The Grand Alliance Quotes

“One clear-cut result is worth a dozen wise precautions.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions, or one set of people get control who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of giving priority to the decisive theatre. There is a lot in this. But in war this principle, like all others, is governed by facts and circumstances; otherwise strategy would be too easy. It would become a drill-book and not an art; it would depend upon rules and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of the proportions of an ever-changing scene.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare,”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“To Admiral Cunningham it was against all tradition to abandon the Army in such a crisis. He declared, “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“The wicked are not always clever, nor are dictators always right.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“decisive feature. Tank divisions or brigades, and still more smaller units, could form fronts in any direction so swiftly that the perils of being outflanked or taken in rear or cut off had a greatly lessened significance. On the other hand, all depended from moment to moment upon fuel and ammunition, and the supply of both was far more complicated for armoured forces than for the self-contained ships and squadrons at sea. The principles on which the art of war is founded expressed themselves therefore in novel terms, and every encounter taught lessons of its own. ENEMY DISPOSITIONS Nov. 18. OPENING PHASE Nov. 18–19 The magnitude of the war effort involved in these Desert struggles must”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“Libya, Eritrea, Abyssinia, Somaliland, nourished by Italian taxation, comprised a vast region in which nearly a quarter of a million Italian colonists toiled, and began to thrive, under the protection of more than four hundred thousand Italian and native troops.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“The Turkish infantry were as fine as they had ever been, and their field artillery was presentable. But they had none of the modern weapons which from May, 1940, were proved to be decisive. Aviation was lamentably weak and primitive. They had no tanks or armoured cars, and neither the workshops to make and maintain them nor the trained men and staffs to handle them. They had hardly any anti-aircraft or anti-tank artillery. Their signal service was rudimentary. Radar was unknown to them. Nor did their warlike qualities include any aptitude for all these modern developments.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“In contrast to this, it is not in our interest to abandon Constantinople to Russia and Bulgaria to Bolshevism. But even here it should be possible, with good intentions, to reach a solution which will avoid the worst and facilitate what we want. It will be easier to find a solution if Moscow is clear that nothing obliges us to accept an arrangement which is not satisfactory to us.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“Although our American friends, some of whose generals visited us, took a more alarmist view of our position, and the world at large regarded the invasion of Britain as probable, we ourselves felt free to send overseas all the troops our available shipping could carry and to wage offensive war in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Here was the hinge on which our ultimate victory turned, and it was in 1941 that the first significant events began. In war armies must fight. Africa was the only continent in which we could meet our foes on land. The defence of Egypt and of Malta were duties compulsive upon us, and the destruction of the Italian Empire the first prize we could gain. The British resistance in the Middle East to the triumphant Axis Powers and our attempt to rally the Balkans and Turkey against them are the theme and thread of our story now.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“The effective combination of the whole English-speaking world in the waging of war and the creation of the Grand Alliance form the conclusion to this part of my account. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL CHARTWELL January 1, 1950”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“They said it was only a ground shark; but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.”
― Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“undismayed, and growing continually in strength. Six months later the United States, violently assaulted by Japan, became our ally for all purposes. The ground for our united action had been prepared beforehand by my correspondence”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“Every man in Air Force uniform ought to be armed with something—a rifle,
a tommy-gun, a pistol. . . . Every airman should have his place in the defence
scheme. . . . It must be understood by all ranks that they are expected to fight
and die in the defence of their airfields. . . . The enormous mass of noncombatant personnel who look after the very few heroic pilots, who alone in
ordinary circumstances do all the fighting, is an inherent difficulty in the
organization of the Air Force. . . . Every airfield should be a stronghold of
fighting air-groundmen, and not the abode of uniformed civilians in the
prime of life protected by detachments of soldiers.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance

“Duty and prudence alike command, first, that the germ-centres of hatred and revenge should be constantly and vigilantly surveyed and treated in good time, and, secondly, that an adequate organisation should be set up to make sure that the pestilence can be controlled at its earliest beginnings before it spreads and rages throughout the entire earth.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“the Bermuda Assembly, which is the oldest Parliamentary institution in the Western Hemisphere.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“lines from Byron’s Childe Harold: Here, where the sword United Nations drew, Our countrymen were warring on that day! And this is much—and all—which will not pass away.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“The drastic application of economic sanctions in July 1941 brought to a head the internal crisis in Japanese politics.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“The successful British air attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto, throwing modern first-class battleships out of action for many months, profoundly impressed the Japanese Navy with the power and possibilities of the new air arm, especially when combined with surprise.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare,”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“Although only about ninety or a hundred thousand fighting troops were engaged in each of the armies, these needed masses of men and material two or three times as large to sustain them in their trial of strength.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“A battle is a veil through which it is not wise to peer.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“On October 31 the immunity of the Halifax convoys from attack was at last broken, and the American destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed and sunk with severe loss of life. This was the first loss suffered by the United States Navy in the still undeclared war.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“I proceeded to a joint review of the British and American forces. There was a long march past in threes, during which the tune “United States Marines” bit so deeply into my memory that I could not get it out of my head.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3

“sufferance is the badge” of all who have to deal with the Kremlin.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3