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World War 2 Quotes

Browse 310 quotes about World War 2.

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World War 2 Quotes

“On the surface, my novel The Vorbing is about vampires terrorising the village of Nocturne every night. The German Blitz on London in World War II. I was the real inspiration. I was fascinated by the idea of normality by day and then this evil, destructive power coming by night, and then the cycle repeating. I wanted to explore the kind of siege mentality that would create in a fantasy setting.”

FantasyLondonVampireWorld War IiVampiresWorld War 2World War TwoBlitzHitler S GermanyLuftwaffe
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“And what was the cost of this Jim Crow? Not merely that the precious words "America" and "freedom" became suspect in the eyes of the world, but more than that. It cost us lives. Lives of white men, of Frenchmen, Russians and Chinese-because there were many battles in this war when replacements were needed. But the American rule of war was "No Negroes allowed on the front lines" until the 92d finally got there. I listened to the Axis radio. Tokyo Rose said, and she quoted American sources, that Negroes were good enough to serve in the American Army, but they weren't good enough to pitch in the American Big League baseball. And they broadcast this not only to our own troops but also to the billion and a half colored peoples of the earth.”

AmericaFreedomRacismSegregationWorld War 2Jim CrowWorld War TwoAxis
Book:Why I Left America and Other Essays
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“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

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Book:The Sinews of Peace
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“Of the 403,272 tank soldiers (including a small number of women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic troops knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew—or those at least who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself—would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armored coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply “boiling up.” The tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. “Have you burned yet?” was a question tank men often asked each other when they met for the first time. A dark joke from this stage in the war has a politruk informing a young man that almost every tank man in his group has died that day. “I’m sorry,” the young man replies. “I’ll make sure that I burn tomorrow.”

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Book:Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
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“It should by now be clear to Americans that any Power, whether Napoleonic France or Hitlerian Germany or some other madly ambitious power of the future, which goes on the warpath in Europe and attempts to dominate that Continent, automatically endangers the peace and security of the rest of the world and is sure, sooner or later, to involve the United States in a horribly costly overseas conflict.”

RussiaPutinUkraineWorld War 2HitlerUkraine WarPutinismRussian AggressionPutin War Crimes
Book:Wartime Mission In Spain 1942-1945
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“In the way of a reflection of my family and friends I mused at the number of people that I encountered during the past 85 years. Everyone here has played an important part but there have been others, many of whom have now passed across the horizon of life, however the purpose of my reminiscing is to share happy thoughts while at the same time take a peek into the future. I can look back to those first few glimpses of my life and find my grandmother Ohme, Gertrude Thieme standing at what I perceived to be a high kitchen counter making sandwiches using a slice of almost not eatable German black bread they called schwartsbrod. With great care she laden it with lard, blootwurst or sometimes liberwurst, topped with the half of a crusty Keiser roll. I always got the heel of the roll, with a quarter lengthwise slice of a crunchy dill pickle. It was the first and last time I remember seeing her before she returned to Germany and the war. My sister Trudy had died a few years prior leaving a collective hole in my family. Her short life and subsequent death was devastating to my mother and father and I constantly felt the sorrow it brought into our home. My father unsuccessfully tried to make a success of a small delicatessen at 11 Nelson Avenue in Jersey City and we moved to 25 Nelson Avenue when my father started working as a chef at Lindy’s Restaurant on Broadway in Manhattan. At home we exclusively spoke German which was a hindrance during World War II. My mother and father never lost their German accent and the only one of my family that made a real effort to speak English without an accent was my Onkle Willie. My parents refused to associate with my Onkle Walter and his wife Tante Wilma although they always treated me kindly and I sometimes talked with my cousins Klein Walter und Norma. The neighborhood treated us as NAZI outcasts until Italy entered the war on the Axis side and suddenly we all had to prove that we were patriotic. Eventually I joined the tin can army and learned enough English to be accepted. As my accent faded I truly became an American.”

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Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One"
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“Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn’t know what to do. Later we learned that the Stars and Stripes that had flown over Guadalcanal were raised over Shuri Castle, a fitting tribute to the men of the 1st Marine Division who had the honor of being first into the Japanese citadel.”

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Book:With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
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“I can’t recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can’t explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. Ralph Webster, A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other”

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Book:A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other
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“The Hoboken waterfront was still familiar to me from earlier years when I walked along River Street on my way to catch the trolley or the electrified Public Service bus home from the Lackawanna Ferry Terminal. Remembering the gray-hulled Liberty Ships being fitted out for the war at these dilapidated piers, was still very much embedded in my memory. Things had not changed all that much, except that the ships that were once here were now at the bottom of the ocean, sold, or nested at one of the “National Defense Reserve Fleets.” Many of them were moved to the Reserve fleet located on the western side of the Hudson River, south of the Bear Mountain Bridge. I vividly recall seeing these nested ships when I occasionally drove north to Bear Mountain State Park on the west side of the Hudson River along Route 9W in Rockland County, New York.”

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Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."
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“I can’t recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can’t explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.”

World War IiHolocaustWorld War 2Nazi GermanyHolocaust SurvivorShoahNazis And The Church
Book:A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other
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“You cannot deport 110,000 people unless you have stopped seeing individuals. Of course, for such a thing to happen, there has to be a kind of acquiescence on the part of the victims, some submerged belief that this treatment is deserved, or at least allowable.”

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Book:Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment
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“The very old lady in black looked up at a notice over the window: TO STOP THE TRAIN PULL DOWN THE CHAIN PENALTY FOR IMPROPER USE, FIVE POUNDS. She smiled the gentlest, sweetest smile. "All my life I have been afraid that one day the temptation would prove too much for me," she said. "Don't suppose there's anyone who doesn't feel like that, ma'am," said the soldier, grinning.”

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Book:Enemy Brothers
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“And at the end of the evening he and Dym had made plans, airy ambitious plans, of all that they would do after the war. Euphemia had laughed at the planners. “What boundless energy you have, Jacob!” she had said. Jacob had turned - Tony could see the dark, curly head and sparkling eyes quite plainly - and smiled at her. “Madam,” he had said, “if I had a thousand lives, I could fill them all.”

LifePlansEnglandGermanyJudaismWorld War 2LivesNazismJewsRafConstance SaveryEnemy BrothersGreat BritianA Thousand Lives
Author:Constance Savery
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“Neither Hitler nor the West had attacked each other seriously. The Western Front was in what was called 'the phony war'; both sides sat in their fortifications. Hitler was not yet prepared for an all-out assault westward; this took time to organize. And Hitler was also aware that he had friends in the British and French upper class who might yield to his demands. Important voices in the press of Britain, France and America urged that 'the wrong war' had started, that the war should be switched against the USSR as the greater enemy.”

World War 2Anna Louise StrongStalin EraPhony War
Book:The Stalin era
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“Month after month, the Russians, bearing the brunt of war, had waited. The Anglo-American landing did not come until June 6, 1944, when the Russian army had already liberated most of the USSR and was driving across Poland. Many Russians had bitterly wondered whether the Allies delayed so that Russia might take the loss, and landed at last in Normandy because they could not afford to let Russians take Berlin alone.”

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Book:The Stalin era
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“Musel jsem se dívat na průzory do plynových komor a sám sledovat proces smrti... Znovu a znovu se mě ptali, jak se já a moji lidé na tyto operace můžeme nepřetržitě dívat a jak jsme schopni to vydržet. Má stálá odpověď zněla, že je to otázka železného odhodlání, s jakým musíme plnit Hitlerovy rozkazy, a takové odhodlání že lze získat pouze potlačením všech lidských citů.”

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Book:Sophie’s Choice
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“It's a good thing we won the war. If we hadn't, I'd be hanged as a war criminal" -- Gen Curtis LeMay, quoted by Mahaffey, p.231 On March 10, 1945, LeMay's XXI Bomber Command sent 334 B-29's to Tokyo, loaded with 1,669 tons of incendiary bombs. The resulting firestorm killed over 100,000 Japanese and injured over a million. A quarter of the industrial production in Tokyo was destroyed. (p.232, paraphrased) The atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945, killed around 120,000 Japanese. (Wikipedia)”

World War 2War CriminalIncendiaryCurtis Lemay
Book:Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder
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“The outbreak of war and the hiatus in non-essential building that it necessitated meant that the Empire Exhibition came to be looked back upon as a period ensemble, rather than the springboard to a new Scotland that those who planned it had hoped for. The international political situation meant that the demolition of the tower was not unexpected, and the imminent war was causing more pressing worries. By the time thar economic and political will for radical updating returned in the 1950s, concepts of what was modern in architecture and planning had moved on. Nonetheless, several of those subsequently involved in Scotland's post-war development would have been visitors, retaining memories of spaciousness, cleanliness, coordination and colour.”

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Book:Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age
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“THE THING WAS AN EXPERT IN HORROR, BUT THIS HUMAN HORROR INDEED EXCEEDED ANY OTHER POSSIBLE FATE. NOT ONLY BECAUSE IT WAS WITHOUT MERCY, BUT BECAUSE IT WAS ACTED UPON RATIONALLY AND WITHOUT COMPULSION. IT WAS A CHOICE. THE KILLING WAS UNRELATED TO THE LARGE WAR, AND IT SERVED NO OTHER PURPOSE THEN EVIL. MEN CHOSE TO DO THIS TO OTHER MEN AND INVENTED REASONS AND PLACES AND MYTHS IN ORDER TO SATISFY THEIR DESIRE IN A LOGICAL AND METHODICAL WAY.”

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Book:The Strain
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“From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease. Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered. The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials. As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.”

HistoryWorld War 2ShoahFeminicide
Book:Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
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