GUNS BEFORE BUTTER
"Guns before butter" meaning "the strain placed on consumer products and social welfare projects by a nation that must place a higher priority on war supplies." Attributed to Hermann Goering, 1936 radio broadcast: "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."
Earlier that year Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns." It came to mean the economic sacrifices that a nation at war must make.
Later in the U.S., the phrase changed to guns AND butter, "a charge that the President is refusing to face up to the sacrifices required." U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson made the charge against President Harry Truman and, as President Johnson, was on the receiving end of the criticism.
"Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993). Page 308-309.
It usually gets attributed to Hermann Goering, in the form "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat." But according to this Wikipedia entry, he wasn't being entirely original:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model
Earlier that year Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns." It came to mean the economic sacrifices that a nation at war must make.
Later in the U.S., the phrase changed to guns AND butter, "a charge that the President is refusing to face up to the sacrifices required." U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson made the charge against President Harry Truman and, as President Johnson, was on the receiving end of the criticism.
"Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993). Page 308-309.
It usually gets attributed to Hermann Goering, in the form "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat." But according to this Wikipedia entry, he wasn't being entirely original:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model
