"I followed the German Army into Paris that June... and on June 19 got wind of where Hitler was going to lay down his terms for the armistice.... It was to be on the same spot where the German Empire had capitulated to France and her allies on November 11, 1918: in the little clearing in the woods of Compiègne. There the Nazi warlord would get his revenge.... Late on the afternoon of June 19 I drove out there and found German Army engineers... pulling the [railroad] car [where the war ended in 1918] out to the tracks in the center of the clearing on the exact spot, they said, where it had stood at 5 A.M. on November, 1918, when at the dictation of [[Ferdinand Foch|[French Marshal Ferdinand] Foch]] the German emissaries put their signatures to the armistice. And so was that on the afternoon of June 21 I stood by the edge of the forest at Compiègne to observe the latest and greatest of Hitler’s triumphs.... I look at the expression in Hitler’s face. I am but fifty yards from him and see him through my glasses as though he were directly in front of me. I have seen that face many times at the great moments of his life. But today! It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph."
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American war correspondent William L. Shirer, in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/World_War_II
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World War II
World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1941 to 1967 It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. In a state of total war, directly involving more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the dist
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