Lloyd Alexander Quotes

I was born in Yangzhou, China, two years after World War II ended. I was 5 when my family escaped to Taiwan. Eight years later, we moved to Japan.

One thing that was amazing about World War II was that everybody signed up for the duration plus six months. Fliers got to leave combat after 25 missions, or 35 missions, but other than that, you were in it. You were part of the great effort, until, oh boy, six months after it was over.

Well, Italy had been overrun by the War, there had practically been civil war, north and south of the Gothic Line, heavy bombing, the northern industrial cities had been bombed heavily and we had political disorder before 1948.

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

I have spent the past ten years in just about every war zone there was.

My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.

You know, my dad was a lieutenant colonel at Ft. Lewis on the 3rd of March, 1941. Fifteen months later, he was commanding a theater of war.

After World War II society had to settle back for a moment before it picked up the 20th century.

The American people want peace. They have long since ceased to talk of a hard or a soft peace for Germany.

Sure we won the war, but the peace we’re losing badly.

The Yanks are coming And we won’t come back till it’s over Over there!

To-day the Peace Treaty was ratified at Paris; the War is over. A terrible era begins for Europe, like the gathering of clouds before a storm, and it will end in an explosion probably more terrible than that of the World War. In Germany there are all the signs of a continuing growth of nationalism.

I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.

When my father served in World War II, he wasn't told, 'Go to Europe for four months, for six months, and then you can come back, and there'll be plenty of big bases there for you to serve on, and don't worry about it.'

My father fought in World War II at the Battle of the Bulge.

It took us 50 months in Germany, post World War II to go from the end of the war to a national election.

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia.

All the aftermath that so frequently follows in the wake of war still confront the nation, and we now, as ever before, must hold fast to the ancient landmarks and see to it that all of these plagues that threaten so mightily shall be rendered harmless.

However, while the Nazi barbarians and their collaborators threatened the entire world, I could not accept his philosophy and, after several earlier attempts, was finally accepted into the Canadian Infantry Corps during the last year of World War II.

Since the early '80s, I've found myself in war zones in various parts of the world.

'Catch-22''s first readers were largely of the generation that went through World War II. For them, it provided a startlingly fresh take, a much-needed, much-delayed laugh at the terror and madness they endured.

In the event of a victory over Germany by Soviet Russia and England, Bolshevism in Europe would inevitably follow. Under these circumstances I would prefer to see Germany win the war. I feel that an understanding could be reached (with Germany) which would result in a lasting peace with Europe and believe that a German victory is preferable to a British and Soviet victory.

… the first armed aggression which the world has seen since the end of the war.

We are going to liberate Europe, but that’s because the Americans are with us to do it. For, understand this, every time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we will always choose the open sea. Every time that I have to choose between you and Roosevelt, I will always choose Roosevelt.

Almost every great war has led to a collapse of the coalition that won the victory.