Ronald Reagan & Nazi Death Camps

On the 112th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, we commemorate his many monumental accomplishments as the greatest president of the past century. But it is also a good occasion for correcting the record regarding the persistent, never-ending efforts to obscure those accomplishments with misleading smears. One attack on Reagan that has grown in the telling over the years is the claim that he invented a wartime story about having been present at the liberation of the Nazi death camps. The problem: The actual evidence of Reagan saying this is vague, thirdhand, and contradicted on the record by people who were there. It is also inconsistent with Reagan’s own public accounts of how he first came to see the reality of the Holocaust on film.

The death-camps story is of fresh interest again because we now live in a golden age of fabulists in American politics, driven by the George Santos drama. Of course, there are all different types of falsehoods politicians tell, ranging from white lies dictated by convention, to invented histories, concealment of fact, and tall tales for the sheer mischievous thrill of putting on an audience. The most egregious and long-running fabulist of his own biography in American political history is Joe Biden. Unlike Reagan, however, when Biden has invented stories, it is almost always in public, leaving unambiguous evidence of what he said. Typically, the only factual disputes are about whether some fig leaf of support can be conjured for the stories he tells; nobody disputes that he told them. He tends to do this on camera — in front of crowds on the campaign trail, or in televised debates, interviews, or Senate hearings. It has happened so regularly in full public view that one need not scrape for examples from disputed private conversations. The opportunity to persuade voters his way is most often the catnip that lures Biden into Walter Mitty–land, but so is any threat to his ego; in a confessional moment reflecting on his 1987 meltdown, he conceded that, “I exaggerate when I’m angry.”

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

Featured Tags

On the 112th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, we commemorate his many monumental accomplishments as the greatest president of the past century. But it is also a good occasion for correcting the record regarding the persistent, never-ending efforts to obscure those accomplishments with misleading smears. One attack on Reagan that has grown in the telling over the years is the claim that he invented a wartime story about having been present at the liberation of the Nazi death camps. The problem: The actual evidence of Reagan saying this is vague, thirdhand, and contradicted on the record by people who were there. It is also inconsistent with Reagan’s own public accounts of how he first came to see the reality of the Holocaust on film.

The death-camps story is of fresh interest again because we now live in a golden age of fabulists in American politics, driven by the George Santos drama. Of course, there are all different types of falsehoods politicians tell, ranging from white lies dictated by convention, to invented histories, concealment of fact, and tall tales for the sheer mischievous thrill of putting on an audience. The most egregious and long-running fabulist of his own biography in American political history is Joe Biden. Unlike Reagan, however, when Biden has invented stories, it is almost always in public, leaving unambiguous evidence of what he said. Typically, the only factual disputes are about whether some fig leaf of support can be conjured for the stories he tells; nobody disputes that he told them. He tends to do this on camera — in front of crowds on the campaign trail, or in televised debates, interviews, or Senate hearings. It has happened so regularly in full public view that one need not scrape for examples from disputed private conversations. The opportunity to persuade voters his way is most often the catnip that lures Biden into Walter Mitty–land, but so is any threat to his ego; in a confessional moment reflecting on his 1987 meltdown, he conceded that, “I exaggerate when I’m angry.”