STEWART: My guest tonight served as Adolf Hitler's air force chief and one of his closest advisors -- let's welcome to the program former German Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering! (They shake hands and sit down while the audience applauds.) Let me just say, sir, thanks for being here, and you look pretty damn good for a man over one hundred years old who supposedly died in 1946! What is that – Oil of Olay or Botox or something?!
GOERING: Ha, ha! Goodness gracious, no! I never died, I just moved to Argentina! I also lied about my age to get in the military and have taken good care of myself in my old age! And it's amazing what modern medicine can do! Ha, ha!
STEWART: Goodness gracious?!? What – is this a 4-H Club convention?!
GOERING: Ha, ha! Millions of good solid Americans from the heartland of the country talk like that, Jon!
STEWART: Oh, yeah, and out on the coasts all we do is yell 'm**her-f**ker' and 'go for the gay'!
GOERING: (Grinning) You said it, I didn't!
STEWART: In your book, you say the Nazis were misunderstood. You say they had doubts about everything they did. You were one of the Nazis close to Hitler – it sure didn't seem you guys had any doubts when you started World War II!
GOERING: Wait, let me address this Nazi thing – in Germany back then, everybody was a Nazi – you had to be one to do business, it was just a fact of life. Besides, the Nazis were just the name of a political party, like the Republicans today. I mean, we had good Nazis and bad Nazis. It's wrong to condemn all Nazis for the extreme fanaticism of a few. You know, we really weren't all fascists!
STEWART: But you were one of the head Nazis, convicted of war crimes like condoning torture!
GOERING: Tut, tut. I had documents in my desk at the time that show how much doubt I had about the decisions we were making and listed all of the things that could go wrong. We were just trying to protect the nation and acted on bad intelligence! Everything we did, we did for our country! Our top military staff believed that intelligence, incidentally.
STEWART: So you invaded Poland based on lousy intelligence reports?
GOERING: There was all kinds of paper flying around back then, pro and con. But we couldn't take a chance with the nation's security that Poland or another potential enemy like France might attack us, so we invaded first. The respected Gen. Jodl made the case to the public at the time.
STEWART: But you established a special office to provide you with the intelligence you wanted!
GOERING: I had no special intelligence office – somebody else set that up. There were three million men in the German military back then – any one of them could have done it.
STEWART: What about the torture? Are you saying you didn't order torture?
GOERING: Not torture like you saw at your Abu Ghraib prison. That kind of thing was done by bad apples – you know, low-level noncoms acting without orders. We ordered enhanced-interrogation techniques that our best legal minds said were acceptable in order to defend the country from terrorists. This was after the Reichstag fire remember, where Communists and other undesirables conspired to undermine the government and attack the public violently. We couldn't afford to let any technique for getting information out of the bad guys go unused.
STEWART: What about the concentration camps? Are you going to deny the Nazi concentration camps that killed millions of innocent people?
GOERING: Look, we had socialists, Communists, unionists, liberals, gays and other malcontents all bent on destroying our way of life. This was during the worldwide economic depression and we were trying to get people back to work, and those groups were fighting us on balancing the budget and creating more jobs. We only put people in camps who refused to work and would rather laze around collecting welfare from the taxpayers, like freeloading teachers and bottom-feeder nurses! Those were just work camps for unionists and commies who wanted to suck off the taxpayer and collect a paycheck for doing nothing!
STEWART: Ha, ha! 'Suck off the taxpayer,' huh? Now I know why you liked those camps! (Laughter.)
GOERING: Ha, ha! I didn't mean it quite like that!
STEWART: But, seriously, what about the Jews -- why did you target them for annihilation?
GOERING: We never targeted the Jews, Jon. That's all revisionist history written by the liberals. We were just trying to protect the Jews from angry Germans who were blaming them for all the nation's problems by putting them in camps, but things got out of hand when some rogue elements took it upon themselves to start executing people. I mean, you go to war with the army you have, and we had some kooks in the Wehrmacht at the time. Certainly if I had been aware of what was going on in those camps I would have put a stop to it, and so would have Hitler, but we were busy defending our country against several powerful aggressors, fighting in a two-front war.
STEWART: What about Adolf Hitler? He's now acknowledged by the world as one of the biggest monsters in history, yet you loyally served him. Are you telling me you don't think he was a monster?
GOERING: Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! The man was a vegetarian who loved animals and didn't drink, and he only had one testicle – does that sound like a monster to you? (Laughter.)
STEWART: Did you guys, like, call him 'One Ball' behind his back? (Laughter.)
GOERING: Ha, ha! No, he would have had us shot! Ha, ha – just kidding! (Laughter and applause.)
STEWART: Well, our time is up. Okay, folks, the book is 'Soaring with Eagles' by former Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering. Thank you for coming in, sir! (They stand and shake hands.)
GOERING: Thank you, Jon, for helping me sell my book and rehabilitate my image by portraying me as a feisty old grandpa instead of a vicious war criminal responsible for the death, dismemberment and torture of millions!
(Applause. Cut to commercial for Burger King's new Super Lethal DOA Beef 'n' Bacon Triple-Stack Axis of Evil Whopper with Cheese.)
Watch Jon Stewart's Feb. 23, 2011, interview with Don Rumsfeld here.
© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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