Rupert Colley > Quotes

“concluded”
― Rupert Colley, The Afghan Wars: History in an Hour

“On Christmas Day, 1914, British troops in the front-line trenches could hear the Germans singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night). The British joined in. Cautiously, soldiers on both sides climbed out of their trenches and walked towards each other across No Man’s Land. They shook hands, exchanged cigarettes, and took photographs of each other. Further up the line, a group of Scots played the Germans at football with helmets for goalposts. The Germans won 3–2. But the festivities had to end. With reluctant handshakes, they each returned to their trenches and grudgingly took up their arms. This fraternization was very much against orders. It was never to happen, to such a large extent, again.”
― Rupert Colley, World War One: History in an Hour

“Whenever Stalin made a speech his audience would applaud so much that no one dared be the first to stop, applauding even to the point of collapse. The writer and Soviet dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, relates a tale from 1937 when, after eleven exhausting minutes of enthusiastic clapping, a factory director was the first to stop; he got ten years in a gulag. Eventually Stalin permitted the use of a bell to signify a stop. If Stalin, in a speech, mispronounced a word (Russian, after all, being his second language), those speaking after him, if using the same word, would mispronounce it in exactly the same way.”
― Rupert Colley, Stalin: History in an Hour