2
" The Roosevelts’ social activities compared favorably with those of Winston Churchill, except that while the Roosevelts associated mostly with politicians, high-ranking administrators, and wealthy swells, the Churchill’s world was composed of princes, dukes, counts, and other powerful men who’d make fortunes from the British Empire.
Both lives contrasted markedly with the social scene in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, where there were no royals, elected legislators, or wealthy swells, because the Communists had killed them all. "
― Winston Groom , The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
3
" Strangely, contributions to the party came in from beyond the proceeds of extortion and robbery. Upper-class citizens (Marx’s “bourgeoisie”) often opened their wallets to the revolutionaries: doctors, lawyers, merchants, and factory owners who secretly hated the czar, as well as less well-off sympathizers including shopkeepers, academics, students, and the clergy. Lenin characterized these people as “useful idiots”; come the revolution, most of them would be killed or exiled to the slave mines of Siberia. "
― Winston Groom , The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
5
" The Midway battle was crucial. In exchange for 307 lives, the Yorktown and a destroyer, and 147 airplanes, the American fleet had destroyed four Japanese carriers, more than three hundred planes, a cruiser and a destroyer, and nearly five thousand Japanese sailors and airmen. It has been called, with justification, “the turning point” in the Pacific war. "
― Winston Groom , The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
6
" Noting these developments, George Marshall, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now secretary of state, had undertaken a fact-finding tour of Europe—and he didn’t like the facts he’d found. He told President Truman that if something wasn’t done to put the prostrated nations of Europe back on their feet, international trade would be crippled and some, if not most, of these countries would fall to Communist proselytizing and intrigue. What became known as the Marshall Plan was a multibillion-dollar American self-help handout in which war-torn nations could apply for direct aid from the United States after submitting a recovery plan. (The package was worth more than a trillion in today’s dollars and up to 15 percent of the U.S. federal budget.) Stalin stupidly forbade the Soviet Union or any of the countries it occupied in central and eastern Europe "
― Winston Groom , The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
14
" The trials continued week after week, until nearly all the old Bolsheviks who had formed the party during and after the October Revolution had been liquidated. In fact, of the nearly two thousand delegates to the 1934 party congress, half were arrested and many sent to the firing squad. The military fared no better. Three out of five field marshals were arrested, tried, and executed, as well as thousands of lesser grade officers. "
― Winston Groom , The Allies: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II