#wii

The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses ... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure. ↗

— Max Hastings

#russia #stalingrad #war #wehrmacht #wwii

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I’ll watch for that book. ↗

— J.D. Salinger

#novel #short-stories #war #writing #wwii

Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#wwii #death

If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls - The Consumptive. Belsen 1945 ↗

— Mervyn Peake

#belsen #death #disease #guilt #wwii

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. — Winston S. Churchill ↗

— Ellen Brazer

#espionage #historical-novel #history #holocaust #intrigue

Ari: The serial number was now my new name. I was dehumanized. I was branded like an animal, but was treated worse. This is what racism can do to people. ↗

— Christopher Huh

#racism #wwii-fiction #wwii-history #racism

Surely there is no more wretched sight that the human body unloved and uncared for. ↗

— Corrie Ten Boom

#corrie-ten-boom #dutch #holocaust #jesus-christ #righteous-gentile

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat. ↗

— Mel Brooks

#combat #couple #i #last #months

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

— Mel Brooks

#brooks #film #i #i think #me

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. ↗

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

#nuclear-bomb #science #wwii #death