Best 141 quotes in «world war 2 quotes» category

As the years go by and I grow older, I feel compelled to record my experiences in wartime Germany. It is important that my children, grandchildren and future generations know about the difficult times we all endured and of the horrors that existed in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Due to my advanced age and present condition, I am aware of the urgency to document my memories. If I fail in this, I will fail those who follow me, for they will never know!” Adeline Perry This book had its origin many years ago when Adeline Perry tried to recount her experiences and found that she would become overcome by her emotions every time she tried. The horrors and trials that she had experienced, plus the responsibility of raising her two daughters proved to be overwhelming. It was not until the twilight of her life when her daughters gently persuaded her to try again so that future generations might hear and perhaps learn from her experiences. In fact a good portion of these manuscripts were written while she was in the care of Hospice and only now survive because of immense personal strength and devotion to her family and the desire that what had happened to her would never happen again. Her daughter, and my wife, Ursula can take a great deal of pride in the effort it took to make these manuscripts a reality. After Adeline’s passing I had the privilege to develop the book Suppressed I Rise. Staying true to her story I gave her the authorship of the first edition of this book, which adhered to, and did not exceed what she had left in her original manuscripts. This book which was printed in limited numbers became an instant success and deserved more exposure. Readers also felt that there were questions that went unanswered requiring a follow-up. How did Adeline justify going to Germany prior to World War II? What happened to her marriage to Richard and how did she resume her own life, as a single mother, when she returned to South Africa! With additional reflections by her daughters Brigitte Grigsby and Ursula Bracker, and travel to the areas discussed in Suppressed I Rise, I expanded the book to include the prewar years. I also corrected minor contradictions and factual discrepancies that were inadvertently caused by the passage of time. Talking to people in Germany I confirmed some of what had happened including the hanging of the Russian prisoner of war. The book has now become a powerful example of not only personal courage but also of human tragedy. It is a book that I am proud to have written and share in the concept that it was a story that had to be told.

We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

A family is no place for privacy!

After walking up one of the steepest streets in the Village of Überlingen, I found Herr Graf at the municipal hospital and was shocked to see how severe his burns were. He was in a dreadful state and obviously appeared to be in great pain. Although his heavy woolen police uniform had warded off burns to his body, his face and hands were badly scorched. The hospital was understaffed for the number of casualties they had to care for, so he asked me if I could come to feed and care for him occasionally. Of course I agreed, even though I knew that for each visit I would have to trudge up the same very long steep hill to get there. Seeing him suffering and in such pain, I felt that this was the least I could do; besides I was now moving into his apartment…. With great difficulty he handed me the key and asked if I could try to locate his teenage son, who had most likely been captured by the Allies. On the way back, my reward was that it was downhill with a beautiful view of the distant Alps. Besides, it was a much easier walk!

A girl like that does not deserve to be married to a man she does not love!” The doctor stared for a moment, and then burst into quite inexplicable laughter. “Are we still speaking of Helen?” he wheezed after a moment. “Yes,” snapped the matron, glaring at him. “Dear me,” said the doctor, removing his glasses and dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “Such a circumstance would be very unfortunate – very, very.” The matron huffed. “The poor child is trapped in a loveless marriage – trust me. I’m a woman.” “The not-at-all-to-be-pitied girl is married to a man she adores,” the doctor said, smiling. “Trust me. I’m a man, with a wife and three daughters.” “Adores my eye!” The doctor replaced his spectacles and spoke very patiently: “Miss Bingham, only a woman who loves remembers what kind of aircraft her man flies.

And at the end of the evening he and Dym had made plans, airy ambitious plans, of all that they would do after the war. Euphemia had laughed at the planners. “What boundless energy you have, Jacob!” she had said. Jacob had turned - Tony could see the dark, curly head and sparkling eyes quite plainly - and smiled at her. “Madam,” he had said, “if I had a thousand lives, I could fill them all.

And so the Red Army, squeezed between two of the most brutal dictators in human history, fought on. - Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

And you just said ‘yes’?” “We could use the money.” “Did you take money for saving the Jews?” Conversation between ‘BB’ and his wife Grete The Informer by Steen Langstrup

As I remember, the worst result of a World War II block was a flood of Argentine Gin. Sensitive martini-boys and Gibson-girls still shudder....

Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.

But if she'd come then, she would never have properly appreciated it. She'd have seen the happy crowds and the Union Jacks and the bonfires, but she'd have no idea of what it meant to see the lights on after years of navigating in the dark, what it meant to look up at an approaching plane without fear, to hear church bells after years of air-raid sirens. She'd have had no idea of the years of rationing and shabby clothes and fear which lay behind the smiles and the cheering, no idea of what it had cost to bring this day to pass--the lives of all those soldiers and sailors and airmen and civilians.

I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits? We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?

Even after years of war, some men retained scruples about licensed homicide. [...] Lieutenant Peter Downward commanded the sniper platoon of 13 Para. He had never himself killed a man with a rifle, but one day he found himself peering at a German helmet just visible at the corner of an air-raid shelter--an enemy sniper. "I had his head spot in the middle of my telescopic sight, my safety catch was off, but I simply couldn't press the trigger. I suddenly realised that I had a young man's life in my hands, and for the cost of one round, about twopence, I could wipe out eighteen or nineteen years of human life. My dithering deliberations were brought back to earth with a bump as Kirkbride suddenly shouted: 'Go on, sir. Shoot the bastard! He's going to fire again.' I pulled the trigger and saw the helmet jerk back. I had obviously got him, and felt completely drained...What had I done?

But was it snobbery to feel that someone's world was too different from yours to ever meld, despite what he had felt back among the light and chatter? Was it prejudiced to acknowledge that skin colour did make a difference, simply because it did matter to so many?

But you need…” Helen began. “Nothing,” he finished flatly. “I have uniforms, and airmen’s mess hall – I need nothing.

Currently reading one of the many examples of the Japanese atrocities inflicted on other Asian- Pacific communities during World War II. Definitely an educational read so far. Check out, Philippines' Resistance: The Last Allied Stronghold in the Pacific!

Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn’t know what to do. Later we learned that the Stars and Stripes that had flown over Guadalcanal were raised over Shuri Castle, a fitting tribute to the men of the 1st Marine Division who had the honor of being first into the Japanese citadel.

Eh oui, Léon comprenait, Léon approuvait ce que disait Louise tout simplement parce que c'était elle qui le disait. Il trouvait son rire beau parce que c'était son rire à elle, il aimait son regard qui le scrutait et l'encourageait parce que c'était ses yeux verts à elle qui le regardaient ainsi comme s'ils ne cessaient de lui demander : Dis-moi, c'est bien toi ? Hein, c'est vraiment toi ? Il était transporté par la mèche qui s'égarait sur le front de Louise parce que c'était sa mèche de cheveux à elle, et il ne pouvait s'empêcher de rire de sa pantomime,quand elle imitait le maire allumant sa cigarette, et il riait parce que c'était sa pantomime à elle.

For kilometres on end the road was totally jammed with vehicles drawn up three or four abreast - petrol tankers, ammunition trucks, teams of horses,ambulances. It was impossible to move forwards or back. Russian combat aircraft now arrived in wave after wave, and threw bombs into that unprotected, inextricable mass. This is what hell must be like.

Everyone was always hungry. The poorer you were, the hungrier you were, and with the hunger came weakness and irritability. It became difficult to think clearly and you needed to think clearly to work out how to survive the next day, how to get food. You were sure you could still work if you could find work, and you could look for it if only you could eat. But how were you going to get food, for yourself, for your children, for your wife or husband, for your parents? There were simply too many people within those walls for the calories that were let in. How were you to get food when there just wasn't enough of it? What were you going to have to do? With hunger of this severity came fatigue, a weakness that transcended tiredness and permeated your sinews and bones. As your limbs got ever lighter, they felt progressively heavier with each new day.

Everything changed, and eleven months later, here I was in the middle of the night with a gungho major, playing secret agent, hoping some Frenchie didn't put a bullet in my skull before I gave the Germans and Italians their chance.

First of all, I want you to know that I believed in the cause for which I died. No war is won without sacrifice.

For the commission to do a great building, I would have sold my soul like Faust. Now I had found my Mephistopheles. He seemed no less engaging than Goethe's.

Everyone worked day and night, Monday through Saturday. Oppenheimer insisted people take Sundays off to rest and recharge. Scientists fished for trout in nearby streams, or climbed mountains and discussed physics while watching the sunrise. "This is how many discoveries were made," one scientist said.

Except for a roll of Harding's eyes, everyone ignored me, which is the way I liked it when I had to hang around with senior officers. They had a way of thinking up ideas that got you killed and them promoted.

His manner became threatening as he stretched out his fat neck and pushed his bullhead at me. Smelling his hot breath and feeling his spit on my face, I heard him yell, “Who did you talk to?” “Why do you want to know?” I bravely asked, expecting the worst. “Answer me!” he repeated. “Give me the name of the person you sheltered!” I faltered, knowing that bad things were about to follow. Here I was just helping a German soldier and this Nazi bureaucrat took it upon himself to punish me. His three huge gold rings cut my face deeply as he repeatedly slapped my face, shouting obscenities. Shaken, I stood there trembling, trying to wipe my bleeding nose and expecting additional blows. Very timidly one of the other women asked just what it was he wanted to know. I stood with my head bowed, as he continued with his demands. I knew that he wanted me to reveal the corporal’s identity. He also wanted the names of the other soldiers who were with him in the village. I told him that they were just German soldiers that needed help! Not even knowing the circumstances, he accused them of being cowards or scared rabbits, Etappenhasen, as he called them. This was a derogatory name given to soldiers suffering from “shellshock” or Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Frightened of what could happen to them, these soldiers in Bischoffsheim stayed close to the mess hall, or goulash kanone as it was called. The local authorities had authorized our helping them and I just couldn’t betray these men! Who was this bully to get involved? I think he was just one of those “Little Hitlers” trying to make a name for himself!

Future generations would be convinced that nothing good could ever have existed in a country that produced such evil. They would think only of these evils. It would be as if these unleashed dark forces had grotesquely marched like devils on dead horses, backward through the gash in the present, and had destroyed the German past too.

From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease.  Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered.  The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials.  As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.

History is not always pessimistic for if World War II Europe has taught us anything it is that the rebuilding of cities is possible and the mending of a nation’s spirit can be achieved.

Hope, belief, and despair are not simply moods. They change our physical performance. They alter how quickly we react, how hard we fight, how quick we are to give up. - Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.

I can’t recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can’t explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.

I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that.

I can’t recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can’t explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. Ralph Webster, A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other

I didn't wait to see her ship go off, because partings are stupid things and best got over quickly

I don't really know; I'm not in the Operations Room, you see. All I do know is that the world has a Chief who was victorious when the powers of darkness struck at Him with everything they had. He has the plans today. The darkness won't last forever. There's a splendor beyond. ~Flying Officer George Dymory Ingleford, Enemy Brothers

If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.

I do so dislike H. G. Wells being accompanied by Wagner, don't you Mr. Ford?” … he was forced to acknowledge the aptness of the phrase. Nazism combines a crassly mechanical futurism with the fuss and fume of a tawdry pseudo-Gothic misconception of the past.

If a bomb has your name on it, you are dead whatever you do; and if not, it will miss you.

If [pacifists] imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German army by lying on one's back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

If you can't change it don't worry about it.

In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.

If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls." Czechoslovakian foreign minister Jan Masaryk to Lord Halifax as reaction to announcement of allies' betrayal in 1938.

If you only knew, all of you, how the camp remains in all our minds, and will until we die.

I'm sorry! It's just that it hurts so much and it never stops!

In November, when our nation remembers her fallen soldiers and honours the lost youth of my generation, the Prime Minister, government leaders and the hollow men of business affix paper poppies to their lapels and afford the dead of war two minutes' silence. Afterwards, they speak golden platitudes about the struggle and the heroism of that time. Yet the words they speak are meaningless because they have surrendered the values my generation built after the horrors of the Second World War.

In Sugamo, Louie asked his escort what had happened to the Bird. He was told that it was believed that the former sergeant, hunted, exiled and in despair, had stabbed himself to death. The words washed over Louie. In prison camp, Watanabe had forced him to live in incomprehensible degradation and violence. Bereft of his dignity, Louie had come home to a life lost in darkness, and had dashed himself against the memory of the Bird. But on an October night in Los Angeles, Louie had found, in Payton Jordan’s words, “daybreak.” That night, the sense of shame and powerlessness that had driven his hate the Bird had vanished. The Bird was no longer his monster. He was only a man. In Sugamo Prison, as he was told of Watanabe’s fate, all Louie saw was a lost person, a life beyond redemption. He felt something that he had never felt fro his captor before. With a shiver of amazement, he realized that it was compassion. At that moment, something shifted swiftly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the was was over.

In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written today, whether the treaties of the UN are written with the full cognizance of the fact that those who sign them are responsible before God?

In the way of a reflection of my family and friends I mused at the number of people that I encountered during the past 85 years. Everyone here has played an important part but there have been others, many of whom have now passed across the horizon of life, however the purpose of my reminiscing is to share happy thoughts while at the same time take a peek into the future. I can look back to those first few glimpses of my life and find my grandmother Ohme, Gertrude Thieme standing at what I perceived to be a high kitchen counter making sandwiches using a slice of almost not eatable German black bread they called schwartsbrod. With great care she laden it with lard, blootwurst or sometimes liberwurst, topped with the half of a crusty Keiser roll. I always got the heel of the roll, with a quarter lengthwise slice of a crunchy dill pickle. It was the first and last time I remember seeing her before she returned to Germany and the war. My sister Trudy had died a few years prior leaving a collective hole in my family. Her short life and subsequent death was devastating to my mother and father and I constantly felt the sorrow it brought into our home. My father unsuccessfully tried to make a success of a small delicatessen at 11 Nelson Avenue in Jersey City and we moved to 25 Nelson Avenue when my father started working as a chef at Lindy’s Restaurant on Broadway in Manhattan. At home we exclusively spoke German which was a hindrance during World War II. My mother and father never lost their German accent and the only one of my family that made a real effort to speak English without an accent was my Onkle Willie. My parents refused to associate with my Onkle Walter and his wife Tante Wilma although they always treated me kindly and I sometimes talked with my cousins Klein Walter und Norma. The neighborhood treated us as NAZI outcasts until Italy entered the war on the Axis side and suddenly we all had to prove that we were patriotic. Eventually I joined the tin can army and learned enough English to be accepted. As my accent faded I truly became an American.

In time I told Clarissa the difficulties we had had escaping from the war zone. She warmed up to me as we worked together and I felt that I could trust her. Once when the farmer was away we undertook to till a field with a southern exposure. I wore the harness and pulled the plow like a horse as she steered it. Together we plowed an entire field alone, preparing it for the springtime planting. Their farm was alongside the main road going up the mountain directly behind the Village of Überlingen. It was situated high on one of the foothills of the Alps that surround the Bodensee.