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A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 QUOTES

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 QUOTES

1 " The troops were cracking because they could not absorb what was happening to them, because they knew themselves to be utterly powerless (bravery had little survival value when one was on the receiving end of a bombardment), and because they had no confidence that the generals who had put them in danger knew what they were doing. Men whose courage was beyond challenge could and did break down if subjected to enough strain of this kind. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

2 " People everywhere were being told that this war was no continuation of politics by other means, no traditional struggle for limited objectives. It was a fight to the death with the forces of evil, and the stakes were survival and civilization itself. It is no simple thing to make people believe such things and later persuade them to accept a settlement based on compromise. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

3 " There arose in the aftermath of this battle the strangest and most beautiful legend of the war. It was said that, when the British peril was at its height, a majestic figure had appeared high in the sky with arm upraised. Some said it had been pointing to victory, others that it held back the Germans as the Tommies got away. It came to be known as the Angel of Mons. Even more colorful was the simultaneous legend of the Archers of Agincourt. In the late Middle Ages at Agincourt—not a great distance from Mons—English yeomen armed with longbows had won a great victory over a much bigger force of mounted and armored French knights. Four hundred and ninety-nine years later there were stories of German soldiers found dead at Mons with arrows through their bodies. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

4 " Unprovable stories about her sexual encounters with a horse have come down to the twenty-first century. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

5 " defensive. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

6 " Almost everything they heard and read assured them that their glorious armies would soon be victorious, that their cause was a noble one, and that the enemy was wicked in ways rarely seen in history. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

7 " At one of the villages, Wytschaete, there was hard fighting a day after the opening of the dikes. A unit of Bavarians had tried to take Wytschaete and failed, and in the aftermath of the attack a captain named Hoffman lay badly wounded between his troops and the French defenders. One of Hoffman’s men moved out of a protected position and, under enemy fire, picked him up and carried him to safety. The rescue accomplished nothing—the captain soon died of his wounds. But his rescuer would claim years later, in a notorious book, that his escape without a scratch was his first intimation that he was being spared for some great future. In the nearer term he was decorated for bravery. It was just a few days after Adolf Hitler’s exploit that Kaiser Wilhelm pinned the Iron Cross Second Class on his tunic. "

― G.J. Meyer , A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918