Wwii Quotes

For a once renowned woman who loved telling tales of dodging bullets, wielding grenades and subverting dogs trained to kill, Christine's story is, surprisingly, little known today. ~ Clare Mulley

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service. ~ Oliver North

So you're met Finn. He's a dash, isn't he? If I weren't older than dirt and ugly as sin, I'd climb that like a French alp. ~ Kate Quinn

Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once? ~ Leon Krier

[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. ~ Ernie Pyle

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

Are you murdering more eggs for breakfast?" Japhet raised his head as the sound of boiling water filled the small apartment.
"Don't insult my eggs, Buchanan."
"You insulted my roasted chicken, Kappel, so I can insult your eggs all I want. ~ Jack Lewis Baillot

The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

NUTS! (In response to demands to surrender Bastogne, Belgium during WWII.) ~ Anthony McAuliffe

Escapers were the cream of the crop. ~ Sara Sheridan

My name's not Jerry," he grumbled, raising his head.
"I know, but it's the only way I can get your attention, kid."
"What did you want?" Japhet muttered.
"I said, do you have a girl?"
Japhet squinted at him and rubbed his nose.
"A girl?" he asked.
"Yeah. You do know what a girl is, don't you? Female version of the male? Whole lot prettier. Sweet temperament. Heard they're great for marrying. Thought a handsome, half starved and nearly dead Jew like you would have one of those by now. ~ Jack Lewis Baillot

When I got home from my war, my uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he bellowed, 'You're a MAN now!'
I damn near killed my first German. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Even post-WWII, nobody talked about the Holocaust. It wasn't until the '50s that people started talking about it. ~ Eli Roth

Surely there is no more wretched sight that the human body unloved and uncared for. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

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. ~ H.E. Bates

As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how "gallant" it is for a man to "shed his blood for his country," and "to give his life's blood as a sacrifice," and so on. The words seemed ridiculous. Only the flies benefited. ~ Eugene B. Sledge

Lately the commandant speaks more and more intimately of the führer and the latest thing- prayers, petroleum, loyalty- that he requires. The führer requires trustworthiness, electricity, boot leather. Werner is beginning to see, approaching his sixteenth birthday, that what the führer really requires is boys. Great rows of them walking to the conveyor belt to climb on. Give up cream for the führer, sleep for the führer, aluminum for the führer. Give up Reinhard Wöhlmann's father and Karl Westerholzer's father and Martin Burkhard's father. ~ Anthony Doerr

John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~ Isaac Asimov

There were several key American scientists that favorably reported on Nazi eugenics after visiting Hitler's Germany in order to provide it cover. ~ A.E. Samaan

I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me. ~ Diet Eman

Make government the herder of the flock, and the herder will cull the undesirable sheep. ~ A.E. Samaan

Ad they entered Berlin, while still killing off the last of its German defenders, The Russians indulged in an orgy of rape and rage beyond the bounds of human Imagination. Over the course of ten days, about 130,000 women were raped
~ Andrei Cherny

Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as thespecial responsibility of mothersany shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood. ~ Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Perhaps it is the knowledge that we carry in our hearts that nobody ultimately wins. Somewhere we all go down. Force used tyrannically is our common enemy. Why align ourselves with it in whatever shape or fashion. ~ Audie Murphy

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

When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I stopped to think about my Grandpa writing to my Grandma, knowing how much he loved her and how many years he spent without her after her death, I knew I wouldn't be able to make it through just one letter without an onslaught of tears. And it was Grandpa, a voice I knew so well. One that I miss terribly. ~ Kara Martinelli

World War II ended in a battle for a single buildng, Germany's Reichstag ... 7,000 German troops defending the building ... Nearly 5,000 men died in a battle for the building. ~ Andrei Cherny

Vera had also hated lipstick, Marzipan and Lutherans - excluding her husband, but not her late mother-in-law. Most of all she hated being governed by anyone or anything. ~ Victoria Dougherty

I'm obsessed with history, especially WWII and the Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. ~ Amy Heckerling

Were there atheists in foxholes during World War II? Of course, as can be verified by my dogtags . . . A veteran of Omaha Beach in 1944, I insisted upon including 'None' instead of P, C, or J as my religious affiliation. ~ Warren Allen Smith

I'm glad to be eating the bread of freedom even if it does taste like sponge buttered with greasy salt. ~ Diane Samuels

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. ~ Iain Pears

It was a war of evil against lesser evil. ~ Niall Ferguson

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

I was honored to have served in the Army for my country. I was at Anzio during WWII, and it makes you realize how very precious life is. ~ James Arness

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

He grieved too, Klara said, for the loss of a certain idea of himself. ~ Julie Orringer

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble. ~ Ellen Feldman

Upstairs on a bus! It's Unbelievable ~ Diane Samuels

I don't blame Germans," Emil said. "I don't even blame Nazis. I blame people who want to live at the expense of others. ~ Steve Anderson

After the prayer they executed an armed robbery. That sounds very strange this many years later: prayer and then armed robbery. ~ Diet Eman

You cannot write an accurate history of The Holocaust without accounting for the Harvard students and professors that help make the science an acceptable world-wide movement. ~ A.E. Samaan

One woman, called Eva, used to visit my mother and sometimes we would call in next door to visit her. Sometimes Frau Eva gave me cakes and fruit drinks. I remember she was very kind. It was not until many years later that I understood just who she was. To me, at the time, she was just a very nice woman who lived next door sometimes, although she did tend to go away, and was often not seen for several months. ~ Alfred Nestor

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... ~ Kathryn J. Atwood

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. ~ Deborah L. Halliday

I remember seeing one elderly man look at us, and he held his hand out, and most frightening were his eyes, dark as a soulless abyss, so black that it looked as if it had been blasted from a cyclone. I felt he was looking right at me. For a moment, I thought I was looking through his sockets, past his brain and behind him; as the tears started rolling down my cheeks a godless universe was expanding within me. Then I became hysterical. ~ Alfred Nestor

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. ~ Maureen Daly

She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven. ~ Joan Rivers

As the brilliant sunset cools to gray, I vow my anger over blatant discrimination will not cool. As these rocks stay steady through season changes and time, so I will remain steady. I will not be silent. I will not let this go. ~ Stephanie Morrill

At the time I was writing 'Weedflower,' my friend Naomi Hirahara was writing a book about Japanese-American flower farmers. She knew quite a few elderly farmers and put me in touch with four or five of them who had been in camps during WWII. Some, like my father, were reluctant to talk about their experiences. ~ Cynthia Kadohata

The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren't any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood. ~ Kevin Powers

God was pitched out of forced schooling on his ear after WWII. This wasn't because of any constitutional proscription-there was none that anyone had been able to find in over a century and a half-but because the political state and corporate economy considered the Western spiritual tradition too dangerous a competitor. And it is. ~ John Taylor Gatto

A single gram of antiparticles combined with a gram of normal particles would release more than 40 kilotonnes of explosive force, which is more than twice as powerful as the atomic bombs dropped by the United States in WWII. A normal household raisin weighs about a gram, so a raisin plus anti-raisin combination would be a dehydrated weapon of mass fruitation. ~ Jorge Cham

I let them do some simple arithmetic. In a group of one hundred people, how many assholes are there? How many fathers who humiliate their children? How many morons whose breath stinks like rotten meat but who refuse to do anything about it? How many hopeless cases who go on complaining all their lives about the non-existent injustices they've had to suffer? Look around you, I said. How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one family member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be - and not only you, but virtually the entire family - if that uncle or cousin would step on a landmine or be hit by a five-hundred-pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past - I never specifically mentioned the Second World War, I used it as an example because it's the one that most appeals to their imaginations - and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it's impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be. The injustice is found more in the fact that the assholes ~ Herman Koch

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

I came to my first Colts training camp in July of 1950, and it was murder, absolute murder. We had a coach named Clem Crow who must have been nuts. You got to remember that I'd been a Marine, had gone through basic training and spent 26 months in the Pacific during WWII, but the Marine drill instructors had nothing on Clem. ~ Art Donovan

My parents didn't settle for the lives their parents lived. They stepped out and up, my father lying his way into the Navy when he was too young to enlist, my mother marrying this fugitive from the mills when she was too young for marriage. A smart guy, he took every course the Navy offered, aced them all, becoming the youngest chief warrant officer in the service. After Pearl Harbor the Navy needed line officers fast and my dad was suddenly wearing gold stripes.
My mother watched and learned, getting good at the ways of this new world. She dressed beautifully. Our quarters were always handsomely fitted out. She and Dad were gracious, well-spoken.
They were far from rich, but there were books and there was music and sometimes conversations about the world. We even listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays.
Still, when I finished high school, their attitudes and the times said that there was little point in further educating a girl. I would take a clerical job until I could find the right junior officer to marry and pursue his career, as helpmeet. If I picked well and worked hard, I might someday be an admiral's wife. ~ Ann Medlock

They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with their
comrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful and
hated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post.
Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above. ~ Primo Levi

War doesn't start with an explosion ... .It bears far more subtlety. A simmer beneath the surface, as if bringing broth to a boil. ~ Kristina McMorris

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe. ~ Eva Ibbotson

I shook with helplessness and rage, but also with fear. This was what fighting back earned you. More abuse. More death. Half a dozen Jews would be murdered today because one man refused to die without a fight. To fight back was to die quickly and to take others with you.
This was why prisoners went meekly to their deaths. I had been so resolved to fight back, but I knew then that I wouldn't. To suffer quietly hurt only you. To suffer loudly, violently, angrily
to fight back
was to bring hurt and pain and death to others. ~ Alan Gratz

JULIAN HUXLEY'S "EUGENICS MANIFESTO":
"Eugenics Manifesto" was the name given to an article supporting eugenics. The document, which appeared in Nature, September 16, 1939, was a joint statement issued by America's and Britain's most prominent biologists, and was widely referred to as the "Eugenics Manifesto." The manifesto was a response to a request from Science Service, of Washington, D.C. for a reply to the question "How could the world's population be improved most effectively genetically?" Two of the main signatories and authors were Hermann J. Muller and Julian Huxley. Julian Huxley, as this book documents, was the founding director of UNESCO from the famous Huxley family. Muller was an American geneticist, educator and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation. Put into the context of the timeline, this document was published 15 years after "Mein Kampf" and a year after the highly publicized violence of Kristallnacht. In other words, there is no way either Muller or Huxley were unaware at the moment of publication of the historical implications of eugenic agendas. ~ A.E. Samaan

I hope that in the final settlement of the war, you insist that the Germans retain Lorraine, because I can imagine no greater burden than to be the owner of this nasty country where it rains every day. ~ George S. Patton Jr.

The country's gone mad...So much anger. ~ Michelle Saftich

Overriding all of them, however, was the memory of 1918, the belief that the Jews, wherever and whoever they might be, threatened to undermine the German war effort, by engaging in subversion, partisan activities, Communist resistance movements and much else besides. ~ Richard J. Evans

Birkenau simmered in the July sun like some hideous brew, a witch's potion of blood, sweat, smoke, and excrement worthy of something the weird sisters might have cooked up in Macbeth. ~ J. Michael Dolan

Integrating the beauty of seasonal change into the residence was a concept that remains true even today even in the more cramped, inner city machiya. ~ Judith Clancy

For me, the sky was the color of Jews. ~ Markus Zusak

I stepped back and looked at all the people as they continued to weave in and out, around and around, faster and faster until they were one blur, until they were One. And then I knew what Bubbe meant. Here, was God. ~ Han Nolan

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events. ~ Rick Atkinson

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

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

And so this is where the post Cold War has brought us: to the recognition that the very totalitarism that we fought against in the decades following WWII might, in quite a few circumstances, be preferable to a situation where nobody is in charge. There are things worse than communism, it turned out, and in Iraq we brought them about ourselves. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

His eyes seem to see nothing. He is a man whose soul has died and whose body is waiting to catch up with it. ~ Heather Morris

here's a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we're sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it's not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we? ~ Matt Harvey

I became a Libertarian as a result of researching WWII and the Holocaust. Individual liberty is sacred. ~ A.E. Samaan

When the excellent German novelist and graphic artist Günter Grass heard that I was born in 1922, he said to me, "There are no males in Europe your age for you to talk to. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This was a particularly spectacular example of the German campaign to gather forced labor in the East, which had begun with the Poles of the General Government, and spread to Ukraine before reaching this bloody climax in Belarus. By the end of the war, some eight million foreigners from the East, most of them Slavs, were working in the Reich. It was a rather perverse result, even by the standards of Nazi racism: German men went abroad and killed millions of "subhumans," only to import millions of other "subhumans" to do the work in Germany that the German men would have been doing themselves - had they not been abroad killing "subhumans." The net effect, setting aside the mass killing abroad, was that Germany became more of a Slavic land than it had ever been in history. (The perversity would reach its extreme in the first months of 1945, when surviving Jews were sent to labor camps in Germany itself. Having killed 5.4 million Jews as racial enemies, the Germans then brought Jewish survivors home to do the work that the killers might have been doing themselves had they not been abroad killing.)

pp. 244-246 ~ Timothy Snyder

Speaking of grandmas, have you heard the joke about grandparents and WWII? No? Well, if you do, be sure to tell me because I'd like to hear it too. ~ Jarod Kintz

A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses. ~ George Orwell

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait. ~ Primo Levi

It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums. ~ Damien Chazelle

Memories are nice, but dreams are better. ~ John Anthony Miller

It was just Franz!"
"Just Franz?" Franz retorted, catching the last part as the window jerked free of the ice which held it to the window sill. "Since when did I become 'Just Franz'? I'm almost another member of your family!"
Japhet leaned on the frame, not caring when cold snow seeped into his sleeves. "That's when you became 'Just Franz'," he said. "Like Ruth is 'Just Ruth'. And you ruined my drawing. I hope you're happy. ~ Jack Lewis Baillot

Of babies born alive and in hospitals during that month of July 1945, 92 percent would die within then days. ~ Andrei Cherny

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. ~ Winston S. Churchill

The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically. ~ Eugene B. Sledge

We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not just going to shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. ~ George Patton

Life, oblivious to his grief, continued ~ Julie Orringer

One thing is certain: for many of those who came back from WWII, the music of Frank Sinatra was no consolation for their losses. Some had lost friends. Some had lost wives and lovers. All had lost portions of their youth. More important to the Sinatra career the girls started marrying the men who came home. Bobby socks vanished from many closets. The girls who wore them had no need anymore for imaginary lovers; they had husbands. Nothing is more embarrassing to grownups than the passions of adolescence, and for many, Frank Sinatra was the passion. ~ Pete Hamill

You hide a Jew. You pay. Somehow or other, you must. ~ Markus Zusak

* *Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.*Don't imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore. ~ George Orwell

How are we ever going to understand what happens when a civilization comes apart at the seams, as it did in Germany, if we fail to see the most glaring distinctions, such as the gender gap? ~ Ruth Kluger

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

As he journeyed alone toward the monster that is death, we could do nothing to help him, nor the others still alive; all the words of strength on our lips melted away, our love not great enough to bind them to life, and our hope not enough to will them to live. ~ Alfred Nestor

The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total. ~ Louis Zamperini

Bill Veeck was a charismatic and somewhat eccentric owner-fan during the post-WWII years. ~ Don Yaeger

The dead were buried above ground, the loose soil heaped around them. The heavy rains of the monsoon months softened the mounds, so that they formed outlines of the bodies within them, as if this small cemetery beside the military airfield were doing its best to resurrect a few of the millions who had died in the war. Here and there an arm or a foot protruded from the graves, the limbs of restless sleepers struggling beneath their brown quilts. ~ J.G. Ballard

There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere. ~ Mel Brooks