Wwii Soldier Quotes

Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they scarified, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book {Unbroken} is dedicated,

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.

A day came when I should have died, and after than nothing seemed very important, so I stayed as I am, without regret separated from the normal human condition.

Maeve glanced around at the tables and watched the couples sitting close to each other laughing, holding hands, or staring into each other’s eyes. She felt that familiar ache thinking of Evan, missing him, and the emptiness it caused at times like this when she was alone.

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

…Sometimes the things you think hold you back are the ones that keep you holding on…

Could you see yourself sitting down to tea with these girls? Will it surprise you to learn that one of them went on to gun down three unarmed German prisoners? Will it shock you to learn that one lit her cigarette from the flames of a burning German SS officer?

Only victors have stories to tell, we the vanquished were then thought of as cowards and weaklings whose memories and fears should not be remembered.

It is not the American soldiers duty do die for his country. It is the American soldiers duty to make the enemy die for his country.

The War Department in Washington briefly weighed more ambitious schemes to relieve the Americans on a large scale before it was too late. But by Christmas of 1941, Washington had already come to regard Bataan as a lost cause. President Roosevelt had decided to concentrate American resources primarily in the European theater rather than attempt to fight an all-out war on two distant fronts. At odds with the emerging master strategy for winning the war, the remote outpost of Bataan lay doomed. By late December, President Roosevelt and War Secretary Henry Stimson had confided to Winston Churchill that they had regrettably written off the Philippines. In a particularly chilly phrase that was later to become famous, Stimson had remarked, 'There are times when men have to die.

This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.

In World War II, some Japanese soldiers preferred to take their own lives rather become prisoners of war. In Saipan hundreds of civilians jumped to their deaths over cliffs in order to avoid falling into American hands. Even in life-or-death situations cultural ties and duties often outweigh the instinct for survival. This is why people die in the attempt to rescue a dog from drowning, or decide to become suicide bombers.

Well, we have to do something. There are all sorts of rumours about soldiers coming up." "These people are full of rumours. They love rumours." Paterson stood watching the bridge. "Their whole life is a rumour.

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.

He had good, open features and a confident air; his blue eyes were wide and watchful, but something about them seemed to hint that in different days and different times they could twinkle and sparkle with fun and mischief. His clothing was tattered and threadbare, but there was an energy to him that did not admit of pity. Somehow, despite his ragged condition, he still looked like a man who had carried a weapon and commanded other men in the not-too-distant past.

The organization of the camps in the east revealed a contempt for life, the life of Slavs and Asians and Jews anyway, that made such mass starvation thinkable. In German prisoner-of-war camps for Red Army soldiers, the death rate over the course of the war was 57.5 percent. In the first eight months after Operation Barbarossa, it must have been far higher. In German prisoner-of-war camps for soldiers of the western Allies, the death rate was less than five percent. As many Soviet prisoners of war died on a single given day in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War. pp. 181-182

Home? What is home? Home is where a house is that you come back to when the rainy season is about to begin, to wait until the next dry season comes around. Home is where your woman is, that you come back to in the intervals between a greater love - the only real love - the lust for riches buried in the earth, that are your own if you can find them. Perhaps you do not call it home, even to yourself. Perhaps you call them 'my house,' 'my woman,' What if there was another 'my house,' 'my woman,' before this one? It makes no difference. This woman is enough for now. Perhaps the guns sounded too loud at Anzio or at Omaha Beach, at Guadalcanal or at Okinawa. Perhaps when they stilled again some kind of strength had been blasted from you that other men still have. And then again perhaps it was some kind of weakness that other men still have. What is strength, what is weakness, what is loyalty, what is perfidy? The guns taught only one thing, but they taught it well: of what consequence is life? Of what consequence is a man? And, therefore, of what consequence if he tramples love in one place and goes to find it in the next? The little moment that he has, let him be at peace, far from the guns and all that remind him of them. So the man who once was Bill Taylor has come back to his house, in the dusk, in the mountains, in Anahuac. ("The Moon Of Montezuma")

I stepped forward as commanded, wondering which of the many rules I had broken now.

Two well-known Austrian folk figures, Count Rudy and Count Bobby, are standing in front of a globe and Rudy asks, "What are all these pink spots?" Bobby replies, "Those are England with all her colonies." "And what about the purple spots?" "Those are France and her colonies." "Well, then," Rudy asks, "what is that great big green area over there?" "Oh, that's the United States of America." "And how about the enormous orange one?" "That's Russia." "Do you happen to know what this little, teeny-tiny brown spot is?" "That's Germany." At this point Rudy becomes quite pensive, and then very quietly asks the question of the century, "Do you think Hitler knows that?

The Russians would lose 305,000 troops in the last 42 miles approaching Berlin---about the number of American army soldiers who died in all of World War II. Of the 125,000 of Berlin's civilians who died in the Russian attack, 6,400 were suicides;

Specifically, according to Vronsky, while all American soldiers who fought in WWII were trained to kill, a small contingent used the cover of state-sanctioned violence to also rape, torture, and collect human body parts as trophies. Though most returning GIs successfully reintegrated into society, some brought the brutality of war into their homes, abusing their families behind closed doors. That abuse, occurring as it did in a culture openly promoting war, created the fertile ground from which the first major crop of American serial killers would spring.

Within minutes we had left the station and were entering a cutting with trees on both sides, so the horror of the massacre was now out of sight. The train left the wooded cutting, and we saw Strausberg on fire. There were Russian tanks in the streets and soldiers on foot entering buildings. People were being dragged out, and shot.

Denise, the Nazi soldiers in those trucks do not suspect they're about to be outfoxed by two girls." In the stillness before we spring back itno action, Denise looks to me, grinning like mad. She quotes a line from King Kong, one of my favorite movies I watched with Tom. "'Oh no. It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.

These boys would be better off hog-tied than playing for a woman!” shouted another. The discordant men gathered at the back exit. Moonshiner opened the door and they poured out, while inside we could hear in the distance the sound of a plane flying into our airfield. We knew another body was likely on board, this time carrying the remains of a soldier from a neighboring town.

I do recall hearing a conversation in our home in Strausberg, between my mother and my father, where my mother sounded very angry that my cousin had let the Rödels down by having to be dragged out of Oma’s house, crying for his mother and shouting that he did not want to return to the war in Russia. Like a great many other soldiers throughout that period, he died in Russia on 5 May, 1944. He was just twenty years of age, and is buried somewhere in that country.

The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets.

The Second World War created the need for a new generation of female heroes. Where could these women look for role models? The women of the previous war had by this time been largely forgotten. Although efforts had been made during the 1920s to memorialize the war's heroes, both men and women, with monuments, books, and films, most Europeans, impatient to forget the war, also forgot its heroes. But now the memory of their courage was needed and eagerly recalled...

The shots and shouts of the attackers rang out quite clearly but were already gone some distance away. Here I lay on my back in the warm sun; under the circumstances, I would have been expected to spring to my feet and begin attempting to justify mu most awkward situation. Defying all the rules, still flat on my back, I cracked my heels together, threw my hand to my forehead in salute, and yelled up to the oberleutnant, "Funder Rauch died for the Führer, Folk, and the Fatherland!" Where there's a war, there have to be dead bodies, I reasoned

У обочины, среди живописных кусточков, стояли два креста — простые, деревянные, с надетыми на них немецкими касками. На холмиках были положены и цветы, но они давно сгнили и высохли. Вот, наверное, где-то в Германии матери плачут или остались дети. Отцы не приедут с чемоданами, полными барахла и велосипедных звонков. Стоило переться в такую даль, чтоб в конце концов гнить под ржавеющей каской? И есть ли вообще в мире что-нибудь такое, ради чего стоит гнить под ржавеющей каской? Столетия идут за столетиями, и убитые гниют то за одно, то за другое, а потом оказывается, что все то было напрасно, а нужно, оказывается, гнить совсем за третье... [130]

[O]ur segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don't want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tenets and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.

Historian Peter Vronsky hypothesizes that while several factors must align to make a murderer (genetics and frontal lobe injuries being two common ones), World War II was responsible for this golden age of serial killers a generation later. Specifically, according to Vronsky, while all American soldiers who fought in WWII were trained to kill, a small contingent used the cover of state-sanctioned violence to also rape, torture, and collect human body parts as trophies. Though most returning GIs successfully reintegrated into society, some brought the brutality of war into their homes, abusing their families behind closed doors. That abuse, occurring as it did in a culture openly promoting war, created the fertile ground from which the first major crop of American serial killers would spring.

The idea of the camp was to use it as a staging area for soldiers on their way to liberate France. It was much better than putting them in Boston in case the Germans attacked. Allied soldiers from several countries left from Camp Myles Standish to go to England and then on to France. They would only stay for a week or two. One group would go out, and another group would come in. At that camp we were doing everything, all the maintenance. There was a small hospital with nurses and doctors, and we were busy. I worked in the PX. We sold coca-cola, and Narragansett beer was delivered once a month. Cigarettes were five dollars a carton. There was plenty of food. We were glad when they gave us American uniforms; that meant we were something. We had work, and we were doing something good. When Italy got out of the war, and we signed to cooperate, that felt pretty good.

Antanas eased up on the accelerator and pulled the truck onto the shoulder. The sound of the soldiers' footsteps crunching in the snow made Maria sit up straight. The truck had driven about thirty metres past the patrol, but none of the soldiers had fired upon them. Antanas hoped fervently that the transport documents that Peter had furnished him would pass inspection. Maria reached down and touched a metal pipe concealed beneath her seat. She was prepared to use it. Jadwyga continued to pray quietly. "Mother Mary, spare me, Maria, and the other women from rape, and Antanas from death." As a sergeant approached the truck, Jadwyga's stomach cramped, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms began to shake. Then she fainted. Maria propped Jadwyga up to make it look as though she was sleeping, and then smiled at the sergeant who was rapping on the glass. Antanas rolled down his window.

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

It was a long time since I had had anything to eat and I was becoming very hungry. I didn’t know where my next meal would come from and I knew that I was facing a long journey ahead. Hunger was something we all learned to live with in wartime Germany. The compartment was now completely full. Looking out to the passageway through the inside window, I could see a German soldier standing in the crowded passageway. He had his back to the outside window and I could see his reflection and knew that he had field rations attached to his belt. As he glanced towards me, he could see how hungry and drawn I looked. I was grateful when he kindly offered to share his rations with me. Although many people became nasty and bitter because of the trials of war, there were still some kind and decent people left. There was no doubt but that this war had left an indelible imprint on everyone!

A wedding is a mash-up between loved ones and strangers, who politely spend the hours attempting to sort out complex familial alignments while slowly getting plastered.

In 1938, probably the most well-known of the combat rations of WWII was developed – the “US ARMY Field Ration C,” or “C Ration.” The C-Ration consisted of a can designated M-1 (or 2 or 3), which consisted of a meat preparation (M-1: meat and beans, M-2: meat and vegetable hash, and M-3: Meat and Vegetable Stew), and a can designated “B-Unit,” which included a biscuit, a sweet (originally malted milk balls, which most soldiers hated), and coffee powder (coffee was the first dehydrated powdered liquid).

For two hours, Clarke and the other men rowed, until it was clear they could no longer keep up with the wreck due to the wind, sea and their condition. When they stopped rowing, Apprentice Officer Clarke could not remove his hands from the oars. The burnt skin of his hand had adhered to them. Actually, the skin had become separated from the bones of his hands and had essentially just been a surface for the bones to rest on. Clarke had rowed for two hours in this condition in the salt sea. When they tried to separate him from the oars, the other survivors found they could not, and were forced to cut away the skin of Clarke's hands in order to wrap his arms and place him in the bottom of the boat, out of the weather.

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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.

Sergeant Missouri crouched close to the ground, pulling up his collar against the bitter, gusting winds. Show me, he thought tiredly, I'm from Missouri.

Looking up, Missouri saw a formation of low-flying P-47's on the horizon, heading up the coast from Naples...Sergeant Missouri laughed aloud. "They're sending us the Air Force, Chico, and we made it with a donkey," he said.

Escapers were the cream of the crop.

Caleb tossed him an explosive and Japhet lunged to catch it before it hit the ground. He glared but Caleb didn't notice. Instead, he started to whistle I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier as he made his way down the left side of the tracks, laying bombs at intervals.

They [soldiers WWII] were so young, so very young. A whole generation of young men died, leaving a whole generation of young women to weep.

Back home, this Catholic kid was accustomed to a Protestant culture's condescension, but here he could see for himself the world-historic glories of Catholicism... [A Catholic American soldier's reaction to seeing St. Peter's Basilica during WWII.]

I am a priest, but in this war I have been a soldier, and a soldier who has not surrendered. For I was fighting for more than a military decision between two powers, rivals for control over the same parcel of land. I was fighting for justice, and in this war, I could see only one kind of justice, a justice partaking at the same time of the human and the divine. I do not expect to find that justice or any justice, in this court. But I know that in the end, divine justice will prevail; and the verdict of God will be pronounced, not against us, but against you, who presume to judge us. - Father Christian

We are living in an artificial world—a world of fantasies and illusions. We've learned beautiful phrases but haven't learned yet how to carry out that little bit that we know. Our brains are stuffed with quotations, while at the same time nine out of ten of these dogmas are incomprehensible, murky, or lies. Which are worthwhile and which are not? Yes, I must stop being false before others and myself. How simple it all seems! But how do I do this? Let just a little time pass, and then we may understand—only the simplest, honorable acts determine the value of a man. Only I myself can and must help myself to become an adult.

O.K., let's go." And again, cheers rang through Southwick House. Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts. Within thirty seconds the mess room was empty, except for Eisenhower, The outflow of the others and his sudden isolation were symbolic. A minute earlier he had been the most powerful man in the world. Upon his word the fate of thousands of men depended, and the future of great nations. The moment he uttered the word, however, he was powerless. For the next two or three days, there was almost nothing he could do that would in any way change anything. The invasion could not be stopped, not by him, not by anyone. A captain leading his company onto Omaha, or a platoon sergeant at Utah, would for the immediate future play a greater role than Eisenhower. He could now only sit and wait.

U.S. and Australian WWII archives hold many files detailing numerous acts of Japanese army cannibalism. For example, of those 157,646 sons of Japan sent to New Guinea, only 10,072 survived. Allied bullets killed relatively few. The vast majority were felled by disease and starvation. General Aotsu was aware of the plight of his men. He wrote that incidents of cannibalism in New Guinea were "frequent". Japanese boys were starving and had to eat whatever they could find. Often, all they could find was one another. Harumich Nogi, the chief of a Japanese naval police force stationed in the South Pacific, later recorded in his memoirs a story told to him by an army lieutenant: "There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger. ... I met some soldiers in the mountains who were carrying baked human arms and legs. It was not guerrillas but our own soldiers who we were frightened of.

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.

After a tearful parting from Elizabeth and her family, we climbed into the back of the postal van. Adventurous Brigitte climbed onto the armoire that was tied down, however Ursula and I found room sitting on a mattress. I had to console poor Ursula since we had to leave her Mama doll behind; it was far too dangerous to take it along. At the bridge there would be officials, soldiers and throngs of people. It was a chance we just couldn’t take! The drive was uneventful and the mattress even made the ride relatively comfortable. We approached the river and as expected we were stopped at the bridge. Although I couldn’t see anything in the darkness of the van I could hear Fritz talking to some officials in a remarkably relaxed and friendly way. They apparently were satisfied with the story concerning his furniture. It seemed that everyone was using official vehicles for their own use, since private vehicles were almost non-existent. With this they slapped the side of the van and let us pass. We continued across the bridge without incident and at last I was back in a part of Germany that I felt I knew. We were no sooner in the city of Mannheim than Fritz stopped the truck. He threw open the doors and told us to get out. “I don’t have time, I have to get rid of my furniture and return this van,” he said. I think the realization of what could have happened, had we been detected unsettled him, and he didn’t want to take any more chances. I looked around but had no idea of where I was. There was refuse on the streets and heaps of rubble that hadn’t been cleared away yet. Most of the street signs were missing but eventually we managed to get our luggage to a corner that I recognized.

I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, pray that humanity will learn more than we ... learned up to that time. But these people [allied soldiers during D-Day in Normandy] gave us a chance, and they bought time for us, so that we can do better than we have done before.

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.

GI’s were returning to the United States and many others were being shipped to the Pacific to finish what looked to be a difficult battle ahead. The Japanese soldiers were a formidable foe, many of whom were willing to die for their country. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and three days later dropped one on Nagasaki. The Imperial Japanese Navy was now unable to continue conducting operations and their army would no longer be able to withstand an Allied invasion of the Japanese islands. Less than a week later, on September 2, 1945, Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the Japanese Instrument of an unconditional Surrender on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor. In the United States, everyone celebrated VJ Day, Victory over Japan Day, and the end of the war.

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'...

My parents did their best to instill a sense of normalcy into our lives even though a war and ethnic cleansing were raging all around us. The battle between Iran and Iraq was fought WWII Stalingrad-style with trenches, tanks, and continuous artillery fire. The sound of whistles marked the moment soldiers were ordered to move into minefields and face the barrage of machine guns. More than a million people died on both sides. And here is the kicker: no land or resources were gained by either country.