Quotes from Martin Gilbert

That winter the son's need for his father's love was again disappointed. On November 10, three weeks before his twelfth birthday, he wrote to him, 'You never came to see me on Sunday when you were in Brighton.' This was the second time his father had been in Brighton but had not gone to see him.

ten thousand Soviet evacuees had been drowned off Tallinn, and twenty-three thousand Hungarian Jews murdered at Kamenets Podolsk, in the same three day period. But these were far from the only deaths in those few August days.

The woman crawled on the earth, took hold of his boot and pleaded for mercy. But the soldier took the boy and hit him with his head against the wall, once, twice, smashed him against the wall.

In one day alone, at the end of December, as a result of frostbite, more than fourteen thousand German soldiers had been forced to submit to amputation. Not all of them survived the operation.

Now it was the Germans who had to fall back to new defensive positions. Among the German soldiers who had fought throughout the retreat was Corporal Hitler. On August 4 he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, for 'personal bravery and general merit'. This was an unusual decoration for a corporal. Hitler wore it for the rest of his life. The regimental adjutant who recommended him for it, Captain Hugo Guttman, was a Jew.

His finest hour was the leadership of Britain when it was most isolated, most threatened and most weak; when his own courage, determination and belief in democracy became at one with the nation.

Even if the tutoring was only for one hour a day, he told his mother, 'I shall feel that I have got to be back at a certain time and it would hang like a dark shadow over my pleasure'.

Neville Chamberlain, commented in a private letter on the persecution of German Jews: 'I believe the persecution arose out of two motives: a desire to rob the Jews of their money and a jealousy of their superior cleverness.' Chamberlain continued: 'No doubt Jews aren't a lovable people; I don't care about them myself; but that is not sufficient to explain the Pogrom.'37

on November 6: in the rapidity and confusion of the advance, Douglas MacArthur, commanding an infantry brigade, was taken prisoner by his own side. Thinking he was a German officer, vigilant American sentries brought him in at pistol point. The mistake was quickly discovered, once MacArthur had taken off his unusual floppy hat and long scarf.

Indian Corps and the 4th Corps will push through the barrage of fire regardless of loss, using reserves if required.

He never flinched, he never cringed, but he died as one would wish all Englishmen to die—quietly and undramatically

in towns and villages throughout the Ukraine, several thousand Jews were being murdered by anti-Bolshevik Whites, whose historic anti-Semitism, combining with a new hatred of the noted Jewish presence among the Bolshevik leadership, renewed the violent pogroms of a decade and a half earlier.

It was five months since Haig had told the British War Council: 'The machine gun is a much over-rated weapon and two per battalion is more than sufficient.' He was once again being proved terribly wrong.

Democracy, I say, is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting other people's rights as well as their ambitions.

If the war was to be over by Christmas, as many believed, or at the latest by Easter 1915, tens of thousands of soldiers might be killed or wounded before the guns fell silent. Every army believed that it could crush its opponents within a few months.

the Germans were 'picking out the revolutionists and Liberals from the many Russian prisoners of war, furnishing them with money and false passports and papers, and sending them back to Russia to stir up a revolution

For the first time since 1815, Russia was denied control of the Polish capital. It was a signal triumph for the Central Powers. The Germans now set their long-term sights on Finland, Russia's province since the Swedes had been driven out in 1808.

Hitler's entourage quickly learned what he had in mind. On September 9 Colonel Eduard Wagner discussed the future of Poland with Hitler's Army Chief of Staff, General Halder. 'It is the Führer's and Goering's intention', Wagner wrote in his diary, 'to destroy and exterminate the Polish nation. More than that cannot even be hinted at in writing.

Of course', Churchill told Linlithgow, 'my ideal is narrow and limited. I want to see the British Empire preserved for a few more generations in its strength and splendour,' and he added, 'Only the most prodigious exertions of British genius will achieve this result.

Seeking to encourage Collins, Churchill replied with his favourite Boer saying, 'All will come right.' On