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Who really said it

Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty

Not sourced to Goebbels — author unknown Unknown Unattributed · no German or English source located
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

There is no located source for this sentence in Goebbels’s speeches, articles or diaries — not in German, and not in any of the standard English translations. What exists is a different passage from his speech at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, in which he complains that wartime propaganda against Germany worked by accusing Germany of what its enemies were themselves doing. That is a charge he levelled at his opponents, not a maxim he offered for his own trade. The compressed imperative — ‘accuse the other side’ — is somebody else’s summary, and nobody has established whose.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty” Widely credited to Joseph Goebbels, but no source exists in his speeches, articles or diaries. The nearest genuine passage is from his 1934 Nuremberg speech and means something narrower.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Joseph Goebbels. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Joseph Goebbels — Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda. Theme: "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Origin
Unknown — no source located
Nearest genuine text
Speech, Nuremberg party congress, 1934
Printed in
Der Kongress zur Nürnberg 1934, pp. 130–141
Goebbels source for this wording
None located, German or English

The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing. Nuremberg, 1934 — the genuine passage

This is the real material, and it is worth reading slowly. It is a claim about what was done to Germany, in the war that ended in 1918. Turning it into ‘accuse the other side of that which you are guilty’ changes the grammar from a complaint into an instruction, and changes the speaker from accuser to strategist. That is a large edit to make on someone else’s behalf.

Goebbels at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally — full English translation

How we traced it

  • The test for a Goebbels quotation is unusually tractable: his major speeches were published by the party’s own press, his articles were collected in volumes such as Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, and a large tranche of both is available in English translation through Calvin University’s German Propaganda Archive. Searching that body of material for this sentence returns nothing the 1934 speech ↗.
  • What it does return is the line quoted above, from the 1934 Nuremberg congress. Read it against the popular version and the difference is not stylistic. Goebbels is describing a technique he says was used against Germany by the Allies in the First World War. He is not writing a playbook; he is filing a grievance.
  • The second passage people reach for is from ‘Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik’ of 12 January 1941, where he writes that the English ‘follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.’ That is the famous ‘big lie’ passage — again an accusation against an enemy, and again not this sentence the 1941 article ↗.
  • We can say what has not been found. We cannot say who first wrote the compressed version, and we will not guess. No dated first appearance has been established by anyone, and inventing one would be exactly the error this page exists to correct.

We deliberately publish no rights status for the popular sentence, because a text with no known author and no known date of first publication has no determinable term. The genuine 1934 and 1941 Goebbels texts are a separate matter: German-language originals published by the NSDAP press, whose post-war status in Germany was handled through state control of the party’s literary estate, and whose modern English translations are the translators’ own work and are in copyright. Quote the genuine passages briefly and with citation, as scholarship does. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This one is worth handling precisely, because the underlying observation about propaganda is real and well studied. The problem is not the idea. The problem is putting a sentence in quotation marks under a named author who cannot be shown to have written it.

Not sourced to Joseph Goebbels no located source

Not in the published speeches, not in the collected articles, not in the diaries, not in German and not in the standard English translations. His output is unusually well preserved, which makes an absence here informative rather than merely inconclusive the archive ↗.

Real, but a different claim complaint, not instruction

At Nuremberg in 1934 he said the cleverest trick in wartime propaganda against Germany was to accuse Germany of what the accusers were themselves doing. He is describing something done to his country, in the past tense, as a grievance. The popular version rewrites it as an imperative he is issuing read it ↗.

A separate genuine text conflation

The 1941 article accusing Churchill of lying big is often merged with this one into a single imaginary quotation. They are different pieces, written seven years apart, and neither contains this sentence.

Also offered, also unsupported unsupported

The line sometimes migrates to Hitler and to Mein Kampf. No passage in that book corresponds to it either; the genuine Mein Kampf material on the ‘big lie’ is, once again, an accusation against Jewish and Marxist opponents rather than a description of the author’s own method.

Not established we will not invent one

We can show the sentence is not in Goebbels. We cannot show when or where it entered English, because nobody has documented that, and a page about fabricated precision should not manufacture any.

Not located in anything Goebbels wrote or said. The genuine 1934 passage is a complaint that Germany’s enemies used the technique — not a rule he set out for himself the speech ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is short enough to be a caption and cynical enough to feel like insider knowledge, and it offers the reader a ready-made explanation for any accusation they dislike. Attach the most notorious propagandist of the twentieth century and it stops sounding like an opinion and starts sounding like a leaked memo.

The irony is precise rather than cute. A sentence about false accusation is itself a false accusation — not of a sympathetic figure, but of a man whose real record is damning enough without help. Quoting him inaccurately is the one way to make him harder to indict.

He said the enemy did it to Germany. Someone else turned that into an order.

What the projection idea actually rests on

The pattern the aphorism gestures at is real and has been studied for decades under names like projection, mirror propaganda and accusation in a mirror.

The phrase ‘accusation in a mirror’ comes from analysis of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where broadcasters accused the Tutsi minority of planning exactly the extermination that was being prepared against them.

That literature does not depend on a Goebbels epigram, and it is stronger without one, because it rests on documented broadcasts and transcripts rather than a sentence nobody can source.

The honest version of the claim is: this technique is well attested in twentieth-century propaganda, including Nazi propaganda. The dishonest version is a quotation mark and a name.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Goebbels at the 1934 Nuremberg Rallyresearch.calvin.edu

The English translation of the speech containing the genuine passage about accusing Germany of what its enemies were doing.
Goebbels Accuses Churchill of Lying (12 January 1941)research.calvin.edu

The article from Die Zeit ohne Beispiel carrying the real ‘big lie’ passage, routinely confused with this one.
German Propaganda Archiveresearch.calvin.edu

The searchable corpus of translated Nazi-era material against which the absence of this sentence can be checked.
Joseph Goebbels — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Maintains the running distinction between his sourced statements and the ones that circulate without any.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels

1897–1945 · Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda

Joseph Goebbels ran the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda from 1933 until his death in 1945, and is the name Western readers reach for whenever a sentence about manipulating a public needs an author. That reflex is why so many unsourced aphorisms end up under his name: attach it to Goebbels and it reads as self-evidently true, and almost nobody checks. He is in fact a well-documented writer — speeches published by the party press, articles collected in book form, diaries running to many volumes — which makes his real output easy to search and the absence of a given line meaningful rather than merely unproven.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Unattributed aphorism; no source located in Goebbels’s speeches, articles or diaries. Nearest genuine text: speech at the Nuremberg party congress, 1934, in Der Kongress zur Nürnberg 1934 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP), pp. 130–141.

MLA (9th ed.)

“Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.” Unattributed; no Goebbels source located.

APA (7th ed.)

Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty. (n.d.). Unattributed aphorism [no Goebbels source located].

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/accuse-the-other-side-of-that-which-you-are-guilty

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