Quotes About Commanders

Lawyers were vastly overrepresented among the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces who carried out the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, Polish elites, communists, the handicapped, and others.

always followed, so far as I could see, the principle that military commanders should not be judged by results, but by the quality of their effort.

depended. On this point we should never have given way, but the refusal would have been bitterly resented by our struggling Ally, and would have poisoned all our relations. It was even with an actual sense of relief that some of our high commanders addressed themselves to our new and grimly simplified problem. As

The uncontrollable momentum of war, the inadequacy of unity and leadership among Allies, the tides of national passion, nearly always force improvident action upon Governments or Commanders

I have it from the highest American authorities that it is their wish that their troops should receive direct orders. They say their Army has been framed more on Prussian lines than on the more smooth British lines, and that American commanders expect to receive positive orders, which they will immediately obey.

the monuments of dead commanders and shot-torn regiments are of different years. An earthly palimpsest of tragedy!

It is not the business of generals to shoot one another.

All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.

That was the entire reason to have battle commanders in the first place—so that one man could balance the advantages of logic and reason against the emotional, insane demands of close battle.

To ensure victory the troops must have confidence in themselves as well as in their commanders.

There may be a hundred thousand men in an army, who are all equally free; but they only are naturally most fit to be commanders or leaders, who most excel in the virtues required for the right performance of those offices.

The fate of the grand empire which Genghis Khan established was the same with that of all others that have arisen in the world, from time to time, by the extension of the power of great military commanders over widely-separated and heterogeneous nations. The sons and successors to whom the vast possessions descended soon quarreled among themselves, and the immense fabric fell to pieces in less time than it had taken to construct it.

Few Allied generals can have hated each other more than Patton and Montgomery.

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

The crowd shouted its approval--they liked their commanders generous, their heroes bold and lusty.

I am sure of the fact that Fidel and Chávez are commanders of the forces of freedom in America, to liberate America and the world.

Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.

According to Clausewitz, the purpose of studying war was to provide commanders with a sound basis for their thinking and render it unnecessary to reinvent the wheel with every new situation.

Relative American openness, contrasted with the communist commitment to secrecy, in my view constitutes a claim upon a fragment of moral high ground. The egregious error committed by US statesmen and commanders was not that of lying to the world, but rather that of lying to themselves.

Nimitz remarked that when he sent Spruance out with the fleet, "he was always sure286 he would bring it home; when he sent Halsey out, he did not know precisely what was going to happen." Halsey's boldness was in doubt seldom, his judgement and intellect often.

We learned that indecision is a decision, that inaction has a cost all its own. Good commanders act and create opportunities. Great commanders ruthlessly exploit those opportunities

But Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who were returning from the battle.

Then the officers who were over the units of the army—the commanders of thousands and of hundreds—approached Moses

All the gold that the commanders of thousands and of hundreds presented as an offering to the LORD weighed 16,750 shekels.