Quotes from Antony Beevor

The newly landed 2nd Infantry

Blood-red Roses Tell You of Happiness'.

But on the whole American soldiers demonstrated great sympathy for civilians trapped in the battle, and US Army medical services did whatever they could to treat civilian casualties. The

After the bloodbath of the First World War, army commanders from western democracies were under great pressure at home to reduce their own casualties, so they relied on a massive use of artillery shells and bombs. As a result far more civilians died. White phosphorus especially was a weapon of terrible indiscrimination.

The Nazi regime had trapped the whole population of the country as accomplices, willing or not, in its own crimes, and its own insanity.

Another Pole landed one afternoon in the grounds of a very respectable lawn tennis club. He was signed in as a guest, given a racket, lent some white flannels and invited to take part in a match. His opponents were thrashed and left totally exhausted by the time an RAF vehicle came to collect him.

Other means were used to wear down the Germans and prevent them getting any rest. The 588th Night Bomber Regiment specialized in flying their obsolete Po-2 biplanes low over the German lines at night and switching off their engines as they made their bombing run. The ghostly swish made a sinister noise. These outstandingly brave pilots were all young women. They were soon dubbed the 'Night Witches', first by the Germans and then by their own side.

The Catholic Church was the bulwark of the country's conservative forces, the foundation of what the right defined as Spanish civilization. Not surprisingly, the outside world had a fixed impression of Spain as a deeply religious country. The jest of the Basque philosopher Unamuno, that in Spain even atheists were Catholic, was taken seriously. Centuries of fanatical superstition enforced by the Inquisition had engraved this image on European minds.

American and British business interests were to make a great contribution to the final nationalist victory, either through active assistance, such as that given by the oil magnate Henry Deterding, or through boycotting the Republic, disrupting its trade with legal action and delaying credits in the banking system.

cap abilities'.

On Tuesday 26 December, Patton famously boasted to Bradley: 'The Kraut has stuck his head in the meat grinder and I've got the handle.' But this bravado concealed his lingering embarrassment that the advance to Bastogne had not gone as he had claimed it would. He

There he heard that Major Thomas, the commander of B Company, had been killed while single-handedly rushing a German machine gun. 'Very gallant,' observed Partridge, 'but I had long since learned that dead soldiers do not win battles, and my prime duty was to stay alive and preserve the lives of as many others as possible.

Field Marshal Brooke once wrote in his diary: 'It is astonishing how petty and small men can be in connection with questions of command.

Perhaps the German leadership's greatest mistake in the Ardennes offensive was to have misjudged the soldiers of an army they had affected to despise.

crow flies, during that night or early the next morning.

regeneration of the entire social body.

In that one month of January 1945, Wehrmacht losses rose to 451,742 killed, roughly the equivalent of all American deaths in the whole of the Second World War.

The surgeons wasted no time. They went straight to the improvised hospital in the barracks and began operating on the 150 most seriously wounded out of more than 700 patients. They operated all through the night and until noon on 27 December, on wounds that in some cases had gone for eight days without surgical attention. As a result they had to perform 'many amputations'. In the circumstances, it was a testament to their skill that there were only three post-operative deaths.

There can be little doubt that the commitment and then grinding down of German forces in the Ardennes, especially the panzer divisions, had mortally weakened the Wehrmacht's capacity to defend the eastern front. But

La Operación Market Garden, iniciada el 17 de septiembre, no solo era ambiciosa. Estuvo además sorprendentemente mal planificada, sus oportunidades de éxito eran mínimas y no debió intentarse nunca.

Frontline soldiers are advancing day and night under fire, with pure and saintly hearts. The rear echelon men who follow along behind are raping, drinking and looting.

telephones. At 05.37 hours the 726th Grenadier-Regiment reported, 'Off Asnelles [Gold beach]

Apart from the risk in the blackout of walking into a lamp-post, the greatest danger was being run down by a motorcar. In London, over 2,000 pedestrians were killed in the last four months of 1939.

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