Göring, Victoria and Trump
Newsweek
Göring, Victoria and Trump | Opinion
Thomas G. Moukawsher
Published
Dec 11, 2025 at 06:00 AM EST
Nobody believed that right makes might like Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Göring. It was Göring who has been credited with telling the police: “Shoot first and ask questions later.”
It was Göring, founder of the Gestapo, who believed democracy was about weakness and stupidity and who sent people without trial to concentration camps with the assurance that they were “dangerous.” Even in prison at Nuremberg, with his country in ashes, Göring said, “The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused.” His view toward law could be summarized in his indelicate three-word exhortation to his fellow prisoners at Nuremberg to show no remorse for crime and no respect for law.
Germany was never the most powerful country in the world. It was crushed in a few short years by the idea that it could kill its way to the top—that only power politics counted and that world leaders can take what they please so long as they have the force to do it.
Unlike Germany, Great Britain in the 1800s was the most powerful country in the world. Sitting atop this empire, was a woman, 4 feet 11 inches tall—Queen Victoria, queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India.
Yet, not only was she in no position to use any three-word curses at her enemies, she was repeatedly humiliated by the law. She had a bruising clash with her uncle over jewels—and lost. To her fury, a jury acquitted on insanity grounds, a man who tried to assassinate her. She was humiliated when her oldest son was forced to testify in a divorce case. She may not have been amused, but in a country built on the rule of law even she could do nothing about it.
The Nazis lasted 12 years. Victoria reigned for 63. Her great-great-great-grandson Charles III now sits on the British throne. Royals continue to be humbled by the law in that country. They know that law is the price we pay for peace.
And this brings us to President Donald J. Trump. Trump believes in power politics. He scorns law-abiding Europe and respects only China and Russia, countries willing to use brute force against their citizens and foreigners alike—countries who think that laws are for the weak and the world is for the taking. Force is the instrument. Power is the goal.
In that spirit, Trump is today trying to topple the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Other than to project force for its own sake, no one seems to know why.
The result: Trump is killing people on the high seas near Venezuela as you read this. He says these people are smuggling drugs to the United States. He opposes trials for this type of suspected criminal. Trump is willing to simply label them terrorists and order them killed. “Why would we care? They’re terrorists,” Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) says. Why not just use immediate force rather than law against people we believe are dangerous?
Maybe one reason is to make sure they actually are dangerous and deserve death. The admiral in charge of the operations now admits that the boat destroyed by the U.S. military in the recent double-strike attack was headed for Suriname, not the United States. Drugs reaching Suriname are typically headed to Europe, not the United States, but the admiral hopefully expressed that it was still a “possibility” the drugs could have made their way here.
In a country governed by law, we don’t kill people over possibilities. We don’t even kill people over probabilities. We only kill—in some states and circumstances—people proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have done something worthy of death—like murder.
Another reason is to preserve the rule of law for our own sakes. One piece of lawlessness leads to another. As Trump takes nonstop bribes—recently a gold-covered globe—we might want to reflect that the unraveling of law easily leads to the unraveling of peace— first for some, then for more and then for all. The end of law sooner or later ends in catastrophe. Consider the lessons of Göring and Victoria. Whose fate would you choose for you and your country?