James L. Stokesbury > Quotes

“In 1932, a commission of the League of Nations produced a preparatory draft for a general scheme of disarmament. The proposal, however, left untouched all previous treaties that dealt with arms limitations. Among these, the French insisted on including the Versailles treaty, with its provisions about German strengths. This meant there could be no German rearmament; that meant there could be no equality of arms, and that in turn, by the convoluted logic of politics, meant there could be no disarmament.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“Britain and France, honoring their pledge to Poland made earlier in the year, declared war on Germany on September 3. The war lasted nearly six years, and by the time it was over, much of the civilized world lay in ruins, something more than thirty million people had been killed, great empires had been destroyed, and weapons of new and hitherto unimagined potential had been unleashed upon the world. Such a result could not have stemmed from a border dispute between Germany and Poland. The powder train that led to the outbreak of war went back far beyond the immediate causes of it.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“The wars of the mid-nineteenth century had been short, and they had been won by the state that got the most men in the field the earliest; theorists concluded that mobilization of a vast number of men was of primary importance.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I

“None of the treaties could disguise the basic fact of European life—a united Germany was potentially the strongest power on the Continent. France began to rearm.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“The fact that France and Britain did go on to win the war preserved their great-power status, but to a very considerable extent they were great powers by default, and their appearance of strength and solidity was no more than an illusion.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“independent”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I

“So beautiful was that summer that those who survived it invested it with a golden haze; it assumed a retrospective poignancy, as if before it, all had been beautiful, and after it, nothing ever was again. It became the summer that the world ended, and it was somehow fitting that it should therefore be the most glorious summer ever.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I

“Is it too imaginative to say that if the Schlieffen Plan had worked, Adolf Hitler might have remained a private in the List Regiment and Joseph Stalin a Georgian peasant?”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I

“Actually, she had now made it extremely likely that, if Germany developed any expansionist tendencies at all, the French would be dragged into another war—exactly what the alliances were all supposed to avoid.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“Darwin had said the fittest survived, and the Social Darwinists completed the circle. The best way to demonstrate fitness to survive was to dominate one’s fellows;”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I

“The Russian delegation, led by Maxim Litvinov, proposed complete and immediate disarmament for everybody; this was rejected out of hand as a Bolshevik trick.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“This meant there could be no German rearmament; that meant there could be no equality of arms, and that in turn, by the convoluted logic of politics, meant there could be no disarmament.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War II

“The Battle of the Marne was the end of the Schlieffen Plan, the end of the era of short wars, and the end of the old Europe as well.”
― James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I