Second World War

“ World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. ”

“ In the giant warfare here described we behold a continent, well nigh a world, in arms. Along the rivers north of Paris three powerful nations, Germany, France and Britain, wrestled like mighty behemoths for supremacy. Far eastward, on the borders of Russia, Austria and Germany, two other great Powers, Russia and Austria, with German armies to aid the latter, strove with equal fury for victory. ”

“ The fact is more than our justification—it is our glory. If we had meant war, as Germany still hoarsely but more faintly says, week after week, to a world that listens no longer, could any nation of sane men have behaved as we did in the years before the war?—233,000 men on active service—and 263,000 Territorials, against Germany's millions!—with arsenals and equipment to match. ”

“ What were the unseen and unnoted conditions that, within little more than a week’s time, induced all the leading nations of Europe to cast down the gage of battle and spring full-armed into the arena, bent upon a struggle which threatened to surpass any that the world had ever seen? ”

“ The battles of World War II raged fiercely on three continents, the onslaught of barbarity was nowhere decisively checked, the democratic nations feverishly tried to overcome their unprepared ness for a conflict of such dimensions. ”

“ Most persons in this country, including all those who work for peace, agree with you in deploring the vast armaments which European States have been piling up, and will hope with you that after this war they may be reduced—and safely reduced—to slender dimensions. Their existence is a constant menace to peace. They foster that spirit of militarism which has brought these horrors on the world; for they create in the great countries of the Continent a large and powerful military and naval caste which lives for war, talks and writes incessantly of war, and glorifies war as a thing good in itself. ”

“ It is clear to us that if Germany and Italy and Japan--or any one of them-- remain armed at the end of this war, or are permitted to rearm, they will again, and inevitably, embark upon an ambitious career of world conquest. They must be disarmed and kept disarmed, and they must abandon the philosophy, and the teaching of that philosophy, which has brought so much suffering to the world. ”

“ First--encourage world-wide investigation into the most effective peace time uses of fissionable material, and with the certainty that they had all the material needed for the conduct of all experiments that were appropriate;
Second--begin to diminish the potential destructive power of the world's atomic stockpiles;
Third--allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great powers of the earth, both of the East and of the West, are interested in human aspirations first, rather than in building up the armaments of war;
Fourth--open up a new channel for peaceful discussion, and initiate at least a new approach to the many difficult problems that must be solved in both private and public conversations, if the world is to shake off the inertia imposed by fear, and is to make positive progress toward peace. ”

“ Such is the situation of Germany confronting a France who keeps her credit intact and her ports open, who procures provisions and ammunition according to her need, who reinforces her army with all that her Al{153}lies bring to her, and who can count—since her cause is that of humanity itself—upon the increasingly active sympathy of the civilized world. ”

“ If we listened only to our hearts, we should reply ‘No! ninety-six million times no!’ because our hearts would tell us we were a small, honest nation living happily by its free labor; we were a small, honest nation having faith in treaties and believing in honor; we were a nation unarmed, but full of confidence, when Germany suddenly hurled two million men upon our frontiers, the most brutal army that the world has ever seen, and said to us, ‘Betray the promise you have given. ”

“ The fact that Germany began the slaughter of babies and women in defiance of the rules of war, and has kept it up in frequent raids by warships, Zeppelins, and aeroplanes, whereas the Allies have very seldom attacked open towns, and then only as occasional reprisals following peculiarly barbarous German attacks, has won for Germany the condemnation, and for the Allies the commendation of the civilised world. ”

“ Our entrance into the War now has not only braced the whole moral fibre of France, Russia, Belgium and Serbia, but has strangled German commerce and held up her food supply by means of our command of the seas. Thus all the enemy plans have been thrown into confusion. We would be indeed foolish if we did not realise our position—what it means to ourselves, to Europe, and to the world. Having won the toss on a hard wicket, we are not going to put Germany in. We must fight to the death. ”

“ The times we live in are anomalous to any that have ever preceded us. For some years there have been universal and active preparations for war, and almost universal peace. To secure the greatest efficiency of armed forces for defensive and offensive purposes, has been the prime consideration of government, especially so, as far as the Old World nations are concerned. Europe echoes to the tread of vast hosts of war while the nations are driven to their wits' end to provide for their support. ”

“ For the first time in our history our troops have been sent to fight on another continent. Many persons have felt that we should keep our young men at home and wait for Germany to cross the Atlantic in order to attack us. Our statesmen, on the other hand, saw that the peace of the world was at stake. ”

“ So, full of this mad obsession, full of this frenzied infatuation, full of lust of power and conquest, Germany struck swiftly, blindingly, perfidiously—struck with the forces secretly organized for instant war, while yet the peaceful peoples were unprepared. ”

“ Wherever there was distress among our allies, German intervention, often with weak forces, always restored the situation and often won noteworthy successes. Germans fought on all the battlefields of the far-flung World War. ”

“ America speaks for the world in fighting Germany. Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's allies, and you will mark but four, running from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All the other nations, the whole globe around, are in arms against her or are unable to move. ”

“ It must be remembered in the third place that we are an insular nation, wholly dependent upon sea-borne supplies, possessing no considerable army, either for home defense or foreign service, and compelled therefore to play for very unequal stakes should Germany be our opponent in the hazardous game of war. ”

“ It will be so easy, when the right moment comes, to befool you. It will be so easy for the wolf to appear in sheep’s clothing; to masquerade as a victim; to pretend that Germany has been invaded; to give to a war of aggression and conquest the sacred aspect of a war of national defence!
“Let us suppose that, through ill-luck, the war ends in a German success. Good-bye, then, to your dreams, to European idealism, to democratic dogmas. Great will be the discomfiture of your Tugendbund. ”

“ Hitherto Allied policy and Allied war aims have been defined too loosely to be comprehensible to the Germans.
"The real war aim of the Allies is not only to beat the enemy, but to establish a world peace that shall preclude the resumption of war. Successful propaganda in Germany presupposes the clear definition of the kind of world-settlement which the Allies are determined to secure and the place of Germany in it. ”

“ The allied and associated Governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of herself and her allies, for causing all the loss and damage to which the allied and associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies. ”

“ It is unlikely that they can be achieved by peaceful means. The decision to make Germany a world power, therefore, forces upon us the necessity of making the corresponding preparations for war.
“3. War against England means at the same time war against the Empire, against France, probably against Russia as well, and a large number of countries overseas, in fact, against one-third to one-half of the world. ”

“ For the thirty years’ war in its wearisome progress makes the outward history of Germany, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, little more than a record of battles and sieges, with scant breathing-spaces of peace, not long enough for the towns to recover from exhausting occupations of foreign troops. ”

“ On the other hand, in a Constitution where the Subject is not a voting member of the State, and which is, therefore, not Republican, the resolution to go to war is a matter of the smallest concern in the world. ”

“ Germany prepared for war, tirelessly, ceaselessly; with her eye on the goal—world-wide dominion—she brought all her organising ability to bear on the preparation for the war she was determined to force on humanity. Britain, on the other hand, has had to improvise her war organisation since war has been actually forced on her. A run round the great base camps in France will show how wonderfully complete is that organisation—transport, supply, commissariat. ”

“ What I am pointing out now is that whether we fight Germany or not, a time is drawing near when Germany will cease to be our war objective and we shall cease to be Germany's war objective, and when there will have to be a complete revision of our military and naval equipment in relation to those remoter, vaster Asiatic possibilities. ”

“ And when all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death. ”

“ In most Entente circles it became more and more a matter of conviction that the military masters of Germany had forced this war on a world wholly unprepared for it, in confident reliance upon a great national delusion, among Germans, due to a generation of systematic teaching in homes, schools and public life, that Germany out there alone in Central Europe, was surrounded by a world of enemies, and that, to save her national existence, she had reached a point where she had to fight. ”

“ The first three years after the world war provided terrible proofs of the disaster which had happened to humanity in that deadly struggle. Those who wish to convince the future generations of the devastating effect of modern warfare upon highly organised nations, as a frightful warning, must summon up the picture of Europe in 1919, 1920 and 1921. ”

“ With an engaging candour and in every fount of type, unofficial Germany had made it abundantly clear how she intended to carry her designs into execution—how, first of all, France was to be crushed by a swift and overwhelming attack—how Russia was then to be punished at leisure—how after that, some of the nations of Europe were to be forced into an alliance against the British Empire, and the rest into a neutrality favourable to Germany—how finally the great war, which aimed at making an end of our existence, was to begin. ”

“ Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. ”

“ In remembering the nightmare we now know as World War II, it is natural and fitting that we pause to mourn our loss. Eleven million service members-more than 400,000 of them American-perished in that war. ”

“ While the guns roar from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and the greatest armed host that history has ever known is still locked in a life-and-death struggle on a dozen fronts, another war, more potent and permanent perhaps than the one which now engulfs Europe, lurks beyond the distant horizon of peace. ”

“ Thirdly, on the losing nations, including Germany, which is generally understood to be the most cultured nation in the world, the victors have forced a peace which practically amounts to a continuation of the War. The vanquished have had to give up their colonies, their shipping, their credits abroad, and their transferable resources, besides agreeing to the military and economic control of the Allies ”

“ ALL wars bring their full measure of miseries and misfortunes, and this world war, initiated by Germany for the purpose of imposing a military domination upon Europe and America, and conducted with methods which combine the barbaric standards of the Huns and Mongols with the skilled mechanism of the twentieth century, has brought upon the world miseries that can hardly be estimated or described. ”

“ These causes may be given under two heads: (1) the war waged upon us by submarines; and (2) the German plots and threats against our country at a time when we were at peace with them. The latter, as given in pages to follow, comprise: (a) The Kaiser’s threat, (b) Admiral Von Tirpitz’s threat, (c) the blowing up of American factories and death of American workingmen, (d) the attempt to get us into war with Japan and Mexico, and (e) the spending of the German government’s money in an attempt to make our congressmen vote as Germany wished. ”

“ Permanent peace will thus be established in part of the world; and for the rest, seeing that you cannot expect to achieve everything at once, there must be just one more war, in which Germany will reduce Russia to impotence, absorb the small States, and crush France and Italy without the interference of troublesome over-sea soldiers ”

“ The year 1915 was one of meager results, the advantages remaining on the side of the Central Powers, with this understanding, however: The Allies were growing stronger because Great Britain was making rapid progress in marshaling her resources for war. ”