Curtis LeMay: Quotes about war

Curtis LeMay was American general and politician. Explore interesting quotes on war.

Curtis LeMay: 26 quotes2 likes

“I'd like to see a more aggressive attitude on the part of the United States. That doesn't mean launching an immediate preventive war…”

Mission with LeMay: My Story (1965), p. 559.

“I'll tell you what war is about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting.”

Quoted by Richard Rhodes in Wikipedia: The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?”

Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview with Generals (1988), p. 88.

“We’re at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?”

From his autobiography, also requoted in Rhodes, 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', p. 596

“As far as casualties were concerned I think there were more casualties in the first attack on Tokyo with incendiaries than there were with the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The fact that it's done instantaneously, maybe that's more humane than incendiary attacks, if you can call any war act humane. I don't, particularly, so to me there wasn't much difference. A weapon is a weapon and it really doesn't make much difference how you kill a man. If you have to kill him, well, that's the evil to start with and how you do it becomes pretty secondary. I think your choice should be which weapon is the most efficient and most likely to get the whole mess over with as early as possible.”

The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series, p. 574

“Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time… I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal…. Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.”

On the morality of the firebombing campaign http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61.html)