Wrong Calls, Euphemisms, and Plain Lies #1 Quiz

Answer: Hitler

Hitler made this claim to his top commanders during the planning stage of operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR. It demonstrated his total contempt for the Communist regime and the Red Army. The initial success of the invasion, especially when the front door was 'kicked in' at Kiev with the destruction of several armies and the capture of 600,000 troops seemed to bear out his prediction.

However the onset of winter and a vigorous Soviet counter-stroke before the gates of Moscow demonstrated the fatal error of this statement.

The ability of the Red Army to recover from seemingly fatal blows and of the government to rally the country shocked everyone in the German high command from Hitler down.

Answer: Richard Nixon

Nixon made this startling claim at a press conference in November 1973 while defending his record as increasingly damaging information about the Watergate break-in was being revealed. Less than a year later Nixon was forced to resign to avoid impeachment proceedings as the full scope of the scandal and of his involvement became apparent.
Al Capone, a well known underworld figure, was finally convicted on tax evasion charges as most regular Funtrivia players will know by now.
Kenneth Lay was the former CEO of Enron and convicted of dodgy accounting practices which led to the corporation's collapse in 2001.
Spiro Agnew was Nixon's Vice President who had his own run in with the law and was forced to resign over his involvement in a kickback scandal during his time as governor of Maryland.

Answer: Neville Chamberlain

The sight of Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper making this bold statement as he exited his plane after his return from the Munich Conference in 1938 was the climax of the policy of appeasement and one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. In return for the dismemberment of Czechslovakia, where Hitler wished to incorporate the ethnically German Sudetenland into the Reich, no more territorial claims were to be made in Europe. Hitler felt ready for war at this time and was furious that he had been manoevered out of it and regarded Chamberlain with contempt. He broke the agreement the following March by occupying the rest of Czechslovakia finally revealing his true intentions to Chamberlain and Daladier, the French Prime Minister. This led to the fateful Anglo-French guarantee to Poland and the start of WWII in September 1939.
Winston Churchill's opposition to the appeasement policy was vindicated and he became Britain's wartime Prime Minister in May 1940.
The vainglorious Mussolini felt he was very much the peacemaker by persuading Hitler to meet the Anglo-French leaders at Munich.

Answer: capitalists

This statement is usually attributed to Lenin during the early years of the USSR when confidence was high that Communist revolutions would soon sweep the bourgeois capitalist governments from power. There was a perception that the wealth of the capitalist countries benefitted the rich at the expense of the workers.

Although this was true to a certain extent it overlooked the fact that sufficient wealth trickled down to the working class to prevent revolutionary sentiment developing. Although impressive gains were made in industrial output in the USSR under a succession of five-year plans this was more than matched by the growth of the capitalist economies.

By the 1980s the boot was very much on the other foot with the ailing Soviet economy stagnating and it had to be bailed by a succession of Western loans. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the reforms of the Chinese to 'Communism with Chinese characteristics' the triumph of capitalism was complete.

Answer: The Hundred Flowers campaign

'Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend' urged Communist leaders over the period 1956-57. Zhou Enlai urged that the government needed criticism in order to learn and convinced Mao to launch the campaign. The public responded enthusiastically and millions gave vent to their thoughts and pent up frustrations. It was all too much for Mao who thought the campaign had gone beyond 'healthy criticism' and had reached a harmful and uncontrollable level. Intellectuals were accused of being counter-revolutionaries, were arrested, tortured, and in some cases executed without trial. Some have contended that the whole campaign was a trap to flush out those who opposed Maoist orthodoxy.
The Great Leap Foward of 1957-58 was a misguided attempt to increase industrial and agricultural output that ended in disaster and mass starvation. It was estimated that 38 million perished in the 'Three years of Natural Disasters' that followed the great leap.
The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 was launched by Mao to flush out counter-revolutionaries from the party and re-impose orthodoxy and ended with the arrest of the 'Gang of Four' in 1976.
Democracy wall was meant as a safety valve for public frustration along the lines of the Hundred Flowers Campaign but also got out of hand and ended in the Tiananmen square massacre in 1989.

Answer: Rain

The theory that increased rainfall would result once the prairie lands or 'Great American Desert', was opened up to agriculture seems to have originated when a period of above average rainfall coincided with early settlement of the region. The reality was that Mississippi valley type agriculture could never be sustained on the prairies, a fact pointed out by early explorer and geographer, John Wesley Powell.

However promoters and scoundrels derided the evidence in their efforts to open up the area pushing the rain follows the plough line as part of 'Manifest Destiny' and thousands of farmers took up the challenge.

When reality struck in the 1880s most were forced off the land resulting in heartbreak and despair. Large scale agriculture in the area could not be sustained without irrigation, but that's another story!

Answer: Goering

This was typical of the grandiose claims made by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering. The reality was somewhat different with the RAF staging a first retaliatory raid on Berlin on August 25, 1940 in response to a Luftwaffe raid on London the previous night.

As the war progressed and the RAF was joined by the USAAF, round the clock bombing destroyed not only Berlin but the industrial Ruhr as well. Surreptitiously at first but increasingly openly Berliners took to calling Goering 'Meyer' whenever his name came up in conversation.

Answer: A war

This was the term Japan used to describe the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-45. Japan claimed an 'incident' at the Marco Polo Bridge was provoked by China, and prompted the full scale invasion in July 1937. Japan continued to use the term 'incident' as neither side declared war and she wanted to avoid intervention by third parties like the US. After the Pearl Harbour attack in December 1941 the gloves were off and the term was dropped.
It has been estimated that total casualties from the 'China Incident' were 20 million Chinese military and civilian and 1 million Japanese military.

Answer: Accomplished

'Mission Accomplished' read the banner which referred specifically to the completion of the carrier's 10 month deployment. However the impression was created and fostered by the media of a premature declaration of an end to the war. The whole issue became controversial with the commencement of guerrilla warfare during the ongoing Iraqi insurgency. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight Bush's minders would have steered him away from the banner, which had been put up by the crew, but at the time it appeared as a perfect photo opportunity.

Answer: frei

'Work makes [you] free' (frei) translated the sign which greeted new arrivals at Auschwitz and many other concentration camps. The sign was a black joke. It was but one in the series of lies and deceptions commencing with 're-settlement' and ending with the 'showers' which lured the Jews and others to their fate.

The breathtaking cynicism of the perpetrators who operated these camps beggers belief making them the closest thing to hell on earth that can be imagined. The only freedom unfortunate victims found, as their evil tormentors jested, was via the smokestacks of the overworked crematoria.