Nineteen Weeks Quotes

“After watching operations Churchill drove away with General Ismay, and said, “Don’t speak to me.[287] I have never been so moved.” It was five minutes before he spoke again, and when he did he had worked out a phrase to express his thoughts: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“Britain had an asset that became increasingly important as the war went on, the existence of which was only disclosed thirty years after the war ended (Churchill did not mention it in his history of the war). With the help of Polish intelligence, the British had acquired the basic German military coding machine, called Enigma.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“There was one other anti-invasion tactic that was never admitted officially, at the time or later.[212] Churchill ordered his military chiefs to investigate the possibility of drenching the beaches with mustard gas if the Germans landed.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“It is clear from this that if Halifax and not Churchill had become prime minister, he would have wanted to seek accommodation with Germany, or at any rate considered peace terms if Hitler offered them. He would have had some support outside the cabinet. Some ministers would have followed him.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“The standing of the local high school football team was more likely to be the subject of conversation and concern than the war in Europe.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“Even Rudyard Kipling, that most patriotic of poets, whose only son was killed on his first day on the Western front, could write in 1919, in the persona of a dead soldier, “If any question why we died / Tell them ‘Because our fathers lied.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“This was the authentic voice of the educated British middle class, unshakable in its tone, meeting the war with light-hearted fortitude and an insistently civilized response. It is seen in the opening of a man’s letter to a friend: “I think I can claim to be the only person in Southern England to have been blown off a lavatory seat while reading Jane Austen.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“France lost 1.3 million men, 2.7 percent of all men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven,”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“That generation was inoculated against any attempt in its own country by its own leaders to foment a war by shouting rhetorical slogans or waving moral flags. But it was left defenseless against an aggressor ready to force war upon us.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God has given us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word. Victory, victory at all costs; victory in spite of all terror; victory however long and hard the road may be.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“spite of every lie uttered or printed, the truth comes to the top, and it is known alike by peoples and rulers, that on the whole British influence is healthy and kindly, and makes for the general happiness and welfare of Mankind.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“You have sat here too long for any good you may be doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God, go!”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“Churchill replied: “To fire willfully[23] on women and children is a disgraceful act, and I am surprised you do not order the officers responsible to be tried by court”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“What’s the difference between Chamberlain and Hitler? Chamberlain takes a weekend in the country, Hitler takes a country in a weekend.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“some of my good Baptist brethren in Georgia had done a little preaching from the pulpit against the KKK, I would have a little more genuine American respect for their Christianity.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

“was the first president to use the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon against opponents.”
― Norman Moss, Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940