Antony Beevor > Quotes

“History is never tidy.”
― Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

“I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis”
― Antony Beevor

“To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make”
― Antony Beevor

“This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“German soldiers made use of Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks, such as filling water-bottles, were dangerous when Russian snipers lay in wait for any movement. So, for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Russian boys and girls to take their water-bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“Stalin, whose bullying nature contained a strong streak of cowardice,”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“Men would pass the long, dark nights thinking of home and dreaming of leave. Samizdat discovered by Russian soldiers on German bodies demonstrates that there were indeed cynics as well as sentimentalists. ‘Christmas’, ran one spoof order, ‘will not take place this year for the following reasons: Joseph has been called up for the army; Mary has joined the Red Cross; Baby Jesus has been sent with other children out into the countryside [to avoid the bombing]; the Three Wise Men could not get visas because they lacked proof of Aryan origin; there will be no star because of the blackout; the shepherds have been made into sentries and the angels have become Blitzmädeln [telephone operators]. Only the donkey is left, and one can’t have Christmas with just a donkey.’ 2”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“In Soviet eyes the definition of ‘fascist’ included anyone who did not follow the orders of the Communist Party.”
― Antony Beevor, The Second World War

“This, perhaps, is why it is unwise to try to judge the terrible conflict of seventy years ago with the liberal values and attitudes that we accept today as normal.”
― Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

“– Ne feledjék el – mondta [Patton] nekik [a katonáinak] egy alkalommal –, soha egyetlen fattyú sem nyert háborút azzal, hogy meghalt a hazájáért. Csak úgy győznek, ha elérik, hogy a másik rohadék haljon meg az ő hazájáért!”
― Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

“The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. ‘You are under military law,’ ran the forceful reminder, ‘and you are still subject to punishment. Don’t speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don’t speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.’
One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled ‘Notes for Those Going on Leave.’ Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. ‘You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression. Relations with the Civil Population: In Germany just because someone is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front. General: When on leave back to the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

“These ‘mine-dogs’, trained on Pavlovian principles, had been taught to run under large vehicles to obtain their food. The stick, catching against the underside, would detonate the charge. Most of the dogs were shot before they reached their target, but this macabre tactic had an unnerving effect. It”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“As supreme commander, Eisenhower had to balance political and personal rivalries, while maintaining his authority within the alliance. He was well liked by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the commander-in-chief of 21st Army Group, but neither rated him highly as a soldier.”
― Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

“Order No. 227, more commonly known as ‘Not One Step Backwards’. Stalin made many changes, then signed it. The order was to be read to all troops in the Red Army. ‘Panic-mongers and cowards must be destroyed on the spot. The retreat mentality must be decisively eliminated. Army commanders who have allowed the voluntary abandonment of positions must be removed and sent for immediate trial by military tribunal.’ Anyone who surrendered was ‘a traitor to the Motherland’. Each army had to organize ‘three to five well-armed detachments (up to 200 men each)’ to form a second line to shoot down any soldier who tried to run away. Zhukov implemented this order on the Western Front within ten days, using tanks manned by specially selected officers. They followed the first wave of an attack, ready ‘to combat cowardice’, by opening fire on any soldiers who wavered. Three”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“A quarter of them came from countries overrun by the Nazis as well as from the Dominions: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa. There were so many Canadians that they formed separate RCAF squadrons, and so later did men from other countries, such as the Poles and French.”
― Antony Beevor, The Second World War

“American doctors did not of course know then what the Germans had discovered after the battle of Stalingrad. The combination of stress, exhaustion, cold and malnourishment upsets the metabolism, and gravely reduces the body’s capacity to absorb calories and vitamins.”
― Antony Beevor, Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge

“General Montgomery, despite his considerable qualities as a highly professional soldier and first-class trainer of troops, suffered from a breathtaking conceit which almost certainly stemmed from some sort of inferiority complex.”
― Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

“A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians.”
― Antony Beevor

“The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan’, the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“Churchill once remarked that the Americans always came to the right decision, having tried everything else first. But even if the joke contained an element of truth, it underplayed the fact that they learned much more quickly than their self-appointed tutors in the British Army. They were not afraid to listen to bright civilians from the business world now in uniform and above all they were not afraid to experiment. The”
― Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

“That the Soviet regime was almost as unforgiving towards its own soldiers as towards the enemy is demonstrated by the total figure of 13,500 executions, both summary and judicial, during the battle of Stalingrad.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.”
― Antony Beevor

“In 1938 the biological warfare establishment Unit 731 had been set up outside Harbin in Manchukuo, under the auspices of the Kwantung Army. This huge complex, presided over by General Ishii Shir, eventually employed a core staff of 3,000 scientists and doctors from universities and medical schools in Japan, and a total of 20,000 personnel in the subsidiary establishments. They prepared weapons to spread black plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera, and tested them on more than 3,000 Chinese prisoners. They also carried out anthrax, mustard-gas and frostbite experiments on their victims, whom they referred to as maruta or ‘logs’.”
― Antony Beevor, The Second World War

“You must leave your imagination behind or it will do you harm.”
― Antony Beevor, The Second World War

“Churchill had foreseen the consequences of the dramatic Red Army advances. He dreaded a Soviet occupation of central Europe. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had convinced himself that by charming Stalin instead of confronting him, a lasting post-war peace was a real possibility.”
― Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

“The army’s exact losses are still uncertain, but there was no doubt that the Stalingrad campaign represented the most catastrophic defeat hitherto experienced in German history.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

“Fighting in the Ardennes had reached a degree of savagery unprecedented on the western front. The shooting of prisoners of war has always been a far more common practice than military historians in the past have been prepared to acknowledge, especially when writing of their own countrymen. The Kampfgruppe Peiper’s cold-blooded slaughter of prisoners in the Baugnez–Malmédy massacre was of course chilling, and its indiscriminate killing of civilians even more so. That American soldiers took revenge was hardly surprising, but it is surely shocking that a number of generals, from Bradley downwards, openly approved of the shooting of prisoners in retaliation. There are few details in the archives or in American accounts of the Chenogne massacre, where the ill-trained and badly bruised 11th Armored Division took out its rage on some sixty prisoners. Their vengeance was different from the cold-blooded executions perpetrated by the Waffen-SS at Baugnez–Malmédy, but it still reflects badly on their officers.”
― Antony Beevor, Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge

“Sentimental thoughts of home were not just a form of escapism from their
world of vermin and filth, but also from an environment of escalating brutality in
which conventional morality had become utterly distorted.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

“Fortunately, the British security service had captured all German agents in Britain. Most of them had been ‘turned’ to send back misleading information to their controllers. This ‘Double Cross’ system, supervised by the XX Committee, was designed to produce a great deal of confusing ‘noise’ as a key part of Plan Fortitude. Fortitude was the most ambitious deception in the history of warfare, a project even greater than the maskirovka then being prepared by the Red Army to conceal the true target of Operation Bagration, Stalin’s summer offensive to encircle and smash the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre in Belorussia. Plan”
― Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

“Stalin’s appeasement of Hitler had continued with a large increase in deliveries to Germany of grain, fuel, cotton, metals and rubber purchased in south-east Asia, circumventing the British blockade. During the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union had provided 26,000 tons of chromium, used in metal alloys, 140,000 tons of manganese and more than two millions tons of oil to the Reich. Despite having received well over eighty clear indications of a German invasion–indeed probably more than a hundred–Stalin seemed more concerned with ‘the security problem along our north-west frontier’, which meant the Baltic states. On the night of 14 June, a week before the German invasion, 60,000 Estonians, 34,000 Latvians and 38,000 Lithuanians were forced on to cattle trucks for deportation to camps in the distant interior of the Soviet Union. Stalin remained unconvinced even when, during the last week before the invasion, German ships rapidly left Soviet ports and embassy staff were evacuated.”
― Antony Beevor, The Second World War