Churchill Germany Quotes

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All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (The Second World War, #1))
From the very start, Churchill understood a fundamental truth about the war: that he could not win it without the eventual participation of the United States. Left to itself, he believed, Britain could endure and hold Germany at bay, but only the industrial might and manpower of America would ensure the final eradication of Hitler and National Socialism.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
The Kingdom of Heaven runs on righteousness, but the Kingdom of Earth runs on oil. ERNEST BEVIN, CHURCHILL’S MINISTER OF LABOUR AND NATIONAL SERVICE London,
Donald L. Miller (Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany)
The Government simply cannot make up their mind or they cannot get the prime minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of Britain for the locusts to eat. - Speaking in the Address in Reply debate, after giving some specific instances of Germany's war preparedness
Winston S. Churchill
In an official statement, Germany depicted Hess as an ailing man who was under the influence of “mesmerists and astrologers.” A subsequent commentary called Hess “this everlasting idealist and sick man.” His astrologer was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Göring summoned Willy Messerschmitt for a meeting and took him to task for aiding Hess. The Luftwaffe chief asked Messerschmitt how he could possibly have let an individual as obviously insane as Hess have an airplane. To which Messerschmitt offered an arch rejoinder: “How am I supposed to believe that a lunatic can hold such a high office in the Third Reich?
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
The absence of any protective measures may simply have been the result of a lapse of attention, with Churchill off in France and Fisher consumed by other matters and seemingly drifting toward madness. It would take on a more sinister cast, however, in light of a letter that Churchill had sent earlier in the year to the head of England’s Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, in which Churchill wrote that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.” Though no one said it explicitly, Britain hoped the United States would at some point feel moved to join the Allies, and in so doing tip the balance irrevocably in their favor.
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
By keeping back the twenty-five squadrons from the lost Battle of France, he acted toughly, wisely, and ungallantly; and he turned the war to the course that ended five long years later, when Hitler killed himself and Nazi Germany fell apart. This deed put Winston Churchill in the company of the rare saviors of countries, and perhaps of civilizations.
Herman Wouk (The Winds of War (The Henry Family, #1))
In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods.
Winston S. Churchill (The Birth of Britain (A History of the English Speaking Peoples #1))
I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.
Winston S. Churchill
Winston Churchill was an early proponent of eugenic legislation decades before Hitler came to power.
A.E. Samaan (From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848)
In the calendar year 1943, when 70,000 Western servicemen, including bomber crews, died fighting Germany, two million Russian soldiers were killed, nearly thirty times the number.
Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny)
There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany.
Winston S. Churchill (Churchill by Himself: In His Own Words)
Germany could not gain complete air superiority unless she could knock out our Air Force, and the aircraft industries, some vital portions of which are concentrated at Coventry and Birmingham.
Winston S. Churchill (Their Finest Hour: The Second World War, Volume 2 (Winston Churchill World War II Collection))
In the autumn of 1946 the leaves were falling in Germany for the third time since Churchill’s famous speech about the falling of leaves. It was a gloomy season with rain, cold – and hunger, especially in the Ruhr and generally throughout the rest of the old Third Reich. All autumn, trains arrived in the Western Zones with refugees from the Eastern Zone. Ragged, starving and unwelcome, they crowded in dark, stinking station-bunkers or in the giant windowless bunkers that look like rectangular gasometers, looming like huge monuments to defeat in Germany’s collapsed cities. The silence and passive submission of these apparently insignificant people gave a sense of dark bitterness to that German autumn. They became significant just because they came and never stopped coming and because they came in such numbers. They became significant perhaps not in spite of their silence but because of it, for nothing can be expressed with such a charge of menace as that which is not expressed.
Stig Dagerman (German Autumn (Quartet Encounters))
David Lloyd George had been to Germany, and been so dazzled by the Führer that he compared him to George Washington. Hitler was a ‘born leader’, declared the befuddled former British Prime Minister. He wished that Britain had ‘a man of his supreme quality at the head of affairs in our country today’. This from the hero of the First World War! The man who had led Britain to victory over the Kaiser!
Boris Johnson (The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History)
After noting that Germany’s submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: “For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
After noting that Germany’s submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: “For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
Why did she want to stay in England? Because the history she was interested in had happened here, and buried deep beneath her analytical mind was a tumbled heap of Englishness in all its glory, or kings and queens, of Runnymede and Shakespeare's London, of hansom cabs and Sherlock Holmes and Watson rattling off into the fog with cries of 'The game's afoot,' of civil wars bestrewing the green land with blood, of spinning jennies and spotted pigs and Churchill and his country standing small and alone against the might of Nazi Germany. It was a mystery to her how this benighted land had produced so many great men and women, and ruled a quarter of the world and spread its language and law and democracy across the planet.
Elizabeth Aston (Writing Jane Austen)
Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry... reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization. Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
A. Scott Berg’s more recent Wilson; John Keegan’s wrenching The First World War; Martin Gilbert’s The First World War; Gerhard Ritter’s The Schlieffen Plan; Lowell Thomas’s 1928 book about World War I U-boats and their crews, Raiders of the Deep; Reinhard Scheer’s Germany’s High Sea Fleet in the World War; Churchill’s The World Crisis, 1911–1918; Paul Kennedy’s The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914; and R. H. Gibson and Maurice Prendergast’s primer, The German Submarine War, 1914–1918. I
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
TWICE THIS POLICY would bring Britain into war with Germany until, by 1945, Britain was too weak to play the role any longer. She would lose her empire because of what Lord Salisbury had said in 1877 was “the commonest error in politics…sticking to the
Patrick J. Buchanan (Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World)
But no matter how far Germany advanced or how much more territory it seized, Hitler would not prevail. The might of the British Empire—“nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world”—was on his trail, “bearing with them the swords of justice.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
Goebbels warned the heads of his foreign and domestic press departments to prepare for a drive by the British to use atrocity stories about the bombing deaths of old men and pregnant women to arouse the world’s conscience. His press chiefs were to be ready to counter these claims at once, using pictures of children killed in a May 10, 1940, air raid on Freiburg, Germany. What he did not tell the meeting was that this raid, which killed twenty children on a playground, was carried out in error by German bombers whose crews believed they were attacking the French city of Dijon.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler's successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (and Churchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges. Conversely, it is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France's failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain's failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even greater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact - as we have seen Hitler admitting - bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by. For France, it was the beginning of the end. Her allies in the East, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, suddenly were faced with the fact that France would not fight against German aggression to preserve the security system which the French government itself had taken the lead in so laboriously building up. But more than that. These Eastern allies began to realize that even if France were not so supine, she would soon not be able to lend them much assistance because of Germany's feverish construction of a West Wall behind the Franco-German border. The erection of this fortress line, they saw, would quickly change the strategic map of Europe, to their detriment. They could scarcely expect a France which did not dare, with her one hundred divisions, to repel three German battalions, to bleed her young manhood against impregnable German fortifications which the Wehrmacht attacked in the East. But even if the unexpected took place, it would be futile. Henceforth the French could tie down in the West only a small part of the growing German Army. The rest would be free for operations against Germany's Eastern neighbors.
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany)
I must speak of Germany. Indescribable crimes have been committed by Germany under the Nazi rule. Justice must take its course, the guilty must be punished, but once that is over—and I trust it will soon be over—I fall back on the declaration of Edmund Burke, ‘I cannot frame an indictment against an entire people.
Winston Churchill
In the German view, which Herr Hitler shares, a peaceful Germany and Austria were fallen upon in 1914 by a gang of wicked designing nations, headed by Belgium and Serbia, and would have defended herself successfully if only she had not been stabbed in the back by the Jews. Against such opinions it is vain to argue.
Winston S. Churchill (Churchill by Himself: In His Own Words)
The ministry’s array of “secret transmitters,” masquerading as English radio stations but based in Germany, were now to be deployed, “to arouse alarm and fear among the British people.” They were to take pains to disguise their German origins, even to the point of starting broadcasts with criticism of the Nazi Party, and fill their reports
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
He then cleverly ascribed the concept of Operation Torch to Roosevelt, even though it had originally been his idea. ‘On my first visit to Washington after the United States was attacked by Japan, Germany and Italy,’ he said, ‘President Roosevelt favoured the idea that French North Africa was specially suitable for American intervention in the Western theatre. This view was fully shared by us.
Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny)
Built on a twisted form of extreme patriotism, it’s fueled by racial hatred, mass propaganda, conspiracy theories, the demonizing of minority groups, and the cult of personality around a narcissistic leader. Under the influence of this ideology—plus the ruthless political party that promotes it—a country that formerly embraced democratic values has turned toward authoritarianism, hatred, and violence. It is Germany and its principal allies, Italy
Brad Meltzer (The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill)
Support for a first strike extended far beyond the upper ranks of the U.S. military. Bertrand Russell—the British philosopher and pacifist, imprisoned for his opposition to the First World War—urged the western democracies to attack the Soviet Union before it got an atomic bomb. Russell acknowledged that a nuclear strike on the Soviets would be horrible, but “anything is better than submission.” Winston Churchill agreed, proposing that the Soviets be given an ultimatum: withdraw your troops from Germany, or see your cities destroyed. Even Hamilton Holt, lover of peace, crusader for world government, lifelong advocate of settling disputes through mediation and diplomacy and mutual understanding, no longer believed that sort of approach would work. Nuclear weapons had changed everything, and the Soviet Union couldn’t be trusted. Any nation that rejected U.N. control of atomic energy, Holt said, “should be wiped off the face of the earth with atomic bombs.
Eric Schlosser (Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety)
that Power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That Power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy. What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany
Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny)
Had Britain not declared war on Germany in 1914, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and India would not have followed the Mother Country in. Nor would Britain’s ally Japan. Nor would Italy, which London lured in with secret bribes of territory from the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Nor would America have gone to war had Britain stayed out. Germany would have been victorious, perhaps in months. There would have been no Lenin, no Stalin, no Versailles, no Hitler, no Holocaust.
Patrick J. Buchanan (Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War" Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition)
There was a spontaneous movement to raise a “National Fund of Thanksgiving” in Chamberlain’s honor, which he graciously turned down. Only Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resigned from the cabinet, and when in the ensuing Commons debate Winston Churchill, still a voice in the wilderness, began to utter his memorable words, “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat,” he was forced to pause, as he later recorded, until the storm of protest against such a remark had subsided.
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany)
If we want to score a victory, we must actively make use of lies. They have to be big. The bigger the lies the quicker people will believe them,” Adolf Hitler stated, coining the term “Big Lie.” Hitler used the Big Lie to spread untruths about Germany’s Jewish population. Dictator Joseph Stalin didn’t much like Hitler, but he appropriated the Big Lie to explain purges of Soviet citizens. In America, almost a century later, the Big Lie is now woven into the fabric of daily political discourse.
Martin Dugard (Taking London: Winston Churchill and the Fight to Save Civilization)
When Britain declared war against Germany, on September 3, 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the government prepared in earnest for the bombing and invasion that was sure to follow. The code name for signaling that invasion was imminent or underway was “Cromwell.” The Ministry of Information issued a special flyer, Beating the Invader, which went out to millions of homes. It was not calculated to reassure. “Where the enemy lands,” it warned, “…there will be most violent fighting.” It instructed readers to heed any government advisory to evacuate. “When the attack begins, it will be too late to go….STAND FIRM.” Church belfries went silent throughout Britain.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
countries under the unyielding rule of Berlin and the discipline of the SS and the Gestapo. It was Churchill in particular who opposed all compromise, who talked to his fellow cabinet members for days on end and finally won over Chamberlain, who, after 1938, was also convinced of Hitler’s evil intentions. ‘Hitler’s terms, if accepted, would put us completely at his mercy,’ Churchill believed. And: ‘Nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.’ In May 1940 it would have been blindly optimistic to think that Great Britain could defeat the Germans without massive support from the Soviet Union and the United States. But the British were persuaded that Germany would once again encounter difficulties due to
Geert Mak (In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century)
the slave labour system, already applied to Jews, was extended to Poles, just as it already applied to Czechs. ‘A hundred thousand Czech workmen’, Churchill told a public audience in Manchester on January 27, ‘had been led off into slavery to be toiled to death in Germany.’ But what was happening to the Czechs, Churchill added, ‘pales in comparison with the atrocities which, as I speak here this afternoon, are being perpetrated upon the Poles’. From the ‘shameful records’ of the Germans’ mass executions in Poland, Churchill declared, ‘we may judge what our fate would be if we fell into their clutches. But from them also we may draw the force and inspiration to carry us forward on our journey and not to pause or rest till liberation is achieved and justice is done.
Martin Gilbert (The Second World War: A Complete History)
its lack of natural resources. In that same month, the British general staff came up with a war plan that anticipated a deep crisis in Germany beginning in late 1941, followed by that country’s collapse. The British, therefore, did not need to prepare for a war fought in huge battles like those of 1914–18. From 1942 onwards they would be primarily engaged in terminal care for a Nazi empire disintegrating of its own accord. In the end, Churchill succeeded in winning over all twenty-five members of his government. ‘I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon
Geert Mak (In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century)
raids. “The secret transmitters, in particular, should marshal witnesses who must give horrifying accounts of the destruction they have seen with their own eyes.” This effort, he instructed, should also include transmissions warning listeners that fog and mist would not protect them from aerial attack; bad weather merely confused the aim of German bombers and made it more likely that bombs would fall on unintended targets. Goebbels warned the heads of his foreign and domestic press departments to prepare for a drive by the British to use atrocity stories about the bombing deaths of old men and pregnant women to arouse the world’s conscience. His press chiefs were to be ready to counter these claims at once, using pictures of children killed in a May 10, 1940, air raid on Freiburg, Germany. What he did not
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived-not without reason-that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them win. Germany, having let Hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. Every outrage against humanity or international law was repaid by reprisals-often of a greater scale and of longer duration. No truce or parley mitigated the strife of the armies. The wounded died between the lines: the dead mouldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate, or killed as they swam. Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered often slowly in the dark recesses of the sea. The fighting strength of armies was limited only by the manhood of their countries. Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.
Winston S. Churchill (The World Crisis, 1911-1918)
As Churchill predicted, the full might and fury of the Nazis were turned on Britain. The dreaded massive bombing of the Luftwaffe, which had terrorized other nations into surrender, failed to break the British. Hitler was stopped for the first time. Britain, though lacking the military forces to launch a major counter-attack, nevertheless stalled the Nazi timetable of conquest, thus buying time, not only for itself but also for an almost completely disarmed United States to begin preparing itself militarily for the ordeal ahead. Many nations, forces, and events contributed to the final victory over Germany and Japan. But what made it all possible was that Britain withstood the fire and blast of war and refused to surrender, even when the situation looked hopeless. It was indeed their finest hour. Freedom survives in the world today because of it.
Thomas Sowell (Conquests and Cultures: An International History)
IN BERLIN ON SATURDAY MORNING, Joseph Goebbels focused his regular propaganda meeting on how best to take advantage of what he believed must certainly be a rising sense of dread among England’s civilian population. “The important thing now,” he told the gathering, “is to intensify as far as possible the mood of panic which is undoubtedly slowly gaining ground in Britain.” Germany’s secret transmitters and foreign-language service were to continue describing the “frightful effects” of air raids. “The secret transmitters, in particular, should marshal witnesses who must give horrifying accounts of the destruction they have seen with their own eyes.” This effort, he instructed, should also include transmissions warning listeners that fog and mist would not protect them from aerial attack; bad weather merely confused the aim of German bombers and made it more likely that bombs would fall on unintended targets.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
Treaty and the reparations Germany was obliged to pay were ‘malignant and silly to an extent that made them obviously futile’. This was the theme of the young economist Maynard Keynes in his philippic The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which began a myth which has never died. In reality, the real disaster wasn’t the way the war had begun or who was responsible, but how it had ended; not the claim that Germany had started the war, but the Germans’ belief that they hadn’t lost it, a belief encouraged by both German generals and politicians. When returning troops marched through Berlin in December, they were told, by Ebert of all people, the Social Democratic leader, ‘No army has overcome you.’ With that belief implanted, when the Treaty was published it was easy for demagogues to offer an answer. If the army had been ‘im Feld unbesiegt’, undefeated in battle, it must have been betrayed by the ‘November criminals’, the treacherous politicians who had taken over, and then betrayed Germany, and then ‘stabbed in the back’ by civilians, and Jews. Thus was the seed planted that would bring forth a frightful blossom.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft (Churchill's Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill)
WHY THE ADMIRALTY would seek to assign fault to Turner defies ready explanation, given that isolating Germany as the sole offender would do far more to engender global sympathy for Britain and cement animosity toward Germany. By blaming Turner, however, the Admiralty hoped to divert attention from its own failure to safeguard the Lusitania. (Questioned on the matter in the House of Commons on May 10, 1915, Churchill had replied, rather coolly, “Merchant traffic must look after itself.”) But there were other secrets to protect, not just from domestic scrutiny, but also from German watchers—namely the fact that the Admiralty, through Room 40, had known so much about U-20’s travels leading up to the attack. One way to defend those secrets was to draw attention elsewhere. The Admiralty found added motivation to do so when, on May 12, wireless stations in Britain’s listening network intercepted a series of messages from the then homebound U-20, which upon entering the North Sea had resumed communication with its base at Emden. At the Admiralty these messages drew an unusual degree of attention. Room 40 asked all the stations that had intercepted them to confirm that they had transcribed them correctly and to provide signed and certified copies.
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
What are we taking away from England, what from France, what from America? Nothing at all! How many times did I offer them peace?! What else should I be offering them? They are men who say, like Churchill, “I want war.” With them, there is a certain clique. And behind these corrupt, drunk creatures, there are the paying forces of international Jewry. On the other side, there is an old Freemason who believes that through a war he can win time for stabilizing his bankrupt economy again. And so, both states again confront the same enemies for the very same reasons. And they are forced to fight together, to lead the same struggle, which ties them in life and in death. And there is a fourth element: in both cases, there are two men who come from the people, who have kindled the revolutions and have uplifted their states. In the few free hours I have had these last weeks, I read a lot about the Fascist revolution in Italy. It seemed to me as though I had before me the history of my own party: everything so similar, so much the same. The same struggle, the same enemies, the same opponents, the same arguments-it really is a miracle. And now, we fight in the same theaters of war: Germans in Africa, Italians in the east. We fight together, and nobody should deceive himself: This struggle will be seen through to our joint victory! And finally, a third state joined us. For many years, I have wanted to have good relations with this state-Japan-as you know from Mein Kampf. And so, the three great have-nots are now united. We will see who will be stronger in this struggle: those who have nothing to lose and everything to win, or those who have everything to lose and who cannot win anything. What does England want to win? What does America want to win? They have so much that they do not know what to do with all they own. They need to feed only a few people per square kilometer. They do not have all those worries that trouble us. For us, a single bad harvest is a national disaster. They have the whole world at their disposal. For decades now, they have robbed us, exploited us, bled us white, and still they have not eliminated their own economic misery. They have more raw materials than they could possibly need, and still they have not managed to find a reasonable solution to their problems. We will see on whom Providence will bestow the victor’s laurels in this struggle: on the man who has everything and wants to take even the last bit from the man who has almost nothing, or on the man, who defends the last bit he owns. And when a British archbishop prays to the Lord that He might strike Germany and Europe with Bolshevism as a punishment-then I can only say, it will not come to Germany. But whether or not He will strike England, that is another question. Speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1942
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
The man who invented bomb warfare against an innocent civilian population declared that this bomb warfare against Germany and so on will shortly be greatly stepped up. I would like to add one thing to this: in May 1940, Mr. Churchill sent the first bombers against the German civilian population. At the time, I kept warning him, for almost four months-in vain. Then, we struck. And we struck so thoroughly that he began to cry and declared that this was barbaric and terrible, and that England would seek revenge. The man on whose conscience all this weighs-not counting the great warmonger Roosevelt-and who is to blame for everything, this man then dared to claim that he was innocent. Today, he continues to wage this war. I would like to say here: the hour will also come this time when we have to answer! May the two great criminals of this war and their Jewish masterminds not start whining and weeping if the end is more terrible for England than the beginning! At the Reichstag session of September 1, 1939, I said two things: First, since this war was forced on us, neither the power of arms nor time will defeat us. Second, should Jewry instigate an international world war in order to exterminate the Aryan people of Europe, then not the Aryan people will be exterminated, but the Jews. The wire pullers of this insane man in the White House have managed to pull one nation after another into this war. Correspondingly, however, a wave of anti-Semitism swept over one nation after another. And it will continue to do so, taking hold of one state after another. Every state that enters this war will one day emerge from it as an anti- Semitic state. The Jews once laughed about my prophecies in Germany. I do not know whether they are still laughing today or whether they no longer feel like laughing. Today, too, I can assure you of one thing: they will soon not feel like laughing anymore anywhere. My prophecies will prove correct here, too.
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
Germany’s rearmament was first met with a “supine”134 response from its future adversaries, who showed “little immediate recognition of danger.”135 Despite Winston Churchill’s dire and repeated warnings that Germany “fears no one” and was “arming in a manner which has never been seen in German history,” Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain saw Hitler as merely trying to right the wrongs of Versailles, and acquiesced to the German annexation of the Sudetenland at Munich in September 1938.136 Yet Chamberlain’s anxiety grew as Hitler’s decision to occupy the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 indicated his broader aims. Chamberlain asked rhetorically: “Is this the end of an old adventure, or is it the beginning of a new? Is this the last attack upon a small State, or is it to be followed by others? Is this, in fact, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force?”137 France, meanwhile, as Henry Kissinger explains, “had become so dispirited that it could not bring itself to act.”138 Stalin decided his interests were best served by a non-aggression pact signed with Germany, which included a secret protocol for the division of Eastern Europe.139 One week after agreeing to the pact with Stalin, Hitler invaded Poland, triggering the British and French to declare war on September 3, 1939. The Second World War had begun. Within a year, Hitler occupied France, along with much of Western Europe and Scandinavia. Britain was defeated on the Continent, although it fought off German air assaults. In June 1941, Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union. By the time Germany was defeated four years later, much of the European continent had been destroyed, and its eastern half would be under Soviet domination for the next forty years. Western Europe could not have been liberated without the United States, on whose military power it would continue to rely. The war Hitler unleashed was the bloodiest the world had ever seen.
Graham Allison (Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?)
The appeasers had been powerful; they had controlled The Times and The BBC; they had been largely drawn from the upper classes, and their betrayal of England's greatness would be neither forgotten nor forgiven by those who, gulled by the mystique of England's class system, had believed as Englishmen had believed for generations that public school boys governed best. The appeasers destroyed oligarchic rule which, though levelers may protest, had long governed well. If ever men betrayed their class, these were they. Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, Anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold all that had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-40)
From the Author Matthew 16:25 says, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  This is a perfect picture of the life of Nate Saint; he gave up his life so God could reveal a greater glory in him and through him. I first heard the story of Operation Auca when I was eight years old, and ever since then I have been inspired by Nate’s commitment to the cause of Christ. He was determined to carry out God’s will for his life in spite of fears, failures, and physical challenges. For several years of my life, I lived and ministered with my parents who were missionaries on the island of Jamaica. My experiences during those years gave me a passion for sharing the stories of those who make great sacrifices to carry the gospel around the world. As I wrote this book, learning more about Nate Saint’s life—seeing his spirit and his struggles—was both enlightening and encouraging to me. It is my prayer that this book will provide a window into Nate Saint’s vision—his desires, dreams, and dedication. I pray his example will convince young people to step out of their comfort zones and wholeheartedly seek God’s will for their lives. That is Nate Saint’s legacy: changing the world for Christ, one person and one day at a time.   Nate Saint Timeline 1923 Nate Saint born. 1924 Stalin rises to power in Russia. 1930 Nate’s first flight, aged 7 with his brother, Sam. 1933 Nate’s second flight with his brother, Sam. 1936 Nate made his public profession of faith. 1937 Nate develops bone infection. 1939 World War II begins. 1940 Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister. 1941 Nate graduates from Wheaton College. Nate takes first flying lesson. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 1942 Nate’s induction into the Army Air Corps. 1943 Nate learns he is to be transferred to Indiana. 1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by U.S. 1946 Nate discharged from the Army. 1947 Nate accepted for Wheaton College. 1948 Nate and Marj are married and begin work in Eduador. Nate crashes his plane in Quito. 1949 Nate’s first child, Kathy, is born. Germany divided into East and West. 1950 Korean War begins. 1951 Nate’s second child, Stephen, is born. 1952 The Saint family return home to the U.S. 1953 Nate comes down with pneumonia. Nate and Henry fly to Ecuador. 1954 The first nuclear-powered submarine is launched. Nate’s third child, Phillip, is born. 1955 Nate is joined by Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming and Roger Youderian. Nate spots an Auca village for the first time. Operation Auca commences. 1956 The group sets up camp four miles from the Auca territory. Nate and the group are killed on “Palm Beach”.
Nancy Drummond (Nate Saint: Operation Auca (Torchbearers))
To decide how great the danger was that this oldest civilized continent in the world would be overrun this winter will be left to later historical research. The unfading credit that this danger is over now goes to those soldiers whom we are commemorating today. Only a glance at Bolshevism’s gigantic preparations for the destruction of our world is sufficient to let us realize with horror what might have become of Germany and the rest of the Continent, had not the National Socialist movement taken power in this state ten years ago, and had it not begun the rebuilding of the German Wehrmacht with the determination that is so peculiar to it, following many fruitless efforts for disarmament. After all, the Germany of Weimar with its Centrist-Marxist democratic party politics would have been swept away by this Central Asian invasion as a straw would be by a hurricane. We realize with increasing clarity that the confrontation that has taken place in Europe since the First World War is slowly beginning to look like a struggle which can only be compared with the greatest historic events of the past. Eternal Jewry forced on us a pitiless and merciless war. Should we not be able to stop the elements of destruction at Europe’s borders, then this continent will be transformed into a single field of ruins. The gravest consequences of this war would then be not only the burned cities and destroyed cultural monuments, but also the bestially murdered multitudes, which would become the victim of this Central Asian flood, just as with the invasions by the Huns and Mongols. What the German and allied soldiers today protect in the east is not the stony face of this continent or its social and intellectual character, but its eternal human substance, whence all values originated ages and ages ago and which gave expression to all human civilizations today, not only to those in Europe and America. In addition to this world of barbarity threatening from the east, we are witnessing the satanic destructive frenzy of its ally, the so-called West. We know about our enemies’ war objectives from countless publications, speeches, and open demands. The babble of the Atlantic Charter is worth as much as Wilson’s Fourteen Points in contrast with the implemented actual design of the Diktat of Versailles. Just as in the English parliamentary democracy the warmonger Churchill pointed the way for later developments with his claim in 1936, when he was not yet the responsible leader of Great Britain, that Germany had to be destroyed again, so the elements behind the present demands for peace in the same democracies today are already planning the state to which they seek to reduce Europe after the war. And their objectives totally correspond with the manifestations of their Bolshevik allies, which we have not only known about but also witnessed: the extermination of all continental people proudly conscious of their nationality and, at their head, the extermination of our own German people. It makes no difference whether English or American papers, parliamentarians, stump orators, or men of letters demand the destruction of the Reich, the abduction of the children of our Volk, the sterilization of our male youth, and so on, as the primary war objective, or whether Bolshevism implements the slaughter of whole groups of people, men, women, and children, in practice. After all, the driving force behind this remains the eternal hatred of that cursed race which, as a true scourge of God, chastised the nations for many thousands of years, until they began to defend themselves against their tormentors in times of reflection. Speech in Lichthof of the Zeughaus for the Heroes’ Memorial Day Berlin, March 21, 1943
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
The drama of Dunkirk and the eloquence of Churchill helped convince many Americans that their country must give Britain all possible support in its lonely struggle against Germany.
Lynne Olson (Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941)
The order to mobilize was given on May 8, 1945, the day Churchill declared victory over Germany from a balcony overlooking Whitehall to a throng of revelers. The forces throughout Norway, including deep in the heart of Telemark, went into action. After years of fighting as an underground army, they put on uniforms and simple armbands and took back Rjukan and the surrounding towns.
Neal Bascomb (The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb)
I suppose every culture has them: men in bondage to their own inadequacies, who will never be satisfied because the emptiness is inside them.” “Yes,” Lucas replied. “They’re always there, the misfits. It’s the measure of a leader, which men he picks for the next tier of command…With Hitler it’s the men who were failures in their own eyes before and have a chance to take their revenge on society now.” “Bitter…” Churchill responded. Lucas half turned, looking around him, then back at Churchill. “Where does it stop, this tide of…violence? How long do we wait before we start doing something? When it’s only Germany? When it’s only Germany and Belgium, or Austria, or part of Poland? When it gets into France as well? A bit late by the time it gets to the cliffs of Dover.
Anne Perry (Death in Focus (Elena Standish, #1))
As Churchill would say in a speech before the House of Commons in 1953 on the occasion of the discussion of a French proposal to establish the European Defence Community: “We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not combined. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.”[7] British ambiguity about Europe could hardly have been better expressed.
Miguel I. Purroy (Germany and the Euro Crisis: A Failed Hegemony)
On the occasion of the second Assembly of the European Council, Churchill gave a speech in Strasbourg’s Place Kléber before 20,000 people enthused about the idea of Europe.
Miguel I. Purroy (Germany and the Euro Crisis: A Failed Hegemony)
This strikingly ambivalent attitude of Churchill towards Europe was consistently echoed by successive British governments to this day. It was not that Churchill did not sincerely wish European unity to succeed, but that he preferred to see Great Britain as a benevolent observer. No great perceptiveness is required to imagine that behind the ambivalence was something more than mere caprice. A first line of interpretation that seeks to exonerate Churchill from the accusation of inconsistency is that his second Government’s foreign policy was managed by Anthony Eden, who clearly never communed with the cause of European unity nor indeed with Britain’s participation in it. The political survival of Churchill in the Government depended in good measure on support from Eden, the party-anointed successor, with whom Churchill tried to avoid conflict. However, Churchill was not one to shy away from a fight for ideas that he considered important. Europe was simply not a high enough priority for him in his second Government.
Miguel I. Purroy (Germany and the Euro Crisis: A Failed Hegemony)
More well-founded is a second interpretation, which points to Churchill’s view–shared by the British establishment–of Great Britain’s special place in the world. According to this view, this British distinctiveness arose from belonging simultaneously to three interlinked circles: Europe, the United States of America and the British Commonwealth.
Miguel I. Purroy (Germany and the Euro Crisis: A Failed Hegemony)
the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all of them, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Winston S. Churchill (Zionism Versus Bolshevism)
In Germany the Diet of Mainz solemnly “swore the expedition” to the Holy Land. The Kings of France and England agreed upon a joint Crusade, without however ceasing their immediate strife. To the religious appeal was added the spur of the tax-gatherer. The “Saladin tithe” was levied upon all who did not take the Cross. On the other hand, forgiveness of taxes and a stay in the payment of debts were granted to all Crusaders.
Winston S. Churchill (The Birth of Britain (A History of the English Speaking Peoples #1))
Early in 1193, at a moment already full of peril, the grave news reached England that the King was prisoner “somewhere in Germany”. There was general and well-founded consternation among the loyal bulk of his subjects. John declared that Richard was dead, appeared in arms, and claimed the crown. That England was held for Richard in his long absence against all these powerful and subtle forces is a proof of the loyalties of the feudal age.
Winston S. Churchill (The Birth of Britain (A History of the English Speaking Peoples #1))
Germany only paid, or was able to pay, the indemnities later extorted because the United States was profusely lending money to Europe, and especially her. In fact, during the three years 1926 to 1929 the United States was receiving back in the form of debt-installment indemnities from all quarters about one-fifth of the money which she was lending to Germany with no chance of repayment. However, everybody seemed pleased and appeared to think this might go on for ever.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (The Second World War, #1))
Lord Moran—later Churchill’s personal physician. “How is courage spent in war?” Moran asked in The Anatomy of Courage,
Donald L. Miller (Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany)
As Hitler declared in 1940, the concept of nationalism was “one strong new idea … which would make Germany great again.
Brad Meltzer (The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill)
The British amateur diplomats came from across the political spectrum and acted from a variety of motives. They were, however, united by a number of beliefs, the most important of which was that Nazism, whatever their personal view of it, should not preclude friendly relations between Britain and Germany. On the contrary, the majority saw Nazism as the natural, if violent, reaction to legitimate grievances stemming from Versailles. From both a moral and political point of view, it was, therefore, imperative that the Treaty should be altered and Germany allowed to regain that place and status to which her size and history entitled her.
Tim Bouverie (Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War)
In the course of the meeting the two leaders discussed what terms of surrender they would eventually insist upon; the word “unconditional” was discussed but not included in the official joint statement to be read at the final press conference. Then, on January 24, to Churchill’s surprise, Roosevelt inserted the word ad lib: “Peace can come to the world,” the President read out to the assembled journalists and newsreel cameras, “only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power. . . . The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan.”1976 Roosevelt later told Harry Hopkins that the surprising and fateful insertion was a consequence of the confusion attending his effort to convince French General Henri Girard to sit down with Free French leader Charles de Gaulle: We had so much trouble getting those two French generals together that I thought to myself that this was as difficult as arranging the meeting of Grant and Lee—and then suddenly the Press Conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it, and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant “Old Unconditional Surrender,” and the next thing I knew I had said it.1977
Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
Sir Winston Churchill was born into the respected family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His mother Jeanette, was an attractive American-born British socialite and a member of the well known Spencer family. Winston had a military background, having graduated from Sandhurst, the British Royal Military Academy. Upon graduating he served in the Army between 1805 and 1900 and again between 1915 and 1916. As a British military officer, he saw action in India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second South African Boer War. Leaving the army as a major in 1899, he became a war correspondent covering the Boer War in the Natal Colony, during which time he wrote books about his experiences. Churchill was captured and treated as a prisoner of war. Churchill had only been a prisoner for four weeks before he escaped, prying open some of the flooring he crawled out under the building and ran through some of the neighborhoods back alleys and streets. On the evening of December 12, 1899, he jumped over a wall to a neighboring property, made his way to railroad tracks and caught a freight train heading north to Lourenco Marques, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique, which is located on the Indian Ocean and freedom. For the following years, he held many political and cabinet positions including the First Lord of the Admiralty. During the First World War Churchill resumed his active army service, for a short period of time, as the commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. After the war he returned to his political career as a Conservative Member of Parliament, serving as the Chancellor of the Exchequer where in 1925, he returned the pound sterling to the gold standard. This move was considered a factor to the deflationary pressure on the British Pound Sterling, during the depression. During the 1930’s Churchill was one of the first to warn about the increasing, ruthless strength of Nazi Germany and campaigned for a speedy military rearmament. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty for a second time, and in May of 1940, Churchill became the Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain’s resignation. An inspirational leader during the difficult days of 1940–1941, he led Britain until victory had been secured. In 1955 Churchill suffered a serious of strokes. Stepping down as Prime Minister he however remained a Member of Parliament until 1964. In 1965, upon his death at ninety years of age, Queen Elizabeth II granted him a state funeral, which was one of the largest gatherings of representatives and statesmen in history.
Hank Bracker
But the murky role he played in the notorious July 20 plot on Adolf Hitler’s life in 1944, the closest an assassination attempt got to killing the Nazi Fuhrer, would bring about the Desert Fox’s untimely demise in October 1944, even as the Soviets and Western Allies were tightening the vise on Germany. Compelled to take cyanide by authorities, the Desert Fox insisted he was innocent until his dying day, and his popularity forced the Nazi government to claim his death was brought about by a heart attack or a cerebral embolism. In fact, Rommel was given an official state funeral, and Winston Churchill would go on to praise him, “He also deserves our respect because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy, chivalry finds no place … Still, I do not regret or retract the tribute I paid to Rommel, unfashionable though it was judged.
Charles River Editors (Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian: The Lives and Careers of Nazi Germany’s Legendary Tank Commanders)
was the British (at the instigation of Winston Churchill) who pioneered the “landship”, but the French soon followed suit with their own designs. Ironically, Germany, which would subsequently become famous for panzers and blitzkrieg warfare, was late in taking up the idea.
Charles River Editors (Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian: The Lives and Careers of Nazi Germany’s Legendary Tank Commanders)
In the meantime, the Germans established numerous bridgeheads on the south bank of the Somme, to be used when the southward advance began. Panzers invested Boulogne on May 22nd, and on May 23rd, the British evacuated their troops at midnight. The French garrison surrendered at noon two days later on May 25th, recognizing their utterly hopeless position. The British government ordered an evacuation of Dunkirk on May 26th, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French forces accompanying them could not escape that easily, however. Near catastrophe struck on May 28th when the Belgians surrendered to Germany, opening a colossal gap in the Allied lines. King Leopold III, showing consistency of character at least if not moral courage, informed the British and French of his planned capitulation only hours prior to the actual surrender, leaving them with practically no time to prepare for its disastrous military consequences. The action earned Leopold III such sobriquets as “King Rat” and “the Traitor King,” nicknames he did little to disprove when he evinced more willingness to negotiate with Hitler for restoration of Belgian independence than he had shown in dealing with France and Britain, which sought to defend Belgium's freedom in the first place. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill blasted the Belgian monarch's abrupt surrender in a detailed speech summarizing the repercussions: “The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army.” (Churchill, 2013, 174).
Charles River Editors (Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian: The Lives and Careers of Nazi Germany’s Legendary Tank Commanders)
Goebbels’s April announcement of totaler Krieg, in Roosevelt’s view, had merely confirmed his judgment of Germany as the world’s most dangerous nation, given the size and ruthlessness of its Wehrmacht and the abiding belief that Macht ist Recht: might is right.
Nigel Hamilton (Commander in Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943)
phalanx
John Kelly (Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain's Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940)
The dilemma facing Hitler in 1923 was how to carry out a coup d'etat which could only hope to succeed with the army's tacit, if not explicit support, yet which must not be so dependent on the army that its fruits might be denied him.
John Strawson (Churchill and Hitler: In Victory and Defeat)
These volumes will leave the reader in no doubt about the opinion of their author. From first to last it is contended that once the main armies were in deadlock in France the true strategy for both sides was to attack the weaker partners in the opposite combination with the utmost speed and ample force. According to this view, Germany was unwise to attack France in August, 1914, and especially unwise to invade Belgium for that purpose. She should instead have struck down Russia and left France to break her teeth against the German fortress and trench lines. Acting thus she would probably have avoided war with the British Empire, at any rate during the opening, and for her most important, phase of the struggle. The first German decision to attack the strongest led to her defeat at the Marne and the Yser, and left her baffled and arrested with the ever-growing might of an implacable British Empire on her hands. Thus 1914 ended. But in 1915 Germany turned to the second alternative, and her decision was attended by great success. Leaving the British and French to shatter their armies against her trench lines in France, Germany marched and led her allies against Russia, with the result that by the autumn enormous territories had been conquered from Russia; all the Russian system of fortresses and strategic railways was in German hands, while the Russian armies were to a large extent destroyed and the Russian State grievously injured. The only method by which the Allies could rescue Russia was by forcing the Dardanelles. This was the only counter-stroke that could be effective. If it had succeeded it would have established direct and permanent contact between Russia and her Western allies, it would have driven Turkey, or at the least Turkey in Europe, out of the war, and might well have united the whole of the Balkan States, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and Roumania, against Austria and Germany. Russia would thus have received direct succour, and in addition would have experienced an enormous relief through the pressure which the combined Balkan States would instantly have applied to Austria-Hungary. However, the narrow and local views of British Admirals and Generals and of the French Headquarters had obstructed this indispensable manéuvre. Instead of a clear strategic conception being clothed and armed with all that the science of staffs and the authority of Commanders could suggest, it had been resisted, hampered, starved and left to languish. The time gained by this mismanagement and the situation created by the Russian defeats enabled Germany in September to carry the policy of attacking the weaker a step further. Falkenhayn organized an attack upon Serbia. Bulgaria was gained to the German side, Serbia was conquered, and direct contact was established between the Central Empires and Turkey. The
Winston S. Churchill (The World Crisis, Vol. 3 Part 1 and Part 2 (Winston Churchill's World Crisis Collection))
The Germans, out of a population of under 70 millions, mobilized during the war for military service 13¼ million persons. Of these, according to the latest German official figures for all fronts including the Russian, over 7 millions suffered death, wounds or captivity, of whom nearly 2 millions perished.15 France, with a population of 38 millions, mobilized a little over 8 million persons. This however includes a substantial proportion of African troops outside the French population basis. Of these approximately 5 millions became casualties, of whom 1½ millions lost their lives. The British Empire, out of a white population of 60 millions, mobilized nearly 9½ million persons and sustained over 3 million casualties including nearly a million deaths. The British totals are not directly comparable with those of France and Germany. The proportion of coloured troops is greater. The numbers who fell in theatres other than the western, and those employed on naval service, are both much larger. The French and German figures are however capable of very close comparison. Both the French and German armies fought with their whole strength from the beginning to the end of the war. Each nation made the utmost possible demand upon its population. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the official French and German figures tally with considerable exactness. The Germans mobilized 19 per cent. of their entire population, and the French, with their important African additions, 21 per cent. Making allowance for the African factor, it would appear that in the life-and-death struggle both countries put an equal strain upon their manhood. If this basis is sound—and it certainly appears reasonable—the proportion of French and German casualties to persons mobilized displays an even more remarkable concordance. The proportion of German casualties to total mobilized is 10 out of every 19, and that of the French 10 out of every 16. The ratios of deaths to woundings in Germany and France are almost exactly equal, viz. 2 to 5. Finally these figures yield a division of German losses between the western and all other fronts of approximately 3 to 1 both in deaths and casualties. All
Winston S. Churchill (The World Crisis, Vol. 3 Part 1 and Part 2 (Winston Churchill's World Crisis Collection))
I want to start everything in New, what's the bad point?? I don't want to have problems with people which we can be friends or nothing, but not argue as before. What's the purpose what did you gain??? Points?? Money?? PS3??? Xbox??? Nothing just useless and making troubles with people, if we must discuss something let's to be about the fucking Bulgarian Schools, talk about them, I hate them as much as you hate them, I hate the Bulgarian as much as you hate them, I hate the fucking teachers in the fucking schools with which just have fucking problems. How can somebody joke with your spelling or with your mistakes for months???? ... What more to tell you??? That I'm sorry that I'm a Bulgarian guy, because I'm sorry, I can't live with this fucking people, what do they created??? Nothing just staying home and jerkoff non-stop, very creative! And guest what happened??? Here come the "?" people which are terrorists in france and have killed a lot of people and here will be planed the same....,what more only the thought that somebody has graduated from the best school existed in Bulgaria and to have fails with the writing like making so easy mistakes that nobody will make ever, to make mess on the sheets and many other things and this on very important day. A day in which you choose the president or the pre-minister or some kind like this, which is important. I'm very sorry that I'm Bulgarian guy, I don't want to be the cases are this, I want to be an American or a guy from Great Britain, but whatever to be, but to know this language. All people use it, and we are the only people which or some others as one User said that France and Germany are also with the worst English in case that Germany words are like English, but little fucked like spelled and written different like Sänger - singer songster schreiben WOw, this is really fucked just look how arae spelled how are written little like joking with English, aren't they??? If they aren't okay, that's your opinion _ I don't have something against it! If there was chance to be other race no matter what American guy or whatever ot to change my country ot my native language I will do it. If there is chance to and learn English, I go and learnt it without giving and shit about the fucking Bulgarian, I won't call my parents, friends and everything, just everything will be mainly for learning English the best way as possible. I fill fucked there are people which can't read, english, to don't talk about bulgarian, all day I'm seeing how mass media brain washes. I don't see how can be improved Bulgaria it's a fail I know why Adolf Hitler wanted to destroyed it and why Churchill Wanted also, I'm not sure about Churchill, but for HItler I'm sure that he wanted to kill us because of that, whatever you understand me what level we are as nation. I hate the fucking Bulgarian people what to learn from them to joke with people badly??? Very Creative??? To jerkoff all time and to don't give a damn shit about the things around the world?? Or to be with friends which can't think or people which are so much stupid that I'm sorry about them... Whatever, read it if you want if you don't want don't read it, but first check it before you block me. Thank you I appreciate your reading!
Deyth Banger
On July 10, as the Austrian Foreign Ministry was drafting its ultimatum to Serbia, thousands of British naval reservists began arriving at manning depots, where they were issued uniforms and boarded their assigned ships. By July 16, the Second and Third Fleets had sailed from their home ports to join the First Fleet for the royal review at Spithead, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. On July 17, King George arrived and the First Lord, bursting with pride, presented the monarch with a fleet that Churchill declared to be “incomparably the greatest assemblage of naval power ever witnessed in the history of the world.” On
Robert K. Massie (Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea)
No one has written a better description of this scene than Churchill himself: We may now picture this great fleet with its flotillas of cruisers steaming slowly out of Portland harbor, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute darkness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs. The strategic concentration of the fleet had been accomplished with its transfer to Scottish waters. We were now in a position, whatever happened, to control events and it was not easy to see how this advantage could be taken from us. A surprise torpedo attack, before or simultaneous with a declaration of war, was at any rate one nightmare gone forever. If war should come, no one would know where to look for the British fleet. Somewhere in that enormous waste of waters to the north of our islands, cruising now this way, now that, shrouded in storms and mists, dwelt this mighty organization. Yet from the Admiralty building we could speak to them at any moment if need arose. The king’s ships were at sea.
Robert K. Massie (Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea)
In the summer of 1919, the Allied armies stood along the Rhine, and their bridgeheads bulged deeply into defeated, disarmed, and hungry Germany. The chiefs of the victor Powers debated and disputed the future in Paris. Before them lay the map of Europe to be redrawn almost as they might resolve. After fifty-two months of agony and hazards the Teutonic Coalition lay at their mercy, and not one of its four members could offer the slightest resistance to their will. Germany, the head and forefront of the offence, regarded by all as the prime cause of the catastrophe which had fallen upon the world, was at the mercy or discretion of conquerors, themselves reeling from the torment they had endured.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
The indestructible might “of all the German tribes” would rise once more and the unquenched fires of warrior Prussia glow and burn again. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift-flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French Army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. Very different were the sentiments and views of the English-speaking world, without whose aid France must have succumbed. The territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles left Germany practically intact. She still remained the largest homogeneous racial block in Europe. When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
rigorously controlled societies. In practice, as even the Russians have now learned, the only way of pillaging a defeated nation is to cart away any movables which are wanted, and to drive off a portion of its manhood as permanent or temporary slaves. But the profit gained from such processes bears no relation to the cost of the war. No one in great authority had the wit, ascendancy, or detachment from public folly to declare these fundamental, brutal facts to the electorates; nor would anyone have been believed if he had. The triumphant Allies continued to assert that they would squeeze Germany “till the pips squeaked.” All this had a potent bearing on the prosperity of the world and the mood of the German race.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
France had been bled white by the war. The generation that had dreamed since 1870 of a war of revenge had triumphed, but at a deadly cost in national life-strength. It was a haggard France that greeted the dawn of victory. Deep fear of Germany pervaded the French nation on the morrow of their dazzling success. It was this fear that had prompted Marshal Foch to demand the Rhine frontier for the safety of France against her far larger neighbour. But the British and American statesmen held that the absorption of German-populated districts in French territory was contrary to the Fourteen Points and to the principles of nationalism and self-determination upon which the Peace Treaty was to be based.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
during the years 1919 to 1923, the mark rapidly collapsed. The rage aroused in Germany by the French occupation of the Ruhr led to a vast, reckless printing of paper notes with the deliberate object of destroying the whole basis of the currency. In the final stages of the inflation the mark stood at forty-three million millions to the pound sterling. The social and economic consequences of this inflation were deadly and far-reaching. The savings of the middle classes were wiped out, and a natural following was thus provided for the banners of National Socialism.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
new and more terrible cause of quarrel than the imperialism of czars and kaisers became apparent in Europe. The Civil War in Russia ended in the absolute victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet armies which advanced to subjugate Poland were indeed repulsed in the Battle of Warsaw, but Germany and Italy nearly succumbed to Communist propaganda and designs. Hungary actually fell for a while under the control of the Communist dictator, Bela Kun. Although Marshal Foch wisely observed that “Bolshevism had never crossed the frontiers of victory,” the foundations of European civilisation trembled in the early post-war years. Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of Communism. While Corporal Hitler was making himself useful to the German officer class in Munich by arousing soldiers and workers to fierce hatred of Jews and Communists, on whom he laid the blame of Germany’s defeat, another adventurer, Benito Mussolini, provided Italy with a new theme of government which, while it claimed to save the Italian people from Communism, raised himself to dictatorial power. As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into even more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their destruction.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
the Second World War every bond between man and man was to perish. Crimes were committed by the Germans, under the Hitlerite domination to which they allowed themselves to be subjected, which find no equal in scale and wickedness with any that have darkened the human record. The wholesale massacre by systematised processes of six or seven millions of men, women, and children in the German execution camps exceeds in horror the rough-and-ready butcheries of Genghis Khan, and in scale reduces them to pigmy proportions. Deliberate extermination of whole populations was contemplated and pursued by both Germany and Russia in the Eastern war. The hideous process of bombarding open cities from the air, once started by the Germans, was repaid twenty-fold by the ever-mounting power of the Allies, and found its culmination in the use of the atomic bombs which obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We have at length emerged from a scene of material ruin and moral havoc the like of which had never darkened the imagination of former centuries. After all that we suffered and achieved, we find ourselves still confronted with problems and perils not less but far more formidable than those through which we have so narrowly made our way.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (Second World War))
A stable and prosperous Germany, he believed, was the best guarantor of a lasting peace.
Peter Apps (Churchill in the Trenches (Kindle Single))
Churchill did not for a moment believe that Britain and the Empire could continue to exist across from a Europe entirely dominated by Germany.
John Lukacs (Five Days in London, May 1940)
Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now. The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler. Hitler not only succeeded in merging nationalism and socialism into one tremendous force; he was a new kind of ruler, representing a new kind of populist nationalism.
John Lukacs (Five Days in London, May 1940)
For the two Western leaders, the alliance with Stalin posed a peculiar moral dilemma. Roosevelt and Churchill, the British military historian Max Hastings noted, "found it convenient, perhaps essential, to allow Stalin's citizens to bear a scale of human sacrifice which was necessary to destroy the Nazi armies, but which their own nations' sensibilities rendered them unwilling to accept." As a result, they traded "dependence upon one tyranny"--the Soviet Union--for "the destruction of another"--Nazi Germany. In doing so, they traded away Poland's future.
Lynne Olson (Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour)
I want to make it clear, however, that although I am deeply opposed to war, I am not advocating appeasement. It is often necessary to take a strong stand to counter unjust aggression. For instance, it is plain to all of us that the Second World War was entirely justified. It "saved civilization" from the tyranny of Nazi Germany, as Winston Churchill so aptly put it. In my view, the Korean War was also just, since it gave South Korea the chance of gradually developing democracy. But we can only judge whether or not a conflict was vindicated on moral grounds with hindsight. For example, we can now see that during the Cold War, the principle of nuclear deterrence had a certain value. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to assess such matters with any degree of accuracy. War is violence and violence is unpredictable. Therefore, it is better to avoid it if possible, and never to presume that we know beforehand whether the outcome of a particular war will be beneficial or not.
Dalai Lama XIV
History was always present for Churchill. He understood, perhaps, that the essence of history is the present, for the present is nothing other than what the past has made it, only those most essential elements of the past being retained in the present. That is what makes them essential. One’s understanding of the past is therefore a constituent part of one’s understanding of current events and a guide as to how to act in it.
Stephen Bungay (The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain)
Mr. MacDonald smiled. “They wouldn’t see and they wouldn’t listen,” he declared. “They never listen to people who try to tell them unpalatable truths. Lord Roberts warned them before the last war and they said he was in his dotage. Winston Churchill, Roger Keyes, Neville Henderson and half a dozen others warned them that Germany was on the warpath again, and all they did was to disarm faster and break up our battleships for scrap. . . . I don’t know whether you have noticed,” continued Mr. MacDonald, “it is rather an extraordinary thing: Churchill has never once said, ‘I told you so,’ or, ‘If you had only listened to me.’ He is a big man, there is no doubt of that.
D.E. Stevenson (Spring Magic)
The moral sense had grown so strong in matters of sex that Churchmen could now brand a king as licentious. Boniface from Germany censured Ethelbald for the “twofold sin” which he committed in nunneries by using the advantages of his royal position to gain himself favours otherwise beyond his reach.
Winston S. Churchill (The Birth of Britain (A History of the English Speaking Peoples #1))
The first four months of Truman’s presidency saw the collapse of Nazi Germany, the founding of the United Nations, firebombings of Japanese cities that killed many thousands of civilians, the liberation of Nazi death camps, the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the execution of Benito Mussolini, and the capture of arch war criminals from Hitler’s number two, Hermann Göring, to the Nazi “chief werewolf” Ernst Kaltenbrunner. There was the fall of Berlin, victory at Okinawa (which the historian Bill Sloan has called “the deadliest campaign of conquest ever undertaken by American arms”), and the Potsdam Conference, during which the new president sat at the negotiating table with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in Soviet-occupied Germany, in an attempt to map out a new world. Humanity saw the first atomic explosion, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the dawn of the Cold War, and the beginning of the nuclear arms race. Never had fate shoehorned so much history into such a short period. “The four months that have elapsed since the death of President Roosevelt on April 12 have been one of the most momentous periods in man’s history,” wrote a New York Times columnist at the time. “They have hardly any parallel throughout
A.J. Baime (The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World)
The excitement in the Press and in Parliament, the warning speeches and counter-speeches were not intended for foreign consumption. England was not trying to make an impression upon Germany. She was trying to make up her own mind: and in proportion as this mind arrived at solid and final conclusions, silence was again restored.
Winston Churchill (The World Crisis, Vol. 1: 1911-1914)
Germany. If Churchill imagined, however, that a living Lawrence might have played a signal role in meeting that danger, he was surely mistaken. As Lawrence himself had been trying to tell the world for many years, the
Scott Anderson (Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
Yet, some things do not change. Overall, designers have stayed with techniques that work—in different countries and historical periods. Flagg’s 'I Want You for U.S. Army' design in World War I, with 'Uncle Sam' looking directly at the viewer and pointing a finger at him, was derived from a British poster produced three years earlier; in the British poster, Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener is pointing a finger at British males, with the words 'Wants You, Join Your Country’s Army! God Save The King.' Other countries—Italy, Hungary, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, France, the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Red Army in Russia, and later, the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War—designed similar posters. The British applied the same design idea in World War II, featuring Prime Minister Winston Churchill, instead of Kitchener, in the same pose; the U.S. Democratic Party resurrected Flagg’s Uncle Sam image, including it in an election poster for Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the decades that followed, however, anti-war protest groups issued satires of Flagg’s 'I Want You' poster, with 'Uncle Sam' in a variety of poses: pointing a gun at the audience; making the 'peace sign,' bandaged and accompanied by the slogan 'I Want Out'; as a skeleton, with a target superimposed on him; and with the 'bad breath' of airplanes dropping bombs on houses in his mouth.
Steven A. Seidman (Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History)
Since January, when he had arrived in England to command Overlord, Eisenhower had been under crushing, ever greater strain. Now it had all boiled down to this decision. Eisenhower alone—not Roosevelt, not Churchill—had the authority to give the final command to go, to “enter the continent of Europe,” as his orders from on high had stated, and “undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”3 He alone could pull the trigger. Marshaling the greatest invasion in the history of war had been, at times, as terrifying as the very real prospect of failure. The last time there had been
Alex Kershaw (The First Wave: The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II)
I must speak of Germany. Indescribable crimes have been committed by Germany under the Nazi rule. Justice must take its course, the guilty must be punished, but once that is over—and I trust it will soon be over—I fall back on the declaration of Edmund Burke, ‘I cannot frame an indictment against an entire people.
Winston S. Churchill
It is clear from this that if Halifax and not Churchill had become prime minister, he would have wanted to seek accommodation with Germany, or at any rate considered peace terms if Hitler offered them. He would have had some support outside the cabinet. Some ministers would have followed him.
Norman Moss (Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940)
With extraordinary prescience, Churchill then made another point, full of foreboding. ‘There is a danger,’ he warned, ‘of the odious conditions now ruling in Germany being extended by conquest to Poland, and another persecution and pogrom of Jews being begun in this new area.’6 There were six hundred thousand Jews in Germany in 1933, and more than three million in Poland. At a time when most British politicians doubted Germany’s aggressive intentions, Churchill’s forecast seemed far-fetched. Within ten years it had come to pass. The Nazis, who were assiduously courting Western opinion, were angered by Churchill’s speech, especially his censure of their anti-Jewish measures. On 19 April a correspondent of the Birmingham Post reported from Berlin: ‘Today newspapers are full with “sharp warnings” for England.’ One headline referred to ‘Mr Winston Churchill’s “impudence”’.
Martin Gilbert (Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship)