Wwii Quotes

“I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.
There was no anger or reproach.
It was Papa who spoke.
How did it look?"
Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Alone

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.”
― George S. Patton Jr.

“They came for him near midnight, seven hard-faced men arriving simultaneously in a matching set of Zis 101s, the black-lacquered saloon car so shamelessly modeled on the American Buick Roadmaster, and so capriciously favored by the sinister flying squads of the NKVD.
Ironically, the arrest when it came did not shock Batya. He had prepared for it.”
― KGE Konkel, Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two

“On the black cotton was printed a white skull and crossbones - the skull head grinning as if he were mocking her. The nun struggled for her breath and wanted to drop the evil little banner, but her fingers wouldn't let go of it - making her stare into its horrid death face as if she were looking at her own end.”
― Victoria Dougherty, The Bone Church

“Vera had also hated lipstick, Marzipan and Lutherans - excluding her husband, but not her late mother-in-law. Most of all she hated being governed by anyone or anything.”
― Victoria Dougherty, The Bone Church

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.
— Winston S. Churchill”
― Ellen Brazer, Clouds Across the Sun

“here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?”
― Matt Harvey

“The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.”
― E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“Ivan, the Russian sharpshooter, was sitting, gun in hand, behind one of Borg’s men on a motorbike further down South Eaton Place. The wooden barriers, the parked lorry and the elderly gentleman with the stick were all part of Isaac Walsh’s plan, aimed at hampering the policemen and giving Abbott a chance to escape.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“When you go home
Tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.”
― Patrick O'Donnell, Into the Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat

“Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God.”
― Louis Zamperini, Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian's Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II

“Guido raised his hand to his head and moved his index finger around in a circle near his temple indicating Smalley Pauley had some mental issues.”
― A.G. Russo, Bangtails, Grifters, and a Liar's Kiss

“Merlin stood up. For once, late as it was, he was pleased to see the Assistant Commissioner because he had been trying unsuccessfully to get hold of him all day. “May I introduce Detective Bernard Goldberg of the New York Police Department.”
Merlin held out a hand to the stocky young man now standing on the AC’s right. Detective Goldberg was an inch or two shorter than Merlin, with a closely cropped head of dark-brown hair and the crumpled face of a man who might have walked into a wall.”
― Mark Ellis, The French Spy

“Maeve glanced around at the tables and watched the couples sitting close to each other laughing, holding hands, or staring into each other’s eyes. She felt that familiar ache thinking of Evan, missing him, and the emptiness it caused at times like this when she was alone.”
― A.G. Russo, Bangtails, Grifters, and a Liar's Kiss

“Captain Gribble was making progress on his pony with his eleven mules. May 6th We reached Shaduzup about 11 a.m. All morning the sky was full of aeroplanes as they passed to and fro from a northern aerodrome in Burma, but I had only just reached the camp when I heard the crump, crump and crump of bombs falling in the direction of Myitkyina …”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942

“* *Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.*Don’t imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore.”
― George Orwell, As I Please: 1943-1945

“God, there must be a meaning. Fiercely he was certain that there must be a meaning.
Surely, while we live we are not lost.
Oh Janos, Janos my brother!
Surely we are not lost--while we live.”
― John Hepworth

“...what happened in New York and Washington is the same thing that England and America did to Berlin every day for three years during World War II -- and Germany did the same thing to England.”
― Lemmy Kilmister, White Line Fever: The Autobiography

“The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek those numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.”
― Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

“The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.”
― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man • The Truce

“It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians.”
― John Hersey

“The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

“It is man who kills, man who creates or suffers injustice; it is no longer man who, having lost all restraint, shares his bed with a corpse. Whoever waits for his neighbor to die in order to take his piece of bread is, albeit guiltless, further from the model of
thinking man than the most primitive pigmy or the most vicious sadist".”
― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man • The Truce

“Red had a deep loathing of the night before them. He had been through so much combat, had felt so many kinds of terror, and had seen so many men killed that he no longer had any illusions about the inviolability of his own flesh. He knew he could be killed; it was something he had accepted long ago, and he had grown a shell about that knowledge so that he rarely thought of anything further ahead than the next few minutes…”
― Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

“Not only can what others are suffering be a consolation while we are suffering, but even knowing what others suffered long ago can be consoling.”
― Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross