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Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War QUOTES

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War QUOTES

1 " Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war) "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

2 " Bethmann-Hollweg era davvero irremovibile non tanto sulle sue richieste territoriali – cercò, a un certo punto, di dissuadere il Kaiser dall’insistere sull’annessione del Belgio – quanto sull’intenzione di imporre una unione doganale sul continente: «è sottinteso che l’unione doganale dovrà rendere possibile il controllo della Germania sull’Europa» "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

3 " As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

4 " The quirky little melodrama that unfolded in Bosnia on 28 June 1914 played the same role in the history of the world as might a wasp sting on a chronically ailing man who is maddened into abandoning a sickbed to devote his waning days to destroying the nest "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

5 " Germany’s highest commander succumbed to a disease common among senior soldiers of many nationalities and eras: he wished to demonstrate to his government and people that their vastly expensive armed forces could fulfil their fantasies. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

6 " Machiavelli observed that ‘wars begin when you will, but do not end when you please’. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

7 " We are readying ourselves to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness (Andre Gide, 28 July 1914) "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

8 " Winston Churchill wrote afterwards: 'No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed. Nor was there any other period in the War when the general battle was waged on so great a scale, when the slaughter was so swift or the stakes so high. Moreover, in the beginning, our faculties of wonder, horror, or excitement had not been cauterized and deadened by the furnace fires of years. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

9 " Sir Edward Grey belongs to the class which, through heredity and tradition, expects to find a place on the magisterial bench to sit in judgement upon and above their fellow men, before they ever have any opportunity to make themselves acquainted with the tasks and trials of mankind. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

10 " It is not only more bloody and more murderous than any previous wars but also more cruel, more relentless, more pitiless … It discards all the parameters to which we defer in times of peace and which we called the rights of man. It does not recognise the privileges of the wounded man or of the doctor and it does not distinguish between non-combatants and the fighting part of the population. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

11 " All politicians find it hard to address with conviction more than one emergency at a time. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

12 " Here was a manifestation of a huge, historic British folly, repeated over many centuries including the twenty-first: the adoption of gesture strategy, committing small forces as an earnest of good intentions, heedless of their gross inadequacy for the military purpose at hand. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

13 " The French were more tolerant of brothels than any other nation in Europe, though there was some dispute about whether this reflected enlightenment or depravity. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

14 " The Götterdämmerung of the bourgeois world is approaching. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

15 " Potiorek was a bachelor who had devoted his life monastically to his profession, while remaining ignorant of every aspect of it that was either modern or important; "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

16 " German test pilot Ernst Canter noted in his logbook that while in 1910 he flew at a height of eighty feet, two years later he was ascending to almost 5,000. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

17 " It is incontrovertible that the First World War was a catastrophe for Europe. It remains hard to see, however, by what means its statesmen could have extracted themselves from the struggle once it began, in advance of a decision on the battlefield. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

18 " With the onset of successive days of high winds and snow blizzards, the battle of Ypres faded away, leaving both sides to hold their blood-soaked positions. The most significant territorial outcome was that the Germans had gained the high ground along the Messines ridge, and held it until June 1917. But they had suffered 80,000 casualties around Ypres, many regiments losing two-thirds of their strength or even more. A German wrote home: ‘I have been living through days that defy imagination. I should never have thought men could stand it … Our 1st battalion, which has fought with unparalleled bravery, is reduced from 1200 men to 194. God grant that I may see you again soon and that this horror may soon be over.’ The writer was fortunate enough to be taken prisoner soon afterwards. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

19 " Meanwhile in the East, within weeks of abandoning their harvest fields, shops and lathes, newly mobilised Russian, Austrian and German soldiers met in huge clashes; tiny Serbia inflicted a succession of defeats on the Austrians which left the Hapsburg Empire reeling, having by Christmas suffered 1.27 million casualties at Serb and Russian hands, amounting to one in three of its soldiers mobilised. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

20 " everything seemed strange, ominous and unreal, like the yellow glare which precedes a storm. There were moments when I felt as if I had died, and woken up in an unknown world. And so I had. "

― Max Hastings , Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War