“I was convinced before the war started that it was a great disaster, a great wrong. Even after the campaign in Poland my conviction didn't change because on 3rd September, the third day of our going to war, the Western Powers had declared war on Germany. After the campaign in France in 1940 my conviction became uncertain, but when I heard one or two months after the armistice with France that now Hitler was to go with Russia, the old conviction came up again and it was at this moment that I changed the place of living for my family, moved them from Berlin to the place where they are today.”

— Walter Warlimont

Quoted in "The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series" - Page 181 - by Richard Holmes - 2007

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Walter Warlimont 8

German general 1894–1976

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“Had I finished off France in '39, then world history would have taken another course. But then I had to wait until 1940. Then a two-front war, that was bad luck. After that, even we were broken.”

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Source: In a meeting with Mannerheim https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/oct/15/radio.internationalnews, 4 June 1942

“I see a future for us only in a Great War in which we lastingly cripple an opponent, France or Russia. Unless there should be a great war, the only way out of our dilemma will be through internal commotion, preferably revolutions in France or Russia.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 15 October 1885, quoted in Scott A. Silverstone, From Hitler's Germany to Saddam's Iraq

“When the Armistice came back no one took time to tell us about it; November 11 was just another day of drilling on the Plain. I found out that the war was over only by courtesy of our "barrack policemen", the janitor who looked after the division of the old South Barracks where my "beast" company was quartered, who reported the war's end a couple of days after the fact.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 25

“We found a round figure of three million Jews in Poland, and then immediately after that came the Russian campaign and we found another five million Jews in Russia. How on Earth could we manage to emigrate this eight million by using long and tiresome official methods if we could not, as was planned somehow or other after the war organise a general and mass-protected and organised emigration to Madagascar? We had conquered France, after all, and we could have compensated France adequately from our other colonial possessions so we could have used Madagascar — the island was big enough to accommodate such a number of Jews — but in the war we were cut off. We had no other choice.”

Karl Wolff (1900–1984) SS general

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“Apart from my absolute belief in National Socialism and my conviction of Hitler's superhuman heroism, I had always been attracted to Germany.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

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“Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of the persistence of Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

Declaration of War Broadcast, on the outbreak of the Second World War, 3 September 1939
First Term as Prime Minister (1939-1941)
Context: Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of the persistence of Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement. Great Britain and France, with the cooperation of the British Dominions, have struggled to avoid this tragedy. They have, as I firmly believe, been patient; they have kept the door of negotiation open; they have given no cause for aggression. But in the result their efforts have failed and we are, therefore, as a great family of nations, involved in a struggle which we must at all costs win, and which we believe in our hearts we will win...

“No, my friend, Germany will not declare war on us [at this moment]. But in my opinion the European situation is such that a great armed conflict is inevitable at some time which I cannot foresee, and our duty is to prepare for the worst.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Letter to Georg Brandes (9 January 1906), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), pp. 220-221.

“I did not decide to become an officer to start a military career. I still wanted to be an agronomist and work in some remote corner of Russia after the war. I could not suppose that my country would change, and I would.”

Aleksandr Vasilevsky (1895–1977) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The matter of my whole life" - by Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky - Moscow, Politizdat, 1978.

“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884–1943) Japanese Marshal Admiral

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“The word 'campaign' is a war term. So when you go into a campaign you just prepare to go to war. If you think this is an exercise in civic activity…then you are going to be surprised.-1985”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Herrnson, Paul S., Women Running "as Women": Candidate Gender, Campaign Issues, and Voter-Targeting Strategies, The Journal of Politics, 2003, 65 no. 1]
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