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Allied victory did not bring universal peace, prosperity, justice or freedom; it brought merely a portion of those things to some fraction of those who had taken part. All that seems certain is that Allied victory saved the world from a much worse fate that would have followed the triumph of Germany and Japan. With this knowledge, seekers after virtue and truth must be content. (651)

MacArthur was distinguished by the splendor of his self-image as a warlord, which it suited his nation to indulge, rather than by gifts as a battlefield commander. While he directed the 1944 phase of the New Guinea campaign with some flair, he floundered in the Philippines; superior resources, especially air support, were the deciding factors in his victories. (643)

The United States was the only belligerent which emerged from the war without a sense of victimhood... Thanks to Pearl Harbor, fewer of Roosevelt's people questioned the justice of their cause than in any other war their country has fought. "It was the last time most Americans thought they were innocent and good, without qualification," said Pfc. Robert Lekachman. (640-1)

Because German and Japanese soldiers displayed high courage and tactical skill, the principal Axis powers were overrated by their enemies. From June 1940 onwards, both Berlin and Tokyo made strategy with awesome incompetence. Japan's early victories in 1941-42 reflected local Allied weakness, not real Japanese strength... (638-9)

Stalin ... recognized that the common commitment of Britain, Russia, and the United States to defeat Hitler did nothing to bridge the yawning divide between their other respective national objectives. He intended to sustain a tyranny which denied any vestige of freedom to his own people, and to secure territorial gains for the Soviet Union which the Western Allies would never willingly approve. (638)

Most French people persuaded themselves in 1940 that the Pétain regime constituted a lawful government... After the liberation in 1944, France indulged in an orgy of domestic recrimination... Communist factions emerged from the war strengthened in France ... for some years there were fears for the survival of democracy... Bourgeois capitalism eventually prevailed, but political stability proved slow to achieve. (637)

The Superfortress program cost $4 billion, against $3 billion for the Manhattan Project … [but] did not match the impact on Japan’s economy of the submarine blockade, because they took place when industry had already been crippled by lack of fuel and raw materials … LeMay’s role in punishing Japan for launching a war of aggression was more significant than his contribution to enforcing its surrender. (617)

"The spirit of human aggression has a magical tendency to evaporate as soon as the shooting starts," wrote [a British infantryman, Lt.] Norman Craig, "and a man then responds to two influences only — the external discipline that binds him and the self-respect within him that drives him on ... Courage is essentially competitive and imitative." (524)

Moltke observed that Germany's soldiers were "continuously led into positions where there is no choice but to fight." He repeated a remark made by Hitler to Manstein: "The German general and soldier must never feel secure, otherwise he wants to rest; he must always know there are enemies in front and at his back, and that there is only one thing to be done and that is to fight." (534)

Helmuth von Moltke of the Abwehr explained the continuing support of a sufficiency of Germans for Hitler ... in March 1943: "There are a great many people who have profited from the Third [Reich] and who know that their time will be up with the Third [Reich]'s end ... Further there are those who supported the Nazis as a counterbalance to foreign pressure and who cannot now easily find their way out..." (534)

The Nazi T4 euthanasia program, which begin in July 1939, killed German and Polish inmates of psychiatric units, categorized as "unfit for further existence," at a rate of some 5000 a month in 1940 ... was historically important, because at an early stage it demonstrate the German government's willingness to undertake an annihilatory process ... to eliminate a subgroup surplus to the Third Reich's requirements. (491)

Hans Frank, the Nazi ruler of Poland, wrote in his 1942 diary: "Humanity is a word that one dares not use ... The power and the certainty of being able to use that force without any resistance are the sweetest and most noxious poison that can be introduced into any government." (484)

The nature of life and death on bomber stations discouraged relationships outside a man's own crew. "If you had losses to the degree we had losses, you didn't get terribly attached to people," said Etienne Maze, who flew RAF Halifaxes. "They came and they went. By the time you had done ten 'ops,' you were a very old boy." (462)

It is among the themes of this book that the Wehrmacht fought many battles brilliantly well, but that Germany made war very badly. Nonetheless, repeated Anglo-American failures to destroy Hitler’s armies, despite successes in displacing them from occupied territory, meant that the Red Army remained until 1945, as it had been since 1941, the main engine of Nazism’s destruction. (436)