Piers Brendon > Quotes

“As one veteran of the Dardanelles said, war produces two kinds of muddle: the “Ordinary Military Cock Up” (OMCU) and the “Inextricable Balls Up” (IBU).138 In every respect apart from the final withdrawal, conducted with stealth and speed at the end of the year, Gallipoli was an IBU.”
― Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997

“So the Ukraine came to resemble “one vast Belsen.” 93 A population of “walking corpses” struggled to survive on a diet of roots, weeds, grass, bark and furry catkins.94 They devoured dogs, cats, snails, mice, ants, earth-worms. They boiled up old skins and ground down dry bones. They even ate horse-manure for the whole grains of seed it contained. Cannibalism became so commonplace that the OGPU received a special directive on the subject from Moscow and local authorities issued hundreds of posters announcing that “EATING DEAD CHILDREN IS BARBARISM.” 95 Some peasants braved machine-guns in desperate assaults on grain stockpiles. Others robbed graves for gold to sell in Torgsin shops. Parents unable to feed their offspring sent them away from home to beg. Cities such as Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Odessa and Belgorod were overrun by pathetic waifs with huge heads, stunted limbs and swollen bellies. Arthur Koestler said that they “looked like embryos out of alcohol bottles.” 96”
― Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

“Periodically Willis’s mother would snatch her family’s own food off the table and take it round to neighbours, replying to her son’s protests: “Stop whining! You’re hungry. They’re starving!”84”
― Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

“He who conquers the streets conquers the masses; and he who conquers the masses conquers the state.”
― Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s