Lynne Olson > Quotes

“we’re inclined to say what we think, even when we have not thought very much.”
― Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

“The German embassy in Washington had spent thousands of dollars to send fifty isolationist Republican congressmen to the convention to work for the adoption of an isolationist platform.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“There was no bombing of the U.S. mainland, no civilian casualties, no destruction of millions of homes. Indeed, while the standard of living plummeted for the vast majority of Britons during the war, many if not most Americans lived better than ever before.”
― Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

“A few days before, she had gone to confession and told the priest about the poison she was taking with her and her concerns about being damned in the eyes of the church if she used it to kill herself. She hoped she would have the courage to resist torture, but she worried that she might not be able to do so and might, in the end, inform on her colleagues. The priest allayed her fears, saying her death would not be a suicide but rather a necessary means of resisting the enemy. He gave her absolution in advance.”
― Lynne Olson, Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler

“For the two Western leaders, the alliance with Stalin posed a peculiar moral dilemma. Roosevelt and Churchill, the British military historian Max Hastings noted, "found it convenient, perhaps essential, to allow Stalin's citizens to bear a scale of human sacrifice which was necessary to destroy the Nazi armies, but which their own nations' sensibilities rendered them unwilling to accept." As a result, they traded "dependence upon one tyranny"--the Soviet Union--for "the destruction of another"--Nazi Germany.
In doing so, they traded away Poland's future.”
― Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

“I do know that in every direction I find a growing discontent with the President’s lack of leadership,” Ickes wrote in his diary. “He still has the country if he will take it and lead it. But he won’t have it very much longer unless he does something.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Happily for the Allies, none of those scenarios became reality. As Dean Acheson aptly put it, “At last our enemies, with unparalleled stupidity, resolved our dilemmas, clarified our doubts and uncertainties, and united our people for the long, hard course that the national interest required.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Many years after the war, an American journalist asked Jeannie Rousseau, one of Marie-Madeleine’s operatives, why she had risked her life to join Alliance. “I don’t understand the question,” replied Rousseau, who was responsible for one of the greatest Allied intelligence coups of the war. “It was a moral obligation to do what you are capable of doing. It was a must. How could you not do it?”
― Lynne Olson, Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler

“Were the Germans able to perfect these new weapons six months earlier, it was likely that our invasion of Europe would have encountered enormous difficulties and, in certain circumstances, would not have been possible,” General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the invasion forces, later wrote. “I am certain that after six months of such activity, an attack on Europe would have been a washout.”
― Lynne Olson, Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler

“[Ed Murrow]would remark during a BBC broadcast: "It is difficult to explain the meaning of cold to people who are warm, the meaning of privation to people who have wanted only for luxuries...It is almost impossible to substitute intelligence for experience.”
― Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

“He demonstrated a feminism very unusual for his time by encouraging her in all her undertakings and helping her overcome the obstacles that arose with her projects,” said Guillemette Andreu-Lanoë”
― Lynne Olson, Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction

“Pack herself told a journalist after the war: “I did my duty as I saw it. It involved me in situations from which respectable women draw back. But wars are not won by respectable methods.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Lindbergh would later write: “I shared the repulsion that democratic peoples felt in viewing the demagoguery of Hitler, the controlled elections, the secret police. Yet I felt that I was seeing in Germany, despite the crudeness of its form, the inevitable alternative to decline.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Above all, she talked about the great debt she owned her parents for encouraging her to do what she wanted and for providing her with unstinting support, not to mention stellar education, that enabled her to enter a male-only field and overcome the daunting challenges put in her way.”
― Lynne Olson, Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction

“In the late 1930s and early 1940s, thousands of desperate Jews lined up each day in front of U.S. consulates in Germany, Austria, and other Nazi-controlled countries to apply for visas. However, with little sentiment in America for providing them with a means of escape, almost all were turned away.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Pastor Hall was not the first anti-Nazi film to be barred by the board; in the previous two years, it had prohibited at least seven other such movies from being shown. At the same time, however, it allowed the release of Feldzug in Polen, a propaganda film produced by the German government that depicted the Wehrmacht’s vanquishing of Poland in 1939 and portrayed Poland as the aggressor.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“In modern war … even those belligerents who are hampered by moral scruples must neglect no weapon that may be of service.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“When Pétain had announced the armistice terms to the French people, he told them that a “new spirit of sacrifice” was needed. In order to recover from the anguish of defeat, he declared, France must undergo a complete transformation of its society, adhering to the conservative spirit of his government’s new motto—Travail, famille, patrie—rather than to France’s national motto since the French Revolution—Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Obedience to authority and devotion to work, he made clear, must replace the idea of freedom and equality. There must be a return to tradition, to working the land, and to so-called family values, which in his and Vichy’s eyes meant accepting men as the unquestioned authority figures of the family and viewing women solely through the prism of motherhood and caregiving.”
― Lynne Olson, Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler

“Echoing Cantril’s view, George Gallup had earlier noted that “the best way to influence public opinion” on an issue was “to get Mr. Roosevelt to talk about it and favor it.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“It’s not surprising, then, that after conservatism made a comeback following the war and FDR’s death, one of its first targets would be the film industry.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“As the country’s most powerful creator of mass culture, Hollywood was considered an especially potent threat by Wheeler and other isolationist leaders. There was little doubt about the influence of movies: more than half of the American people saw at least one movie a week in the late 1930s and early 1940s.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“As part of that effort, FDR authorized FBI investigations of his political opponents, who were branded by administration spokesmen and much of the press as subversives, fifth columnists, and even Nazis.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“But by 1940, as the specter of war once again faced the United States, a reevaluation of rights and liberties, especially those relating to the First Amendment, had begun.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“My parents were humanists,“ Desroches later told an interviewer. “They taught me humanist values such as respect for one another, for your neighbors, for people in general, respect for civilizations. My brother and I grew up in an environment very open to culture, music, and foreign languages.”
― Lynne Olson, Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction

“On your marks, he had said to the nation, for a race with destiny.… Get set for the greatest effort of our history. Then, while the people waited poised and tense, he tucked the starter’s gun back in his pocket and went off to a Hyde Park weekend.” The British,”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“In Europe, Murrow observed to his wife, people were dying and "a thousand years of civilization [were] being smashed" while America remained on the sidelines. How could one possibly be objective or neutral about that?”
― Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

“Lindbergh decided that he and his family had no alternative but to leave America. “Between the … tabloid press and the criminal, a condition exists which is intolerable for us,” he wrote his mother. A few days before his departure, Lindbergh told a close friend that “we Americans are a primitive people. We do not have discipline. Our moral standards are low.… It shows in the newspapers, the morbid curiosity over crimes and murder trials. Americans seem to have little respect for law, or the rights of others.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Since bigotry traditionally flourishes in times of economic instability and unsettling social change, it’s not surprising that the Great Depression and its accompanying turmoil provided another fertile seedbed for intolerance toward Jews. “Economic hardship was taking its toll,” noted the Anti-Defamation League’s Arnold Forster. “People needed a scapegoat for their Depression miseries.”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Convinced that the isolationists, particularly Lindbergh, posed a major threat to the country and himself, Roosevelt and his supporters, assisted by a covert British intelligence operation, embarked on a campaign to destroy their credibility, influence, and reputations”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

“Shortly after Lindbergh’s first speech, Sherwood wrote in his diary: “Will Lindbergh one day be our Fuehrer?”
― Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941