Quotes from Max Hastings

Yet since 1917 the Soviet Union had created an edifice of self-deceit unrivalled in human history.

Potiorek was a bachelor who had devoted his life monastically to his profession, while remaining ignorant of every aspect of it that was either modern or important;

One of Beria's most cynical ruses was carried out in August 1941: NKVD agents disguised as Nazi parachutists were dropped into the Volga German autonomous region, to test the loyalty of its citizens. Villages where the new arrivals were offered shelter were liquidated wholesale; the entire region's surviving population was eventually deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

A Russian, the poet David Samoilov, said later, "We were all expecting war. But we were not expecting that war.

In action, there was a fine line between courage which heartened others and bluster which incurred their contempt.

In Japan, no one could dictate effectively to either army or navy. To an extraordinary degree, the two services—each with its own air force—pursued independent war policies, though the soldiers wielded much greater clout. The foremost characteristic of the army general staff, and especially of its dominant operations department, the First Bureau, was absolute indifference to the diplomatic or economic consequences of any military action. Mamoru

THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR was extraordinarily diverse. The Eastern Front, where 90 percent of all Germans killed in combat met their fate, overwhelmingly dominated the struggle against Hitler. Between 1941 and 1944, British and American sailors and airmen fought at sea and in the sky, but relatively small numbers of Western Allied ground troops engaged the Axis in North Africa, Italy, Asia and the Pacific.

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each. About 8 percent of all Germans died, compared with 2 percent of Chinese, 3.44 percent of Dutch people, 6.67 percent of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans.

Never in history have lies been such vital instruments of diplomacy and policy.

in intelligence as in everything else related to conflict victory is gained not by the side that makes no mistakes, but by the one that makes fewer than the other side. By

In all armies, soldiers serving with forward combat units shared a contempt for the much larger number of men in the rear areas who fulfilled roles in which they faced negligible risk: the infantry bore 90 percent of global army casualties.

German test pilot Ernst Canter noted in his logbook that while in 1910 he flew at a height of eighty feet, two years later he was ascending to almost 5,000.

Sometimes I get caught up in a kind of puzzled wonder at things, and think of all the work and effort and unlimited money that is used today to destroy, and not so long ago there was no money or work, and it seems so wrong somehow, that money and effort could always be found to pull down and destroy rather than build up.

The prime principle of employing force in pursuit of national objectives is to ensure that it is effective.

Yet both Langlais and 'Bruno' were better suited to enduring a crucifixion than inspiring a resurrection.

Compulsion was a key element in Leningrad's survival, as in that of Stalin's nation. If the city's inhabitants had been offered an exchange of surrender for food in February 1942, they assuredly would have given

The prime principle of employing force in pursuit of national objectives is to ensure that it is effective. The Germans failed to achieve this against Britain in 1940–41, a first earnest of one of the great truths of the conflict: while the Wehrmacht often fought its battles brilliantly, the Nazis made war with startling ineptitude. The Luftwaffe, instead of terrorising Churchill's people into bowing to Hitler's will, merely roused them to acquiesce in defiance.

Bethmann-Hollweg era davvero irremovibile non tanto sulle sue richieste territoriali – cercò, a un certo punto, di dissuadere il Kaiser dall'insistere sull'annessione del Belgio – quanto sull'intenzione di imporre una unione doganale sul continente: «è sottinteso che l'unione doganale dovrà rendere possibile il controllo della Germania sull'Europa»

Wainwright, who did his duty more impressively than MacArthur

All his life, the ruler of Russia displayed towards able comrades a blend of admiration and envy which impelled him to murder most of them sooner or later.

After the armistice, Finland, having failed to gain useful help from Britain and France, turned to Germany for assistance in rearming its forces, which Hitler was happy to provide.

The Russians eventually killed more than 4.5 million German soldiers, while American and British ground and air forces accounted for only about 500,000.

American dismay in the face of those early defeats was assuaged by skilful propaganda. The United States had much less to lose in the East than did the British Empire.

Courage is essentially competitive and imitative.