German Army Quotes

On a visit to Cologne in March 1945, after a heavy bombing, I met hundreds and hundreds of deserters who were squatting in the rubble, many in the deep cellars left from Roman times. They had been hiding there after the retreat from France.

I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army.

I was in the invasion of Normandy in southern France.

In the Second World War, they're talking about the Japanese traitors and putting them into concentration camps. But companies like DuPont had factories in Germany turning out stuff for the German Army.

If we have political forces in the Bundestag, and in parts of the coalition, who... say they want to spend money on pensions, not weapons. Then I say, be honest and say you don't want a German army.

I don't know what you think you're trying to do, but the krauts ought to pin a medal on you for helping them mess up discipline for us.

In March 1915, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the British fired more shells in a single 35-minute bombardment than they had during the whole Boer War.

After the outbreak of war, in April 1940, we left Geneva with our three children aged 4 years, 2 years and 2 weeks only to become part of the disordered refugee crowds fleeing across France from the German army.

Tom Arnold and I, we have a huge firefight scene on top of a German tank. I get to shoot 50 caliber rounds. We shoot a helicopter out of the sky. That's the only fight I'm in.

Germany expected that at the most a day or so would see Belgian resistance broken and the dash on Paris begun. It was not safe to start such a forward rush with Belgium unconquered.

It may be that at a given moment I, as the only representative of the Diplomatic Corps remaining in Paris, will be obliged in the interests of public safety to take control of the city pending arrival of the German army. I shall do my best to save as many lives as possible and to keep the flag flying…. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your friendship in case I get blown up before I see you again. [Meanwhile,] Here I am. Here I stay.

After World War I, while France and other Allies were building military defenses modeled on trench warfare, German commanders were shaping a nimble fighting force.

In the early hours of 16 December 1944, the Germans launched their last great offensive of the Second World War against weakly held U.S. positions in the Ardennes Forest, the site of their original Blitzkrieg success against the French in 1940.

From what mad optimism we descended. The Newspapers had done their job so well that everyone began to imagine that our army had only to show itself to put the entire German army to rout.

I was always known as the 'Desert Fox.'

I could not have the honour of being a German soldier because of my imprisonment in the First World War. And in this world war the Fuehrer refuses to allow me to serve as a soldier.

My father was not really a presence for me. He was away; he was in the German army.

This was like July 13th, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of the Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.

At the beginning of June 1944, the war was reaching a climax. German troops had been brutalised by the savagery of the ongoing fighting in Russia, where the Red Army was secretly preparing its vast encirclement of the Germans' Army Group Centre.

Ludendorff and Hitler have everything ready for a march into Saxony and Thuringia. The North German Fascist organizations ... have made all their preparations for the military overthrow of Berlin and Hamburg ... The officers of the German army are equipping the Fascists.

As a consequence of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the officer corps of the old army became part of this class, as did that part of the younger generation who, in the old Germany, would have become officers or civil servants.

I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies.

The National Defense Act of 1916 left the United States with a General Staff of 19 officers, against Germany's 650.

I knew it was called 'Dunkirk,' Christopher Nolan was directing it, and it was a war film. That was all anyone knew.

Very little changed fundamentally, except that the proud German soldier had turned into a defeated bundle of misery and the great German army had disintegrated.