Antony Beevor Quotes

History is never tidy.

I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis

To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make

This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.

Stalin, whose bullying nature contained a strong streak of cowardice,

In Soviet eyes the definition of ‘fascist’ included anyone who did not follow the orders of the Communist Party.

German soldiers made use of Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks, such as filling water-bottles, were dangerous when Russian snipers lay in wait for any movement. So, for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Russian boys and girls to take their water-bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.

This, perhaps, is why it is unwise to try to judge the terrible conflict of seventy years ago with the liberal values and attitudes that we accept today as normal.

– Ne feledjék el – mondta [Patton] nekik [a katonáinak] egy alkalommal –, soha egyetlen fattyú sem nyert háborút azzal, hogy meghalt a hazájáért. Csak úgy győznek, ha elérik, hogy a másik rohadék haljon meg az ő hazájáért!

I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.

A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians.

These ‘mine-dogs’, trained on Pavlovian principles, had been taught to run under large vehicles to obtain their food. The stick, catching against the underside, would detonate the charge. Most of the dogs were shot before they reached their target, but this macabre tactic had an unnerving effect. It

That the Soviet regime was almost as unforgiving towards its own soldiers as towards the enemy is demonstrated by the total figure of 13,500 executions, both summary and judicial, during the battle of Stalingrad.

General Montgomery, despite his considerable qualities as a highly professional soldier and first-class trainer of troops, suffered from a breathtaking conceit which almost certainly stemmed from some sort of inferiority complex.

American doctors did not of course know then what the Germans had discovered after the battle of Stalingrad. The combination of stress, exhaustion, cold and malnourishment upsets the metabolism, and gravely reduces the body’s capacity to absorb calories and vitamins.

A quarter of them came from countries overrun by the Nazis as well as from the Dominions: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa. There were so many Canadians that they formed separate RCAF squadrons, and so later did men from other countries, such as the Poles and French.

Men would pass the long, dark nights thinking of home and dreaming of leave. Samizdat discovered by Russian soldiers on German bodies demonstrates that there were indeed cynics as well as sentimentalists. ‘Christmas’, ran one spoof order, ‘will not take place this year for the following reasons: Joseph has been called up for the army; Mary has joined the Red Cross; Baby Jesus has been sent with other children out into the countryside [to avoid the bombing]; the Three Wise Men could not get visas because they lacked proof of Aryan origin; there will be no star because of the blackout; the shepherds have been made into sentries and the angels have become Blitzmädeln [telephone operators]. Only the donkey is left, and one can’t have Christmas with just a donkey.’ 2

As supreme commander, Eisenhower had to balance political and personal rivalries, while maintaining his authority within the alliance. He was well liked by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the commander-in-chief of 21st Army Group, but neither rated him highly as a soldier.

The army’s exact losses are still uncertain, but there was no doubt that the Stalingrad campaign represented the most catastrophic defeat hitherto experienced in German history.

Hitler had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing.

You must leave your imagination behind or it will do you harm.

I saw then that he had lost touch with reality. He lived in a fantasy world of maps and flags.

If British planes appear, we duck. If American planes come over, everyone ducks. And if the Luftwaffe appears, nobody ducks.

The degree of ignorance claimed after the war by many officers, especially those on the staff, is rather hard to believe in the light of all the evidence that has now emerged from their own files.

Many soldiers closed their minds to the suffering of the Belgians as they focused on the priority of killing the enemy. Those who did care were marked for life by the horrors that they witnessed. Villages,

Churchill once remarked that the Americans always came to the right decision, having tried everything else first. But even if the joke contained an element of truth, it underplayed the fact that they learned much more quickly than their self-appointed tutors in the British Army. They were not afraid to listen to bright civilians from the business world now in uniform and above all they were not afraid to experiment. The

Sentimental thoughts of home were not just a form of escapism from their world of vermin and filth, but also from an environment of escalating brutality in which conventional morality had become utterly distorted.

The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan’, the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.

Churchill had foreseen the consequences of the dramatic Red Army advances. He dreaded a Soviet occupation of central Europe. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had convinced himself that by charming Stalin instead of confronting him, a lasting post-war peace was a real possibility.

Red Army cavalry divisions also ranged far into the rear, mounted on resilient little Cossack ponies. Squadrons and entire regiments would suddenly appear fifteen miles behind the front, charging artillery batteries or supply depots with drawn sabres and terrifying war-cries. The

French forces remained under SHAEF command as a result of Eisenhower’s compromise, but headaches in dealing with the French authorities persisted. Eisenhower subsequently complained that the French ‘next to the weather . . . have caused me more trouble in this war than any other single factor’. SHAEF

Order No. 227, more commonly known as ‘Not One Step Backwards’. Stalin made many changes, then signed it. The order was to be read to all troops in the Red Army. ‘Panic-mongers and cowards must be destroyed on the spot. The retreat mentality must be decisively eliminated. Army commanders who have allowed the voluntary abandonment of positions must be removed and sent for immediate trial by military tribunal.’ Anyone who surrendered was ‘a traitor to the Motherland’. Each army had to organize ‘three to five well-armed detachments (up to 200 men each)’ to form a second line to shoot down any soldier who tried to run away. Zhukov implemented this order on the Western Front within ten days, using tanks manned by specially selected officers. They followed the first wave of an attack, ready ‘to combat cowardice’, by opening fire on any soldiers who wavered. Three

Hemingway, eager not to miss the big battle even though he was suffering from influenza, managed to reach Colonel Buck Lanham’s command post near Rodenbourg. The house had belonged to a priest suspected of being a German sympathizer. Hemingway took great delight in drinking a stock of communion wine and then refilling the bottles with his own urine. He claimed to have relabelled them ‘Schloss Hemingstein 1944’ and later drank from one by mistake.

In its way, the fighting in Stalingrad was even more terrifying than the impersonal slaughter at Verdun. The close-quarter combat in ruined buildings, bunkers, cellars and sewers was soon dubbed ‘Rattenkrieg’ by German soldiers. It possessed a savage intimacy which appalled their generals, who felt that they were rapidly losing control over events. ’The enemy is invisible,‘ wrote General Strecker to a friend. ’Ambushes out of basements, wall remnants, hidden bunkers and factory ruins produce heavy casualties among our troops.

Polish paratroopers could not have been more different. They were not like the British who just wanted to make the best of a bad war by joking and referring to any battle as ‘a party’. Nor were they like the Americans who wanted to finish it quickly so that they could go home. The Poles were exiles, fighting for the very survival of their national identity. An American officer who saw them in training described them as ‘killers under the silk’. Polish patriotism was nothing like the rather embarrassed British equivalent: theirs was a burning, spiritual flame.

Fortunately, the British security service had captured all German agents in Britain. Most of them had been ‘turned’ to send back misleading information to their controllers. This ‘Double Cross’ system, supervised by the XX Committee, was designed to produce a great deal of confusing ‘noise’ as a key part of Plan Fortitude. Fortitude was the most ambitious deception in the history of warfare, a project even greater than the maskirovka then being prepared by the Red Army to conceal the true target of Operation Bagration, Stalin’s summer offensive to encircle and smash the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre in Belorussia. Plan

In 1938 the biological warfare establishment Unit 731 had been set up outside Harbin in Manchukuo, under the auspices of the Kwantung Army. This huge complex, presided over by General Ishii Shir, eventually employed a core staff of 3,000 scientists and doctors from universities and medical schools in Japan, and a total of 20,000 personnel in the subsidiary establishments. They prepared weapons to spread black plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera, and tested them on more than 3,000 Chinese prisoners. They also carried out anthrax, mustard-gas and frostbite experiments on their victims, whom they referred to as maruta or ‘logs’.

The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. ‘You are under military law,’ ran the forceful reminder, ‘and you are still subject to punishment. Don’t speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don’t speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.’ One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled ‘Notes for Those Going on Leave.’ Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. ‘You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression. Relations with the Civil Population: In Germany just because someone is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front. General: When on leave back to the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.

The poet Keith Douglas, a twenty-four-year-old captain in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, wrote to Edmund Blunden, that poet of the previous war, ‘I’ve been fattened up for the slaughter and am simply waiting for it to start.’ Douglas was one of a number of men who harboured a strong sense of imminent death and spoke to their closest friends about it. It is striking how many turned out to have been right, and yet perhaps such a belief somehow turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Douglas went to church parade on the last Sunday. He walked afterwards with the regimental padre, who recorded that Douglas was reconciled to his approaching death and not morbid about it. In the view of a fellow officer, he was fatalistic because he felt that he had used up his ration of luck in the desert war. Almost

They eyed with mounting alarm the red flags and banners and portraits of Lenin, Stalin and Largo Caballero on huge placards, and listened to the chanting of the demonstrators, demanding the formation of a proletarian government and a people’s army. But it was not just these obvious political symbols that frightened them. The workers in the street had a new confidence or, in their view, insolence. Beggars had started to ask for alms, not for the love of God, but in the name of revolutionary solidarity. Girls walked freely and started to ridicule convention. On 4 May José Antonio delivered a diatribe from prison against the Popular Front. He claimed that it was directed by Moscow, fomented prostitution and undermined the family. ‘Have you not heard the cry of Spanish girls today: “Children, yes! Husbands, no!”?

Stalin’s appeasement of Hitler had continued with a large increase in deliveries to Germany of grain, fuel, cotton, metals and rubber purchased in south-east Asia, circumventing the British blockade. During the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union had provided 26,000 tons of chromium, used in metal alloys, 140,000 tons of manganese and more than two millions tons of oil to the Reich. Despite having received well over eighty clear indications of a German invasion–indeed probably more than a hundred–Stalin seemed more concerned with ‘the security problem along our north-west frontier’, which meant the Baltic states. On the night of 14 June, a week before the German invasion, 60,000 Estonians, 34,000 Latvians and 38,000 Lithuanians were forced on to cattle trucks for deportation to camps in the distant interior of the Soviet Union. Stalin remained unconvinced even when, during the last week before the invasion, German ships rapidly left Soviet ports and embassy staff were evacuated.

cap abilities’.

Paulus faced what Strecker called ‘the most difficult question of conscience for every soldier: whether to disobey his superior’s orders in order to handle the situation as he deems best’. Officers who disliked the regime and despised the GRÖFAZ (‘Greatest Commander of All Time’), as they privately referred to the Führer, hoped that Paulus would oppose this madness and trigger a reaction throughout the army.

Paulus guessed immediately that he had been presented with a cup of hemlock. He exclaimed to General Pfeffer at his last generals’ conference: ‘I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal

Neither he nor Schmidt seems to have appreciated that speed was the decisive factor. They

Castilian authoritarianism developed from a feudal-military emphasis to one of political control by the Church. During the seven centuries of the Reconquista’s uneven course, the Church’s role had been mainly that of propagandist for military action, and even of participant. Then, in Isabella’s reign the warrior archbishop was superseded by the cardinal statesman. Nevertheless, the connection between Church and army remained close during the rapid growth of Spain’s empire when the crucifix was the shadow of the sword over half the world. The army conquered, then the Church integrated the new territories into the Castilian state.

Castile had the unbending pride of a newly impoverished nobleman, who refuses to notice the cobwebs and decay in his great house and resolutely continues to visualize the grandeur of his youth. This capacity for seeing only what it wanted to see made the Castilian ruling order introverted. It refused to see that the treasures from the Americas in the churches fed nobody and that the vast quantities of precious but useless metal only undermined the country’s economic infrastructure.

This passivity was entirely contrary to the Prussian tradition, which regarded inactivity, waiting for orders and failing to think for yourself as unforgivable in a commander.

Utterly irresponsible rhetoric and the debasement of political discourse fanned the flames of resentment and created fear. The socialist youth began to arm and train in secret, like the Carlists in the north-east and the minuscule Falange. Ortega y Gasset had warned the previous June of the ‘emergence of childishness, and thus violence, in Spanish politics’.29

Acoup d’état does not need a positive creed, just an enemy. A civil war, on the other hand, demands a cause, a banner and some form of manifesto.

One of the Bolsheviks’ great strengths at a time when the masses had little political sophistication was to make their orators repeat slogans, not to try to convince their audience through argument (a technique which still seems to work).

This was a deliberate strategy. ‘Although an insurrection can win on the offensive,’ Trotsky admitted, ‘it develops better the more it looks like self-defence.

Open minds never stood a chance against the ruthless single-mindedness of the Bolsheviks.

One German visitor reported to the Wilhelmstrasse: ‘One has the impression that the members of the Falangist militia themselves have no real aims and ideas; rather, they seem to be young people for whom mainly it is good sport to play with firearms and to round up communists and socialists.’8

There he heard that Major Thomas, the commander of B Company, had been killed while single-handedly rushing a German machine gun. ‘Very gallant,’ observed Partridge, ‘but I had long since learned that dead soldiers do not win battles, and my prime duty was to stay alive and preserve the lives of as many others as possible.

It was a gathering which Soviet troops could not fail to miss.

The smell of roasted flesh permeated the air for hours afterwards with the stench of oily-black smoke from the blazing vehicles . Gräbner's body was never identified among all the other carbonized corpses.

A Dutchman stepped out of his house and asked two British Soldiers if they would like a cup of tea. A little further back along the route they had come, the bodies of British paratroopers lay 'everywhere, many of them behind trees or poles', Albert Horstman of the Arnhem underground recorded. He then saw 'a man about middle-aged, who wore a hat. This man went to every dead soldier, lifted his hat and stood in silence for a few seconds.

It is only when one faces death, observed one of the men there, that one realises the great value of life.

The Abwehr also achieved a great success against the Dutch resistance beginning in March 1942. It called this counter-intelligence coup Operation North Pole, or the Englandspiel. This disaster was almost entirely due to appallingly lax practices in N Section at SOE’s London headquarters. An SOE radio operator was picked up in a sweep in The Hague. The Abwehr forced him to transmit to London. He did so, assuming that, because he had left off the security check at the end of his message, London would know that he had been captured. But to his horror London assumed that he had simply forgotten it, and replied telling him to arrange a drop zone for another agent to be parachuted in. A German reception committee was waiting for the new agent, and he was in turn forced to signal back as instructed. The chain continued, with one agent after another seized on arrival. Each was deeply shocked to find that the Germans knew everything about them, even the colour of the walls in their briefing room back in England. The Abwehr and SD, for once working harmoniously together, thus managed to capture around fifty Dutch officers and agents. Anglo-Dutch relations were severely damaged by this disaster; in fact many people in the Netherlands suspected treachery at the London end. There was no conspiracy, just a terrible combination of incompetence, complacency and ignorance of conditions in occupied Holland.

The hour of courage has struck on the clock …’, ran Anna Akhmatova’s poem at that moment when the very existence of Russia appeared to be in mortal danger.

Hitler told the women that they must prepare to leave for the Berghof like the others. Eva Braun smiled and went to him. ‘You know that I am never going to leave you,’ she said. ‘I will stay by your side.’ He pulled her head down to him and, in front of everybody, kissed her full on the lips. This act astonished all who knew him. Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian said that they would stay too. Hitler looked at them fondly. ‘If only my generals had been as brave as you,’ he said. He dispensed cyanide pills to them as a farewell present.

There was a pump which still worked outside the station, and young women near the entrance took the risk of running with a pail to fetch water.

and the French soldiers had been sitting in the bars for two days, waiting to be taken prisoner. So that’s how it was in France, that was the celebrated “Grande Nation”.

final ration from the Soviet state, the NKVD’s ‘nine grams of lead’.

Lydia Ruslanova,

He did not want headlines round the world proclaiming that a ship called ‘Germany’ had been sunk.

Blood-red Roses Tell You of Happiness’.

Vae Victis!

Stalin saw the capture of Berlin as the Soviet Union’s rightful reward, but the yield was disappointing and the waste terrible.

The main objective was to strip Germany of all its laboratories, workshops and factories.

Even the NKVD in Moscow provided a shopping list of items wanted from police forensic laboratories.

Most of the programme of stripping laboratories and factories was marked by chaos and disaster.

Red Army soldiers who discovered methyl alcohol drank it and shared it with their comrades.

The worst mistake of the German military authorities had been their refusal to destroy alcohol stocks in the path of the Red Army’s advance.

This decision was based on the idea that a drunken enemy could not fight.

Tragically for the female population, however, it was exactly what Red Army soldiers seemed to need to give them courage to rape as well as to celebrate the end of such a terrible war.

Women soon learned to disappear during the ‘hunting hours’ of the evening.

Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end. Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning, when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol from the night before.

Altogether at least 2 million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.

A friend of Ursula von Kardorff and the Soviet spy Schulze-Boysen was raped by ‘twenty-three soldiers one after the other’.

She had to be stitched up in hospital afterwards.

They noted that the Ivans went for fatter women first of all, which provided a certain schadenfreude.

Rape had become a collective experience — the diarist noted

Hanna Gerlitz gave in to two drunk Soviet officers to save both her husband and herself.

Large numbers of women soon found that they had to queue at medical centres.

Many think that the Red Army was given two weeks to plunder and rape in Berlin before discipline was exerted, but it was not nearly so simple as that.

Standards of morality had indeed taken a battering, but in the circumstances there was little option.

Willkommen in Shanghai,’ remarked one cynic.

Young women of thirty looked years older, she noticed.

The need to survive had distorted more than just morals.

The writer Ernst Jünger, when a Wehrmacht officer in occupied Paris, observed that food is power.

The power, of course, becomes even greater when a woman has a child to feed, as so many German soldiers found in France.

In Berlin, the black-market exchange rate was based on Zigarettenwahrung - ‘cigarette currency’ —

so when American soldiers arrived with almost limitless cartons at their disposal, they did not need to rape.

Bruce-Mitford, a lecturer in classics at the University of St Andrews, with an academic air and thinning sandy red hair, was austere and very tough. His idea of fun in Cairo was to go out into the desert and spend the night in the sand dunes.

The brigade fought to the end with great courage, winning the admiration of the Germans. But the continuing failure of British commanders to counter-attack in force from the west was one of the least impressive examples of generalship in the war.

Meanwhile the 7th Armoured Division had charged ahead to cut off Tobruk. Two Australian brigades hurried on from Bardia to complete the siege. Tobruk also surrendered, offering up another 25,000 prisoners, 208 guns, eighty-seven armoured vehicles and fourteen Italian army prostitutes who were sent back to a convent in Alexandria where they languished miserably for the rest of the war.

Its first major task had been the liquidation of over 4,000 Polish officers in the forest at Katyn.

In that one month of January 1945, Wehrmacht losses rose to 451,742 killed, roughly the equivalent of all American deaths in the whole of the Second World War.