World War Quotes

The Frogs are getting all they can for nothing, and we are getting nothing for all we can.

I had hoped that we were hurling a wild cat on to the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.

We have come to the conclusion that this particular method of warning [church bells] was redundant and not in itself well adapted to the present conditions of war. For myself, I cannot help feeling that anything like a serious invasion would be bound to leak out.

When imagining the horrors of a Hun invasion, there rose that last consoling thought which rises naturally in unconquerable races and in unenslavable men resolved to go down fighting-"you can always take one with you."

Man-power-and when I say that I intend of course woman-power-is at a pitch of intensity at the present time in this country which was never reached before, not even in the last war, and certainly not in this. I believe our man-power is not only fully extended, but applied on the whole to the best advantage. I have a feeling that the community in this Island is running at a very high level, with a good rhythm, and that if we can only keep our momentum-we cannot increase our pace-that very fact will enable us to outclass our enemies and possibly even our friends.

A fearful game of chess proceeds from check to mate by which the unhappy players seem to be inexorably bound...the fact that the British Empire stands invincible, and that Nazidom is still being resisted, will kindle again the spark of hope in the breasts of hundreds of millions of down-trodden or despairing men and women throughout Europe, and far beyond its bounds, and that from these sparks there will presently come a cleansing and devouring flame.

Normally I wake up buoyant to face the new day. Then [summer 1940] I awoke with dread in my heart.

Carrying the Beatles or the '60s dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion.

I am the first soldier of the German Reich... I will not take it off again until victory is secured or I will not survive the outcome.

A state of no less than 36,000,000 inhabitants... took up arms against us... Their confidence ... knew no bounds.

If, however, the opinions of Messrs. Churchill and his followers should prevail, this statement will have been my last.

I have my Death's-Head units ready ... to send to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women and children of Polish derivation.

Alone... I wish to declare... my patience is now at an end.

I want today to be a prophet again: if international Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth and therefore the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

I am now fifty. I would rather have the war now than when I am fifty-five or sixty.

We shall only talk of peace when we have won the war. The Jewish capitalist world will not survive the twentieth century.

The battle beginning today will decide the fate of the German nation for the next thousand years.

Soldiers of the West Front! Dunkirk has fallen ... with it has ended the greatest battle in world history. Soldiers! My confidence in you knows no bounds. You have not disappointed me.

With Russia smashed, Britain's last hope would be shattered. Germany will then be master of Europe and the Balkans.

Today I am at the head of the strongest Army in the world, the most gigantic Air Force and of a proud Navy. Behind and around me stands the Party with which I became great and which has become great through me... Our enemies must not deceive themselves - in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today.