Quotes About Conflict

In the Second World War, twenty-two generals were executed by Hitler. Another 963 died or were posted missing on active service. An astonishing 110 killed themselves.

David Rees' Korea: The Limited War

The archbishop of Canterbury declared that Christians were allowed to pray for victory, but the archbishop of York disagreed. While the war was a righteous one, he said, it was not a holy one: "We must avoid praying each other down.

Some Americans responded brutally to such docility: in two separate incidents on 14 July, an officer and an NCO of the U.S. 45th Division murdered large groups of Italians in cold blood. One, Sgt. Horace West, who killed thirty-seven with a Thompson submachine gun, was convicted by a court-martial, but later granted clemency. The other, Capt. John Compton, assembled a firing squad which massacred thirty-six Italian prisoners.

War is full of clichés, because only clichés can match the drama of the moment.

It is known that 610,000 ethnic Germans were killed in Rumania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Stalin would ultimately prove the most successful warlord of the conflict, yet no more than Hitler

Nations are fortunate to have such leaders in time of conflict, but there are also advantages in leaders who avoid conflict in the first place.

Arguments for war based on the principle of 'setting the world an example' are always dangerous. They can be used to justify quite disproportionate responses, as occurred in South-east Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. They tend to be selective: why for instance did Britain not use force in 1965 to uphold the concept of majority self-determination in Rhodesia?

Intelligent men found that among the hardest parts of war was the need to accept orders from stupid ones.

Possession of armed might can be corrupting: it feeds an itch among those exercising political authority to put it to practical use. Successive Washington administrations have been seduced by the readiness with which they can order a deployment, and see this promptly executed. It is much easier to commit armed forces, especially air power, in pursuit of an objective than to grapple the complexities of social and cultural engagement with an alien people.

Shikata ga nai: it could not be helped. If this was a monumentally inadequate excuse for condemning millions to death without hope of securing any redemptive compensation, it is a constant of history that nations which start wars find it very hard to stop them.

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.

Machiavelli observed that 'wars begin when you will, but do not end when you please'.

We are readying ourselves to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness (Andre Gide, 28 July 1914)

it is a constant of history that nations which start wars find it very hard to stop them.

It is not only more bloody and more murderous than any previous wars but also more cruel, more relentless, more pitiless … It discards all the parameters to which we defer in times of peace and which we called the rights of man. It does not recognise the privileges of the wounded man or of the doctor and it does not distinguish between non-combatants and the fighting part of the population.

After more than five years of strife in the name of freedom, tens of millions of people were merely to exchange one tyranny for another. Some

dominant feeling of the battlefield is loneliness, gentlemen.

A President is best judged by the enemies he makes when he has really hit his stride.

The people's good fortune is my misfortune!

Habt nur den Mut, destruktiv zu sein, und ihr werdet bald sehen, welch' herrliche Blume der Eintracht aus der fruchtbaren Asche aufschießt.

Its entry on the scene was not generally peaceful. A flood of mistrust, sometimes of hatred, above all of moral indignation, regularly opposed itself to the first innovator.

Quien busca la salvación de su alma y la de los demás que no la busque por el camino de la política, cuyas tareas, que son muy otras, solo pueden ser cumplidas mediante la fuerza. El genio o demonio de la política vive en tensión interna con el dios del amor, incluido el dios cristiano en su configuración eclesiástica, y esta tensión puede convertirse en todo momento en un conflicto sin solución.