine Führungsgeheimnisse nicht verraten, zumal man nicht weiß, ob und wann man sie noch einmal gut gebrauchen kann. Das haupt-sächlichste englische Führungsgeheimnis ist nun nicht so sehr in einer besonders hervorstechenden Intelligenz als vielmehr in einer manchmal geradezu penetrant wirkenden dummdreisten Dickfelligkeit zu finden. Die Engländer gehen nach dem Prinzip vor, wenn du lügst, dann lüge gründlich, und vor allem bleibe bei dem, was du gelogen hast! Sie bleiben also bei ihren Schwindeleien, selbst auf die Gefahr hin, sich damit lächerlich zu machen.
  9. ^ Bytwerk, Randall (2008). "False Nazi Quotations". German Propaganda Archive. Retrieved 2 April 2021.
  10. ^ Hitler and Psychohistory Hans W. Gatzke, The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), pp. 394–401.
  11. ^ Langer, Walter C. "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler" (PDF). CIA.gov. p. 46. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-08-01. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
  12. ^ "Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler" (PDF). Office of Strategic Services. p. 219. Archived from the original on 11 January 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2018 – via archive.org.
  13. ^ Pheby, James (April 23, 2021). "UK MPs say China's Uyghurs 'suffering crimes against humanity and genocide,' as Beijing claims accusations are 'big lie'". hongkongfp.com. Hong Kong Free Press. Agence France-Presse. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  14. ^ Inskeep, Steve (28 January 2022). "China's ambassador to the U.S. warns of 'military conflict' over Taiwan". npr.org. NPR. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  15. ^ "U.S. raps China's Uyghur abuse as "genocide" in human rights report". english.kyodonews.net. Kyodo News. Mar 31, 2021. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  16. ^ Wilson, Andrew (2022-03-11). "To win the war of the Big Lie, we must cancel Vladimir Putin | View". euronews. Retrieved 2022-03-30.

Further reading

  • Baker White, John (1955). The Big Lie. London: Evans Brothers. OCLC 874233110.

External links

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