#wwii

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

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead. ↗

— Neal Stephenson

#humor #internet #neal #stephenson #wwii

The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total. ↗

— Louis Zamperini

#forgiveness #forgives #god #jesus #wwii

There’s nothing funny about war. Well, aside from this joke Orafoura told me: What did WWI say to WWII? I wish I could tell you the punch line, but the restaurant was so noisy that I didn’t hear it. But I laughed anyway, because I’ll bet it was pretty funny. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#humor #war #wwi #wwii #funny

After the prayer they executed an armed robbery. That sounds very strange this many years later: prayer and then armed robbery. ↗

— Diet Eman

#god #holocaust #jesus-christ #righteous-gentile #wwii

The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically. ↗

— Eugene B. Sledge

#military #okinawa #peleliu #war #wwii

I really should be studying now, but you're much more important to me than a .50 calibre machine gun. ↗

— Kara Martinelli

#humor #letters #longing #love #wwii-history

As we drew nearer I saw a cathedral like a crown on the head of a city. In its white walls every window glinted in the sun. Lincoln! Of such places is England made. -"No Moon Tonight ↗

— Don Charlwood

#inspirational #nationalism #wwii #inspirational

I knew why earlier generations once believed that the sun circled the earth. Because, in our limited imaginations, that is how we lived our lives. -Mrs. Tuesday's Departure ↗

— Suzanne Anderson

#religion #wwii #imagination