Peter Margaritis > Quotes

“usually a hodgepodge mixture of old civilian and military vehicles. Many unit commanders lack their own personal vehicle to tour their area of responsibility. They must use more simple means of transportation, such as a bicycle or a horse.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“the current joke is, if you see it flying in the daytime, it’s American; if you hear it at night, it’s British, and if you do not hear or see it at all, it is the Luftwaffe.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“Rommel notes with contempt that the OKW staff had then changed their attitudes as well, from hostility to cordiality, abruptly changing their moods like chameleons to their surroundings. “Sie sind Arschküsse,” he finishes. “They’re ass-kissers.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“Rommel has seen this type of precision at work for the British in North Africa. And the well-armed, well-supplied technological Americans are even worse. He had grumbled more than once, “Those damned Americans fight their battles ‘mitt dem Rechenstift’”—with a calculator.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“If we don’t succeed in pushing the enemy back into the sea by the fourth day at the latest, then their invasion will have succeeded.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“In the East, the Reich faced a constantly strengthening Soviet Union, a phenomenon that baffled a German High Command that had at once considered the Russians inferior and on the brink of defeat.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“After over nearly three and a half years of war with England, the Germans have still not learned the lessons of the Battle of Britain.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944

“Staying in the enclosed compound at Rastenburg in East Prussia was like living in a labor camp in the middle of the woods. And working at the Berghof is like operating in a monastery, subject to the whims of a brilliant but somewhat insane abbot.”
― Peter Margaritis, Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944