World War Ii

"The Nazi regime issued numerous laws and regulations during the 1930s to implement its eugenic and racial program, and, as we shall see, the practitioners of race hygiene-anthropologists, geneticists, psychiatrists, and physicians-were involved in drafting and applying them. Of course, their role had changed. They profited from being governed by a regime that favored race hygiene, but they also had to accommodate themselves to the regime’s political needs. They continued to consider the Nazis “vulgar and ordinary” and Nazi anti-Semitism somewhat extreme, but they accepted, even applauded, Nazi policies because they reflected an ideology they as individuals and as scientists had long supported. But even though they may have tried to maintain a certain scientific detachment, their assistants and students enthusiastically embraced all aspects of Nazi ideology. At times, however, Nazi ideology made life inconvenient for the race scientists. Fritz Lenz discovered the futility of objecting to one of Heinrich Himmler’s pet projects. At a committee meeting attended by Himmler, Lenz opposed equality for illegitimate children because he believed it would have a negative impact on the quality of the transmitted germ plasm. Himmler disagreed. The powerful Reich leader SS argued that illegitimacy was not a disgrace in the “real world” and that equality was needed to assure a high birthrate and to prevent the spread of homosexuality and abortion. German science was rapidly synchronized (“gleichgeschaltet”) with Nazi ideology after 1933, especially after scientists opposed to the new regime, as well as those with the wrong ethnic background, were fired. There was no effective resistance. Still, not all science was dominated by Nazi ideology in disregard of the German scientific tradition. For example, the attempt to establish an Aryan physics failed as older traditions reasserted themselves. Such restraints did not apply in the biological sciences concerned with the questions of race and heredity. There Nazi ideology and German scientific tradition complemented each other. Without hesitation, the race scientists fired their Jewish colleagues."

"As the Nazi regime moved toward war, Hitler authorized state and party planners to proceed form the exclusionary policies of emigration, incarceration, and sterilization to the most radical exclusionary solution of killings. The first group targeted were the handicapped. They were excluded by being institutionalized, but this was not enough. Hostile to their existence, institutions reduced services and sought to cut the costs of caring for mental and disabled patients. Excluded, incarcerated, sterilized, and neglected, the handicapped were viewed as expendable, and thus a logical progression led to the killing of the handicapped in the so-called euthanasia program. The other group of undesirables-the “Asozialen” were treated similarly: those committed to institutions by the courts were among the first killed; others were later selected for killing when euthanasia was applied within the concentration camps."

"Against the handicapped, the regime enacted into law the program long advocated by race scientists to control a population considered degenerate and inferior. The so-called sterilization law, promulgated in July 1933, served throughout the Nazi period as the model for all eugenic legalisation. It introduced compulsory sterilization for persons suffering from a variety of mental and physical disorders and in the process defined the groups to be excluded from the national community. This legislation was followed in October 1935 by the Marriage Health Law, which mandated screening the entire population to prevent marriages of persons considered carriers of hereditary degeneracy, particularly those covered by the sterilization law. Numerous ordinances defining and enlarging these two laws followed. As race hygiene had always linked the handicapped to criminal and antisocial behavior, the bureaucrats drafting this legislation believed that their eugenic laws should also cover “inherited criminal traits.” To accomplish this, the regime enacted in November 1933 the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and the Law on Measures of Security and Reform. The new provisions- articles 220a and 42a-m of the penal code-gave the courts substantial new powers to confine and punish persons considered habitual criminals. In addition to the penalties already provisioned by the penal code, the court were authorized to commit the ”Asozaielen” to state hospitals, to impose protective custody or longer prison terms on habitual criminals, to mandate castration for sexual offenders, and to prohibit defendants from practicing their professions or occupations."

"The Nazi medical experiments and even the program for the destruction of “lives not worth living” represent only the tip of a much larger iceberg. In fact, the ideological structure we associate with National Socialism was deeply embedded in the philosophy and institutional structure of German biomedical science long before the beginning of the euthanasia program in 1939-and to a certain extent, even before 1933. The published record of the German medical profession makes it clear that many intellectuals cooperated fully in Nazi racial programs, and that many of the social and intellectual foundations for these programs were laid long before the rise of Hitler to power. What I want to argue in addition to this, however (and here I shall be drawing upon a growing body of recent German scholarship on this question) is that biomedical scientists played an active, even leading role in the initiation, administration, and execution of Nazi racial programs. In this sense the case can be made that science (especially biomedical science) under the Nazis cannot simply be seen in terms of a fundamentally “passive” or “apolitical” scientific community responding to purely external political forces; on the contrary, there is strong evidence that scientists actively designed and administered central aspects of National Socialist racial policy."

"We should not allow our judgment of the ethical character of Nazi medical practice to hinge entirely on whether we consider it to have been based on “genuine science”. One cannot (or at least should not) radically divide the practice of science from its product science is, among other things, a social activity, and the politics of those who practice it is part of that science. Furthermore, we miss something if we assume at the outset a fundamental hostility between science and a form of political practice such as National Socialism. This was not how scientists themselves viewed the matter[..]"

"American eugenicists rejected the entire concept of birth control because it was associated, in their view, with an “antibaby strike” on the part of emancipated women. Curiously, at the same time that racial hygienists warned of a declining population, conservative apologists for the Pan-German League argued that overseas colonies were needed to relieve the “overcrowding” caused by Germany’s rapidly growing population. Similar contradictions would persist in the Nazi period. Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick in 1933 thus found it possible to warn of “race suicide” (caused by the declining birthrate) in one breath and then to call for the need to acquire “Lebenstraum” for Germany’s growth, in the next. Such pronouncements make one suspect that population concerns were (then as now) more the product of political interests than of incontrovertible facts."

"Hereditary theory remained a point of political contention throughout the period of Nazi rule (and indeed, for some time after). In 1939 the Moscow Anthropological Museum sponsored an exhibit on “Race and Race Theory” attacking the Nazi ideal of Nordic supremacy as part of an “effort by the German ruling class to justify its domination over subjugated classes as ‘natural’.” Nazi physicians reporting on the exhibit claimed that by virtue of their support for the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Soviet biologists had abandoned the goal of “pure science”; Nazi physicians also suggested that the Soviets hoped, with the help of the Lamarckian doctrine, to “disprove the existence of racial boundaries” and thereby “facilitate the assimilation of Jews into the country.” By this time, however, Russia was not the only country issuing official proclamations on the nature of heredity. In 1937 the Nazi party published its official “Handbook for the Hitler Youth”, issued as required reading for the 7 million members of this organization. The “Handbook” presented a chapter titled “Race Formation: heredity and Environment,” including discussions of Mendel’s laws of inheritance, Darwin’s theory of the origin of species by natural selection, and the Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics."

"One of the leading research efforts of Germany’s racial hygiene institutes was twin studies (for example, studies of identical twins raised apart) designed to determine the relative importance of heredity an environment. Suggestions that the study of twins might be used for this purpose date back at least as far as Francis Galton’s 1875 “History of Twins as a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture.” In the Third Reich, twin studies were lavisihly funded as part of an effort to prove that heredity was the key to many human talents and imperfections. Twin studies purportedly demonstrated the heritability of everything from epilepsy, criminality, memory, and hernias to tuberculosis, cancer, schizophrenia, and divorce. In 1933 Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer published a book purporting to provide exact ratios of the relative influence of heredity and environment in a wide range of bodily traits; he derived his data from the study of several thousand identical and nonidentical twins. (see Figure 8). Verschuer’s studies were followed by hundreds of others. By 1936 Otto Reche’s Institute for the Study of Race and Volk had examined 12,50 pairs of twins, recording forty-two separate physical or physiognomic traits for each pair. Eugen Fischer called twin studies “the” single most important research tool in the field of racial hygiene; Verschuer called twin research the “sovereign method for genetic research in humans” Racial hygienists were able to convince Nazi authorities that twin studies warranted substantial government support: in 1939 Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick ordered the registration of all twins, triplets, or quadruplets born in the Reich, for the express purpose of research to isolate the effects of nature and nurture in the formation of the human racial constitution."

"The Nazis found biology and medicine a suitable language in which to articulate their goals; scientists found the Nazis willing to support many of their endeavors. Furthermore, racial hygiene was not “imposed on” the German medical community; physicians eagerly embraced the racial ideal and the racial state. This in fact was perceived by observers at the time. In 1933 Fritz Lenz noted: Whatever resistance the idea of racial hygiene may have encountered in previous times among German doctors, this resistance exists no longer. The German core [Kern] within the medical community has recognized the demands of German racial hygiene as its own; the medical profession has become the leading force in making these demands. Lenz than cited the words of Gerhard Wagner, leader of the German medical profession: Knowledge of racial hygiene and genetics has become, by a purely scientific path, the knowledge of an extraordinary number of German doctors. It has influenced to a substantial degree the basic world view of the State, and indeed may even be said to embody the very foundations of the present state [“Staatsraison”]."

"Why did physicians join the Nazi party in such numbers? Professional opportunism certainly played a role: many reasoned that by driving out the Jews, jobs could be created for non-Jewish physicians-an important motive, given the overcrowding and financial stress suffered by the profession in the years before the rise of the Nazis (see Chapter 6). The traditionally conservative character of the medical profession was another factor. Prior to 1933, many German physicians identified with the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, a conservative and nationalistic party that eventually threw its support to Hitler. Most physicians shared a strong sense of national pride: in the spring of 1933, for example, the “Deutsches Arzteblatt” noted that most German physicians had taken part in World War I and that 1,000 had died “on the field of honor.” In the years preceding the triumph of the Nazis, physicians were faced with a series of economic shocks that moved many to realign their politics. Impoverishment after the war and economic collapse during the final years of the Weimar Republic polarized the profession politically. At the same time, physicians warned of a “crisis in medicine,” a crisis variously construed as the bureaucratization specialization, or scientization of medicine-problems blamed on the socialists, the Jews, or the numerous quacks that eternally plague the profession. Physicians expressed a desire to win back “the confidence of the people.”"

"The single most important classes of journals that, generally speaking did “not” survive the Nazi seizure of power were those publishing in the field of social hygiene (“Sozialhygiene”). These were journals concerned primarily with broader social or public health aspects of medicine, often from a socialist or communist point of view. The journal “Soziale Medizin”, for example, folded in the first year of Nazi rule, as did “Der Sozialistische Arzt”, the official journal of the Association of Socialist Physicians."

"The Nazi medical community also published special journals designed either to popularize the new racial ideal or to keep Nazi physicians abreast of social and racial policy. “Ziel und Weg” was the primary journal responsible for articulating Nazi philosophy in the sphere of medicine. In 1931 it began publishing in editions of 3,000 copies; by 1934 this number had grown to 16,000; and by 1939 the journal was publishing 40,000 copies twice a month. The Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt) published the popular health magazine “Neues Volk” (New people), issued as the successor to the pre-Nazi journal “Das Horrohr”, in editions that ran as high as 360,000 copies (in 1939); the office also published an in-house journal called the “Informationsdienst” (Information service) to keep its members informed on issues of racial policy. Circulation of the “Informationsdienst” was deliberately limited to 5,000 copies in order to be able to include confidential information; readers were asked not to repeat information published in the journal unless they withheld the source. Published from 1934 to 1944 the “Informationsdienst” today serves as one of the most revealing sources of information on Nazi racial policy."

"Socialist physicians wanted to legalize abortion; Nazi physicians saw abortion as a feminist plot designed to sap the strength of the nation."

"A great number of people in this country do not even take the Atlantic Charter seriously. They think it is some jiggery-pokery trumped up by Roosevelt and Churchill to propagandize their meeting at sea in 1941. They do not see it for what it should be: an extension of the Rights of Man, and another logical step in the fulfillment of the purpose of this nation. The scornful conception of the Atlantic Charter and of all other attempts to state our purpose will not do. For unless the spirit of the people is behind these declarations, they will have no true value. The essence of patriotism is in believing in the principles of America. Either you believe in the equalitarian idea behind this republic or you do not. Either you believe in Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" or you do not. Either you believe in liberty, justice, and right, or you do not. If you do, then our appeal to the revolutionary spirit of the world will be heard, but if you do not, all the Atlantic Charters in the world will not inspire the conquered nations to fight for principles that we proclaim but do not follow."

"Send us more Japs!"

"The sirens blow, and death is in the air Still at her post the trusty Captain stands, And counts her change, and scampers up the stair,As brave a sailor as the King commands."

"It gave me a good start in life. I decided that if I could learn to weld like a man, I could do anything it took to make a living."

"Nova Lee Holbrook, on how her experience in war work was invaluable."

"On the eve of World War II, Japan was a thriving industrialized power of about seventy million people. The nation had become a major manufacturer of consumer goods, but, by the early 1930s, the military-dominated central government was increasingly replacing the market economy with features of a totalitarian command economy, including strong government control and planning of production. A growing sector of production was being devoted to war-related industries. Additionally, during 1934-36, the electric power and oil industries were nationalized, and in 1939 rice rationing was introduced. By the end of the decade, Japan was on a war footing driven by wartime economy."

"Those Americans who went to Spain to fight Franco and stave off World War II have never minded being called "premature anti-fascists." They were proud of the label."

"We have long memories. We have developed a relative immunity to the endless barrage of propaganda, slander and outright lies that has been laid upon us. And especially, we are immune to the Big Lie that destroyed Spain and which Hitler developed to such a point of perfection that it was necessary for millions of human beings to die to achieve the defeat of the Axis. Yet the Big Lie survives and flourishes mightily in our own country today. As it is promulgated daily, hourly and every minute of the day through every medium of communication, so it must be answered- until our own people see it for what it is and explode it in their own good time."

"To a striking degree, the way the United States conducted World War II was a consequence of Roosevelt’s own experience as the assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I—a period that made him appreciate the benefits of overwhelming the enemy with machinery, as well as the risks of ground warfare. When he traveled to France in 1918 to tour the front lines, the battlefield disgusted him. The conditions for soldiers were too crowded, and he wrote in his diary that “the smell of dead horses” offended his “sensitive naval” nose. Instead, he fixated on logistics and material: the deployment of large naval guns, transported on land via train carriages, to batter German lines; a push for rapid advances in aircraft and bomb technology. He promoted a plan to thwart German U-boat attacks by creating a minefield across the entire North Sea rather than putting Allied ships at risk. (The scheme was not complete when the war ended.) Roosevelt’s work during this period also showed him the value of working closely with trusted international partners such as Britain and France. Strong alliances, he came to learn, were how modern wars were won. Unlike many Americans, Roosevelt did not become an isolationist after World War I. He understood that aggressive authoritarian regimes had to be stopped and believed that the U.S. could protect many of its own interests via machinery and alliances. He was so wedded to these two ideas that, during World War II, he provided Britain and the Soviet Union with massive amounts of aid without expecting any repayment. So much better, Roosevelt believed, to strengthen U.S. allies and let them do much of the land fighting. This approach led to one of his greatest successes as a war leader."

"It might have been the greatest lost weapon of World War II. Major-General JFC Fuller, the man credited with developing modern armored warfare in the 1920s, called failure to use it "the greatest blunder of the whole war." He even suggested that British and American tank divisions could have overrun Germany before the Russians – if it had been deployed, that is."

"I was there."

"World War II, at least in Europe, may have had some moral justification, though there can be some legitimate debate as to whether the US and its freedoms were ever really threatened, and certainly many of the Americans who died in that war saw their struggle as worthy, so that we may at least in good conscience honor their deaths."

"Unlike World War One, then, the Second War—Hitler's War—was a near-universal experience. And it lasted a long time—nearly six years for those countries (Britain, Germany) that were engaged in it from beginning to end. In Czechoslovakia it began earlier still, with the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland in October 1938. In eastern Europe and the Balkans it did not even end with the defeat of Hitler, since occupation (by the Soviet army) and civil war continued long after the dismemberment of Germany."

"The World War that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet, the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes; an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints. In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die -- men, women, children no different than us, shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death."

"There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war -- memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism; graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a species -- our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will -- those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction."

"At the war's end, the death toll of the peoples of the Soviet Union numbered some 27 million. Twenty-seven million people were killed, murdered, bludgeoned, starved or left to die as a result of forced labour by National Socialist Germany. Fourteen million of them were civilians. No one had to mourn more victims in this war than the peoples of the then Soviet Union. And yet these millions are not as deeply etched in our collective memory as their suffering and our responsibility demand. This war was a crime – a monstrous, criminal war of aggression and annihilation."

"Of the 10,583,755 tons of Japanese naval and merchant vessels sunk during World War II, 9,736,068 tons were sunk by United States forces, 5,320,094 tons being accounted for by United States submarines alone. Our submarines were doing to the Japanese in the Pacific what the German U-boats were doing to Allied shipping in the Atlantic; but the industrial power of the United States was almost limitless, while that of Japan was not. Until the closing months of 1942 the German submarines continually reduced the available total of Allied tonnage, but thereafter both by the improved effectiveness of antisubmarine measures and the stupendous output of American and British shipyards, Allied shipping constantly increased. Although approximately 23,351,000 tons of Allied shipping were sunk by German U-boats between 1939 and 1945, new construction reached the total of 42,485,000 tons so that the final balance sheet in the Atlantic showed a net gain of 19,134,000 tons. Japanese losses, not being offset by comparable new construction, were in large part final. Thus as the enemy's links with his extended positions and overseas sources of logistic strength in the Pacific were being weakened by our submarines, his very hold upon those conquests was challenged by the industrial productivity of the United States."

"The last seven months of 1944 had witnessed incredible progress both in Europe and the Pacific. The long-awaited invasion of Normandy had taken place. The Marianas Islands were in our hands and we had returned to the Philippines, well in advance of even the most optimistic schedules. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle for Leyte Gulf a great part of the Japanese fleet had been disposed of forever and the remainder had been made ineffective for some time to come. Although the war was still far from won, it was at least approaching its final stages on both sides of the world."

"To King, Leahy, Nimitz, and naval officers in general, it had always seemed that the defeat of Japan could be accomplished by sea and air power alone, without the necessity of actual invasion by the Japanese home islands by ground troops. In 1942, 1943 and 1944, while attention of most of the Allied political and military leaders was focused on Europe, and while the war in Japan was left largely to King to manage with what forces he could muster, the Pacific war had proceeded largely upon this assumption. With the approaching victory in Europe a larger amount of attention was concentrated on the Pacific by people who had not previously been too greatly concerned with the problems of that war, and an increasing amount of high-priced thought was devoted to it, some of which seemed to King not strictly pertinent. From the time of the Teheran Conference there had been the political consideration of Soviet intervention in the war against Japan, and the Army had been convinced that the use of ground troops would be necessary. Upon Marshall's insistence, which also reflected MacArthur's views, the Joint Chiefs had prepared plans for landings in Kyushu and eventually in the Tokyo plain. King and Leahy did not like the idea, but as unanimous decisions were necessary in the Joint Chiefs meetings, they reluctantly acquiesced, feeling that in the end sea power would accomplish the defeat of Japan, as proved to be the case."

"World War II gave King the opportunity of putting in practice another conviction. His earliest studies of the Napoleonic campaigns had indicated to him that the great weakness of the French military system of the period was that it required the detailed supervision of Napoleon. His belief that one must do the opposite, and train subordinates for independent action, had been confirmed and strengthened through his years of association with Admiral Mayo. During World War II King would jokingly maintain that he managed to keep well by "doing nothing that I can get anybody to do for me," but in all seriousness he could not have survived the four years of war without having made full use of the decentralization of authority into the hands of subordinate commanders, who were considered competent unless they proved themselves otherwise, and who were expected to think, decide, and act for themselves. Upon Nimitz in the Pacific, Edwards, Cooke and Horne in Washington, Ingersoll in the Atlantic, Stark in London, Halsey, Spruance, Kinkaid, Hewitt, Ingram and many other flag officers at sea, King relied with confidence and was not disappointed."

"I wonder when I hear people scoffing at the four freedoms and wondering whether wars, after all, ever really settle anything. Do we, even now, understand the revolutionary nature of this war? Are we putting everything to the test; will it help win the war? Are we clear on the enormity of our task? Do we realize the size of the stakes?"

""We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Could anything be more in conflict with the fundamental philosophy of the totalitarian states? These states do not agree that there are any truths in this paragraph; they deny most vehemently and have taken up the sword to prove that all men are not created equal, but that they, the master races, have the right and duty to dictate to the lesser men of the world; they do not concede that man has any "unalienable Rights" except his right to bear arms and carry out the will of the God-state; and they deny him not only his liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but his life as well."

"The second paragraph of the Declaration continues: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." This clearly is the very antithesis of the totalitarian belief. Those governments were not instituted to secure these individual rights for their people. Neither the Nazis nor the Japanese militarists nor the Fascists of Italy derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," and their concentration camps and common graves are full of people who even dared to suggest that the people had any right to criticize let alone to alter or abolish, the existing regimes."

"These are the thing we are really talking about when we speak of "our way of life"; and these are precisely the things that are at stake in this war. For the Germans have denied every democratic and Christian principle that has been handed down to us and preserved and developed in this great republic. The Greeks gave us the idea of intellectual liberalism, Plato the conception of reason, yet the Nazis deny their right to exist. Christ gave us the doctrine of love and mercy, but the Germans scorn Christ as a Jew and scoff at love and mercy. The French confirmed our faith in democracy with their cry of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," yet the Germans dismiss this as a hypocritical slogan to be opposed, as Hitler's pal Hans von Bülow has said, by their "Prussian realities of Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery." The Romans and British gave us our conception of the "rule of law and the sanctity of treaties," and we have known for years what the totalitarians thought of these fundamental virtues. We in the United States have given all these honorable things a worthy home and have proved to the world what can be done by heroic men whose minds are free to question and experiment, to seek truth according to their own conscience, and to listen sympathetically to the most unorthodox views."

"But we must understand that these are not permanent things. Democracy is no heirloom to be possessed and passed on like a Governor Winthrop desk. It is "an endowment like life that must be purchased in every generation." Sympathy and reason and true democracy can be destroyed overnight. They can be destroyed by a conqueror, as in Norway; they can be taken from us by our own selfishness, as in France. Every bureaucrat who tampers with freedom of the press, every newspaper publisher who willfully suppresses or distorts or minimizes the truth; every unreasonable citizen who nurses his own prejudices and refuses to listen sympathetically to the other fellow's point of view, is, we must clearly understand, endangering these principles for which we are fighting. Never before in the history of the republic has it been so important that we understand this fact, for in time of war these principles are often threatened at the top by a small minority of officials who would curtail our freedom to know, and at the bottom by a number of people who, even in the face of the enemy, cannot shelve their own prejudices or abandon the interests of their particular groups."

"The root of the trouble lies, I think, in the military situation. We do not like this unprecedented parade of bad news; we don't like to get shoved around all over the world; so we are complaining bitterly about almost everything. But neither do the British like it, and neither do the Russians, nor the Chinese, nor the Dutch, who have had to take a lot more than we have. Adverse criticism of our allies will not help our military situation. It does no good to complain now about Singapore; that milk has been well and truly spilt. It does even less good to meditate on King George III, or the last World War, or the war debts, or the unfortunate accents and manners of certain officials sent out here from Whitehall. I have not read any adverse criticism in the British press about Pearl Harbor (what would we have said if they had got caught like that at Alexandria or Gibraltar or Scapa Flow?); I have heard no attacks in the House of Commons on our naval dispositions or on the size of our expeditionary forces; I have heard of very few recriminations about our failure to be ready for war despite our years of criticizing British unpreparedness."

"Why, then, all the sniping over here? We are not doing anybody any favors in this war. This is no exercise in knight-errantry. The Russians and the British are doing just as much for us as we are doing for them. They need our weapons and what men we can send; we need their help, and we need it desperately if we are ever to win this war. If most of the people who are doing most of he complaining had their own way with our foreign policy, we might not have had any allies today, and unless we had wanted to connive with the Japs at the destruction of China, the Netherlands Indies, and the British Empire, we should still have been attacked at Pearl Harbor. There was only one honorable course on December 7, and we chose it; there is only one honorable course now, and that is to be helpful or to be quiet."

"I have heard it often- that if the conquered peoples of Europe do not like our democracy the way it is, they can go fly a kite. It is absolutely true that a great majority of us found the old life very comfortable and would like to go back to the "normality" that produced it; but... we destroyed that "normality" trying to save our lives and cannot now go back to it any more than we can turn 1943 back into 1938. Nor can we tell the conquered peoples of Europe to go fly a kite if they do not like our democracy, because we need their help and will need it desperately before the war is over, and in order to get it we shall have to remove the doubts that are in their minds. That means that the people of America must look forward and not backward. That means that we must prove that our democracy is just as efficient as the totalitarian creed of our enemies. That means that we must make democracy live up to its promises. "Most governments," said Abraham Lincoln, "have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men; ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it- think of it." The democracy of Lincoln is not dead. It has not lost its revolutionary fervor. It has not lost its appeal to the men of the world. Our problem is to prove that we really believe in it."

"France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war."

"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour.""

"I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone."

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.""

"The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

"Now may God bless you all, and may he defend the right. For it is evil things that we will be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail."

"The situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted, and no people or country could feel itself safe, has become intolerable. Now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage."

"His actions shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. And we and France, are today, in fulfillment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people."

"I am speaking to you from the cabinet room of 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany."