These two classic works capture the tide of world events even as they unfold the compelling tale of a single North American family drawn into the very center of the wars maelstrom. These two multimillion-copy bestsellers capture all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of the Second World... read more
Starts on Chapter 50, page 565 through page 1128. Book club edition.
“The United States of America has been a lucky nation, and this luck had held remarkably on June 4, 1942. How long it will hold in the future, only the dark gods know who bestowed on this crass mercantile nation of mongrelized blood and cowboy culture a virgin continent with almost infinite natural resources.”Armin von Roon, writing about the Battle of Midway
“p. 511 "Scientists have never played with such big chips."”Palmer Kirby, speaking with Harrison Peters about the bomb
“p. 521: "Your country baffles me: a luxurious unharmed lotus land in which great hordes of handsome dynamic people either wallow in deep gloom, or play like overexcited children, or fall to work like all the devils in hell, while the press steadily drones detestation of the government and despair of the system. I don't understand how America works, any more than Frances Trollope or Dickens did, but it's an ongoing miracle of sorts."”Pamela Tudsbury, writing to Victor Henry
“p. 577: "Yet the warmongering President had only a half-trained expanding army of green recruits, led by an unblooded officer cadre. Civilian morale was unstable. Mild rationing ordinances brought wails of protest; austerities that we Germans had been taking for granted for years seemed to the spoiled Americans the end of the world. What was worse--and this was fundamental, and Roosevelt knew it--like the Italians, the American people were incapable of accepting substantial battle losses. This fact shaped all of Franklin Roosevelt's war decisions, including the North African landing. Para. Roosevelt's solution of his problems can be starkly stated. The formula that won world empire for the U.S.A. was twofold: 1. Germany first. 2. Shed German blood by shedding the blood of others.”Armin von Roon, Global Waterloo
“pp. 801-802: <Dr. R.> "asks me to picture the Ku Klux Klan seizing power in the United States. That is what has happened to Germany, he says. The Nazi Party is an enormous German Ku Klux Klan. He points to the dramatic use of fire rituals at night, the anti-Semitism, the bizarre uniforms, the bellicose know-nothing hatred of liberal ideas and of foreigners and so forth. I rejoined that the Klan is a mere lunatic splinter group, not a major party capable of governing the nation. Then he cited the Klan of Reconstruction days, a respectable widespread movement which many of the leading Southerners joined; also the role of the modern Klan in the Democratic politics of the twenties. Para. Extremism, he says, is the universal tuberculosis of modern society: a world infection of resentment and hatred generated by rapid change and the breakdown of old values. In the stabler nations the tubercules are sealed off in scar tissue, and these are the harmless lunatic movements."”Aaron Jastrow, Feb. 26, 1943, writing from internment in Baden-Baden
“p. 1089: <wondering how the camp commander, Rahm, will keep visitors from seeing the truth of camp life> . . . "is this whole Beautification just a master instance, a paradigm, of the idiot thoroughness which has characterized what the Germans have done since Hitler took power? Para. In their ability to get things done, their energy, their attention to detail, their sheer scientific and industrial prowess, they equal and perhaps surpass the Americans. Moreover, they are capable of the greatest charm, intelligence, and taste. It is their peculiarity as a people that with no reservations, with whole hearts, with singular elan, they can throw themselves into the executing of plans and orders crazy or monstrous beyond previous human conceptions."”Aaron Jastrow, April 1944, describing the Beautification of Theresienstadt
“p. 1093The German has never been quite at home in Christian Europe, has never quite made up his mind whether he is Vandal or Roman, the destroyer from the north or the comme il faut Western man. He oscillates, vacillates, plays the one or the other role, as historic circumstances change. To the Vandal in him, Christian compunction and British and French liberalism are nonsense; the reason and logic of the Enlightenment are a veneer over real human nature; destruction and dominance are the thing; slaughter is an ancient joy. After centuries of Lutheran restraint, the rude rough German voice bellowed forth once again, in Nietzsche, radical revulsion from Christianity's mock tenets. Quite accurately Nietzsche blamed all this kindness and compunction on Judaism. Quite accurately he foretold the coming death of the Christian God. What he failed to foresee was that the freed Vandal, in lunatic industrialized vengeance, would set out to nail eleven million Christs to the cross."”Aaron Jastrow, April 1944, writing about "bottomless lack of compunction" of the Germans
Democracy satisfies best the human thirst for freedom; yet, being undisciplined, turbulent, and luxury-seeking, it falls time and again to austere single-minded despotism.Highlighted by 41 Kindle customers
Extremism, he says, is the universal tuberculosis of modern society: a world infection of resentment and hatred generated by rapid change and the breakdown of old values. In the stabler nations the tubercles are sealed off in scar tissue, and these are the harmless lunatic movements. In times of social disorder, depression, war, or revolution, the germs can break forth and infect the nation. This has happened in Germany. It could happen anywhere, even in the United States.Highlighted by 26 Kindle customers
“Should you succeed in getting Stalin out,” he said, yawning, “for God’s sake don’t try to install your free enterprise system here, with party elections and the rest. By free enterprise, Persians mean what they’re doing with your copper wire. A democracy in a backward or unstable country simply gets smashed by the best-organized power gang. Here it’ll be a communist gang that will open the gates of Asia to Stalin. So forget your antiroyalist principles, and strengthen the monarchy.”Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers
“I’ve had a lot of troubles in my life, and most of them never happened,”Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers
So long as men choose to decide the turns of history with the slaughter of youths — and even in a better day, when this form of human sacrifice has been abolished like the ancient, superstitious, but no more horrible form — the memory of these three American torpedo plane squadrons should not die.Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers
Wars are won by will, by readiness to die, and by skill in killing, not by advantages, however lopsided, in numbers.Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
Your country baffles me: a luxurious unharmed lotus land in which great hordes of handsome dynamic people either wallow in deep gloom, or play like overexcited children, or fall to work like all the devils in hell, while the press steadily drones detestation of the government and despair of the system. I don’t understand how America works, any more than Frances Trollope or Dickens did, but it’s an ongoing miracle of sorts.Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
If the hope is not the coming of the Prince of Peace, it has to be that in their hearts most people, even the most fanatical and boneheaded Marxists, even the craziest nationalists and revolutionaries, love their children, and don’t want to see them burn up. There is no politician imbecile enough, surely, to want a nuclear Leyte Gulf. The future now seems to depend on that grim assumption. Either war is finished or we are.Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
War is politics implemented by the use of force. A military undertaking seldom rises above its political genesis; if that is unsound the guns will speak and the blood flow in vain.Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
Defiant toughness in adversity is a sound doctrine; however, elasticity of defense is another.Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
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