World War 2 Quotes

Quotes by German Leader Adolph Hitler:

"I saw my enemies in Munich, and they are worms."

"Germany must either be a world power or there will be no Germany" - from his autobiography 'Mein Kampf'

"Why should this war in the West be fought for the restoration of Poland? The Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never rise again." - September 1939

"Gentlemen, you are about to witness the most famous victory in history." - addressing his generals prior to 'Operation Yellow'.

"You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." - on invading the Soviet Union

"A victory at Kursk would shine like a beacon to the world!" - to his generals

"Whenever I think of this attack, my stomach turns over." - to tank warfare specialist Heinz Guderian prior to the assault on Kursk.

Quotes by Mathematician Albert Einstein:

"As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable."

Quotes by British General Bernard Law Montgomery:

"The Germans should have thought of some of these things before they began the war, particularly before attacking the Russians." - referring to a German soldier's request to surrender only to British or American forces and not the Russians.

"Nice chap, no General." - on first impressions of American General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Quotes by Charles de Gaulle:

"Today we are crushed by the sheer weight of the mechanized forces hurled against us, but we can still look to the future in which even greater mechanized forces will bring us victory. Therein lies the destiny of the world."

Quotes by British Labor Party Opposition Leader Clement Atlee:

"In a life and death struggle, we cannot afford to leave our destinies in the hands of failures." - on the British handling of the war in Norway

Quotes by American General Douglas MacArthur:

"Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

Quotes by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"During the time I have had WACs under my command, they have met every test and task assigned to them...their contributions in efficiency, skill, spirit, and determination are immeasurable." - in a speech referring to the five women whom served on his staff during the war - 1945

Quotes by German General Erwin Rommel:

"Which would your men rather be, tired, or dead?" - extorting an Officer during the building of Hitler's 'Atlantic Wall'.

Quotes by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

"I have seen war...I hate war." - at in address at Chautauqua, NY - August 14, 1936

"The Soviet Union, as everybody who has the courage to face the fact knows, is run by a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world." - before the American Youth Congress - February 10, 1940

"Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will...It is the most humane, the most advanced, and, in the end, the most unconquerable of all forms of human society. The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase of human history...We...would rather die on our feet than live on our knees." - in his Third Inauguration Speech, January 20, 1941

"I say that the delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative. I say that this can be done; it must be done; and it will be done...The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - during his Fireside Chat radio address, May 27, 1941

"The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march. They are going forward - on the Russian front, in the vast Pacific area, and into Europe - converging upon their ultimate objectives: Berlin and Tokyo. I think the first crack in the Axis has come. The criminal, corrupt Fascist regime in Italy is going to pieces." - in a Fireside Chat - July 28, 1943

"The world has never seen greater devotion, determination, and self-sacrifice than have been displayed by the Russian people...under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Stalin. With a nation that in saving itself is thereby helping to save all the world from the Nazi menace, this country of ours should always be glad to be a good neighbor and a sincere friend to the world of the future." - during a Fireside Chat - July 28, 1943

"On this tenth day of June 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor"

"Force is the only language they understand, like bullies." - speaking in reference to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and German dictator Adolph Hitler.

Quotes by American General George S. Patton:

"Maybe there are 5,000, maybe 10,000 Nazi bastards in their concrete foxholes before the Third Army. Now if Ike stops holding Monty's hand and gives me some supplies, I'll go through the Siegfried Line like %*$# through a goose."

Quotes by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels:

"In 1933, a French premier ought to have said - and if I had been the French premier I would have said it: The new Reich chancellor is the man who wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that. This man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity. Either he disappears or we march! But they didn't do it."

"If we have power, we'll never give it up again unless we're carried out of our offices as corpses"

Quotes by American General Joseph Stilwell:

"The Limeys want us in even with our hastily made plans and our half-trained and half-equipped troops." - on joining the war alongside Britain, date unknown

Quotes by Reverend Martin Niemoller:

"In Germany they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Quotes by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain:

"How horrible, how fantastic, how incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."- 1938

"It is evil things we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution." - 1939

Quotes by the New York Times:

"Germany having seized the prey, Soviet Russia will seize that part of the carcass that Germany cannot use. It will play the noble role of hyena to the German lion."- commenting on the joint invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939

Quotes by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind the line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe...All these famous cities...lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."

"In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will."

"Without ships, we cannot live." - on the importance of winning the War in the Atlantic

"Good night, then - sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn." - to the people of France - October 21, 1940

"In Hitler's launching of the Nazi campaign on Russia, we can already see, after six months of fighting, that he has made one of the outstanding blunders in history." - before the House of Commons - December 11, 1941

"The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories...No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging-out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must reside." - to the American Congress, May 19, 1943

"The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-Boat peril...It did not take the form of flaring battles and glittering achievements, it manifested itself through statistics, diagrams, and curves unknown to the nation, incomprehensible to the public."

"I expected to see a wild cat roaring into the mountains - and what do I find? A whale wallowing on the beaches!" - to Sir Harold Alexander on the handling of the Allied landings at AnzioU

Quotes by US President Woodrow Wilson:

"It must be a peace without victory...Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last." - addressing the United States Senate on January 22, 1917