|
dab7875
|
"I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months. There was no anger or reproach. It was Papa who spoke. How did it look?" Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes."
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|
stars
wwii
|
Markus Zusak |
|
bd4ff06
|
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
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|
wwii
|
Winston S. Churchill |
|
b7d54f3
|
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
|
|
ironic
rights
war
wwii
yossarian
|
Joseph Heller |
|
9865a4b
|
Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.
|
|
humor
internet
neal
stephenson
wwii
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
9f2b6e9
|
"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!
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|
d-day
wwii
|
Dwight D. Eisenhower |
|
35165c9
|
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.
|
|
aryans
demon
hitler
perspective
propaganda
wwii
|
J.R.R. Tolkien |
|
92f7996
|
There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.
|
|
books
death
hiroshima
japan
ways-to-die
world-war-ii
wwii
|
John Hersey |
|
d03bb8f
|
"God, there must be a meaning. Fiercely he was certain that there must be a meaning. Surely, while we live we are not lost.
|
|
death
fiction
hope
last-lines
the-long-green-shore
war
wwii
|
John Hepworth |
|
67fe7a9
|
The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.
|
|
black-plague
christians
clement-vi
dream-of-scipio
gaul
holocaust
iain-pears
jews
late-antiquity-rome
provence
vichy-france
wwii
|
Iain Pears |
|
6d8c5b9
|
Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.
|
|
civilization
denunciation
evil
good
jews
nazis
ordinariness
pettiness
resentment
war
wwii
|
Iain Pears |
|
4c364c2
|
If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls -
|
|
belsen
death
disease
guilt
wwii
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
4133a71
|
When you are singled out for torture because of your faith, can religion still be a beacon?
|
|
religion
wwii
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
6f76833
|
Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen,' Goebbels said. 'All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our people were virtually in jail. Now our party is in charge and they are free again. When a man has been in jail for twelve years and he is suddenly freed, in his joy he may do something irrational, perhaps even brutal. Is that not a possibility in your country also?' Ebbutt, his voice even, noted a fundamental difference in how England might approach such a scenario. 'If it should happen,' he said, 'we would throw the man right back in jail.
|
|
nazi-germany
wwii
|
Erik Larson |
|
010d3eb
|
Red had a deep loathing of the night before them. He had been through so much combat, had felt so many kinds of terror, and had seen so many men killed that he no longer had any illusions about the inviolability of his own flesh. He knew he could be killed; it was something he had accepted long ago, and he had grown a shell about that knowledge so that he rarely thought of anything further ahead than the next few minutes...
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|
wwii
|
Norman Mailer |
|
ac4d771
|
And a ton came down on a coloured road, And a ton came down on a gaol, And a ton came down on a freckled girl, And a ton on the black canal, And a ton came down on a hospital, And a ton on a manuscript, And a ton shot up through the dome of a church, And a ton roared down to the crypt. And a ton danced over the Thames and filled A thousand panes with stars, And the splinters leapt on the Surrey shore To the tune of a thousand scars.
|
|
bomb
bombing
london
war
wwii
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
225e4d3
|
"Distressing to be hated because of lies, isn't it." (Mirella) "Especially when there are so many legitimate reasons to be hated." (Schramm)"
|
|
nazis
world-war-ii
wwii
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
977c0c6
|
The road of the pass was hard and smooth and not yet dusty in the early morning.
|
|
italy
wwii
|
Ernest Hemingway |
|
adc234a
|
Or, obversely, he might kill a man himself. It would be a question of throwing up his rifle, pressing the trigger, and a particular envelope of lusts and anxieties and perhaps some goodness would be quite dead. All as easy as stepping on an insect, perhaps easier...Everything was completely out of whack, none of the joints fitted. The men had been singing in the motor pool, and there had been something nice about it, something childish and brave. And they were here on this road, a point moving along in a line in the vast neutral spaces of the jungle. And somewhere else a battle might be going on. The artillery, the small-arms fire they had been hearing constantly, might be nothing, something scattered along the front, or it might be all concentrated now in the minuscule inferno of combat. None of it matched. The night had broken them into all the isolated units that actually they were.
|
|
wwii
|
Norman Mailer |
|
43e4b09
|
His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political.
|
|
laziness
occupation
occupied-france
politics
war
wwii
|
Iain Pears |
|
ecf1a8e
|
If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?
|
|
holocaust
time-travel
wwii
|
Jane Yolen |
|
b67c189
|
I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the colour of rain. Even the clouds tried to look the other way.
|
|
fear
nazis
survival
wwii
|
Markus Zusak |
|
f76c71a
|
Lately the commandant speaks more and more intimately of the fuhrer and the latest thing- prayers, petroleum, loyalty- that he requires. The fuhrer requires trustworthiness, electricity, boot leather. Werner is beginning to see, approaching his sixteenth birthday, that what the fuhrer really requires is boys. Great rows of them walking to the conveyor belt to climb on. Give up cream for the fuhrer, sleep for the fuhrer, aluminum for the fuhrer. Give up Reinhard Wohlmann's father and Karl Westerholzer's father and Martin Burkhard's father.
|
|
anthony-doerr
ww2
wwii
|
Anthony Doerr |
|
75b4026
|
"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."
|
|
jews
shoah
wwii
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
e36be8b
|
"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.
|
|
bad-drivers
bletchley-park
driving
humor
ultra
wwii
|
Connie Willis |
|
2c5f130
|
He grieved too, Klara said, for the loss of a certain idea of himself.
|
|
love
relatable-quotes
wwii
|
Julie Orringer |
|
c32f25e
|
How astounding that the largest thing he'd ever seen was still no match for the diminishing effect of distance. It made him aware of his own smallness in the world, his insignificance in the face of what might come, and for a moment his chest felt light with panic.
|
|
love
relatable-quotes
wwii
|
Julie Orringer |
|
f615b73
|
Life, oblivious to his grief, continued
|
|
lost-love
paris
wwii
|
Julie Orringer |
|
38007cf
|
"One of the things I cannnot grasp, though I have often written about them, trying to get them into some kind of bearable perspective," Steiner writes, "is the time relation." Steiner has just quoted descriptions of the brutal deaths of two Jews at the Treblinka extermination camp. "Precisely at the same hour in which Mehring and Langner were being done to death, the overwhelming plurality of human beings, two miles away on the Polish farms, five thousand miles away in New York, were sleeping or eating or going to a film or making love or worrying about the dentist. This is where my imagination balks. The two orders of simultaneous experience are so different, so irreconcilable to any common norm of human values, their coexistence is so hideous a paradox-Treblinka is both because some men have built it and almost all other men let it be-that I puzzle over time."
|
|
holocaust
sophie-s-choice
styron
world-war-two
wwii
|
William Styron |