John Keegan

We forget today that Britain still depends for its livelihood and, indeed, its day-to-day survival, on the sea. But the Royal Navy…

— John Keegan

Hitler ... lacked the [inclination] for anything more than the occasional sensational display of emotion, in particular the great set-piece speech which…

— John Keegan

The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish…

— John Keegan

It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the…

— John Keegan

Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle - a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a…

— John Keegan

“The Second World War, when it came in 1939, was unquestionably the outcome of the First, and in large measure its continuation.…

— John Keegan

The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all…

— John Keegan

“It is one of the many graveyards which are the Great War's chief heritage. The chronicle of its battles provides the dreariest…

— John Keegan

The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam…

— John Keegan

Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?

— John Keegan

“Less than twenty years after the end of the Great War, the ‘war to end wars’ as it had come to be…

— John Keegan

I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put…

— John Keegan

“The ANZACs, clinging lost and leaderless to the hillsides, began, as the hot afternoon gave way to grey drizzle, to experience their…

— John Keegan

The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make…

— John Keegan

“Rundstedt, revered throughout the German regular officer corps as its last archetypal Prussian, refused to deal with detail or to look at…

— John Keegan

Soldiers, when committed to a task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others,…

— John Keegan

“[W]e are hardened to what we know, and we rationalise and even justify cruelties practised by us and our like while retaining…

— John Keegan

“Mankind, if it is to survive, must choose its leaders by the test of their intellectuality; and, contrarily, leadership must justify itself…

— John Keegan

“By the forty-second day from mobilisation, the war in the west would have been won and the victorious German army freed to…

— John Keegan

Some people are more terrorist than others

— John Keegan

“THE FIRST WORLD WAR was a tragic and unnecessary conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might…

— John Keegan

We saw the children and the women with their babies and then I heard the poouff — the flame had broken through…

— John Keegan

I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a…

— John Keegan

Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display…

— John Keegan

The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence;…

— John Keegan