#ii

A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses. ↗

— George Orwell

#england #nobility #orwell #royalty #uk

One day this war will end. And when it does, Tule Lake will be just a memory. ↗

— Teresa R. Funke

#japanese-internment #life #remembering #war #world-war-ii

What you don’t know going in is that when you come out, you will be scarred for life. Whether you were in for a week, a month, or a year—even if you come home without a scratch—you are never, ever going to be the same. When I went in, I was eighteen. I thought it was all glory and you win lots of medals. You think you’re going to be the guy. Then you find out the cost is very great. Especially when you don’t see the kids you were with when you went in. Living with it can be hell. It’s like the devil presides in you. I knew what I sighed up for, yes, and I would do it again. But the reality of war—words can’t begin to describe it. ↗

— William Guarnere

#memoir #military #world-war-ii #life

There began to appear before my romantic eyes...a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape. ↗

— Erik Larson

#germany #history #hitler #war #world-war-ii

...the experience of battle forever divides those who talk of nothing else but its prospect from those who talk of everything else but its memory. ↗

— James D. Hornfischer

#combat #war #wwii-history #experience

A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it. ↗

— George S. Patton Jr.

#wwii #imagination

Yet the only girl who'd love him is his mother...' - A Girl Worth Fighting For (song) ↗

— David Zippel

#burn #disney #lyrics #mulan #mulan-ii

I love you as one loves certain dark things. ↗

— Pablo Neruda

#love

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it. ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #denunciation #evil #good #jews

* *Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.*Don’t imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore. ↗

— George Orwell

#hypocrisy #journalism #poland #stalin #warsaw-uprising