When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Medal for bravery: today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance… — 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 180 had been specifically designated ademilitarized zone. Had the German Army beenopposed by the French and British forces stationednear by, it had orders to retire back to base and sucha reverse would almost certainly have cost… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share
“The documentary and anecdotal evidence is overwhelming and indisputable; the Red Army, which had behaved so heroically on the battlefield, raped the women of Germany as part of their reward, with the active collusion of their officers up to and including Stalin. Indeed he explicitly excused their behaviour on more than one occasion, seeing it as part of the rights… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share
“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 1939, yet as Alexander Solzhenitsyn pointed out: ‘Not to trust anybody was very typical of Josef Stalin. All the years of his life did he trust one man only, and that was Adolf Hitler.” — Andrew Roberts Copy Share
“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 1943. Historians simply cannot say, or even estimate, how often the summit changed hands, for, as Chuikov notes, there were no witnesses who survived all through the whole battle for it, and in any case no… — Andrew Roberts Copy Share
“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
