The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all it oceans. It killed 50 million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization.
John KeeganThe historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.
John KeeganWell, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?
John KeeganOf whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.
John Keegan