Dunkirk Quotes

“Asked by an audience member at a public meeting whether he agreed with Hitler, Labour MP Rhys John Davies answered that he hated Hitler – as did the German people. He went on to argue that this would be the last war Britain would ever fight as a great power. In future, he claimed, ‘we should be a sort of vassal state of America.”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“Here are the widespread views of Churchill as a liability, and of Hitler as the ultra-human genius, the sorcerer divining Britain’s weakness from afar”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“What happens,’ writes Shirer, ‘to the inner fabric of a people when they are fed lies like this daily?’ It is a question as important today as it was when posed on 9 May 1940”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“For Lord Halifax, Britain was a geographical entity, a place of hills, dales, moors and tors, an H. E. Bates world durable enough to resist whatever brutal regime was in effective charge. For Churchill, Britain was more than this. It was the original model of liberty, a land whose existence depended on freedom and the rule of law. If these were extinguished, her survival meant nothing. And while both views were rosy and sentimental in their different ways, the latter was closer to the truth – and a great deal more humane.”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“And the fact that heroism occurred alongside negative behaviors, that it flourished in spite of base human nature, makes it all the more affecting and powerful.”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“Here are just a few tastes of Dunkirk's messy paradox. Life is always complex, nuanced, and contradictory. We instinctively know this. But too many modern politicians and media sources would have us believe that it is straightforward and monochrome. If one thing alone is remembered about Dunkirk, then let it be this: There was no single story. And this is a theme reinforced by Chris Nolan's film, which takes place in three realms: land, sea, and air. In each of these realms, people were having very different experiences. And they are all equally valid.”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“United States ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, who had just told Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, that he was disgusted with Britain’s performance. Britain would, Kennedy was quite sure, lose the war.”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“And though it would never be publicly admitted, they must also be brainwashed to adopt his ideology. Pure by blood, stripped of free will, they were going to make Germany great again.”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture

“Isle of Guernsey, meanwhile, was responsible for picking Flying Officer Ken Newton out of the sea. Newton was an RAF pilot who had bailed out after a dogfight. Like the character Collins in the film, he was helped out of the water by sailors. The sailors were killed, however, by German aircraft raking them with machine-gun fire as they”
― Joshua Levine, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture