# Fake Hitler Quote **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [April 13, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600 "2013-04-13T13:53:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DiamondStrike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@DiamondStrike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiamondStrike)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/1 "2013-04-13T13:53:23Z")
Good morning all, I have been perusing the web and couldn’t find the Hitler quote about gun control anywhere. The NRA’s insistence that the quote was attributed to Hitler is beyond belief. However, in saying that, these quotes can be directly attributed to V.I. Lenin. “One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin “A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin So to attribute the destruction of our second amendment rights to a fascist is incorrect. We need to attribute the destruction of our second amendment rights to a communist. Now if we take Obama’s quotes in “Dreams of my Father”, his relationship with Bill Ayers and others from Chicago’s Marxist roots, his teaching of Saul Alinsky, Obama’s mentor, Frank Davis and other ties, could we safely assume that this is a gun grab to prevent Americans from arming themselves? You want straight dope? This is straight dope. And what hurts more is it is the “Truth” ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/2 "2013-04-13T18:56:13Z")
[Link to column.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1791/did-hitler-ban-gun-ownership) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/3 "2013-04-13T21:37:01Z")
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!! stupid caplocks code ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/4 "2013-04-14T01:24:55Z")
> [@DiamondStrike](#): > > Good morning all, I have been perusing the web and couldn’t find the Hitler quote about gun control anywhere. The NRA’s insistence that the quote was attributed to Hitler is beyond belief. > > However, in saying that, these quotes can be directly attributed to V.I. Lenin. Can you supply us with credible links demonstrating that Lenin said all those things? I’m especially :dubious: about this one: "“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.” Next we’ll be hearing that Lenin said “The road to power is in demonizing sporting and gun rights organizations” or “The first step towards consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat is halting weapons sales at gun shows and expanding background checks”. I don’t doubt that dictators in general don’t want their teeming millions to own guns. But I don’t think you’re doing the gun rights cause a lot of good by trying to link Obama with Lenin via Bill Ayers (Obama has behaved far more like a typical politician playing to his base than a fire-breathing Commie). And preventing Americans from arming themselves is kind of a lost cause, seeing how many already do. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/5 "2013-04-14T03:18:35Z")
Hey, everybody. We have a live one! None of those quotes are in Lenin’s long [Wikiquotes](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lenin) page. In fact, the word gun isn’t there. Not surprising. Gun rights as a term is quite recent and it’s doubtful that Lenin or his translators would have thought to use it. The [ngrams chart](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gun+rights&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=) shows that it was virtually unused before 1990. Anybody with any sense of history or language would see that immediately. Though, admittedly, nobody with a sense of history or language could call anything that the Democrats have ever done a “gun grab.” As for Obama, the best quote on that subject is one I can’t find again, so I can’t credit the writer properly. But it went something like, “America wanted a conservative Republican for president in 2012, so it elected one.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/6 "2013-04-14T05:49:03Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > None of those quotes are in Lenin’s long [Wikiquotes](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lenin) page. In fact, the word gun isn’t there. Not surprising. Gun rights as a term is quite recent and it’s doubtful that Lenin or his translators would have thought to use it. The [ngrams chart](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gun+rights&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=) shows that it was virtually unused before 1990. It’s pretty implausible that Lenin ever had to worry about gun control. It’s not like there would have been a lot of privately-owned guns under the Tsarist regime he replaced. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/7 "2013-04-14T05:49:09Z")
Regardless of the blurb that used to appear (in Russian, of course) on the front page of _Pravda,_ Lenin was just Lenin–not Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, or V.I. Lenin, or Nikolai Lenin, or any such variant–just Lenin. It was a pen name. He was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, but the first two names were not part of his assumed name, though they were with Stalin (Iosif Vissiaronovich Dzugashvili). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/8 "2013-04-14T07:52:37Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > Regardless of the blurb that used to appear (in Russian, of course) on the front page of _Pravda,_ Lenin was just Lenin–not Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, or V.I. Lenin, or Nikolai Lenin, or any such variant–just Lenin. It was a pen name. He was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, but the first two names were not part of his assumed name, though they were with Stalin (Iosif Vissiaronovich Dzugashvili). Are you sure? Here’s an [poster](http://cdn2.img22.rian.ru/images/3972/54/39725418.jpg) from his revolutionary days where he’s identified as V.I. Lenin. And the [cover](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lenin_book_1902.jpg) of _What Is to Be Done?_ (1902) lists its author as N. Lenin. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/9 "2013-04-14T09:36:43Z")
People are forgetting Engels’ dictum that to destroy the power of the bourgeosie universal single-payer healthcare would be the vector of change. And Bakunin’s insistence on spy-in-the-sky drones to increase the power of the state; or Babeuf’s desire to protect bankers at all costs. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s pretty implausible that Lenin ever had to worry about gun control. It’s not like there would have been a lot of privately-owned guns under the Tsarist regime he replaced. I dunno. It’s not like the tsarists were anything but apathetic in even those things for which they felt most strongly — I’m pretty sure that as in most of Europe at that time, if you could purchase a gun no-one cared unless you tried to shoot a noble\*. After all most men in the Balkans had guns and used them, whilst people like Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky went hunting together for fun — yet alas, no magic Cheney moments… \*Bearing in mind, the general lack of use of a death penalty in the Tsarist state, reserving it for political assassinations, they managed 4000 executions in 85 years, about as many as the USA managed in their best 25 years; compared to 1000 a day during The Soviet Great Purge ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/10 "2013-04-14T12:16:52Z")
**Exapno Mapcase** , thanks for the Wikiquotes link. Now that I know that Lenin opposed terrorism, I guess we should start lobbying for our government to support it, right? Since anything Lenin or Hitler supported, we should do the opposite? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/11 "2013-04-14T12:33:10Z")
Besides which, even if those quotes were genuine, the first quote is explicitly clear that Lenin wanted the vast majority of the country to be armed. Doesn’t that rather undermine the argument? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/12 "2013-04-14T15:03:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Besides which, even if those quotes were genuine, the first quote is explicitly clear that Lenin wanted the vast majority of the country to be armed. Doesn’t that rather undermine the argument? We’re all bourgeoisie now. Especially DiamondStrike. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/13 "2013-04-14T17:10:07Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > **Exapno Mapcase** , thanks for the Wikiquotes link. > > Now that I know that Lenin opposed terrorism, I guess we should start lobbying for our government to support it, right? Since anything Lenin or Hitler supported, we should do the opposite? DiamondStrike just got hurt by the Truth™ There is also another item folks like that miss, The German Kaiser efforts to ensure Lenin took over in Russia: > **[BBC - History - World Wars: The Ending of World War One, and the Legacy...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/war_end_01.shtml)** > > Germany had high hopes of winning World War One - especially after astonishing advances early in1918. > [@](#): > > Towards the end of March, however, the German foreign office and the High Command agreed to send one of the exiled Bolshevik leaders, Vladimir Lenin, plus 31 other émigrés opposed both to the tsarists and the liberals, back to Russia from Switzerland. > > This was in the hopes that they would topple the Provisional Government and sue to bring an end to Russia’s involvement in the war. A sealed train passed through Germany during the night of 10 to 11 April, with the conspirators hidden on board, and within a few months the policy appeared to be crowned with spectacular success. In a recent BBC documentary about the Great war it was noticed that the Kaiser not only did that but sent money and weapons to the Bolsheviks to ensure that the side that wanted to end the war in Russia came on top over there, how ironic that 3 decades later the Bolsheviks of WWII would run over Germany. So yeah, the OP has no clue about the real Marxist roots regarding guns. > **[Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League by Marx and Engels](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm)** > [@](#): > > 1. To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. > > Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. > > Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/14 "2013-04-14T17:30:49Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Are you sure? Here’s a [poster](http://cdn2.img22.rian.ru/images/3972/54/39725418.jpg) from his revolutionary days where he’s identified as V.I. Lenin. And the [cover](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lenin_book_1902.jpg) of _What Is to Be Done?_ (1902) lists its author as N. Lenin. I disagree, first of all because Lenin’s “first name” could not be both “V. I.” _and_ “N.”; also, from an article in _Dictionary of Misinformation_ by Tom Burnam: “But the _N._ does not stand for ‘Nikolai,’ a legend perhaps spawned by knowledge of his father’s middle name, Nikolaevich, or ‘son of Nikolai.’ In European and particularly in Russian writing, _N._ (possibly for _not_ or in Russian _nyet)_ is a conventional symbol for anonymity, thus a hint that _Lenin_ is a pseudonym.” (p. 137, 1975.) Lenin used eight other pseudonyms before settling on “Lenin,” which he sometimes signed “N. Lenin.” Incidentally, about the “firearms” quote, it’s unlikely Lenin made such a statement, since he died in January 1924 and had nothing to do with the firearms issue current in the United States forty years later, the ultra-right-wingers who misquote him notwithstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/15 "2013-04-14T17:38:24Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > I disagree, first of all because Lenin’s “first name” could not be both “V. I.” _and_ “N.” Obviously not simultaneously. But you wrote _“Lenin was just Lenin–not Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, or V.I. Lenin, or Nikolai Lenin, or any such variant–just Lenin”_. I was giving examples of times when he did use a name other than just Lenin. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/16 "2013-04-14T17:59:30Z")
Yeah, I see what you mean…but is _my_ point taken? I assume you acknowledge that he did take on “Lenin” as a pseudonym. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/17 "2013-04-14T21:46:37Z")
So, in conclusion, Obama is a communist who hates white people, along with every person who voted for him, who supports higher taxes on the wealthy, background checks for gun purchases, and/or gay rights. Amirite? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/18 "2013-04-14T21:51:41Z")
Only on the Dope could a thread accusing President Obama of being a Communist gun-grabber get derailed into a semantic discussion about the proper form of Lenin’s _nom de guerre_. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/19 "2013-04-15T13:36:16Z")
I am in awe of the OP’s logic: If dictators wanted to limit gun rights, then anyone who wants to limit gun rights must be a dictator. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fake-hitler-quote/655600/20 "2013-04-15T17:43:55Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > I am in awe of the OP’s logic: If dictators wanted to limit gun rights, then anyone who wants to limit gun rights must be a dictator. But not Hitler. He was apparently okay.