Quote of the day III

"I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Harry S Truman after FDR´s death on the decisions of the president at the time

 

"Piss on them then. We need more speed."

Capt. Douglass Johnson, CO of USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70) while attempting to escape an enemy sub and having been informed that his ships boilers had reached their temperature limits.

 

I believe it is peace in our time.- Neville Chamberlain, 1938


Later

 

'Oi! You'll kill someone doing that!'

Harry Seacomb the first time he came under fire.

 

"You will usually find that the enemy has three courses open to him, and of these he will adopt the fourth!"

(anonymous)

"Snow is not neutral."

(Frunze Military Academy Maxim)

"No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

(Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke)

 

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

George S. Patton

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

George S. Patton

 

'One of the oddest [stories in circulation] concerned the colonel or general in the Air Force whose duty required that he stay in the reluctant comfort on the ground and who ate his heart out to be with his "boys" out on mission over Germany among the red flak. It was hard, stern duty that kept him grounded, and much harder than flying missions. I don't know where this one started, but it doesn't sound as though it came from enlisted personnel. I never met a bomber crew which wouldn't have taken on this sterner duty at the drop of a hat. They may have been a little wild, but they weren't that crazy.' (John Steinbeck, 1943, well before Heller)

 

"On land I am a hero. At sea I am a coward."

Adolf Hitler

 

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.
Adolf Hitler

Generals think war should be waged like the tourneys of the Middle Ages. I have no use for knights; I need revolutionaries.
Adolf Hitler

 

An angel's blessing prepares a warrior better then a thousand military drills ever could

 

The Difference Between A Sinner and a Saviour is Usually a Matter of Modivation

 

Gimme the goods and I´ll go through that wall like shit through a sieve!

General Patton on West Wall Sept 1944

 

"Only poets make strategy without budgets"

"To conquer the command of the air means victory; to be beaten in the air means defeat."

Giulio Douhet

 

It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.

Joseph Göbbels

 

" Haven´t you read Schlieffen? How can you direct a battle without table, maps and telephone?"

General Beck in 1937 to General Guderian on warfare...

 

"I have against me the bourgeois, the military and the diplomats, and for me, only the people who take the Métro."

-- General Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970),

 

Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.

Erwin Rommel

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If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly.

Bernard Law Montgomery

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bernard_law_montgomery.html

 

"When the Americans start using 155s as sniper weapons, it is time to give up."

German commander of Aachen autumn 1944

 

Not quite on topic but this is a link to an example of how we are doing that now.

155mm sniper

 

"Personally I am enjoying a very interesting battle, but we ought to be in tears at the tragedy of the whole thing."

Montgomery Dec 23rd 1944

http://www.angelfire.com/my/rememberww2/1944/12/23.htm