Tokugawa Ieyasu Quotes
There are only two ways to come back from the battlefield: With the head of an enemy or without your own.
It was then customary to return with the head of a killed Samurai which would be made up as if in life so the dead man could be recognized. That way, the victor received more recognition with the importance of the Samurai who he defeated.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, 1543-1616, [Matsudaira Takechiyo], First Japanese Shogun Who United Japan, Famous Instructions To His Samurai Before Battle
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It was this code, and its implementation in Saipan, Okinawa, and other Japanese held islands taken by the allies that caused Japanese soldiers to fight to the death or commit suicide. The prospect of this code being followed by Japanese soldiers, civilians or both in an invasion of the Japanese mainland, was one of the major arguments in favor of dropping the Atomic Bomb in World War II.
This would be like an American President firing the congressional chaplains. However this is only one small, but telling, example of Atatuk’s secularization of the nation which had a great deal to do with Turkey becoming a modern great power—by far the strongest and most developed of the Islamic world.
Eisenhower was then the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces.
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.
Patton, one of the world’s best fighting general was somewhat mentally unbalanced and unlike almost all senior officers who are successful commanders but see war as an unpleasant, brutal necessity, Patton loved war and the fighting part of it. His non battlefield behavior was so erratic and atrocious that Eisenhower and his other superiors almost fired him on several occasions. He died in an automobile crash shortly after the German surrender, so the dilemma of what to do with Patton in peacetime was resolved.
Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; January 31, 1543 – June 1, 1616) was the founder and first shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fellow Oda subordinate Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The son of a minor daimyo, Ieyasu once lived as a hostage under daimyo Imagawa Yoshimoto on behalf of his father. He later succeeded as daimyo after his father's death, serving as ally, vassal, and general of the Oda clan, and building up his strength under Oda Nobunaga.
