George S. Patton Quotes
Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect.
D'Este, Carlo. Patton: A Genius for War. HarperCollins, 1995.
She and her husband, like many of the "America Firsters", believed that Hitler should be allowed to overrun Europe and Russia.
See Prince Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen {632620} for a similar focus on "iron and blood". This is no coincidence as Lindemann had been the Captain of the Battleship Bismarck.
Voltaire made this quotation famous but he did not originate it. Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, another ho wrote it over 100 years earlier (See {596505} ). Sometimes the origin is attributed to Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, 1611-1675, a French General.
In this case, he was referring to the situation with the Barbary Pirates who had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. Jefferson favored and authorized war—a naval attack which for many reasons the European nations had not done (they just paid the tribute). Then a peace treaty was finally signed—the first American Treaty.
George Smith Patton Jr. was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France and Germany after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
