Steve Middendorf

“Papa’s long gone, but I continue to love him. I don’t believe it when people say that men like him were stupid and blind—believing in Stalin. Fearing Stalin. Believing in Lenin’s ideas. Everyone thought the same way. Believe me, they were good and honest people, they believed not in Lenin or Stalin, but in the Communist idea. In socialism with a human face, as they would call it later. In happiness for everybody. For each one. Dreamers, idealists—yes; blind—no. I’ll never agree with that. Not for anything! In the middle of the war Russia began to produce excellent tanks and planes, good weapons, but even so, without faith we would never have overcome such a formidable enemy as Hitler’s army—powerful, disciplined, which subjugated the whole of Europe. We wouldn’t have broken its back. Our main weapon was faith, not fear. I give you my honest Party-member’s word (I joined the Party during the war and am a Communist to this day). I’m not ashamed of my Party card and have not renounced it. My faith has never changed since 1941…”
― Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

“As if the Irish weather were his adversary. Which it was, in its way, the Irish weather, which would so rarely play ball with the plans of citizens. All public holidays were guaranteed to be rainswept, stem to stern. It was a given of Irish life. A trip to the beach, begun in blazing sunshine, would inevitably end in shivering tears, in sudden storms, in lids of cloud. How often the Irish person, of whatever age or sex, had lain on his or her towel, on any beach in Ireland, body stiffening with the assault of the cold, waiting for the cloud cover to pass away, and the gladsome sun to pour down again. Soon the shivering passes to convulsions, to an epilepsy of exposure. The victim quails, squints up at the sky with one eye, because there is a glare even in the cloud, trying to make a judgement. Should I stay or should I go? Is there any point in lying here, as gradually death seems a desirable thing?”
― Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

“EVEN HERE, IN THESE FIRST glimmers of liberty, we begin to see the character of a continent. The American-born were hungry for liberties, yet unaccustomed to freedom; resourceful, yet unacquainted with self-rule; racially mixed, yet mistrustful of whatever race they were not. For three hundred years of authoritarian reign, Spain had carefully instilled these qualities. “Divide and subjugate” had been the rule. Education had been discouraged, in many cases outlawed, and so ignorance was endemic. Colonies were forbidden from communicating with each other, and so—like spokes of a wheel—they were capable only of reporting directly to a king. There was no collaborative spirit, no model for organization, no notion of hierarchy. It was why the people of Coro or Maracaibo or Guayana refused to obey their newly independent brothers in Caracas; given the choice, they preferred the crown. And even though Americans had been inclined to mix across racial lines from the beginning, Spain had worked hard to keep the races apart, feed their suspicions. Add to this a church that was thoroughly opposed to independence, and a picture emerges unlike any other in that age of revolutions. If Spanish America now found itself strong enough to rise up against Spain, it would never quite rid itself of the divisions that the Council of the Indies had carefully installed in the first place.”
― Marie Arana, Bolivar: American Liberator

“China is the major Allied belligerent whose position on the meaning of the war has shifted most thoroughly during the postwar era.”
― Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism