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Second World War Quotes

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Second World War Quotes

“Is this a textbook case of bad faith, of lying self-deception combined with outrageous stupidity? Or is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man who would admit that he had done wrong) who cannot afford to face reality because his crime has become part and parcel of it? (...) During the war, the lie most effective with the whole of the German people was the slogan of “the battle destiny for the German people” [der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes], coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, which made self-deception easier on three counts: it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and third, that it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated.”

WarCriminalsSelf DeceptionSecond World War
Book:The Portable Hannah Arendt
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“The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek those numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.”

HumanityHolocaustWwiiSecond World WarHitlerStalinScholars
Book:Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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“Obsessed with Christine to the end, his last statement as he left his cell was, 'to kill is the final possession'. But Muldowney was wrong. He had never possessed Christine; the resistance burning within her was too great.”

MurderPossessionResistanceObsessionWwiiBiographySecond World WarSpiesKrystyna SkarbekChristine GranvilleSpecial Agents
Book:The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville
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“Christine did not live, or love, as most people do. She lived boundlessly, as generous as she could be cruel, prepared to give her life at any moment for a worthy cause, but rarely sparing a thought for the many casualties that fell in her wake.”

SacrificeCrueltyWwiiBiographySecond World WarSpiesSoeSpecial AgentKrystyna SkarbekChristine Granville
Book:The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville
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“A diferença nos tempos de decisão pode ser interpretada como um indicador de maiores escrúpulos por parte dos ingleses. Por outro lado, tal diferença podia ter origem na simples vantagem que um ditador tem (em caso de guerra) sobre um governo democrático. Não será de todo injusto afirmar que Churchill estava consciente desta última situação. Nas memórias que escreveria mais tarde nota-se o quanto sofreu com os debates que se prolongaram ao longo de meses, acabando por demorar precisamente o tempo necessário até todo o empreendimento perder o seu sentido estratégico; tudo por causa de decisões tomadas sem convicção e novamente descartadas, do vai e vem, dos compromissos, da necessidade de argumentar justamente onde ele queria decidir e comandar.”

WarDemocracySecond World WarChurchill
Book:Churchill
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“Graças a Churchill, não foi a Alemanha que passou a dominar a Europa, mas sim os Estados Unidos e a Rússia. Graças a Churchill, o fascismo deixou de desempenhar qualquer papel significativo no mundo, ficando o liberalismo e o socialismo a travar a luta pela primazia na política interna dos países. (...) Churchill não desejava grande parte destes cenários, embora aceitasse como mal menor num contexto mais pessimista.”

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Book:Churchill
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“Adolf Hitler had no special animus toward Britain or its empire, and indeed imagined a division of the world into spheres of interests. He expected Churchill to come to terms after the fall of France. Churchill did not. He told the French that "whatever you may do, we shall fight on for ever and ever and ever.”

FightingSecond World WarHitlerChurchill
Book:On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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“The organization of the camps in the east revealed a contempt for life, the life of Slavs and Asians and Jews anyway, that made such mass starvation thinkable. In German prisoner-of-war camps for Red Army soldiers, the death rate over the course of the war was 57.5 percent. In the first eight months after Operation Barbarossa, it must have been far higher. In German prisoner-of-war camps for soldiers of the western Allies, the death rate was less than five percent. As many Soviet prisoners of war died on a single given day in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War. pp. 181-182”

GenocideSoviet UnionWwiiSecond World WarEthnic CleansingNazi GermanyPows
Book:Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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“Неговото отношение към гражданите се промени. Беше видял митинга, ...., на който митинг побелели мъже плачеха като деца - тъй дълбоко бяха оскърбени достойнството и гордостта на народа, бе изпитал същите чувства, същата мъка, скръб и гняв, но когато в края на митинга една жена от Варуша бе събрала малка тълпа от гладни съседки и бе хвърлила камъни в прозорците на кметството, той се изплаши, че може да се вдигне бунт. Заповяда да арестуват жените, ...., и написа заплашителна заповед към населението.”

WarHungerRiotSecond World WarCivil Disobedienceвойнаемилиян станев
Book:Крадецът на праскови
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“I have to hand it to you people. Three attempts to kill Hitler in as many weeks and all of them botched. You would think that a group of senior army officers would know how to kill one man. It's what you're supposed to be good at, damn it. None of you seemed to have any trouble slaughtering millions during the Great War. But it seems beyond any of you to actually kill Hitler. Next thing you'll be telling me you were planning to use silver bullets to shoot the bastard.”

World War IiSecond World WarAssassination PlotAssassinate
Book:Bernie Gunther
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“– But keeping such large troop formations idle here, while the enemy can outflank us from the right, is extremely dangerous!” Context note: Rigid command structures in the Red Army and a fear of initiative often led to catastrophic delays and encirclements in the early years of the war. In this case, the military leader is frustrated by the impossibility of implementing an obvious solution.”

TotalitarianismSecond World WarUkraine WarMilitary HistoryMilitary Leadership1941Red ArmyUssr HistoryPolitical ControlEastern Front
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.
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“I didn't even feel quite comfortable about having a modestly good time. This guilt was a holdover from the bleak cold days of the Depression when the long gray lines quickly scratched through the hardly realized moments of color ... the long winter dream played out against an always nightmarish backdrop of black and white. Ironic indeed that it took another nightmare, the red and gold blast of war, to make us rub our eyes and become accustomed once again to a brilliant spectacle. The unfamiliar color dulled our senses to the horror. We were enjoying ourselves for the first time in a decade. This was the carnival time of life, and we intended to celebrate, and celebrate we did, although a bit uneasily and self-consciously.”

DepressionWorld War IiAmerican HistoryWwiiSecond World WarThe DepressionMargaret Brown KilikThe Duchess Of Angus
Book:The Duchess of Angus
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“A very important man used to visit her sometimes, and I met him too. He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty Eva’.”

WwiiSecond World WarHitlerWorld War TwoWar StoriesWar StoryAlfred NestorUncle HitlerEva BraunAdolph Hitler Adolf Hitler
Author:Alfred Nestor
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“Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans and elements of the local non-Jewish populations closer together. Anger was directed, as the Germans wished, toward the Jews, rather than against collaborators with the Soviet regime as such. People who reacted to the Germans' urging knew that they were pleasing their new masters, whether or not they believed that the Jews were responsible for their own woes. By their actions they were confirming the Nazi worldview. The act of killing Jews as revenge for NKVD executions confirmed the Nazi understanding of the Soviet Union as a Jewish state. Violence against Jews also allowed local Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles who had themselves cooperated with the Soviet regime to escape any such taint. The idea that only Jews served communists was convenient not just for the occupiers but for some of the occupied as well. Yet this psychic nazification would have been much more difficult without the palpable evidence of Soviet atrocities. The pogroms took place where the Soviets had recently arrived and where Soviet power was recently installed, where for the previous months Soviet organs of coercion had organized arrests, executions, and deportations. They were a joint production, a Nazi edition of a Soviet text. P. 196”

CollaborationHolocaustNaziSoviet UnionWwiiUkraineSecond World WarPolandEastern EuropeEstoniaLithuaniaLatviaBelarusBloodlands
Book:Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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“El mundo no volverá a ser igual al que dejamos a nuestras espaldas. Ahí fuera están sucediendo muchas cosas. La guerra arrasará con todo. Será un mundo mejor. Desaparecerán los triángulos negros, rosas o rojos. Ya no habrá judíos, arios o negros. Nos mezclaremos todos en una gran Babel, pero esta vez no intentaremos erigir una torre más alta que el cielo. Nos limitaremos a vivir bien”

Second World WarSpanish QuoteSegunda Guerra MundialIiww
Book:Block 11
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“The [Second World] war may thus have acted as a forcing-bed, bringing to somewhat speedier development what was already securely rooted in the circumstances of our nation; and in this sense it may, perhaps, be said that: "The Scottish Renaissance was conceived in the First World War and sprang into lusty life in the Second World War.”

ScotlandSecond World WarFirst World WarScottish Renaissance
Book:The New Scotland: 17 Chapters on Scottish Reconstruction
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“Somehow one feels unfettered by any of the harsh, restricting influences of human existence as we live it these days. There are no buildings, no roads, no street lights, no artificial or even natural noises, no hustle and bustle, no need for anyone to shout or to have money or to pretend about anything; those human beings who are with you are probably fairly well known to you, and are there for the same reason that you are—they know the dangers and delights of solitude just the same as you do, and they will react to the unblemished and staggering loveliness of a huge expanse of desert sky, deep blue by day and of a marvellous purple at night sprinkled haphazardly with hundreds and thousands of stars silently lighting up that great canopy of night-time that drifts down with the close of day. I personally think I know of nothing more restorative than lying on the soft sand—cool now after the retirement of the day’s sun— and just staring at the miracle of such a sky. And then you fall asleep, rolled up in a sleeping bag against the considerable fall in temperature as the night goes on, perhaps waking an hour or two before dawn for just long enough to notice that those little stars are still there—as bright as ever—and do not even look as though they are getting ready to be extinguished by the advent of another day. It is a lovely, comforting feeling when the world around you is quite still; and there is no sound anywhere to penetrate the delightful peace that surrounds you. When the dawn comes, and the stars have all gone away, there is something sharp and exhilarating about the smell in the air. It is fresh and clean and tantalisingly different to the atmosphere which will pervade the day once the sun has come up over the distant horizon. Then there will be no escape from its merciless and desiccating heat, which drains you of energy and leaves you burned and incapable of any prolonged activity. And the bright reflection of the sun off the light-coloured sand can be piercing and painful to the eyes. There is probably not even a tiny breeze to move that sullen, sultry air, and there can be no relief from its effects until once more, and inevitably, the great ball of fire that is the sun will slide slowly below the land and allow it to grow cool. It would be foolish to pretend that all of those who served with the LRDG saw the desert in the way that I have described it, all or even much of the time. But I am quite sure that when their minds were not diverted by rather more pressing considerations concerning the enemy, there were few who were not moved by the beauty of the sky at night. They all spent quite a number of hours on sentry duty, when, alone with his thoughts and in such surroundings, no man can be oblivious of such a miraculous revelation.”

DesertSecond World WarNorth AfricaDesert QuotesLong Range Desert Group
Book:The Long Range Desert Group, 1940–1945: Providence Their Guide
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“All Nazi champions insist again and again that Marxism and Bolshevism are the quintessence of the Jewish mind, and that it is the great historic mission of Nazism to root out this pest. It is true that this attitude did not prevent the German nationalists either from coöperating with the German communists in undermining the Weimar Republic, or from training their black guards in Russian artillery and aviation camps in the years 1923–1933, or— in the period from August, 1939, until June, 1941—from entering into a close political and military complicity with Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, public opinion supports the view that Nazism and Bolshevism are philosophies—Weltanschauungen—implacably opposed to each other.”

SocialismSecond World WarNazisUssrBolshevismNational SocialismSoviets
Book:Omnipotent Government
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“There is a monstrous garden in the sky Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs, Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high. Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height... They tend it well, these gardeners on wings! How rich these blossoms, hideously fair Sprawling above the shuddering citadel As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell? O give us back the garden that we knew Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie, The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity..... But here I sit, and watch the night roll by. There is a monstrous garden in the sky! (written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941)”

PoetrySecond World WarWomen WritersWar PoetryWar Poems
Author:Margery Lawrence
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“Sixty-five years ago [written 2009], in a brief lull between storms in a remarkably stormy June, even by the standards of Channel weather, the heirs of Harold and the kinsmen of the Conqueror came to Normandy. They were supported by the remnants of their first, North American, empire, the two great nations that they had planted in the New World in the time of Good Queen Bess and James 6th and 1st: the Americans, who had rebelled in the name of the rights of Englishmen, and the Canadians, who had stood loyal in the name of the Crown. … The honours of these regiments are ancient and moving: Minden and Malplaquet, Mysore, Badajoz, Waterloo, Inkerman, Gallipoli, the Somme, Imjin. None shines more brightly than Normandy 1944. The paths of glory may lead but to the grave; yet all, even golden boys and girls, must come to dust. It is a better path to the grave than any of the others, not because glory is something to seek, but because, not once or twice in our long island story, the way of duty has been the path to glory; and duty is to be done. …Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.”

RemembranceSecond World WarMilitary HistoryNormandyD Day
Author:G.M.W. Wemyss
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“Anyway, here I am still waiting for troops, with everybody in the highest places issuing orders that I am to have them and no one in the lower quarters taking the slightest step to obey. The result is that we are months and months back on our programme and God knows when we will begin to do anything. Once patience gets frayed to tatters, and the loathing that one engenders for this country and its unbelievable military system reaches a stage impossible to describe. I am due for repatriation and often feel like applying. The only thing holding me back, and will no keep me here in spite of everything, the feeling that one hates to go home a failure, and secondly, the knowledge that if I got back home I would not be able to contribute one iota to the defeat of the enemy, whereas here I do know him and given the tools I can do something to finish him off. It's often so difficult though to fight (very metaphorically speaking), with one bare hands, and physically one gets exhaust. And one feels that one will never forgive or forget the stupid people who stood in the way, all the time wondering how one can be so petty, for they are certainly not worth remembering for their own sakes and not to forgive them is to take them far too seriously. I suppose really that war, especially when it is waged far away from public criticism and almost out of the public mind, is the highest form of inefficiency known to man. Hundreds more, thousands of gentlemen, in fact, who would be failures in any normal business and in peacetime would be kept in their places commercial travellers, et cetera, are now in positions of responsibility and yet sabotage anybody who has energy and ideas, and in spite of it all, I think that I still have a bit of both, and that no number of years in India will knock or dry them out of me.”

HistorySecond World WarBurmaBritish ArmyAbyssiniaPsywar
Author:George L. Steer
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“How could a large land empire thrive and dominate in the modern world without reliable access to world markets and without much recourse to naval power? Stalin and Hitler had arrived at the same basic answer to this fundamental question. The state must be large in territory and self-sufficient in economics, with a balance between industry and agriculture that supported a hardily conformist and ideologically motivated citizenry capable of fulfilling historical prophecies - either Stalinist internal industrialization or Nazi colonial agrarianism. Both Hitler and Stalin aimed at imperial autarky, within a large land empire well supplies in food, raw materials, and mineral resources. Both understood the flash appeal of modern materials: Stalin had named himself after steel, and Hitler paid special attention to is production. Yet both Stalin and Hitler understood agriculture as a key element in the completion of their revolutions. Both believed that their systems would prove their superiority to decadent capitalism, and guarantee independence from the rest of the world, by the production of food. p. 158”

IndustryEconomicsAgricultureWwiiModernitySecond World WarHitlerEmpireStalinBloodlands
Book:Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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“I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.”

WorldShouldWritingMeanWarHardHatePrayerCommonGenerationsInvolvedProjectsRemainsCompetitionMalesWar Of The WorldsParadigmGoreSecond World WarSelf Hate
Author:Erica Jong
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