Wwii Sayings Quotes

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He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
When you go home Tell them of us, and say For your tomorrow, We gave our today.
Patrick O'Donnell (Into the Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat)
I love you. I want to shout it sometimes. I know you worry about our letters and texts getting read--shades of WWII, haunting us still, I guess, and I'm well aware that nothing's safe on the internet. I worry too. You need to know that when I say it, when I ask you to say it, it's because my lungs feel full of dark water, and seeing it or writing it lets me breathe.
Amy Lane (Keeping Promise Rock (Promises, #1))
There’s nothing funny about war. Well, aside from this joke Orafoura told me: What did WWI say to WWII? I wish I could tell you the punch line, but the restaurant was so noisy that I didn’t hear it. But I laughed anyway, because I’ll bet it was pretty funny.
Jarod Kintz ($3.33 (the title is the price))
But miracles still happen, even if we don't think they do.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
I felt peace, even though I was still scared to death. I thought that, whatever would happen to me - I could still be killed. I didn't know - and in what I'd already been through, God was in control.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
We love WWII because the cause was so obviously just, because you can't be a good person and say you wouldn't fight against an evil like that. It was so black and white on our side, and on our side so few died. (Our side meaning the lantern-jawed John Wayne Greatest Generation constantly canonized soldiers who strode in late to the graveyard that was Europe. Compared to Jewish, Russian, Roma, and other casualties, our losses were minimal.) We felt so strong. In some ways I think we're always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes. With every war we invoke that one, we hope it will be that good. -from her blog
Catherynne M. Valente
(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
To me it was real war and my life was at stake, and I believe that all those clandestine spy games we played as children helped when the Occupation came.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: "The church may not mix in politics." he says. And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God. -From the diary of Diet Eman
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
They thought we were stupid to do it, (hide Jews) of course; in fact, it was beyond their comprehension that we would risk so much for Jews.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
It's time to live now, Cilka," he says. "Without fear, and with the miracle of love." "Is that a poem?" she asks him, smiling through her tears. "It is the beginning of one.
Heather Morris (Cilka's Journey (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #2))
We ate, did our homework, got good grades, kissed our parents goodnight and always had the secret door and shared experiences to go to. It was truly remarkable, and doing it as a group made us feel invulnerable. As soon as the drums and amps were set up and Jean and Kathie hit it, I tell you there was nothing more to say. Conversation stopped, and the magic carpet ride took off. I’ve never felt anything more powerful in my life.
June Millington (Land of a Thousand Bridges: Island Girl in a Rock & Roll World)
Many Germans nowadays say they were not Nazi, and many were not, but they were nearly ALL Party members. It was safer ... and if you were not, you could end up in a ‘camp’ for retraining ... so they mostly all paid ‘lip service’ to the Nazi Party.
Alfred Nestor (Uncle Hitler: A Child's Traumatic Journey Through Nazi Hell to the Safety of Britain)
Well, what's Cecilia say today?” he asked, not bothering to rise. “Can’t believe you two write each other every day. Doesn't it get boring? 'Dear Joseph, I went to town today and bought an egg. Then I boiled it and had breakfast.
Jack Lewis Baillot (Brothers-in-Arms)
WWII plaque that resides on an island in the pacific:   “When you go home  Tell them of us, and say  For your tomorrow,  We gave our today.
Melissa Schroeder (Uniform Desires (Make Mine Military))
Now I was shocked! The old shibboleth, intelligence! Had not our government been culpable enough in pampering the high-IQ draftees as though they were too intelligent to fight for their country? Could not Doctor Gentle see that I was proud to be a scout, and before that a machine gunner? Intelligence, intelligence, intelligence. Keep it up, America, keep telling your youth that mud and danger are fit only for intellectual pigs. Keep on saying that only the stupid are fit to sacrifice, that America must be defended by the low-brow and enjoyed by the high-brow. Keep vaunting head over heart, and soon the head will arrive at the complete folly of any kind of fight and meekly surrender the treasure to the first bandit with enough heart to demand it.
Robert Leckie
By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
Yesterday the paper had a "short" summary of the places where Jews are not allowed! I can better mention where they are still aloud: "in their houses and in the streets!" God, punish those who are persecuting the people you chose and to whom Jesus also belonged. -From the diary of Diet Eman
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
You see a dead enemy soldier and you say, At least it wasn’t one of ours. You see a dead American soldier—one of your own—and you say, At least it wasn’t me. You lose a friend and you say, To hell with this. Get me out of here.
Donald Malarkey
And now to that Victim whose Sign rose above the world two thousand years ago, to be menaced now by that other sign now rising, I say a prayer of contrition. I, whom you have seen as irreverent and irreligious, now pray in the name of Chuckler and Hoosier and Runner, in the name of Smoothface, Gentlemen, Amish, and Oakstump, Ivy-League and Big-Picture, in the name of all those who suffered in the jungles and on the beaches, from Anzio to Normandy--and in the name of the immolated: of Texan, Rutherford, Chicken, Loudmouth, of the Artist and White-Man, Souvenirs and Racehorse, Dreadnought and Commando--of all these and the others, dear Father, forgive us for that awful cloud.
Robert Leckie (Helmet for My Pillow)
In decades from now, I’m sure they’ll say we Joes were all noble, every one of us grimy but patriotic cherubs. Because we won a war. Back home they already do think it, thanks to the publicity teams, the ads, correspondents, censors. I’m not buying it. If we have to come here and fight to do away with your Hitler and the sorry mess he created, then people ought to know just how much the effort sucks all our souls. That way, maybe no one will try a war again.
Steve Anderson (Under False Flags)
Men tell stories", I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.
Kristin Hannah (The Nightingale)
The agreement,' the colonel announced, 'says thirty-seven officers, fifty vehicles, and one hundred seventy five men.' 'What agreement?' 'The Berlin Agreement,
Andrei Cherny (The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour)
What do you say, son? Doesn’t your father look great in his new uniform?” Poul-Erik’s Father The Informer by Steen Langstrup
Steen Langstrup (The Informer (Sabotage Group BB #1))
After the prayer they executed an armed robbery. That sounds very strange this many years later: prayer and then armed robbery.
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
But you never knew where the bombs would fall in the dark, so night bombing was even more frightening than daylight bombing. Let’s just say, it scared the living daylights out of us!
Alfred Nestor (Uncle Hitler: A Child's Traumatic Journey Through Nazi Hell to the Safety of Britain)
Why do I go on? Why I am doing this when I am 92 years and two months old? I could, after all, be sitting on a sofa in slippers with my feet up. So why do I do this? You think the man sitting opposite you is Manolis but you are wrong. I am not him. And I am not him because I have not forgotten that every time someone was about to be executed [during WWII], they said: 'Don't forget me. When you say good morning, think of me. When you raise a glass, say my name.' And that is what I am doing talking to you, or doing any of this. The man you see before you is all those people. And all this is about not forgetting them.
Manolis Glezos
The censors were so far gone as to find the following sentence obscene: 'The factory gate waited for the student workers, thrown open in longing.' What can I say? This obscenity verdict was handed down by a censor in response to my script for my 1944 film about a girls' volunteer corps, Ichiban utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful). I could not fathom what it was he found to be obscene about this sentence. Probably none of you can either. But for the mentally disturbed censor this sentence was unquestionably obscene. He explained that the word 'gate' very vividly suggested to him the vagina! For these people suffering from sexual manias, anything and everything made them feel carnal desire. Because they were obscene themselves, everything seen through their obscene eyes naturally became obscene. Nothing more or less than a case of sexual pathology.
Akira Kurosawa (Something Like an Autobiography)
14 July 1942—Jerusalem - ...A magnificent parcel, covered in tape and seals, arrived for me from India. Inside were two pairs of old fashioned corsets with bones and laces. They were sent by HRH The Duke of Gloucester. Nick and I had an argument as to how one should thank one of the Royal Family for a present of corsets. Whichever way we put it looked disrespectful. Finally we sent a telegram saying: ‘Reinforcements received. Positions now held. Most grateful thanks.
Hermione Ranfurly (To War With Whitaker)
In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch
Bertrand Russell
You said imagination is good," protested Iggy, tumbling off the mattress in alarm. "You said it can take us places we've never been before!" "Well, the only place you're going now is your own bunk, and you've certainly been there before," Jozef retorted. "Now march!
Sarah Beth Brazytis (Treasures of Darkness (Lighten Our Darkness #2))
It might be instructive to try seeing things from the perspective of, say, a God-fearing hard-working rural-Midwestern military vet. It's not that hard. Imaging gazing through his eyes at the world of MTV and the content of video games, at the gross sexualization of children's fashions, at Janet Jackson flashing her aureole on what's supposed to be a holy day. Imagine you're him having to explain to your youngest what oral sex is and what it's got to do with a US president. Ads for penis enlargers and HOT WET SLUTS are popping up out of nowhere on your family's computer. Your kids' school is teaching them WWII and Vietnam in terms of Japanese internment and the horrors of My Lai. Homosexuals are demanding holy matrimony; your doctor's moving away because he can't afford the lawsuit insurance; illegal aliens want driver's licenses; Hollywood elites are bashing America and making millions from it; the president's ridiculed for reading his Bible; priests are diddling kids left and right. Shit, the country's been directly attacked, and people aren't supporting our commander in chief.
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
The ground is still filled iwth rings, and money, and pictures, and Jewish things. I was only able to find a few of them, but they fill the earth." The hero did not ask me once what she was saying. I am not certain if he knew what she was saying, or if he knew not to inquire.
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated)
O Father, console them and please spare our country from that terrible disaster, not because we are any better but only out of grace. And if it has to be different, then teach me to pray: "Your will be done." O please protect him whom my soul lives! -From the journal of Diet Eman
Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
He added in typical Patton style, “There is one thing you men will be able to say when you go home. You may all thank God that 30 years from now when you are sitting with your grandson upon your knees and he asks: ‘Grandfather, what did you do in World War II?’ you won’t have to say, ‘I shovelled s**t in Louisiana!
Charles Whiting (America's Forgotten Army: The True Story of the U.S. Seventh Army in WWII - And An Unknown Battle that Changed History (Forgotten Aspects of World War Two))
The Lutz heck that emerges from his writings and actions drifted like a weather vane: charming when need be, cold-blooded when need be, tigerish or endearing, depending on his goal. Still, it is surprising that Heck the zoologist chose to ignore the accepted theory of hybrid vigor: that interbreeding strengthens a bloodline. He must have known that mongrels enjoy better immune systems and have more tricks up their genetic sleeves, while in a closely knit species, however "perfect," any illness that kills one animal threatens to wipe out all the others, which is why zoos keep careful studbooks of endangered animals such as cheetahs and forest bison and try to mate them advantageously. In any case, in the distant past, long before anyone was recognizably Aryan, our ancestors shared the world with other flavors of hominids, and interbreeding among neighbors often took place, producing hardier, nastier offspring who thrived. All present-day humans descend from that robust, talkative mix, specifically from a genetic bottleneck of only about one hundred individuals. A 2006 study of mitochondrial DNA tracks Ashkenazi Jews (about 92 percent of the world’s Jews in 1931) back to four women, who migrated from the Near East to Italy in the second and third centuries. All of humanity can be traced back to the gene pool of one person, some say to a man, some a woman. It’s hard to imagine our fate being as iffy as that, be we are natural wonders.
Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
I am quite gifted at waiting,” von Rumpel says in French. “It is my one great skill. I was never much good at athletics or mathematics, but even as a boy, I possessed unnatural patience. I would wait with my mother while she got her hair styled. I would sit in the chair and wait for hours, no magazine, no toys, not even swinging my legs back and forth. All the mothers were very impressed.
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
In therapy, to meet the needs of traumatized survivors of war and torture, the patient is requested to repeatedly talk about the worst traumatic event in detail while re-experiencing all emotions associated with the event. Traumatic memory, they say, is cleared by narration of whole life; from early childhood up to the present date ... this book is my therapy. I am awash with living memories.
Alfred Nestor (Uncle Hitler: A Child's Traumatic Journey Through Nazi Hell to the Safety of Britain)
Judging Pius by what he did not say, one could only damn him. With images of piles of skeletal corpses before his eyes; with women and young children compelled, by torture, to kill each other; with millions of innocents caged like criminals, butchered like cattle, and burned like trash—he should have spoken out. He had this duty, not only as pontiff, but as a person. After his first encyclical, he did reissue general distinctions between race-hatred and Christian love. Yet with the ethical coin of the Church, Pius proved frugal; toward what he privately termed “Satanic forces,” he showed public moderation; where no conscience could stay neutral, the Church seemed to be. During the world’s greatest moral crisis, its greatest moral leader seemed at a loss for words. But the Vatican did not work by words alone. By 20 October, when Pius put his name to Summi Pontficatus, he was enmeshed in a war behind the war. Those who later explored the maze of his policies, without a clue to his secret actions, wondered why he seemed so hostile toward Nazism, and then fell so silent. But when his secret acts are mapped, and made to overlay his public words, a stark correlation emerges. The last day during the war when Pius publicly said the word “Jew” is also, in fact, the first day history can document his choice to help kill Adolf Hitler.
Mark Riebling (Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler)
The only detail I knew about my dad’s experience in World War II was that he liked when they served chicken-fried steak. I was probably 13 when he told that story, and with the unblinking sanctimony that only a teenager can wield, I remember saying, “Wasn’t that really unhealthy?” In a look that I can only describe as for-a-smart-kid-you’re-remarkably-stupid, my father replied, “We were in planes carrying bombs, and enemy planes were shooting at us. Fried food was not a problem.
Gina Barreca
It fucking matters. What I do, our kind, signal technicians—it descends straight from you guys.” “Our kind?” She tried to say it without sharing the classified parts. “The kind with blasted headphones and little cold rooms?” “Yeah, them. You. Want to know the first thing I did, coming to England? I went to Bletchley Park. Because it’s Mecca to people like us. BP and all the outstations like the one you’re at. The Greatest Generation, all these girls like you sitting in little cold rooms with your headphones on. I saw that display, the Bakelite headphones and wireless receivers and what you managed to do with them, and I felt like I was in goddamn church.
Kate Quinn (Signal Moon)
People who try to tell you what the blitz was like in London start with fire and explosion and then almost invariably end up with some very tiny detail which crept in and set and became the symbol of the whole thing for them. . . . "It's the glass," says one man, "the sound in the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle." ... An old woman was selling little miserable sprays of sweet lavender. The city was rocking under the bombs and the light of burning buildings made it like day. . . . And in one little hole in the roar her voice got in—a squeaky voice. "Lavender!" she said. "Buy Lavender for luck." The bombing itself grows vague and dreamlike. The little pictures remain as sharp as they were when they were new.
John Steinbeck (A Russian Journal)
Or is it the opposite-that the US has moved so far and so fast toward cultural permissiveness that we've reached a kind of apsidal point? It might be instructive to try seeing things from the perspective of, say, a God-fearing hard-working rural-Midwestern military vet. It's not that hard. Imagine gazing through his eyes at the world of MTV and the content of video games, at the gross sexualization of children's fashions, at Janet Jackson flashing her aureole on what's supposed to be a holy day. Imagine you're him having to explain to your youngest what oral sex is and what it's got to do with a US president. Ads for penis enlargers and Hot Wet Sluts are popping up out of nowhere on your family's computer. Your kids' school is teaching them WWII and Vietnam in terms of Japanese internment and the horrors of My Lai. Homosexuals are demanding holy matrimony; your doctor's moving away because he can't afford the lawsuit insurance; illegal aliens want driver's licenses; Hollywood elites are bashing America and making millions from it; the president's ridiculed for reading his Bible; priests are diddling kids left and right. Shit, the country's been directly attacked, and people aren't supporting our commander in chief. Assume for a moment that it's not silly to see things this man's way. What cogent, compelling, relevant message can the center and left offer him? Can we bear to admit that we've actually helped set him up to hear "We 're better than they are" not as twisted and scary but as refreshing and redemptive and true? If so, then now what?
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
There’s no need to say anything to Mr. Turing. I was the one who wasn’t watching where I was going” “You were the one?” Mavis said indignantly. “Turing never pays the slightest attention to where he’s going. He simply plows through pedestrians” Elspeth nodded. “Someone needs to tell him he must be more careful! He could have injured you!” And I could have injured him, Mike thought. Or killed him. If Turing had lost control of his bicycle and crashed into a lamppost instead of the curb, or into a brick wall… Mavis said, “I’ve a good mind to tell Cap—” “No. There’s no need to tell anybody. I’m Fine. No Harm done. Thank you for picking me up and dusting me off.” He picked up his bag, which Mavis had carried in… “Watch out for Turing on your way there,” Joan cut in. “And for Dilly,” Elspeth said. “He’s even worse about not watching where he’s going, and he has a car! Whenever he comes to a crossing, he speeds up.” “Dilly?” Mike said hoarsely. “Captain Knox,” Mavis said. “We work for him. He has some sort of mathematical theory that by going faster he’ll it fewer people, because of being in the crossing a shorter time.”... “I refuse to accept lifts from him anymore,” Elspeth was saying. “He forgets he’s driving and takes both hands off the—are you alright? You’re pale as a ghost.
Connie Willis
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 A gentleman who had read One Heartbeat Away emailed me one day. He said he was a WWII veteran. He made the fatal error of putting his phone number in his email, so I called him! We had the neatest chat. He was a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge! I told my mom that I had history on the telephone. So I picked his brain for a while. He said he had seen a copy of One Heartbeat Away lying on a table at a VA hospital and perused it a bit. He also told me he loves to read, so he figured that if it was left on the table, then he could take it! When he emailed me, he had already read the book once and was half way through it for the second time. He said, “I have three hundred years of Catholicism in my family. After reading this book, I am now trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, for my salvation.” All I could say was, “Wow!” Then he said, “My mind is sharp as a tack. I love to read. You got any more books?” Well, we sent him everything I had at that time. In his next email, he let me know that he had read One Heartbeat Away three times through, front to back, and he was telling everyone he could about Jesus! If you live in Ohio, there is an 89-year-old evangelist roaming around, so you better watch out! This veteran made the decision to break the cycle of Catholicism in his family. No more rituals. No more good works to get to Heaven. No more, I hope I get there. No more infallibility. He is trusting in the blood of Christ, and nothing else, for the washing away of his sins. He now wants everyone else to have that same blessing as well!
Mark Cahill (Ten Questions from the King)
It goes without saying that any man may look for help and kindness and generosity from any other.
David Howarth (The Sledge Patrol: A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival and Victory)
It's a nonsense to say that men should be Britons and Frenchmen and Russians first and communists and Christians and fascists afterwards, for it is only by making a philosophy and not a nation prevail that we shall every attain universal peace. That's why this war's decided nothing, really, because it was fought for national survival and not for philosophical penetration.
Bruce Marshall (Vespers in Vienna)
You heard his storm-troopers shout their "Juda verrecke!" You heard him denounce us Jews, threaten us, revile us.' 'Yes, I did. But will you believe me, Herr Klaar, that I and thousands like me, didn't take all that seriously? After what I saw today I know that I was wrong. But believe me, I thought all that anti-Jewish propaganda was just rabble-rousing, something for that drunken SA mob. I ignored it and thought it unimportant. I felt certain all that would be forgotten once Hitler came to power, that ...' 'And the Nuremberg laws?' Father interrupted her. She thought a little while before replying. 'Yes,' she said, 'you're right to ask me that question. What shall I say? Of course, I know about them., but I also know now that I pushed that knowledge away from me. It won't be as bad as it sounds, I thought, and that injustice, I persuaded myself, had to be put on the scales and weighed against Hitler's achievements. Nearly six million unemployed were found jobs. Germany was strong and respected again, the same of Versailles was wiped out. Yes, I looked for the good things and was intentionally blind to the bad. I am sorry, Stella, I wanted so much to believe.
George Clare (Last Waltz in Vienna)
Many of the great collaborations in history were between people who fully understood and internalized what the other was saying. The fathers of flight, Orville and Wilbur Wright; WWII leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt; James Watson and Francis Crick, who codiscovered the structure of DNA; and John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles were all partners known for spending uninterrupted hours in conversation before they made their marks on history. Of course, they were all brilliant on their own, but it took a kind of mind meld to achieve what they did. This congruence happens to varying degrees between any two people who “click,” whether friends, lovers, business associates, or even between stand-up comedians and their audiences. When you listen and really “get” what another person is saying, your brain waves and those of the speaker are literally in sync.
Kate Murphy (You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters)
Brasse saw Karol’s back on the table. It was held down by weights at the edges and seemed in good condition. His knees began to tremble. He tried to say something, but his voice caught in his throat. He could only speak after several attempts. “Who did this?” His friend didn’t reply. He lowered his eyes in silence. The photographer, in shock, thought about what it must have been like to have to skin a man. He leaned over and vomited on the ground. Morawa held him up and pulled him away, out of the crematorium. “Was it Entress who told you to cut the tattoo off this man?” Brasse pressed. “Yes. He came in person.” “What did he say to you?” Morawa looked him straight in the eyes. “He told me to treat the skin carefully and preserve it well, because it’s going to be used as the binding for a book. He said that. And he repeated it. Do you understand? A man died because a mad doctor wants to bind a book.
Luca Crippa (The Auschwitz Photographer: The Forgotten Story of the WWII Prisoner Who Documented Thousands of Lost Souls (Gift for History Buffs and Men))
Somebody is in a queer state of mind, perhaps behaves oddly, and no reason for this can be discovered at the time. Later—a month, a year, 10 years—the cause of this effect reveals itself. Because of where or what or how I am now, I behaved in such a fashion then.”54 Priestley called this the “future-influencing-present effect”—not unlike what later researchers would call presentiment but unfolding in many cases across a much longer timeframe of an individual’s life. In his 1964 book Man & Time, Priestley described several examples. One letter-writer was a WWII veteran with what we would now call PTSD, who experienced a “breakdown” during the war and relapses of his condition thereafter. He credited his recovery to a somewhat older woman with children whom he met and married after the war and, by the time of his writing, had a teenage daughter with. But “for a year before he met his wife or knew anything about her, he used to pass the gate of her country cottage on the local bus. And he never did this without feeling that he and that cottage were somehow related.”55 Another, older letter writer recalled being a girl during the First World War and when out walking one night in London, “found herself looking up at a hospital, quite strange to her, with tears streaming down her cheeks.” Years later, she moved in with a woman friend, and they remained partners for 25 years. “This friend was then taken ill and she died in that same hospital at which the girl so many years before had stared through her inexplicable tears.”56 Priestley also gives an example from two acquaintances of his own: Dr A began to receive official reports from Mrs B, who was in charge of one branch of a large department. These were not personal letters signed by Mrs B, but the usual duplicated official documents. Dr A did not know Mrs B, had never seen her, knew nothing about her except that she had this particular job. Nevertheless, he felt a growing excitement as he received more and more of these communications from Mrs B. This was so obvious that his secretary made some comment on it. A year later he had met Mrs B and fallen in love with her. They are now most happily married. He believes … that he felt this strange excitement because the future relationship communicated it to him; we might say that one part of his mind, not accessible to consciousness except as a queer feeling, already knew that Mrs B was to be tremendously important to him.57
Eric Wargo (Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious)
Poor little lambs,’ says one, eyeing us constantly, as if there is something wrong with us; as if we have a condition that can’t be named.” Pastel Orphans
Gemma Liviero (Pastel Orphans)
Frau Heinchen, was the elderly woman with her dog, who talked to me on the windy hillside overlooking Überlingen on Sunday afternoon, December 1, 2002. She recalled the Polish and Russian prisoners, whom she called Cossacks, and vividly remembered the hanging of the Russian soldier, described in “Suppressed I Rise”. According to her, it was the farmer’s wife Clarissa who was raped by the Russian soldier and later, bore his child. She remembered the lager (warehouse) that was used to house the prisoners, saying that it was located on a field near the municipal hospital. She also told us the location of where the one room schoolhouse had been. For the limited time that we talked, she glowed and became twenty-one years young again.
Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
Note about youth. Before ending this chapter, I'd like to say something about youth. It was a popular edict in the 1960's to never trust anyone over 30. Whether or not this is true in general, it has great validity in theoretical physics. When Einstein discovered his theory of relativity he was 25. Bohr was 28 when he developed his atomic theory. De Broglie was 28 when he had his ephiphany. Pauli was 25 when he announced his exclusion principle. Heisenberg was 26 when he presented his uncertainty principle (although the exact date is uncertain). Dirac was 26 when he discovered his relativistic equation. Newton was 23 when he worked out his gravitational theory. Even Schwinger and Feynman (but not Tomonaga), despite the interruption of WWII, found the renormalization solution before the age of 30. It seems that the ability to "think outside the box" is strongest in the young!
Rodney A. Brooks (Fields of Color: The theory that escaped Einstein)
It was thus that in 1940 [Hitler] represented a wave of the future. His greatest reactionary opponent, Churchill, was like King Canute, attempting to withstand and sweep back that wave. And––yes, mirabile dictu—this King Canute succeeded: because of his resolution and—allow me to say this—because of God’s will, of which, like every human being, he was but an instrument. He was surely no saint, he was not a religious man, and he had many faults. Yet so it happened.
John Lukacs (Five Days in London: May 1940)
I think at times all of us in camp considered ourselves as heroes. We were surviving, some would say even thriving, in the midst of war. By dint of hard work, ingenuity, faith, prayer and perseverance we had transformed a compound that was a hopeless mess into a habitable and in some rare corners, almost an attractive living place.
David Michell
And mind you, Hermine, even though such abusive articles cannot annoy me any longer, they often sadden me all the same. Two-thirds of my countrymen read this kind of newspaper, read things written in this tone every morning and every night, are every day worked up and admonished and incited, and robbed of their peace of mind and better feelings by them, and the end and aim of it all is to have the war over again, the next war that draws nearer and nearer, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last. All that is perfectly clear and simple. Any one could comprehend it and reach the same conclusion after a moment's reflection. But nobody wants to. Nobody wants to avoid the next war, nobody wants to spare himself and his children the next holocaust if this be the cost. To reflect for one moment, to examine himself for a while and ask what share he has in the world's confusion and wickedness-look you, nobody wants to do that. And so there's no stopping it, and the next war is being pushed on with enthusiasm by thousands upon thousands day by day. It has paralysed me since I knew it, and brought me to despair. I have no country and no ideals left. All that comes to nothing but decorations for the gentlemen by whom the next slaughter is ushered in. There is no sense in thinking or saying or writing anything of human import, to bother one's head with thoughts of goodness for two or three men who do that, there are thousands of papers, periodicals, speeches, meetings in public and in private, that make the opposite their daily endeavor and succeed in it too.
Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)
Paranoid Systems of History (PSH), a short-lived periodical of the 1920s whose plates have all mysteriously vanished, natch, has even suggested, in more than one editorial, that the whole German Inflation was created deliberately, simply to drive young enthusiasts of the Cybernetic Tradition into Control work: after all, an economy inflating, upward bound as a balloon, its own definition of Earth's surface drifting upward in value, uncontrolled, drifting with the days, the feedback system expected to maintain the value of the mark constant having, humiliatingly, failed. . . . Unity gain around the loop, unity gain, zero change, and hush, that way, forever, these were the secret rhymes of the childhood of the Discipline of Control—secret and terrible, as the scarlet histories say. Diverging oscillations of any kind were nearly the Worst Threat. You could not pump the swings of these playgrounds higher than a certain angle from the vertical.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
His attitude to the dead and wounded was not one of guilt. “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died,” he would say later. “Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
Captivating History (George Patton: A Captivating Guide to a Combative American War Hero Who Played a Critical Part in the Battle of Normandy During WWII (The Second World War))
I say that the delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative. I say that this can be done; it must be done; and it will be done… The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The answer Frankl found was that “those who were oriented toward the future, toward a meaning that waited to be fulfilled—these persons were more likely to survive.” Similar answers were found in studies done on concentration camp survivors in Japan and Korea. We see it also in Louis Zamperini’s survival story at sea in WWII as told by Laura Hillenbrand in Unbroken. Frankl would go on to say, “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’.
Vito Grigorov (Origin of Why: The Proven Purpose and Meaning of Life)
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.
Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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.
Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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.
Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
What people are saying about WAR EAGLES ​5 out of 5 stars! WW2 with a dash of fantasy! I really enjoyed stepping back in time as the race for air travel was developing. One could truly feel the passion these pilots and engineers had for these magnificent machines. The twist of stepping back into a land of Vikings and dinosaurs was very well executed. Well done to both the author and the narrator. ​ Reminiscent of Golden Age Sci Fi This audio book reminded me of some of the 40's and 50's era tales, but what it happens to be is an alternative timeline World War II era fun adventure story. Think of a weird mash-up of a screw-up Captain America wanna-be mixed with the Land of the Lost mixed with Avatar where Hitler is the real villain and you might come close. At any rate, it's load of good fun and non stop action. But don't get distracted for a minute or you'll miss something! There are american pilots, Polish spies, Vikings, giant prehistoric eagles and, of course, Nazis! What more could you ask for to while away an afternoon? Our hero even gets the (Viking) girl! Put your feet up an get lost in what might have been.... 4 out of 5 stars! it's Amelia Earnhart meets WWII This is not an accurate historical fiction book, but rather an action-packed book set an historical time. I normally listen to my books at a higher speed, however the amount of drama and action in this book I had to slow it down. I like the storyline and the narrator however, the sound effects throughout the book did kind of throw me since I'm not used to that and most audible books. still I would recommend this is a good read.​ 5 out of 5 stars! I Would Like to See this on the Silver Screen Back in the late 1930s, the director of King Kong started planning War Eagles as his next block buster film. Then World War II intervened and the project languished for decades. It helps to know this background to fully appreciate this novel. It’s a big cinematic adventure waiting to find the screen. The heroes are larger than life, but more importantly, the images are bigger and more vivid than the mighty King Kong who reinvented the silver screen. And what are those images you may ask? Nazis developing super-science weapons for a sneak attack on America, Viking warriors riding gargantuan eagles in a time-forgotten land of dinosaurs, and of course, those same Vikings fighting Nazis over the skyline of New York City. This book is a heck of a lot of fun. It starts a little bit slow but once the Vikings enter the story it chugs along at a heroic pace. There is a ton of action and colorful confrontations. Narrator William L. Hahn pulls out all the stops adding theatrical sound effects to his wide repertoire of voices which adds a completely appropriate cinematic feel to the entire story. If you’re looking for some genuinely heroic fantasy, you should try War Eagles. Wonderful story War Eagles is a really good adventure story. ​5 out of 5 stars!
Debbie Bishop (War Eagles)
The condemnation of the National Socialist Party goes much further than it seems to. In reality, it reaches all the solid forms, all the geological forms of political life. Every nation, every party which urges us to remember our soil, our tradition, our trade, our race is suspect. Whoever claims right of the first occupant and calls to witness things as obvious as the ownership of the city offends against a universal morality which denies the right of the people to write their laws. This applies not just to the Germans; it is all of us who are dispossessed. No one has any more the right to sit down in his field and say: “This ground belongs to me.” No one has any more the right to stand up in the city and say: “We are the old ones; we built the houses of this city; anyone who does not want to obey our laws should get out.
Maurice Bardèche (Nuremberg or the Promised Land)
With the false claim that the Germans murdered six million Jews, mostly in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland during WWII, since the end of WWII, the world has been saturated with films, documentaries and books on the Holocaust. Anyone worldwide who dares to investigate the Jewish Holocaust claims, is branded an Anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier. In our democratic world, a person who is accused of a crime is deemed innocent until irrefutable evidence proves them guilty. What has happened to democracy in Germany, Poland, France and Switzerland where people accused of Holocaust Denial are not allowed to provide any evidence that would prove that they are not guilty? In the Middle Ages, people accused of being witches, were also allowed no defence and were burned at the stake. As burning at the stake and crucifiction is not allowed in today's world, the best that the Jewish leaders and holocaust promoters can achieve is incarceration where no one can hear claims backed by years of very thorough research. The Jewish success in blocking my book "The Answer Justice", their failed attempts to stop the book "Chutzpah" written by Norman Finkelstein whose mother and father were held in German concentration camps, the incarceration of revisionists Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany and David Irving in Austria: these are all desperate attempts to end what they call Holocaust Denial. The English historian David Irving was refused entry to Australia in 2003 at the behest of the Jewish community (representing only 0.4% of the Australian population) thus denying the right of the other 99.6% to hear what David Irving has to say. Proof of Jewish power was the blocking of the public viewing of David Irving's film. The Jewish owners of the building locked the film presentation out which resulted in the headline in the "Australian" newspaper of: " Outrage at Jewish bid to stop the film by David Irving called "The Search For Truth in History" . Sir Zelman Cowan who was Governor General of Australia and a man much reverred in the Jewish community, has stated in the Jewish Chronicle (London) that "The way to deal with people who claim the holocaust never happened, is to produce irrefutable evidence that it did happen". I agree 100% with Sir Zelman Cowan. I am quite certain that he and other Zionist Jewish (Ashkenazim) world leaders are aware that a United Nations or International forensic examination of the alleged gas chamber at No. 2 Crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, would irrefutably prove the truth to the world that xyclon B cyanide has never been used as alleged by world Jewry to kill Jews. In 1979 Professor W.D. Rubenstein stated: "If the Holocaust can be shown to be a Zionist myth, the strongest of all weapons in Israels's propaganda armory collapses. The Falsification of history by Zionist Jews in claiming the murder of six million Jews by Germany, constitutes the GREATEST ORGANISED CRIME that the world has known.
Alexander McClelland
Before the war, a Parisian woman could not vote, work, or even open a checking account without her husband’s say so. To humiliate her now, propaganda posters fed the lie that she and her children had been abandoned in the necessities of life by the French men who’d run off to play savior by fighting a war they couldn’t possibly win. Now it was only the German soldier who could save her. It was not by a blitzkrieg that Hitler sought to take over. It was by a prolonged methodical effort to win the ravaged minds of the women left behind and to appropriate all that was distinctly Parisian - the arts, Haute couture, the very spirit of the French people - and repurpose it to become a higher form of the German ideal. In all of this flowed the callus and crafty undercurrent of fear.
Kristy Cambron (The Paris Dressmaker)
11. What was your impression of Father Jacques? What kind of role do you think faith plays throughout the novel? 12. Adele had no qualms about sleeping with the enemy. Why would she take such a risk? 13. Bette could have her pick of men but chose Lucien. Discuss what made him special in her eyes. What are the most important qualities you look for in a friend/significant other? Would you be willing to compromise on any of these qualities? For what? 14. If you were a gentile living under the Nazis in World War II, do you think you would have had the courage to hide Jews? What consequences are you willing to face to help others? 15. It’s easy to say, knowing what we do about the horrors that occurred during WWII, that we would have helped Jews with nowhere to hide. How do you think you’d react if a similar situation occurred today? Do you think it’s even possible for a similar situation to occur in our age and day? Why? Why not? 16. Suppose you had been taken from your apartment by Captain Bruckner and lined up in the street. If you knew your life was about to end, what would you be thinking about? 17. If you were under the stairs in the Geibers’ place during the Gestapo’s search, how would you have reacted?
Charles Belfoure (The Paris Architect)
Why didn't somebody say anything?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House)
The next time you hear someone say that Roe v. Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges are the law of the land, remind them that they are not; they are the opinions of the supreme Court just like Dred Scott v. Sanford (slaves are property) and Korematsu v. United States (Japanese internment during WWII). The court was wrong in the past, it is frequently wrong today, and will almost certainly be wrong in the future.
Paul Engel (The Constitution Study: Returning the Constitution to We the People)
Listen, my son", said Chumra, "I have not come here to plead my defense. But all the same, I will tell you this: the Polish peasant is on my side, not on yours. What have you done for him? Nothing. The value of your prowess to him is that he has been shot, his harvest has been confiscated, his village burned to the ground. What corn and potatoes he has managed to keep, he owes not to you, but to me. Myself, I don't blow up bridges: I simply see to it that my peasants do not die of hunger. I stand between them and the Germans: I prevent them from being starved or driven like lousy cattle to the West. The Polish state will cease to exist? So what? That's better than a Polish state peopled with corpses where every inhabitant looks like a survivor. It's very nice, a hopeless struggle — but the destiny of a race is to survive, and not to die beautifully..." He tapped his foot. "If you were to show me ten Polish children, and if I could save them by licking the boots of ten German soldiers, I should say: 'Your servant'...
Romain Gary
Goering's on the phone to Freiburg - Says, "Willie's done quite a job" - Hitler's on the phone from Berlin - Says, "I'm gonna make you a STAR!
Blue Öyster Cult (Blue Öyster Cult - Cult Classic)
As I travel around the financial services industry today, the most interesting trend I see is the one toward relationship consolidation. Now that Glass-Steagall has been repealed, and all financial services providers can provide just about all financial services, there's a tendency - particularly as people get older - to want to tie everything up... to develop a plan, which implies having a planner. A planner, not a whole bunch of 'em... You've got basically two options. One is that you can sit here and wait for a major investment firm, which handles your client's investment portfolio while you handle the insurance, to bring their developing financial and estate planning capabilities to your client's door. And to take over the whole relationship. In this case, you have chosen to be the Consolidatee. A better option is for you to be the Consolidator. That is, you go out and consolidate the clients' financial lives pursuant to a really great plan - the kind you pride yourselves on. And of course that would involve your taking over management of the investment portfolio. Let's start with the classic Ibbotson data [Stocks, Bonds, Bills and Inflation Yearbook, Ibbotson Associates]. In the only terms that matter to the long-term investor - the real rate of return - he [the stockholder] got paid more like three times what the bondholder did. Why would an efficient market, over more than three quarters of a centry, pay the holders of one asset class anything like three times what it paid the holders of the other major asset class? Most people would say: risk. Is it really risk that's driving the premium returns, or is it volatility? It's volatility.... I invite you to look carefully at these dirty dozen disasters: the twelve bear markets of roughly 20% or more in the S&P 500 since the end of WWII. For the record, the average decline took about thirteen months from peak to trough, and carried the index down just about 30%. And since there've been twelve of these "disasters" in the roughly sixty years since war's end, we can fairly say that, on average, the stock market in this country has gone down about 30% about one year in five.... So while the market was going up nearly forty times - not counting dividends, remember - what do we feel was the major risk to the long-term investor? Panic. 'The secret to making money in stocks is not getting scared out of them' Peter Lynch.
Nick Murray (The Value Added Wholesaler in the Twenty-First Century)