“The preponderance of the entertainment and desire market is a stage in the social-pacification enterprise, in which it has been given the function of obscuring, provisionally, the living contradictions that cross every point on the fabric of imperial biopolitics.” – Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl (trans. Reines)
“The toughest job in the military is that of infantry platoon leader. The fresh second lieutenant who finds himself in command of 40 other infantrymen is often a newcomer to combat, younger than many of his soldiers and poorly prepared for the rigors of battlefield leadership. In spite of these obstacles, the new lieutenant must come to terms with the fact that the futures and fortunes of his men are in his hands. He must apply his theoretical training to the battlefield and learn fast. Truly, a young person can work under no greater pressure.” – John McManus, review of William L. Devitt’s Shavetail: The Odyssey of an Infantry Lieutenant in World War II
“The automobile is the world’s most effective killing machine, with victims outnumbering any war, with millions maimed, shocked, crazed by the car, half the world trashed by its production, made brutal, ugly, used up, useless, with endless highways and hospitals to maintain, most citizens in debt to their eyes for this toy . . . . Mr. Hitler’s Holocaust can’t hold a candle. After all, his is kaput. This way to the gasoline, ladies and gentlemen.” – William H. Gass, The Tunnel
“Slowly slime is covering the earth, more of it made every day—more whiny people, more filthy thoughts, crummy plans, cruddy things, contemptible actions—multiplying like evil spores (we were told to be fruitful, not to trash the place); so that now there are more artifacts and less art, more that is tame, little that is wild, more people, fewer species, more things, less world, more of the disappointment we all know so well, the defeats which devour us, the hours we spend with our heads buried in our books, blinding our eyes with used up words, while the misspending of our loins leads to more lives and less life—just think (we members of the better species) what divine sparks we might have played at being, and come and gone with spirit; instead, around us, as before, nobodies are killing nobodies for nothing.” – William H. Gass, The Tunnel
“To be free is the greatest blessing the world never gives.” – William H. Gass, The Tunnel
“What will we do when we lose the war? Prepare for the next one.” – Julius J. Epstein, Cross of Iron
“Amateurism is obviously differentiated from professionalism, but the criteria for differentiation here is not payment or quality. What distinguishes an amateur is not that he or she is not paid, nor that he or she is doing something in an inexpert way. Rather, the central notion of amateurism is the motivation to engage in a game or other practice for the sake of the game or practice itself. An amateur does what he or she does because of a love of the activity. There is no denying that amateurism carries a certain leisure-class connotation. A discourse of amateurism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, replete with clearly observable practices of rule making, exclusion and inclusion; amateurism was used by the elites to exclude and differentiate themselves from anyone engaged in manual labor.” – Halvard Leira, “International Relations Pluralism and History—Embracing Amateurism to Strengthen the Profession” (internal quotes and cites omitted)
“Disciplinary boundaries and boundary-keeping circumscribe which channels of publication are seen as relevant and also where specific types of work will be acceptable. Hence, they are also ultimately decisive for the possibilities of getting tenure and promotion.” – Halvard Leira, “International Relations Pluralism and History—Embracing Amateurism to Strengthen the Profession”
“The Reichskommissariat Ukraine had certain features in common with Nazi concentration camps such as Dachau: the pervasive terror; the obligation to witness public beatings or executions; the happy music during sad occasions; and the frequency with which captors observed their subjects with disgust or pretended not to see them at all. It is not surprising that the natives themselves often described their situation as one of captivity (plen) or slavery (rabstvo). ‘We are like slaves,’ wrote one woman in her diary. ‘Often the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes to mind. Once we shed tears over those Negroes; now obviously we ourselves are experiencing the same thing.’ But the Reichskommissariat was far worse than a slaveholding society. In the vast majority of past societies for which reliable data are available, slaves were treated with some consideration. Slaveholders and other nonslaves realized that in the treatment of slaves, incentives made more sense than punishment. Slaves were supposed to be used as servants—not to be disabled, let alone killed.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair
“The overall quality of the Eastern Worker experience is not entirely clear. The few who worked for farmers were generally satisfied with their treatment and payment, and initially some even wanted to stay in Germany forever. On the whole, the Eastern Workers, who were mostly females, worked much harder than either western European or Balkan foreign workers. In their native Ukraine, women generally worked harder than men.” – Karel C. Berkhoff, in Harvest of Despair
“I hopped off in the Podil [in Kiev] and walked down the Andriïvsky Uzviz, which was lined with beggars all the way. Some of them were whining and begging openly for money, others exposed their amputated limbs in silence. There were other, quiet, intelligent-looking elderly men and women, some with spectacles and pince-nez, standing there; they were professors and teachers of various kinds, like our math teacher who had died. In the case of some of them who sat there you couldn’t tell whether they were alive or dead. There had always been plenty of beggars about even before the war, but now there were so many it was simply frightful. They wandered all over the place, knocking on people’s doors, some of them people who had lost their homes through fire, some with babies, some of them on the run, and some swollen with hunger. It was bitterly cold and the people walked down the streets with grim expressions on their faces, hunching themselves up from the wind, worried, in ragged clothes, in all sorts of strange footwear and threadbare coats. It was indeed a city of beggars.” – A. Anatoli Kuznetsov, Babi Yar
“Food is given out in the evening. We stand in line, but instead of leading us into the kitchen in an organized fashion, they shout, ‘To the canteen!’ ‘Run!’ The hungry people rush to the kitchen, where there are several dirty barrels with a millet slop. Everybody knows that there is not enough food and tries to get at it first. Jostling starts. Now the ‘order supervisors’ appear and start up . . . a line using sticks, rods, rubber truncheons—anything they can beat you with. The usual results are head injuries, nearly broken arms, or the murder of an emaciated and weak prisoner. The beatings go on for hours. Meanwhile, half the prisoners no longer want to eat . . . They lie down on the damp ground—for there are not enough sheds for all—and sleep until 5 in the morning.” – Motel’e (quoted by Karel C. Berkhoff in Harvest of Despair; ellipses in original)
“All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden on others.” – Bishop Milton Wright (father of Orville and Wilbur)
“Before 1939, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy were the most influential nations in the world, but when the war ended, Germany, Italy, and France were in shambles, and Great Britain was nearly bankrupt and its colonies were pressing for independence.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“Between 1940 and 1945 the number of working women increased by 50 percent and the percentage of women in the U.S. workforce increased from 27.6 percent to nearly 37 percent. In the aviation industry, the increase was even more dramatic, from 1 percent to 65 percent by 1943. Time reported that in 1943: ‘Many a factory manager has found that when women are good they are better than men. They are more painstaking as inspectors, are nimbler with their fingers, don’t fret or get bored with repetitious work, are generally quicker, and particularly good at assembling small parts.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“American women achieved an unprecedented degree of independence during World War II. Many joined the military, and many others found themselves working outside the home for the first time in their lives. For those who entered the labor force and accepted employment in nontraditional jobs, the civilian day often began earlier and ended later. They were working a 48-hour week and still had a household to maintain. Everything from breakfast to bedtime seemed to have changed. Rationing and shortages affected the preparation of every meal, and the useful life of a piece of clothing was extended far beyond what it once had been. Working women adapted to the use of mass transportation, crowding into buses or streetcars rather than driving their own automobiles. Household items as mundane as metal bobby pins were prized because they were scarce. Working mothers had to provide for the well-being of their school-age children. Because day care was virtually nonexistent, grandparents or neighbors often helped. The phenomenon of the latchkey child began to grow. Because of the demands of wartime, juggling work schedules and maintaining the home, two or three generations of family members often lived under one roof, pooling their resources and sharing responsibilities. They planted victory gardens to supplement rationed staples, recycled whatever they could, and banked much of their income because there was little to buy. These nest eggs would play a part in the U.S. postwar economic boom as pent-up demand for consumer goods was satisfied. Although most husbands and boyfriends did return from overseas—some having been absent for more than three years—the definition of ‘normal’ home life had been forever changed, and aspects of the changed lives of American women in World War II endure today.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“By the time World War II broke out, Mussolini had been the Italian dictator for 17 years, and all political life revolved around this flamboyant, crude peasant from the Romagna hills in Northeast Italy. His Fascist movement was, like Hitler’s invocation of an earlier racially pure Reich, predicated on a return to the glory days of the Roman Empire. . . . He built up a huge though ineffectual army and bankrupted and terrorized the country. Although one of his greatest achievements, it was claimed, was making the trains run on time, the truth is that, as the war dragged on, nothing in Italy worked. While Mussolini spouted lines from Virgil and Dante, his people grew hungry.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“During the later stages of the war, German industry used slave labor procured from occupied France and Poland, Russian prisoners, and Jewish concentration camp inmates. The living conditions were almost unfathomably harsh: long unpaid hours of work, meager food rations, unheated and inappropriate quarters (for example, dog kennels, stables, bombed work camps), inadequate water, no toilets or sanitation, rampant disease, and no medical attention. The Krupp munitions plants were the primary recipients of this slave labor force. Krupp even built a fuse factory on the grounds of the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, in the same area where I.G. Farben built its synthetic coal-oil and rubber plant. ‘Resettled’ Poles and Jews were forced to build the camp itself at Auschwitz (in 1940) but also to work in these adjoining factories until they collapsed from exhaustion; then they were exterminated.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“In February 1933, soon after being named Chancellor, Adolph Hitler convened a meeting with German business leaders. The three business leaders most vital to the war industry and rearmament of the Wehrmacht were present: Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, who made armaments; Karl Bosch and Georg von Schnitzler from I.G. Farben, the chemical maker; and Albert Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. They were predisposed to support the new leader because, in their minds, he stood for order. Business leaders also believed, wrongly, that they could manipulate Hitler. Hitler explained to them that he planned to stay in power indefinitely, even if he did not win future elections. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, also present, explained how certain ‘financial sacrifices’ were necessary and that these ‘surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March 5 would surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years.’ Krupp was particularly impressed by the speech. On the spot, the Nazi inner circle was able to get promises of three million marks from the guests. Thus, from the very beginning of his regime, Hitler had enlisted the financial and political support of the major German industrialists.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“Japanese society permitted a young woman to teach, nurse, or work in the textile industry, but once her marriage was arranged, she was expected to quit work and concentrate on raising a family. But by the summer of 1943, after Japanese military expansion in Asia had been halted and the Allies were gaining the upper hand, tradition fell victim to military necessity. Once the ancient social barriers had fallen, Japanese women and schoolgirls performed hard and sometimes hazardous physical labor in steel mills and coal mines. They often worked 12- to 16-hour shifts in unheated factories.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“One of the enduring symbols of the contribution of women in World War II was Rosie the Riveter, a smiling girl in overalls and a bandana who represented the many thousands of women toiling in war plants from coast to coast, and who exhorted others to join them. These women, who filled the ranks of civilian jobs left empty by men serving in the armed forces, were an essential element in Allied victory.” – The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.
“I joined the army ‘cause there wasn’t anything else around. Not just for a colored man but for anyone. I had a large family, and we were really poor. I knew the army would give me three meals a day and a little pay, so I joined up. . . . I knew that the service wasn’t much better than where I was in terms of racism, but a full belly could take away some of the bitterness. I got clothes, a place to live, and a little money and even got some training on some heavy equipment. I don’t think I would have gotten that anywhere else but in the service. It was segregated, but I felt that I was doing something better with my life instead of just slowly wasting away. When I went in, we weren’t at war. I just wanted three squares a day, some spending money, and a roof over my head.” – Harry Kempt, U.S. Army, 93rd Combat Engineers (quoted in The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.)
“Because the unemployment rate in 1939 averaged about what it had been in 1931, some economists argue that the New Deal had failed to both put people back to work and to enhance private investment. However, others argue forcefully that the appeal and success of the New Deal had less to do with economics than with the expansion of political power by the central government. Still others argue that the New Deal was really about hope, and that Roosevelt and his programs helped stabilize the nation. What, then, is the legacy of the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Although the New Deal did not end double-digit unemployment, it did increase the power of the presidency and the central government. Moreover, it changed the focus of the national political debate. The New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt changed the ways that people view the role of the state in American life. The Great Depression forced Americans to wonder whether a system of free market capitalism was capable of bringing both economic growth and economic stability. Whether the Depression was a failure of capitalism or a failure of government policies, the U.S. economy ever since has felt, for better or worse, the guiding hand of government far more than before the nation’s economy collapsed in the early 1930s.” – “The New Deal,” The World War II Desk Reference (Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds.)
“We all had dysentery and that was worse than the enemy fire. During daylight you couldn’t leave your hole to relieve yourself. Still, when the Germans dropped ‘surrender leaflets’ they made good toilet paper. Your tin hat came in handy, too. You could use it as a shovel, a cooking pot, a toilet and a wash basin. Two boots made a good pillow. We had two litres of water a man a day and little except bully beef to eat; we ate it at night when it was cold and not too greasy. But there was always plenty of tea—a great morale-booster, with Carnation milk and lots of sugar.” – Private John Youden, 2/13th Australian Infantry (quoted by John Bierman and Colin Smith in The Battle of Alamein)
“Among the Allied military, the better-smelling fleshpots of Cairo and Alexandria were not the exclusive preserve of headquarters staff. A field officer taking a well-earned break from the desert could share facilities with ‘the gabardene swine’ of GHQ, as many front-line soldiers called them, and, if so inclined, pick up one of the attractive Nicoles and Babettes—Frenchified daughters of the Greek, Armenian, Jewish or Coptic middle classes—who, for the price of a meal, a few drinks and a box of chocolates, were often willing to offer the lonely warrior an hour or two of sweet consolation. For Other Ranks, the attractions offered by Cairo were more basic. The rancid bars, live shows and urine-and-carbolic-reeking brothels of the Wagh el Birket red light district did a roaring trade, as did the official VD Centres that were set up by GHQ to ensure that pox and clap did not produce more casualties than enemy fire.” – John Bierman and Colin Smith, The Battle of Alamein
“Prime Minister to Minister of Agriculture, September 26, 1940: ‘I am far from satisfied at the proposal to reduce pigs to one-third of their present number by the middle of the autumn. This is certainly not what was understood by the Cabinet. . . . Meanwhile, what arrangements are you making for curing the surplus bacon that will come upon the market through the massacre of pigs?’ “ – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour
“We don’t think backgrounds mean anything. We don’t want to think that who your parents are should control your chances for success in life, but they do.” – Eric Asimov (interview by Meara Sharma in Guernica)
“Over 1,500 factories had been evacuated from the western regions of the Soviet Union to behind the Volga, particularly the Urals, and reassembled by armies of technicians slaving through the winter. Few factories had any heating. Many had no windows at first, or proper roofing. Once the production lines started, they never stopped, unless halted by breakdowns, power failures, or shortages of particular parts. Manpower posed less of a problem. The Soviet authorities simply drafted in new populations of workers. Soviet bureaucracy wasted the time and talents of its civilian people, and squandered their lives in industrial accidents, with as much indifference for the individual as military planners showed towards their soldiers, yet the collective sacrifice—both forced and willing at the same time—represented a terrifyingly impressive achievement.” – Antony Beevor, Stalingrad
“Although shelter was the first priority, civilians faced the virtual impossibility of finding food and water. Each time there was a lull in the bombardments, women and children appeared out of holes in the ground to cut slabs of meat off dead horses before homeless dogs and rats stripped the carcass. The chief foragers were children. Younger, smaller and more agile, they presented less of a target. They sneaked down at night to the badly burned grain elevator south of the Tsaritsa, which the Germans had finally captured. There, they often managed to fill bags of satchels with scorched wheat and scamper away, but German sentries, protecting the silos for their own army’s use, shot a number of them. Those who attempted to steal German Army ration tins were also shot on the spot.” – Antony Beevor, Stalingrad
“The Great Patriotic War, with its devastation and suffering, colored the strategic thinking of an entire generation of Soviet leaders. Postwar Soviet governments created an elaborate system of buffer and client states, designed to not only expand Soviet influence, but to insulate the Soviet Union from attack. Although the Warsaw Pact countries contributed to Soviet defense and to the Soviet economy, their rebellious populations were a recurring threat to the regime’s sense of security. Outposts such as Cuba and Vietnam might appear to be useful gambits in the Cold War struggle with the West, but these outposts represented further drains on the Soviet economy. In the long run, the Soviet government probably lost as much as it gained from the buffer and client states. In retrospect, therefore, the determination to preserve the fruits of victory and preclude future attacks was a dangerous burden for the Moscow government. This determination, accompanied by huge military spending and ill-conceived foreign commitments, was a permanent handicap that helped doom the Soviet economy and with it, the Soviet state.” – David M. Glantz, Slaughterhouse