Quotes from Rick Atkinson

De Gaulle reluctantly reboarded La Combattante, convinced that "France would live, for she was equal to her suffering," while privately wondering, "How can one be expected to govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?

CASABLANCA provided Vichy with its best anchorage south of Toulon, and the French navy had chosen to defend the Moroccan port with valor worthy of a better cause.

There was nothing for it but obduracy, to soldier on even for those who were not soldiers. "How hard I have become," an American Red Cross volunteer told her diary in February. "Emotions which formerly would have wracked my soul leave me almost untouched. It's a hardness of survival.

That Allied victory had cost them 44,000 casualties since DIADEM began on May 11: 18,000 Americans—among them more than 3,000 killed in action—along with 12,000 British, 9,600 French, and nearly 4,000 Poles. German casualties were estimated at 52,000, including 5,800 dead. Americans

By singleness of purpose, by steadfastness of conduct, by tenacity and endurance—such as we have so far displayed—by this and only by this can we discharge our duty to the future of the world and to the destiny of man.

The cardinal principle of concentrating military force had been abandoned by George and his ministers; so, too, had the pursuit of clear strategic goals while avoiding diversionary sideshows.

a phrase he attributed to Voltaire: "That calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of a soul in danger, which is the greatest gift of nature for command." Gavin called it "the courage of two o'clock in the morning

The faults were clear enough: the greatest of them was an initial lack of appreciation of the possibilities of the enemy; a certain indiscipline of mind; a tendency towards exaggeration

Sergeant Samuel Allen, Jr., a former college student who had led his own swing band in the palmy days of peace, tried to explain in a letter home the flinty nihilism that made young men at war seem so old when they contemplated the dead. "We have found that it is best to forget about those friends, not to talk about them," he wrote. "They don't even exist.

Close on the heels of Leclerc's armored spearhead was an American intelligence unit code-named ALSOS, carrying secret instructions from the physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Luis W. Alvarez on clues to look for in investigating "the Y program"—the German atomic bomb effort. Evidence discovered in Paris and at the Philips factory in Eindhoven pointed to the University of Strasbourg as a key atomic research center.

If U-boats torpedoed a transport during the Atlantic passage, how many destroyers should be left behind to pick up survivors? Hewitt was not certain he could spare any without jeopardizing the task force, and the prospect of abandoning men in the water gnawed at him. Had word of the expedition leaked? Every day he received reports that someone, somewhere had been talking too much.

Lincoln had inelegantly called "the tired spot that can't be got at.

Two great armadas would carry more than 100,000 troops to the invasion beaches. One fleet would sail 2,800 miles from Britain to Algeria, with mostly British ships ferrying mostly American soldiers.

Eindhoven was home to the Philips electronics company, founded in 1891 by a cousin of Karl Marx's. In addition to making lightbulbs, the firm had expanded to vacuum tubes, radios, X-ray equipment, and, in 1939, the electric razor.

of infinite wit and pleasantry

Ernie Pyle, who was with them as usual, wrote: "They were dead weary, as a person could tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies spoke their inhuman exhaustion…. They were young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion made them look middle-aged." A sergeant wrote to his family in Iowa: "It'll soon be five months that a pup tent has been our home. Five months since I've even so much as sat at a table while eating.

soon enough, the day would come when new recruits claimed the Army no longer examined eyes, just counted them. A conscript had to stand at least five feet tall and weigh 105 pounds; possess twelve or more of his natural thirty-two teeth; and be free of flat feet, venereal disease, and hernias. More than forty of every hundred men were rejected, a grim testament to the toll taken on the nation's health by the Great Depression.

the firm proved deft at sheltering Jews by insisting they were irreplaceable specialists, and several hundred Jewish workers would survive the war. Now

A priest anointed the body with oil. Slovik would be buried outside a World War I cemetery at Oise-Aisne, near Soissons, in row three of Plot E—a hidden, unsanctified tract reserved for the dishonorable dead. 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

the prime minister's physician concluded that "Monty wants to be a king." Eisenhower came to believe that "Monty is a good man to serve under, a difficult man to serve with, and an impossible man to serve over." That maxim would tidily sum up the Allied high command in Europe.

inconsequential M-3 Stuart caused one American general to muse that "the only way to hurt a Kraut with a 37mm is to catch him and give him an enema with it" the half-track mounted with a 75mm gun was already known as a "Purple Heart box." American tanks were so flammable they were dubbed Ronsons, after a popular cigarette lighter advertised with the slogan "They light every time.

But, as Voltaire had observed, history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.

In "misusing 6th Army Group," as one Army historian later charged, Eisenhower unwittingly gave the Germans a respite, allowing Hitler to continue assembling a secret counteroffensive aimed at the Ardennes in mid-December. Crossing the Rhine after Thanksgiving might well have complicated German planning for what soon would be known as the Battle of the Bulge.

German general who had fought in both world wars now described the Normandy struggle as "a monstrous blood-mill, the likes of which I have not seen in eleven years of war." Omar Bradley lamented, "I can't afford to stay here. I lose all my best boys. They're the ones who stick their heads through hedges and then have them blown off.