International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW)

Guessing Game War Quotes

Thinking war in terms of peace

For more than 100 years, propaganda and war rhetoric have often followed a similar pattern. This guessing game takes advantage of precisely that: participants are presented with a series of quotes on the subject of war. The quotes are not contextualised further – neither the author of the quote nor the year of origin or historical background are mentioned. After each quote, the game leader makes a statement about the context in which the quote originated: who is said to have made the statement, when and in what political situation. The participants must then guess whether this statement is true or false. The game shows in an entertaining way how similar the rhetoric of wartime can be across decades and eras – and how difficult it is to clearly assign quotations to a specific historical situation.

 

Where can I find the tool?

Collection of quotations

Contact

Marcel Vondermaßen
marcel.vondermassen@izew.uni-tuebingen.de

How does the tool work?

After the game, the discussion can continue, for example, about which patterns of war propaganda can be found in the quotations. A suitable starting point for this is, for example, Lord Arthur Ponsonby's Ten Principles of War Propaganda, which summarise typical rhetorical strategies in times of war and can be explored in more depth in a group discussion.