Robert Dallek Quotes

The Atlantic conference in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland is a dramatic moment in World War II history because for the first time, Roosevelt and Churchill are meeting face to face in this war.

Mehmet Ertegun died in 1944. President Roosevelt sent his body back to Turkey on the U.S.S. Missouri. Mehmet Ertegun and President Roosevelt had had a cordial relationship, and, indeed, Mehmet Ertegun may have helped insure that Turkey did not ally itself with Germany, as it had in the First World War.

FDR’s War Plans

You may not like Mr. Roosevelt, but if he loss the war, we all lose it with him.

Our only president who has died as U.S. commander in chief in war is Franklin Delano Roosevelt - who died of a cerebral hemorrhage or massive stroke on April 12, 1945, only three weeks before the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces he had laid down as implacable Allied policy two years before.

World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.

Apart altogether from our own vital interests, we cannot and must not desert those other nations who have already gone through so much tragedy and suffering to defeat the evil designs of the Axis powers.

We have given most of Europe to Hitler. Let us try to hold on to what we have got left.

Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.

Most people learn all about the Second World War in school, or else, they see so many films put out by Hollywood, that it's easy to think we know exactly what happened.

Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

The bomb and the entrance of the Russians into the war will certainly have an effect on hastening the victory.

The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.

World War II really fascinated me because it's the only time that everybody in this country sat down at the same table, because eating on rations was your patriotic duty.

Just five years before that the Russians were our allies.

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

Remember, we know the end of the story of World War II and the Cold War. But day by day, living in fear of the Nazis and then in fear of the Soviets, the outcome was by no means certain.

If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies; they say the United States won the war and saved the world.

The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically.

I think this could be our best victory over Germany since the war.

Without Pearl Harbor there would not have been Hiroshima.

When the British people were asked what was the most important thing that the country had ever done, winning World War II came second. Establishing the National Health Service came first.

Many people are beginning to wonder who they should fear most - the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.

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.

The Four Great Powers? Who the hell are the other two?