“On 20 November, front-line troops got 500 grams of bread per day, factory workers received 250, and everyone else 125 (that is, two slices). ‘Twigs were collected and stewed,’ records an historian of the siege. ‘Peat shavings, cottonseed cake, bonemeal… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“One of the chief values reading history, this is the author, is its capacity to "provoke renegade thoughts".” — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“As one Finn put it after the battle of Kuhmo, ‘There were more Russians than we had bullets.” — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“They looked like scarecrows,’ Slim said of his troops. ‘But they looked like soldiers, too.’ He also recalled the heart-rending sight of a four-year-old… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“Grossly to oversimplify the contributions made by the three leading members of the Grand Alliance in the Second World War, if Britain had provided… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“It was on 7 March 1936 that Hitler comprehensivelyviolated the Versailles Treaty by sending troops intothe industrial region of the Rhineland, which under Article… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“The documentary and anecdotal evidence is overwhelming and indisputable; the Red Army, which had behaved so heroically on the battlefield, raped the women of… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“Hitler had done quite enough in his career to prove how utterly untrustworthy he was long before the Nazi–Soviet Pact was signed in August… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“Certainly the fighting around the huge water-tanks on the hillside was continuous for 112 days from the second half of September to 12 January… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“If you make war,’ he would say to General d’Hédouville in December 1799, ‘wage it with energy and severity; it is the only means… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
What finally scuppered Napoleon's Europe was of course the fatal combination of the English Channel and the Russian winter; the same unlikely partnership that… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
“and said that these councils were only ever resorted to as ‘a cowardly proceeding’ intended to distribute blame.” — Andrew Roberts Copy Share Image
