" Whereas the rulers of Germany in 1914 and her allies who provoked World War I were—to use the term in its most generous sense—at least “gentlemen,” the leaders of the Axis powers in 1941 were thugs. They were, most of them, amoral murderers and brutish torturers who gained power through assassination and corruption, and more than sixty years after the fact this remains a stubborn truth. "

― Winston Groom , 1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls