Hitler, Bush and Historical Accuracy
“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our Homeland.”
This quote, according to hundreds of pages on the web, is by Adolf Hitler from a 1933 (or 1932 or 1922 on some pages) announcement of the creation of the Gestapo. These pages all have two things in common:
- They all compare Bush to Hitler
- They never cite their source
As a geeky historian, I find the second more troubling than the first. In fact, the creation of the Gestapo (note the presence of uncited quotes in this article), which began piecemeal around Germany, culminated in the so-called Reichstag Fire Decree, which among other things
placed severe limitations on personal freedom, the right of free expression, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of assembly; it permitted the authorities to spy on people’s private communications through the post, telegraph, and telephone; it allowed the police to conduct search and seizure operations in private homes; andit enabled the police to arrest people and put them in protective custody without charging them with a specific offense[1]
It is, indeed, hard to avoid seeing the parallels with our government’s behavior since September 11. We have allowed our government to eavesdrop on phone conversations. We have permitted our elected officials to pass laws permitting the government to demand our purchasing records from bookstores (illegal search and seizure), which was largely solved by the bookstores refusing to make the information available, but the parallel is significant. We have also arrested people without charging them with a specific offense and we have allowed them to be tortured even if not guilty of a specific offense, because they might spill the beans about other threats to public security. So it is not amiss to compare the Gestapo to measures by the Bush administration. Obviously, one should not belabor the comparison: Bush is no Hitler. Bad as he is, Bush is nevertheless closer to Roosevelt than he is to Hitler. However, the utility of the comparison is not to paint Bush as a modern Hitler, which is ridiculous, but to point out how willing his is as a president and we are as a people to go down the same road that the Germans went down in return for a little security. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so it behooves us to make sure that the first step is in the direction of freedom, not totalitarianism. It is most certainly useful to see how dictators have taken control in the past so we can guard against it in the present, and in that light, Bush should make us afraid.
But what about the quote? It isn’t so far from the text of the special law of 26 April 1933 for the creation of the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) that said it was necessary to create such a police force “In order to assure the effective struggle against all the efforts directed against the existence and security of the state.”[2] That gets at the essence of the quote, but it comes up short of being a parallel with the supposed Bush quote.
It may well be that the quote that is all over the net is accurate, but I would like to see one citation. Just one. At this point, most people object to my historian geekiness and say that the special law is “close enough” to the version on the net. But when we let the accuracy of our facts slide, we are also taking one step in the wrong direction. That journey of 1000 miles also ends in totalitarianism. The most important bulwarks we have against tyrants is that we do not let them control history. Stalin tried by airbrushing cosmonauts in and out of photos. The Roman Inquisition tried it by burning books. Open discourse based on verifiable facts is the bane of tyrants. Ultimately, it is more important than force of arms, because if you can twist history so that the people believe the Big Lie, you have no need of arms, but when the illusion of the Big Lie is broken on a broad enough scale, no amount of arms can restore the illusion.
When we parrot quotes that are parroted on the web by authors who are parroting others who can never cite their actual source, we go down that slope where we leave the realm of facts and enter the realm of myth, and the realm of myth is the favorite homeland of tyrants and demagogues everywhere. The land of myth is the one where we have a virtual paradise on earth if we could just get rid of the Jews. The land of myth is the one where Chinese peasants under Mao were living in a workers’ paradise and, as Jung Chang talks about in her wonderful memoir Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China
Sources
1. Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror : The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans
2.Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (Clarendon Paperbacks)
Popularity: 26% [?]
Add to: 
del.icio.us •
furl •
reddit
•
digg •
technorati cosmos
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Excellent point. As much as I would love to slap this quote alongside some Bush blurb, I cannot in good conscience do so without some decent citation….which I have yet to find. As the 9-11 conspiracy crowd have proven, once you slap some official-sounding quote without any citation on the web, it will forever be dusted off and uncovered and touted as ‘evidence’ long after it’s been thoroughly refuted. And that makes people look like true amateurs.
Keep up the diligent geekiness.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Thanks Derwood. It’s nice to know that my uptight, geeky diligence is appreciated by someone! I do find it troubling when people toss around labels like Nazi or Fascist or Communist (as one fan called me) and get fast and loose with citations and facts. As Machiavelli said, “It is better for the prince to lie to the people than confront them with unpopular truths.” Or did he? Anyone can make up a quote!
November 5th, 2007 at 5:04 am
I found your site while researching the same “geeky” questions that you are raising about the Bush/Hitler “quote” bouncing around the web. There are enough verifiable creepy Bush quotes that his detractors should not need to twist history to make him look bad. Credibility requires meticulous accuracy.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Thanks Nancy.
If I were not so verbose, that’s what I would have said.
Nothing is served by making stuff up, reiterating undocumented allegations, or repeated unsourced citations. When you do that, it raises questions about credibility in general and it becomes easier to discredit an entire, otherwise well-documented argument because one aspect gets disproven or can’t be proven.
I know it’s not the world we live in with Rush and Ann and all, but I do think that there is a burden on people who love civil liberties to be tight with the facts even when it does not suit their purposes. Once we accept that we can make stuff up in an attempt to further our agenda, we have in essence abanonded any agenda that I could support, no matter how idealistic its purported aims.
PS, Nancy put a spam catcher address in the email field. I guess I should put this somewhere more obvious but
November 6th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
I can’t believe no one has thanked you yet. I was also annoyed by the fact that the websites did not cite their sources. THANK YOU!!!
November 6th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Thanks Shane! Considering that this site gets almost no traffic, I’m just happy to see people stopping by to comment.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Thank you Ranter for an eloquent piece of clear thinking.
I’m not sure about the veracity of the Bush/Hitler quotes but ‘Zeitgeist – The Movie’ is certainly promulgating them as fact. I am right now in the process of watching it on Youtube and when the quotes came up it stopped me in my tracks. I’m astounded really.
And like you and your previous visitors I have to find out the facts. I know something is not right as there are no sources given for either quote. Hitlers quote is cited as being from – “When announcing the Gestapo to the people”. No date no place. While the Bush version is given no context at all.
My search so far has taken me to your good site and to a piece by Jackson Thoreau on Opednews dot com in which he states that in his ‘…17th press conference’ President Bush speaking on the Budget says:
The quote is from the conference of December 20, 2004 and a full transcript is available on the Whitehouse site as well rm audio versions on various other sites, which is the closest I can get so far.
‘Protect the homeland’. Sinister but no mention of evil etc.
My quest continues though.
It’s very disappointing really. These guys from Zeitgeist are purporting to expose propaganda and give a better insight into our common history. A worthy cause. But for me now I’ll have to check everything they say and then it doesn’t warrant the effort. When will they learn that the method is the message. You cannot expose lies with more lies
June 7th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Thanks John. Your comments (which I rec’d on my birthday no less) got me to go and correct a few poorly written passages.
As yet, though, I still don’t know the original source of the quotation, whether made up or accurate.
If anyone does find out where this came from originally, regardless of whether it was simply made up in 200x or comes from 1930s Germany, I would love to have this answered.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:50 am
I guess I’m not the only one. I found your site while looking for an accurate source of the “Hitler” quote and any similar quotes by George W. How easy it is to fall into the trap. Something agrees with your think and next thing you know you are spouting it as fact, thus joining the ranks of the enemy.
I’m doing research for a book about Vietnam and why we were there, incorporating quotes I’ve found. Many are un-sourced and no matter how applicable to my story I just can’t be a hypocrite. Keep up the good work.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Interesting how so many of the comments here are left by people after watching Zeitgeist, and who are trying to verify the Hitler/Bush quote. That is how I found this site as well. It is good to know that not everybody believes everything they hear. Remember never believe anything without facts to backup the claim.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Remember, just because you believe something to be true, does not make it so.
December 29th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Wow!!! I was also watching Zeitgeist when I felt the obligation to look up the quote and try to contrast it. I have to say it’s not the only thing I’ve had to look up from the video, since I think there are a few other exagerations.
Going back to your post, you make a great point, it’s really annoying when you find qoutes and “facts” with no reference at all. It’s even worse when people just believe it, and don’t question it for a second.
It’s good to know there are still people like yourself and your readers who aren’t completely blinded by the almighty internet.
Good work!!!
December 29th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Thanks Sam!
It’s something that has always bugged me. One of the first arguments I got in on the internet concerned a quote from Martin Luther. The other guy said I was wrong because he had proof – The Oxford Book of Quotations, citing Luther’s speech before the Imperial Diet.
Sadly for him, my source was the original German proceedings of the Imperial Diet and an extended discussion on the quote from a biography of Luther. That pretty much settled that.
My latest, with much less political import than the Hitler/Bush thing is the “I would have written a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time.” That’s attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Oscar Wilde to Pliny the Younger. The only one I can actually find is from Pascal
“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”
Blaise Pascal, Les provinciales, ou, Les lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte à un provinciale de ses amis et aux RR. PP. Jésuites Lettre 16 (1656), pp. 297-326 in the Garnier edition, Paris, 1965.
Yeah, okay. I’m kind of anal about this stuff. I guess it’s not by accident I became a historian.
March 5th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
“The German people are not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom”
“What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator”
“In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism.”
I’d say its close enough. These ones can be cited.
March 9th, 2010 at 10:34 am
ismhmr,
Fine. Those are all good quotes. But you must have entirely missed the point of this article. The point is, these are random quotes with no citation.
You could have just made them up right now. Unless you cite your sources, quotations are worthless.
If those quotes “can be cited” than please cite them.
To be useful, a quote must be traceable to the original source. Anything else hurts the cause. Look at how much amunition the shennangians related to climate change data have given to the climate change deniers.
It is important first and foremost to be transparent and verifiable.
June 13th, 2010 at 11:55 am
How about the additional evidence that puts Prescott Bush in with the Nazi’s? It’s a proven fact that he provided funding to them through his banking practices. The quote is just a piece used to back up these Neo-Con/Neo-Nazi principles. Not saying the Bush’s are anti-semitist, but doesn’t the eveidence provided give creedence to the whole to go war/stay at war for money ideology?