“I am a soldier. I get orders. I execute them.”
To Raoul Nordling <br class="br"> The Race to Liberate Paris, warfarehistorynetwork.com https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/the-race-to-liberate-paris/
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Dietrich von Choltitz12
German general 1894–1966Related quotes
“If I am in a place where there are enemies, I become a soldier.”
Poemen (340–450) Egyptian monk and desert father
Saying 202
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist
A Soldier's Declaration (July 1917)
Context: I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.
“Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die.”
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey
Orders to the 57th Infantry Regiment, at the Battle of Gallipoli (25 April 1915); as quoted in Studies in Battle Command http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/csi-battles.htm by Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College, p. 89; also quoted in Turkey (2007) by Verity Campbell, p. 188<br>Variant translation: I am not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die. <br class="br">Context: Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States
Original quote from The Democratic Speaker's Hand-Book (1868), by Matthew Carey, p. 33. Often paraphrased as "If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side".
Misattributed
“I am nothing, neither a chief nor a soldier.”
Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man
Recorded by a reporter after Sitting Bull's retreat to Canada after being defeated in the Black Hills War, originally published in the New York Herald on November 16, 1877. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 190.
Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A