Thursday, August 23, 2012

Hermann Goering's Warning to America

From David Gordon's review of Tom Dilorenzo's new book, Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government:

Thomas DiLorenzo is probably best known to the public for his revisionist studies of Lincoln, but he has a wide range of economic and historical interests. Organized Crime, a collection of 52 short articles by him, shows again and again his keen eye for the striking historical detail that exactly illustrates the point he wants to make.
It will come as no surprise to readers of the Mises Daily that price control does not work. But DiLorenzo still manages to come up with an unexpected point about this familiar topic. The Nazi leader Hermann Goering warned the American occupation authorities that they stood in danger of repeating the mistakes of his own recently fallen regime. Speaking to the American correspondent (and, by the way, later American Ambassador to Switzerland) Henry Taylor, Goering said, 
Your America is doing many things in the economic field which we found out caused us so much trouble. You are trying to control peoples' wages and prices – peoples' work. If you do that you must control peoples' lives. And no country can do that part way. I tried and it failed. Nor can any country do it all the way either. I tried that too and it failed. You are no better planners than we. I should think your economists would read what happened here. (p. 5)

3 comments:

  1. The two parties are even more fascist than Goering!

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  2. A fraudulent quote constructed by 'Baldy' Harper' and inserted into "A Just Price and Emergency Price Fixing" By F.A. Harper, Essays on Liberty, Vol. II (1954) , pp. 184-201. Published by The Foundation for Economic Education

    You will find this 'quote' on pp.198-199 here: http://www.unz.org/Pub/EssaysLiberty-1954-00184?View=PDF

    And I reproduce it below:

    "Goering's Advice:

    "This quotation from Henry J. Taylor, of what Goering said in an interview long after Goering, Ribbentrop, and others had been jailed following the surrender of Germany, is revealing:

    "Your America is doing many things in the economic field which we found out caused us so much trouble. You are trying to control people's wages and prices—people's work. If you do that, you must control people's lives. And no country can do that part way. I tried it and failed. Nor can any country do it all the way either. I tried that too and it failed. You are no better planners than we. I should think your economists would read what happened here.

    "Germany has been beaten, eliminated, but it will be interesting to watch the development of the remaining great powers, the stupidities they practice within their home lands, their internal strife, and their battles of wits abroad.

    "Will it be as it always has been that countries will not learn
    from the mistakes of others and will continue to make the mistakes of others all over again and again?"

    Harper gives no source and I'm not surprised!

    Here is the correct quote from Henry J. Taylor in full:

    "Then Hermann Wilhelm Göring spoke like a true unreconstructed German, the good old German glint in his eye, his powder blue gloves whacking his knee.

    "Germany has been beaten, eliminated,'' he said. But it will be interesting to watch the development of the remaining Great Powers, the stupidities at home, and the battle of wits abroad.

    "Will it be as it always has been, that they all, every one of them, will not learn from the past and will continue to make the old mistakes in economics, in politics and war again and again".

    Source: p.23 of Henry J. Taylor's Men and Power. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015041995575;view=2up;seq=240;q1=Hermann;start=1;size=10;page=search;num=226

    Incidentally, Taylor interviewed Goering, not in 1946 (which would have been at Nuremberg), but in May 1945 at Augsburg in Bavaria.

    See here: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=mdp.39015041995575;q1=Hermann;page=root;seq=225;num=211

    Harper's fiction is found repeatedly throughout Libertarian books and articles. If this is an example of what they feel is needed to make their point then it might be the case that they don't have a point worth making.

    Disgraceful.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the note on historical accuracy. In this case, this is a little anecdote that backs up the libertarian position. If you think that one incorrect story negates an entire structure of reasoning, you are sadly mistaken. The libertarian position is built on reasoning and not anecdotes. If you'd like me to point you towards some beginning literature, I can provide you with some reading tips.

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