Dieter F. Uchtdorf Quotes

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

The United Nations was founded 70 years ago, at the end of World War II. Since that time, Japan has steadfastly walked the path of peace and rebuilt a nation. And, since the mid-1950s onward, we have actively worked to share our experience of development with other nations, especially in Asia.

I actually happened to be in Haiti right before the earthquake in 2010. I was there already with the organization I work with now, Artists for Peace and Justice, visiting the primary school that I had adopted, the Academy for Peace and Justice in Port-au-Prince. I came back, and within days, the earthquake happened.

Europe today is hungry. I am not talking about Germans. I am talking about the people of the countries which were overrun and devastated by the Germans, and particularly about the people of Western Europe. Many of them lack clothes and fuel and tools and shelter and raw materials. They lack the means to restore their cities and their factories. As the winter comes on, the distress will increase. Unless we do what we can to help, we may lose next winter what we won at such terrible cost last spring. Desperate men are liable to destroy the structure of their society to find in the wreckage some substitute for hope. If we let Europe go cold and hungry, we may lose some of the foundations of order on which the hope for worldwide peace must rest. We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.

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.

Our sacrifices are terrible. I can safely say that there is no other part of the world which has been devastated on a vaster scale than Yugoslavia. Every tenth Yugoslav has perished in this struggle in which we were forced to wrest armaments from our enemies, to freeze without clothing, and to die without medication

By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors.

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.

As we all know, many people remain buried under tons of rubble and debris, waiting to be rescued. When we think of their suffering, we feel deeply and profoundly that we should be there, in Haiti, with them, trying our best to prevent death.

I grew up in the time of Germany after the war.

I can testify to what UNICEF means to children because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II.

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

I really connect with those moments of doing missionary work down there and just seeing the people that are dying from disease and hunger and malnutrition.

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

If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis for which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation [Russia]. Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been killed.

If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.

An iron curtain has descended over the fate of these people and very likely conditions are truly terrible.

I tried to read in the faces of the thousands what was in their minds this Easter day. But their faces looked blank. Obviously they do not like the war, but they will do what they’re told. Die, for instance.

Then comes the catastrophe. Then the great mobilization will take place in Europe; 16-18 million men, the flower of the various nations, armed with the best tools of death, will enter the field as enemies. But, I am convinced, that behind the great mobilization there stands the great havoc. It will not come through our party, but rather yours. You are driving things to the limit. You are leading us to catastrophe. You will reap what you have sown

We’re not going to need as many people to do peacekeeping as we needed to fight the war.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the occupation of Japan and Germany was the relatively free hand the occupation forces enjoyed in imposing policy on the conquered country. This was especially dramatic in the case of Japan. There, the occupying forces wrote a new constitution for the country and essentially handed it down to the occupied with little local consultation in ways that are quite astonishing today for their radicalness and their dictatorial quality. In Germany the occupying forces had the luxury of postponing national elections for three years giving them precious time to purge the old guard and reestablish order before putting the new political system to the test.

The cost of war is hard to count.

No attempt of any kind must be made at rescuing members of ships sunk, and this includes picking up persons in the water and putting them in lifeboats, righting capsized lifeboats, and handing over food and water. Rescue runs counter to the most primitive demands of warfare for the destruction of enemy ships and crews. Be hard, remember that the enemy has no regard for women and children when he bombs German cities.

Warsaw is burning. Warsaw is fighting its enemy in this last mortal battle. All the promises let us down, the help did not arrive. Lack of food and lack of potable water paralyzes and weakens. Yet we fight: with the enemy, with the fire and with the epidemics. Everyone is fighting. Whole city is tied in this mortal struggle. You send us letters of compliments and best wishes from London and Paris. We don't want wishes any more, nor do we await your help. It's too late for help. Before it arrives there will be only rubble here, a corpses-covered, leveled terrain. What we await is revenge. We expect that you will start fighting one day, just like Warsaw is… A day will come when Berlin will be set on flames, when German women and children will die just like ours are dying. I hope all of you will understand then that there is God's justice.

We should have known better after the first war.