Wwii Inspirational Quotes

...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.

I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.

Sturm, Swung, Wucht

But most of these women -- the famous and the obscure -- had one thing in common: they did not think of themselves as heroes. They followed their consciences, saw something that needed to be done, and they did it. And all of them helped win a war, even though many of them paid the ultimate price for their contribution. But their sacrifice was not in vain, especially if their courage continues to inspire others to fight injustice and evil wherever they find it. --From Women Heroes of WWII

And she felt the beauty in the music now, drank it in with tears streaming down her face. Never had she been so naked in worship before her Creator, allowing the adoration to bleed out her very fingertips onto the strings, playing her heart's cry for every single lost soul, for the loss of innocence every generation to come would possess as a result of what happened at the killing fields of Auschwitz.

Love is a decision more than it is a feeling.

As we drew nearer I saw a cathedral like a crown on the head of a city. In its white walls every window glinted in the sun. Lincoln! Of such places is England made. -"No Moon Tonight

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression — nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it — and liked it.

What does it matter how we look in Germany compared to how we look in heaven?

Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.

The casting of the brash United States Army Air Force officer Colonel Robert E. Hogan and the pompous German Luftwaffe officer Colonel Wilhelm Klink was inspired. For this series—a comedy with the serious backdrop of war—to succeed, the lead players had to be the perfect fit. The dynamic portrayal of this military odd couple had to be articulate, accurate, and precise. For the show to work, for the concept to be accepted, for one of the most outlandish premises in television history to be believed, the actors signed to play the two leading characters not only had to bring these extreme individuals to life with broad, fictional strokes, they had to make them real in the details.

Standing there watching them, it occurred to me that when Hitler watched Joe and the boys fight their way back from the rear of the field to sweep ahead of Italy and Germany seventy-five years ago, he saw, but did not recognize heralds of his doom. He could not have known that one day hundreds of thousands of boys just like them, boys who shared their essential natures--decent and unassuming, not privileged or favored by anything in particular, just loyal, committed, and perseverant--would return to Germany dressed in olive drab, hunting him down. "They are almost all gone now--the legions of young men who saved the world in the years just before I was born. But that afternoon, standing on the balcony of Haus West, I was swept with gratitude for their goodness and their grace, their humility and their honor, their simple civility and all the things they taught us before they flitted across the evening water and finally vanished into the night.

I’ve claimed—so far sort of vaguely—that what makes televisions hegemony so resistant to critique by the new Fiction of Image is that TV has coopted the distinctive forms of the same cynical, irreverent, ironic, absurdist post-WWII literature that the new Imagists use as touchstones. The fact is that TV’s re-use of postmodern cool has actually evolved as an inspired solution to the keep-Joe-at-once-alienated-from-and-part-of-the-million-eyed-crowd problem. The solution entailed a gradual shift from oversincerity to a kind of bad-boy irreverence in the Big Face that TV shows us. This in turn reflected a wider shift in U.S. perceptions of how art was supposed to work, a transition from art’s being a creative instantiation of real values to art’s being a creative rejection of bogus values. And this wider shift, in its turn, paralleled both the development of the postmodern aesthetic and some deep and serious changes in how Americans chose to view concepts like authority, sincerity, and passion in terms of our willingness to be pleased. Not only are sincerity and passion now “out,” TV-wise, but the very idea of pleasure has been undercut. As Mark C. Miller puts it, contemporary television “no longer solicits our rapt absorption or hearty agreement, but—like the ads that subsidize it—actually flatters us for the very boredom and distrust it inspires in us.” 24

In Healing the Masculine Soul, Dalbey introduced themes that would animate what soon became a cottage industry of books on Christian masculinity. First and foremost, Dalbey looked to the Vietnam War as the source of masculine identity. The son of a naval officer, Dalbey described how the image of the war hero served as his blueprint for manhood. He’d grown up playing “sandlot soldier” in his white suburban neighborhood, and he’d learned to march in military drills and fire a rifle in his Boy Scout “patrol.” Fascinated with John Wayne’s WWII movies, he imagined war “only as a glorious adventure in manhood.” As he got older, he “passed beyond simply admiring the war hero to desiring a war” in which to demonstrate his manhood. 20 By the time he came of age, however, he’d become sidetracked. Instead of demonstrating his manhood on the battlefields of Vietnam, he became “part of a generation of men who actively rejected our childhood macho image of manhood—which seemed to us the cornerstone of racism, sexism, and militarism.” Exhorted to make love, not war, he became “an enthusiastic supporter of civil rights, women’s liberation, and the antiwar movement,” and he joined the Peace Corps in Africa. But in opting out of the military he would discover that “something required of manhood seemed to have been bypassed, overlooked, even dodged.” Left “confused and frustrated,” Dalbey eventually conceded that “manhood requires the warrior.” 21 Dalbey agreed with Bly that an unbalanced masculinity had led to the nation’s “unbalanced pursuit” of the Vietnam War, but an over-correction had resulted in a different problem: Having rejected war making as a model of masculine strength, men had essentially abdicated that strength to women. As far as Dalbey was concerned, the 1970s offered no viable model of manhood to supplant “the boyhood image in our hearts,” and his generation had ended up rejecting manhood itself. If the warrior spirit was indeed intrinsic to males, then attempts to eliminate the warrior image were “intrinsically emasculating.” Women were “crying out” for men to recover their manly strength, Dalbey insisted. They were begging men to toughen up and take charge, longing for a prince who was strong and bold enough to restore their “authentic femininity.” 22 Unfortunately, the church was part of the problem. Failing to present the true Jesus, it instead depicted him “as a meek and gentle milk-toast character”—a man who never could have inspired “brawny fishermen like Peter to follow him.” It was time to replace this “Sunday school Jesus” with a warrior Jesus. Citing “significant parallels” between serving Christ and serving in the military, Dalbey suggested that a “redeemed image of the warrior” could reinvigorate the church’s ministry to men: “What if we told men up front that to join the church of Jesus Christ is . . . to enlist in God’s army and to place their lives on the line? This approach would be based on the warrior spirit in every man, and so would offer the greatest hope for restoring authentic Christian manhood to the Body of Christ.” Writing before the Gulf War had restored faith in American power and the strength of the military, Dalbey’s preoccupation with Vietnam is understandable, yet the pattern he established would endure long after an easy victory in the latter conflict supposedly brought an end to “Vietnam syndrome.” American evangelicals would continue to be haunted by Vietnam. 23

Life is a matter of luck, and the odds in favor of success are in no way enhanced by extreme caution. — WWII German U-Boat Commander Eric Topp

Plodding along what barely passed for a trail, I had an eerie feeling. There was still snow on the ground but the air had become warmer, causing a mist to form. We trudged under large trees to a place that I finally recognized. The thick forest ended as we continued, walking across an open field up the side of a hill. Once again our trail entered the woods, however now there were only low bushes, which surrounded the limestone quarry. I hadn’t really noticed but the snow was getting deeper, and now almost obliterated the worn pathway. The young man told me that I was close to my destination and that he would turn back now. I think he felt it would be better if we were not seen together, since the locals loved to gossip and seeing me with a single young man would certainly cause them to talk. Swinging his lantern as a farewell gesture, he disappeared into what had now become a heavy fog. I really felt uneasy now that the fog had settled in. There I stood, knowing that I still had to walk through the rock cut and past some trees before I could get back onto the paved road. There wasn’t anything I could do except continue on!

I was happiest in the sky—at dawn when the quietness of the airwas like a caress, when the noon sun beat down and at dusk whenthe sky was drenched with the fading light. Think of me there and remember me…” - Cornelia Fort

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others." - Winston Churchill

It was a moment many probably wished would last forever, the kind of ephemeral glimpse that proved Hitler wrong and humanity right. People with vast differences could unite and thrive together; they could lift each other, forgive, ignore the temptation for prejudice, embrace common causes without sacrificing their core identities, and set aside their disagreements to focus on areas where they did agree. Unity didn’t need to come at the expense of identity.

The Nazis didn’t kill them. They chose to die so others could live. So did Charles. He carried precisely zero burden to help anyone. His efforts were his choice. He was a victim to no one.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.” TRAUMA IS EVERYWHERE It’s not just veterans, crime victims, abused children, and accident survivors who come face-to-face with trauma. About 75% of Americans will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than they are to get breast cancer.

The United States has always been two countries: its ideal and its reality. Both exist side by side, never fully aligned, one always tailing the other. Still, in the Army Chaplain Corps during and building up to World War II, we see men pressing toward a reality that would be far better than the past, even if it was not yet perfect.

I knew a chaplain once, who, when he went on maneuvews [sic] always dropped back in the line towards the close of the day and somewhere he would find a young soldier who would be having trouble carrying his rifle along with his pack so the chaplain would carry his rifle for him. That, Chaplains, is your job—to carry rifles for the boys and they will not always be of wood and steel but burdens, problems, sins and sorrows.

As his comments made clear, in the days that would come, what the world would need were not men who sacrificed the core of who they were just to get along with others. It would need men whose foundation was so solid, they did not feel the need to oppress others.

The life cord became thin filament, and the heaven cord a rope, by the times the camps were liberated. But I don't think many focused on heaven; too much of hell had been lived to allow for God's grace and heaven.

they are also a spiritual symbol of the dignity to which man can aspire in his workaday life—hope and integrity fashioned from metal, gears, and rubber.

Everyone in their life has his own particular way of expressing life’s purpose—the lawyer his eloquence, the painter his palette, and the man of letters his pen from which the quick words of his story flow. I have my bicycle.

This book is just that: the capacity we have as human beings to transform the world in each generation, when the balances are zeroed out and, for better or worse, everything begins again.

Children of the Stars is a tribute to the power of everyday men and women to change reality.

A light stream emanated from the engine’s wheels, and the train gave a final whistle as if the huge frame of metal and wood were sighing in grief over the souls it had to separate.

To Moses, stars were the lights God had created so that night would not swallow everything up.

The walls still enclosed his memories, but the soul had been removed.

Innocence can only be lost once.

Most people value freedom and life, but for me, it’s all worthless without my family. Existing without them would be a kind of slavery. Suffering with them, I’ll be with them forever.

Nightmarish monsters tried to trap them that restless night, but their innocent minds escaped and flew off to the world of dreams, where everything is possible and nothing lasts forever.

Once people being to hate, they stop asking questions. Stop using their brains. They just look down on other people.

What is hate? Like when you don’t like someone?

When there are more people who hate than people who love, then there are wars, which make hate grow until it destroys everything.

You can’t learn to swim unless you’re willing to risk drowning. Keeping your distance from the water might keep you safe for a while, but it also keeps you far way from the things that are really worth it.

A family was much more than a group of people united by blood. More than anything, it was the thin thread that kept the present linked to the past. Memories and memory itself kept both worlds together.

True peace was a sleeping child’s face.

Jacob longed to grow up, to become an adult, yet he was still drawn to so much from childhood, and he did not want to give up his playing.

In one sense, childhood is an eternal present. The road traveled is just a few feet beyond the starting point, and the end goal seems so far away that it gives the false sense of eternity that the young always feel.

Happiness was compromised of small decisions that move you closer to your dreams. Before you could be happy, you had to imagine life as an exciting novel with a happy ending.

Everyone calls you ‘Pasture.’ Do you raise cows or sheep? They call me ‘Pastor’ because I’m like a shepherd for people, and I lead them to safe pasture in God’s good earth.

For her, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was much more than an out-of-the-way French college. It was a secret mountain, the last place in Europe where people could carry on as people — the last place human beings could live together in harmony.

A long, dark shadow was stretching over the valley: the shadow of death and fear, darkness and hatred, which bided its time for the chance to overtake each home, field, and byway until it devoured the last ray of hope in the hearts of the women and men of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

The town embodied the reality that people could always find a way out, and the impact of one good deed was infinitely more powerful than that of evil.

We live in a world in which men have become wolves for other men.

Life’s not worth living if you don’t give it to others.

He was the last witness of the world that was going extinct, never to be seen again.

Adults were always judging one another based on appearance, religion, skin color, or wealth. Children were not like that. For them, everyone was equal, and they hardly noticed differences between peers.

I can’t live there, but I don’t know what I’d do if Buenos Aires didn’t exist. Chaotic, dehumanizing, dirty, anarchic — but she is my mistress, my lover.

The souls of men and women make a country great.

Don’t confuse flags for patriots.

You can’t love a symbol and hate what it represents.

For a moment, time stood still; nothing happened; eternity posed all its intricate movement on that one moment.

Tears spilled out of closed eyes and mixed with the tears of the faces pressed against them.

Observing the happiness of others always makes the world make a little more sense all of a sudden, makes suffering a little more bearable, makes grief a little less suffocating.

From the green valleys of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon , were a village of men and women set their faces against the horror and showed that, armed with the Spirit, the noblest hearts are always capable of overcoming and that there shadows of evil will finally be dispelled until light invades everything once more — for a new generation to believe it can change the world, or at least try.

Heaven should be a happy place, like those green summits of the Dolomite Mountains, after you’ve rounded a hundred curves, pedaling all the way.

Perhaps what unites this group of disparate souls is their unique sense of humor, one only an eighty or a ninety year old has. With each of those who shared their tales, I’ve smiled, chuckled, laughed out loud, and occasionally doubled over and laughed till I cried.

There is a certain personality type that demands living a life where boundaries aren't set by society but by the individuals. It's an outlook where making your own rules seems as natural as breath. There's nothing inherently evil about that type of personality; it's the same mindset that has spawned scientific discoveries and schools of thought that have made the Earth a much nicer place to live. Great heroes and heroines throughout human history have all shared a dissatisfaction with the status quo and the will to do something about it. Anti-fascists during the Spanish Civil War and WWII, as well as activists of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements were all inspirational examples of rebels who refused oppression and organized against it. But when that kind of person makes certain mistakes in certain circumstances, things as atrocious as the aforementioned things were wonderful can be set as in motion. Just as Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, the Prophet Muhammad, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were all examples of people who made their own rules and who had a positive impact on society, there is unfortunately a perhaps even longer list of people who had horrific impacts on the world-stemming from that same core need to dictate reality and motivate others.

Few events, after all, can rival the scale of a lavish Italian wedding.