All the other books ask, ‘What’s it like?’ What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What’s it like to be black or white?
I am not saying that during the Second World War Germany did not, under the leadership of the National Socialist government, commit crimes.
The need for a non-veteran reserve became painfully obvious in the Korean war when many of the men who were being called to serve were World War II veterans participating in Ready Reserve units.
I have heard from many readers since ‘The Girl in the Blue Beret’ came out. The story of my airline pilot, former B-17 bomber pilot Marshall Stone, on his search to find the people who helped him during World War II has struck a chord.
I suppose that I just grew up knowing, in a very vivid way, that if it hadn’t been for the men who fought in the Second World War, we’d all be living in a very different world now.
We’re living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.
Rights compliance helps effective outcomes, it does not hinder them. That should come as no surprise because the ‘human rights’ in the Human Rights Act are the rights adopted in the aftermath of the horrors of the second world war, and are designed to protect all of us from oppression.
Each summer, as Lake Michigan finally begins to warm, I think of the men of the World War II cruiser Indianapolis and the worst disaster at sea in United States naval history. I go down to the lake, and I wonder: How would I have survived what they experienced?
The women of Afghanistan, left behind as their men fought, did what the women of World War II did – used their wits and resourcefulness to preserve some semblance of civilization.
My paternal grandfather, when he was in the army in World War II – he was over in the South Pacific, and he thought he was gonna die. And he wrote a letter to my grandmother and their newborn son, thinking he wasn’t gonna come home.
The D-Day moniker wasn’t invented for the Allied invasion. The same name had been attached to the date of every planned offensive of World War II. It was first coined during World War I, at the U.S. attack at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, in France in 1918.
As British and French imperialism ebbed following the end of the Second World War, America became the main outside player in Arab affairs.
My parents were not born in Vienna, but they had spent much of their lives there, having each come to the city at the beginning of World War I when they were still very young.
Running for President is physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually the most demanding single undertaking I can envisage unless it’s World War III.
There was a belief after World War I that painting could be an act of civil revolt. I want this exhibition, ‘New Museum,’ to be an act of civil disobedience. It’s not so much about the New Museum on the Bowery, but the idea of challenging museums as projections of cultural authority. It’s painting as insurgency.
We have to make the argument that the only economically sound place to be is within Europe – we have to remember, it’s history again, that there are reasons we bound ourselves together as a set of European nations and it all came out of the second world war.
Ukippers are the kinds of fools who haven’t noticed they’re sleep-walking towards fascism. Many UKIP candidates are of the age when their parents fought in the Second World War.
Both grandfathers fought in different wars. My mother’s father fought in World War II, and then my father’s father fought in Korea. And they’re both these country boys, one from rural Tennessee and one from rural Louisiana – and they never went back home.
As a privileged survivor of the First World War, I hope I may be allowed to interject here a deeply felt tribute to those who were not fortunate enough to succeed, but who shared the signal honor of trying to the last to salvage peace.
I was opposed to World War II, and indeed on June 22, 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union I suddenly found myself the lone supporter of peace since everybody else had, because of their communist beliefs, shifted over to become supporters of the war.
When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store.
‘World War Z’ is basically a big-budget B-movie.
The latest rule is: you cannot have protectionism – otherwise you will get a world war. Other rules say you cannot have collective ideas that involve the surrender of the individual to the group – otherwise, you get totalitarianism or, even worse, religion.
I didn’t realise the depth of horror that happened in the Second World War every day.
The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.
Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized… World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.
In 1945, when the Second World War technically ends in Poland, the incoming Soviet army liberates some groups of people but begins to oppress the general population, in some ways more harshly than it had happened before.
After its defeat in the Second World War, Japan, unlike Germany, failed to show true contrition or give a fulsome apology, though it showered its neighbours, including China, with generous economic assistance. Only in 1995 did it finally offer an apology, but this was of the most limited and formulaic kind.
I had always been interested in mythology. I suppose my brief stay in Wales during World War II influenced my writing, too. It was an amazing country. It has marvelous castles and scenery.
Many people in Hungary acted shamefully during World War II.
Except for a short period at the end of World War II, I attended an elementary school affiliated to Kobe University from ages six to twelve and then moved on to Nada Middle and High School from ages twelve to eighteen. I enjoyed many out-door activities in my youth.
World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.
All one has to do is look at old footage of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and think of the people beneath those bombs. It’s horrific.
The novel ‘World War Z’ is told from the perspectives of so many people – speaking to the narrator – that there’s no way a movie could capture all of them. Still, the idea of turning a zombie pandemic into a war story is fascinating and could have translated easily to film.
Japan rose from the ashes of World War II as a ‘trading state,’ the model for export-led growth. It is not clear that the old export model of growth will be sustainable in a more ‘balanced’ global economy that does not rely so heavily on the U.S. consumer.
American soldiers wore khaki uniforms during World War II. Men’s khaki trousers became fashionable after the war, as homecoming GI’s decided to continue wearing the soft, comfortable pants in their civilian capacities.
World War II was a decisive time in our history and June 6, 1944, marked the decisive moment of the war.
I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go… It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, ‘Wait a second? Didn’t we just get through with that?’
The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.
Outside the walls, among others, is the Soviet Empire. It is malevolent, destructive and expanding. It has swallowed up over half a dozen countries since World War II.
My grandpa was a World War II paratrooper, my uncle a Vietnam Purple Heart recipient, my cousins both Marine Corps officers. I have some very close Navy SEAL connections as well.
Western Europe has been redefining the nation state since 1945 when it formed the European Union following World War II.
We can say that Japan is the only country that calls into question the outcome of the Second World War; no one else does.
For a while, I thought that I was only going to be cast in Second World War films.
American diplomats worked closely with the League of Nations. The United States used its considerable influence to settle some of the outstanding issues left over from World War I, and Washington took the lead in negotiating naval limitations in the Pacific.
Australians are crazy, man! Every night, I feel like I’m in a scene from Brad Pitt’s ‘World War Z’… the kids are going to figure out a way to from a zombie rave ladder over the plexiglass and come into the DJ booth and eat me alive… Not in a bad way at all.
I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives.
