Dan Hedlund

“I have never liked Americans, except odd ones. In the mass I have always thought them dreadful!”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“He might have been speaking before the House of Commons, rather than to a small group of men fogged by cigars and alcohol in a quiet country house. “We seek no treasure,” Churchill said, “we seek no territorial gains, we seek only the right of man to be free; we seek his right to worship his God, to lead his life in his own way, secure from persecution. As the humble laborer returns from his work when the day is done, and sees the smoke curling upwards from his cottage home in the serene evening sky, we wish him to know that no rat-a-tat-tat”—here Churchill knocked loudly on the table—“of the secret police upon his door will disturb his leisure or interrupt his rest.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“At his own home, however, Goebbels found himself increasingly mired, not unhappily, in preparations for the holiday. He and his wife, Magda, had six children, all of whose names began with H: Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig, and Heidrun, the last just a month and a half old. The couple also had an older son, Harald, from Magda’s previous marriage. The children were excited, as was Magda, “who thinks about nothing but Christmas,” Goebbels wrote.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz