Dolores Ibarruri Quotes
It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.
Dolores Ibarruri, 1895-1989, Spanish Leftist Revolutionary, Common speech to the women of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In a massive terror campaign captured Republican males were shot and the Republican women were raped as a matter of the General’s policy. He would commonly broadcast—see {592113}—what had and would happen to Republicans who remained loyal to the government and continued to fight. It was the actions of men like this that led to the modifications of the Geneva Conventions.
Lacedaemonian refers to the ancient Greek city of Sparta,
Patton, though a great leader and fighting general, also was almost crazy and irrational at times. This quotation illustrates one of those periods. Somehow, most of the officers and enlisted men under his command were generally able to distinguish and live with him. In this case, no one tried to ferret out the cowards and kill them despite the Generals exhortation. Also, his—and other people’s notion that bravery is genetically inherited is scientifically incorrect.
Attila the Hun. The Romans aided by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, fought the Huns in the only battle that Attila ever lost which he lost badly. There were 165,000 men killed in an afternoon. The Roman General, Flavius Aetius, had been a boyhood friend of Attila’s and had fought with him against the Visigoths. The Romans had Attila trapped but his old friend let him escape with just a good thrashing to his ego and army as to not upset the balance of power and tilt it in favor of the Goths. Roman foreign policy at the time was to keep all the Barbarians strong enough to fight one another so that none would be dominant but all weaker than Rome. Divide and conquer.
An example of this was the landing in the beaches of Normandy in WWII. Once on the beaches the allied troops had to win or die. Some of the most heroic fighting in American and English military history occurred on those beaches. Another was the Spanish Explorer Hernando Cortez who after landing in the New World, had his ships burned so that he and his soldiers had to conquer or they would die.
Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, known as la Pasionaria (English: "the Passionflower"), was a Spanish Republican fighter of the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 and a communist politician known for her famous slogan ¡No Pasarán! ("They shall not pass!") issued during the Battle for Madrid in November 1936.
