Wwii German Quotes & Sayings

Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm. — Hippocrates

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed ... I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it. — Irwin Shaw

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't - whichever seems likelier to win an effect. — John Updike

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

The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds. A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why, The conscript answers only that drafting happens often. — Du Fu

Bernie Sanders is like those liberal members of the German National Socialist Party during the WWII, or of the Italian Fascist movement during Mussolini. They'd do much for their own workers and peasants, socially ... as long as funds were flowing in from the countries plundered by their imperialism. — Andre Vltchek

She dreamed of Venice. However, it wasn't a city alive with stars dripping like liquid gold into canals, or Bougainvillea spilling from flowerpots like overfilled glasses of wine. In this dream, Venice was without color. Where pastel palazzi once lined emerald lagoons, now, gray, shadowy mounds of rubble paralleled murky canals. Lovers could no longer share a kiss under the Bridge of Sighs; it had been the target of an obsessive Allied bomb in search of German troops. The only sign of life was in Piazza San Marco, where the infamous pigeons continued to feed. However, these pigeons fed not on seeds handed out by children, but on corpses rotting under the elongated shadow of the Campanile. — Pamela Allegretto

In October 1941, Mahilue became teh first substantial city in occupied Soviet Belarus where almost all Jews were killed. A German (Austrian) policeman wrote to his wife of his feelings and experiences shooting the city's Jews in the first days of the month. 'During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children, and infants. I kept in mind that I have two infants at home, whom these hordes would treat just the same, if not ten times worse. The death that we gave them was a beautiful quick death, compared to the hellish torments of thousands and thousands in the jails of the GPU. Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight, before their bodies fell into the pit and into the water.'
pp. 205-206 — Timothy Snyder

Of the twenty-eight thousand German fighter pilots to see combat in WWII, only twelve hundred survived the war. — Adam Makos

You are the one girl that made me risk eveything for a future worth having. — Simone Elkeles

A good lover is a person who knows how to love deeply but never expects any in return. — Debasish Mridha

The present destruction of Europe would not be complete and thorough had the German people not accepted freely [the Nazi] plan, participated voluntarily in its execution and up to this point profited greatly therefrom — Raphael Lemkin

The casting of the brash United States Army Air Force officer Colonel Robert E. Hogan and the pompous German Luftwaffe officer Colonel Wilhelm Klink was inspired. For this series - a comedy with the serious backdrop of war - to succeed, the lead players had to be the perfect fit. The dynamic portrayal of this military odd couple had to be articulate, accurate, and precise. For the show to work, for the concept to be accepted, for one of the most outlandish premises in television history to be believed, the actors signed to play the two leading characters not only had to bring these extreme individuals to life with broad, fictional strokes, they had to make them real in the details. — Carol M. Ford

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? — Michael Grant

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

It wasn't that I didn't feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn't do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, 'A wee little bit,' instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do. — C.E. Murphy

Vann also came to realize something else. As offensive as the lack of cultural awareness in the office was, part of that deficit was his own. They didn't understand him, but he didn't understand them, either. (197) — Tanner Colby

I wonder" he wrote, "if the day will ever come that the loveliest of hymns, Silent Night, will come into the minds of the people throughout the world to express the German heart. I belive it is the expression of the heart of many Germans ... [and]of most people throughout the world. That is the appalling tragedy of all that we witness today" Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in his diary during WWII during German occupation of the Netherlands. — Mackenzie King

There was nothing conservative about Adolf Hitler. Hitler was an artist and a revolutionary at heart. He wanted to completely upend and remake German society. — A.E. Samaan

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

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 — Timothy Snyder

I've gone through back surgery a couple times, and of course, my radiation treatments for six weeks got me to the point where I was not able to play at the level that I was accustomed to. — Mario Lemieux

It's not possible to move from one activity to the next at blinding speed and be reflective at the same time. The more complex and demanding the work we do, the wider, deeper and longer the perspective we require to do it well. It's almost impossible to do that when we create no white space in our lives. — Tony Schwartz

She was both perfect and untouchable, a brown-eyed angel dressed in resplendent white, while he was older, world-weary and wanting. — Sylvain Reynard

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

The word "lepton" derives from the Greek leptos, meaning "light" or "small. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. — Annette Janic

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. — Boris Gorbachevsky

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