Bill Yenne > Quotes

“I read that they have buried his body like a dog's - without funeral rites, without tribal wail, with no solemn song or act. That is the deed of to-day. That is the best that this generation has to give to this noble historic character, this man who in his person ends the line of aboriginal sanctities older that the religion of Christian or Jew. Very well. So let it stand for the present. But there is a generation coming that shall reverse this judgement of ours. Our children shall build monuments to those whom we stoned, and the great aboriginals whom we killed will be counted by the future American as among the historic characters of the continent.”
― Bill Yenne, Sitting Bull

“One of their number directed attention to the top of a bluff, and there stood a figure in white perfectly motionless. Suddenly, one of them cried out in Sioux, 'It's Sitting Bull.' The phantom suddenly commenced waving an arm, as if motioning them to follow, and with the speed of a bird glided from hilltop to hilltop, finally disappearing in the direction of the Bad Lands." The New York Times observed that "only one interpretation could be given this ghostly visitation. Sitting Bull is thus identified as the....long danced-for Messiah.”
― Bill Yenne, Sitting Bull

“Once Himmler had been strict about membership requirements, but now he could afford to actually purge the SS of those who did not meet his increasingly exacting standards. Of course, these precepts were not so much a man’s IQ or the number of pushups that he could do, but the Aryan purity of the blood in his veins and his Nordic appearance. Had DNA testing existed in the 1930s, Himmler would have used it.”
― Bill Yenne, Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts: Himmler's Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS

“To address such concerns, major breweries had started hiring “travellers,” men who would literally travel to places where the product was being sold to check on the quality. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Guinness had employed several such men, including J. C. Haines, himself a former brewer, who traveled the London region for Guinness in the 1890s. Haines also became a Guinness “World Traveller,” making trips to Europe and the Middle East, as well as to Australia. Perhaps the most famous Guinness World Traveller was Arthur T. Shand, a former World Traveller for British ale brewer Allsopp, who was hired by Guinness in 1898. For the next 15 years, until the eve of World War I, the tireless Shand traveled throughout the United States and Canada, and also made visits to Latin America, South Africa, and Australia, which was the largest market for Foreign Extra Stout until eclipsed by the United States in 1910.”
― Bill Yenne, Guinness: The 250 Year Quest for the Perfect Pint

“Only in the Soviet Union did women carry arms and engage in routine front-line combat duty on a large scale during World War II. There were numerous Soviet women infantry soldiers, and at least two female combat pilots achieved ace status. Katya Budanova and Lilya Litvak each shot down more than a dozen Luftwaffe aircraft.”
― Bill Yenne, Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts: Himmler's Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS

“Himmler is the man whom General Heinrich Hossbach described as “Hitler’s evil spirit, cold, calculating and ambitious … undoubtedly the most purposeful and most unscrupulous figure in the Third Reich.”
― Bill Yenne, Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts: Himmler's Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS

“Between May 26 to June 4, a hastily assembled fleet of more than 800 boats, including fishing boats, pleasure craft, and lifeboats, made numerous crossings of the English Channel, rescuing nearly 200,000 British troops and more than 100,000 French soldiers from capture by the Germans.”
― Bill Yenne, Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts: Himmler's Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS