Quote of the Day

If you want General Gehlen sent to a lunatic asylum then you had better have me certified as well.

- exert from an argument between Heinz Guderian and Adolf Hitler

 

Carl: how dare you to not remember! That SOMEONE at Verdun was the man that saved Verdun and all France! The military genious:



Henri Phillipe Omer Pétain , maréchal de France.

"Ils ne passeront pas!"

And indeed, they didn't pass...

 

Friedrich...now you just know the same man was not quite the saviour of France in ww2...

 

Well. He is a hero. He did his best for France as Vichy president. He didn't have too many option. He better kept the little independence he had for the rest of France instead of turning France into a Poland or Czecholsovakia...

 

He did what he thougt was best for France, that does not make him a hero...certainly in ww1 a hero..but France had the choice in ww2...Vichy was not the only option..IF Prtain had not created a France within a France if France had chosen the other option to fight fully from its colonies as many wanted and Frances colonies were not forced to choose..thus fractioning French fighting ability..France could have helped dramatically change the face of the Middle East at an earler stage..The fact Petain was who he was worked against France and its ability to fight on overseas in a major way in early years.

The name Petain was a rallying call becuase of his hero status from ww1...he attracted many in the militar that would have carried on the fight elswhere if he had not and I fully belive this if he had not collaborated on a major scale...The fleet would have not have had British shells raining down on them..British troops would have had support in early Italian battles in Somaliland rather than the French force disarming ..Sea assets alone..not to be used as a British proxy but an independant French force..in its own right..Many in France do not to this day support your view that he was a hero...Friedrich to this day..Due to his actions French forces overseas were fractured and not a coherant force..Metropolitan France could not survive thats certain. But the French could well have fought on...As for proteccting France from the ravages..The Jews of France would not agree either..

De-Gaulle may not have risen to the power he attained..Petains name was a rallying call and the military in the main supported his call..The call was not to an independant French territory, it was a call to collaboration...Many would not have answered that call if the name Petain had not thrust foreward..

 

The legal precedent that resulted from the U.S. trials of German industrialists after WW II

... a nineteen-year-old draftee accused of war crimes cannot successfully plead that he was acting under orders, but the owners and directors of multi-billion-dollar companies can.

 

"This is not a peace treaty. It's a twenty-years armistice"

Field marshal Ferdinand Foch speaking about Versailles.

 

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

Winston Churchill

 

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Charles De Gaulle

 

"...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle
is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

 

It will not be any European statesman who will unite Europe: Europe will be united by the Chinese.

Charles De Gaulle

 

That will be prawn balls and prawn crackers for me please and two numer 7 thanks. Thank god not all famous quotes come to fruition Kai...Or is there still time...

 

We´ll see Urgh, we´ll see...

And another interesting point by Charles De Gaulle:

Only peril can bring the French together. One can't impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.

 

Im a confirmed French/British anglophile, but even I couldnt agree that even peril brings the French together as a nation....I cannot think off hand of one major scenario where they have all spoken with one tongue. Closest Ive seen is present current events.

 

A. Hitler

 

Actually De Gaulle had quite many interesting remarks:

"I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians."

Charles De Gaulle

 

More like Charles himself...

"When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself. "

Charles De Gaulle

 

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.


Dwight D Eisenhower

 

I guess Churchill was thanked as well as blamed for a lot of things by 1944 in England so his response when he heard of the 20th July murder attempt of Hitler:

" You can´t blame me for that!"

 

Another Charles De Gaulle:

"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."