Wartime Leadership Quotes

I think that Sir Winston Churchill, in the period that the Germans occupied the Channel Ports, when the whole war hung in issue, fulfilled a role, which is as great as any role in our history.

'Il faut vivre' might almost be the French national motto from 1940 to June 1944, but who is to say ours would have been any different if the Germans had paraded victoriously through London and Generalfeldmarschall Von Runstedt made his headquarters at Claridge's?

If Roosevelt took this country into war and won, he might be one of the great figures of all time. But if we lost, he would be damned forever. The cards are now stacked against us.

I feel a special kinship for our military. Because, unfortunately, I became a wartime president. And committed our military in the defense of our country to difficult assignments. I tell people all the time, I don't miss much about being president; I do miss looking in the eyes of people who volunteered to serve. And so not only do I feel a kinship, I feel an obligation and a duty to help.

Presidents in wartime, embattled presidents, unpopular presidents, they all look to Lincoln. He's their patron saint because no president was more embattled or more unpopular than Lincoln was during his presidency. We think he was born on Mount Rushmore. Not so.

Despite an unqualified understanding that U.S. national security was inextricably bound up with Britain's survival, F.D.R. knew that his reelection in part rested on the hope that he would keep the country out of war.

We are all proud of is World War II where we went in, we were decisive, we came to the conclusion that freedom prevailed, and we were heroes.

If Wilson "took" the United States into the war, he must have done so by overcoming that "softness" of which [Theodore] Roosevelt so bitterly complained.

And what always struck me about that war period was how even Churchill had to talk socialism to keep up people's morale.

World War II was a must win.

Listening to a speech by [Neville] Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth's, everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however we have a new experience. We have a victory - a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

General Montgomery is the most irritating man I ever met. I have an idea that he might irritate the Germans even more however.

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

When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.

If you are going to be a wartime president, you have to have the characteristic of being able to be very, very hard.

I think that President [Dwight] Eisenhower was... did the most marvelous job in the war, not really a military job: a public relations job, and it was essential that there should be a public relations job done in the post that he had.

A wartime C.E.O. may not delegate. They make every decision based on the next product release. They may use a lot of profanity.

The wisdom and spirit of Churchill not only saved Britain from the Third Reich but saved Western civilization from a Nazi Dark Ages when no other nation was willing to take up that defense. Churchill was the greatest military, political and spiritual leader of the 20th century.

For over five years this man [Winston Churchill] has been chasing around Europe like a madman in search of something he could set on fire. Unfortunately he again and again finds hirelings who open the gates of their country to this international incendiary.

In the closed circle of the war cabinet, pounded by terrible report after terrible report, there had been uncertainty about whether he could fend off the drift to exploring a deal with Hitler. The determination of the larger group trumped the tentativeness of the smaller, and Churchill fulfilled his role as leader by disentangling himself from defeatism--one of his singular achievements at the end of May 1940.

I'd always wanted to do something about the Second World War, but I didn't want to do another combat film, whether it was air, land, or sea.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.

When I look at Franklin Roosevelt's leadership, I think the most important quality he had during the Depression and the war was this absolute confidence in himself, in his country, really in the American people. He was able to exude that confidence and almost project it.

I am a war president.