Quotes from Richard Overy

Goering appeared at times to be all things to all men.

Goering was known to wear togas, fur coats and faux-medieval hunting outfits.

No one in either system could be unaware that State Security was out there, but for the ordinary citizen, uninterested in politics, lucky enough not to belong to one of the groups stigmatized as enemies, the attitude was as likely to be prudent respect, even approval, rather than a permanent state of fear.

Moral and ethical questions have no validity in Total War except in as far as their maintenance or destruction contributes towards ultimate Victory. Expediency, not morality, is the sole criterion of human conduct in Total War.' Dennis Wheatley, Total War, 1941

The reconstruction of an almost entirely new army on the ruins of the collapse in 1941, one capable of holding its own against the attacker, ranks as the most remarkable achievement

In December 1941 the Japanese poet Takamura K?tar? summed up the Japanese view of the conflict with the West: We are standing for justice and life, While they are standing for profits, We are defending justice, While they are attacking for profits, They raise their heads in arrogance, While we are constructing the Great East Asia family.

The wave of anti-imperial nationalism proved this time to be irreversible, and it was met by the old imperial powers with an uneven mix of expedient compromise and extreme violence. The crises of empire when they came were not unpredictable, like an earthquake, but their effects were seismic. The collapse of the European Asian empires between 1946 and 1954 ended centuries of empire-building in eight years.

Goering got into endless arguments with other officers [and] he did not like routine work.

Goering's ideas betray a consistent desire to create something essentially new, implying all the historic virtues, but unlike [anything] of the past.