#wwi

O Father, console them and please spare our country from that terrible disaster, not because we are any better but only out of grace. And if it has to be different, then teach me to pray: "Your will be done." O please protect him whom my soul lives! -From the journal of Diet Eman ↗

— Diet Eman

#couldn-t #diet-eman #holocaust #say #things

By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person. ↗

— Diet Eman

#god #holocaust #jesus-christ #righteous-gentile #wwii

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. ↗

— Iain Pears

#black-plague #christians #clement-vi #dream-of-scipio #gaul

His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political. ↗

— Iain Pears

#laziness #occupation #occupied-france #politics #war

He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that ... being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it represented, would make some small difference. ... His idealism was one of the casualties of the carnage [of Verdun]. ↗

— Iain Pears

#war #wwi #dreams

A GI dreams about a long-haired dictionary because it always opens to the same page. ↗

— Edward R. Prisk

#dreams

I once asked an old Japanese man why Japan decided to team up with Germany during WWII, and do you know what he told me? Well, you would if you speak Japanese, which I don’t. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#germany #japanese #war #wwii #funny

All that technical expertise isn't worth a damn if you don't get the best out of people, though. . . . These were leaders who saw strength in ordinary people and showed them how to break tyranny. ↗

— Noël Coward

#wwii #leadership

Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God. ↗

— Louis Zamperini

#god #survival #wwii #life

We love WWII because the cause was so obviously just, because you can't be a good person and say you wouldn't fight against an evil like that. It was so black and white on our side, and on our side so few died. (Our side meaning the lantern-jawed John Wayne Greatest Generation constantly canonized soldiers who strode in late to the graveyard that was Europe. Compared to Jewish, Russian, Roma, and other casualties, our losses were minimal.) We felt so strong. In some ways I think we're always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes. With every war we invoke that one, we hope it will be that good. -from her blog ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#strong #superheroes #war #wwii #love