X EndQuote52
 

Is my reaction is unfounded, do quotes from Adolf Hitler belong in this game?

I became uncomfortable when I saw this end quote: "Strength lies not in defense but in attack," attributed to the Adolf Hitler, appear as a closing quote to the game. So when I found it in the Text folder, I placed an x preceding the file name EndQuote52.

Although I googled the quote and found another instance of the quote but attributed to Marquis de Acerba, I was not able to locate a biography to learn about de Acerba.

Re: X EndQuote52
 

It's unfounded, in my opinion. We would have to remove quotes from Stalin as well. While we're at it, let's remove the SS units from the German orbat, hell, take Germany completely out.. and we have no game. History is ugly, and WW2 was extremely ugly (for example, there's video on Youtube of the mass hanging and shooting of civilians at Pancevo in 1941, committed by the Grossdeutschland, not the SS). I'd say sanitize the game as much as you like, but I think it's good to be reminded of the unimaginable, historical ugliness of which the game is a highly sanitized abstraction.

Besides, that quote makes perfect military sense, why not include it?

Re: X EndQuote52
 

No, of course your reaction isn't "unfounded." Hitler is perhaps the twentieth century's most notorious character and if your ancestors were victims of his policies your objection is understandable.

But I'd agree with mkr on this. By most accounts Hitler, like Stalin, was a moral monster--or, if you prefer, a delusional psychotic. That doesn't mean everything he said was wrong.

Of course some would insist that quoting an historical villain constitutes "rehabilitation" or justification for anything he did. But as B.H. Liddell Hart noted, "If you want peace, understand war." And sometimes understanding war means getting into the heads of those who practice(d) it with some success.

One doesn't have to be an uncritical admirer of ruthless conquerors to benefit from a study of their military--as opposed to sociopolitical--theories and practices. The campaigns of Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and others who created "mountains of skulls" are studied regardless of how they treated conquered or minority peoples.

If we fail to consider subjugators like Hitler, how can we stop rogues like him in future? Besides, some people might complain if his quote is removed; I understand Mein Kampf is a perennial bestseller in the Middle East :shock:.

Re: X EndQuote52
 

It would seem someone is or was being clever. The saying is definitely a quote from Hilter made in circa 1935. Of Marquis de Acerba someone has used the combination of French and Spanish orgin words. The French meaning of Marquis being a "middle" nobleman with the Spanish spelling the same. The de Acerba is from the Spanish meaning "of bitter" or the better secondary meaning "of severe or cruel". I would suggust that Hilter was the Marquis of Cruel.

One of the greatest cavalry officers of the U.S. Civil War was Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest he was absoulutely brillant in his tactics and extremley brave to the point of leading a charge against Union forces as it would turnout by himself and breaking the enemy position in confusion. But many people would remember him for being the first "Grand Wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Yet the study of his tactics as applied to modern armor/mech. tactics were (Still are?) required training in the USMA and associated Army training schools.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Sir Winston Churchill- That's the true lesson here; play on, I say.

It is always good to excercise the mind before going to bed.

Regards,
Pat

Re: X EndQuote52
 

Isn't ignoring/purging "inconvenient" history what Political Correctness is all about?

One quote not in the game, made by yours truly in a speech I once had to give:

"Free Speech exists only when people are willing to defend the right of others to say things they object to."

Re: X EndQuote52
 

I'm most certainly anti-Nazi IRL, but I cant see the problem using a Hitler quote. I also love the fact that SP games are one of the few games around that dont enforce the no-swastikas rule in video games, if anything the actual flag of Germany at the time.

Re: X EndQuote52
 

Seems a strange reaction to me, if you want to remove Hitler from the game then remove his armies they caused far more harm than those words which are valid.

Re: X EndQuote52
 

Can't tell you how many sheets of swastika decals I've had to order for my 1/72 Luftwaffe models over the years because kits with those decals can't be marketed in Germany and other countries in Europe. I think we, who derive so much enjoyment from history and wargaming, can't be reminded too often of the horrors faced by those who lived in those times. The book 'Frontsoldaten,' a collection of accounts from German soldiers during WW2, conveys the abject brutality, cruelty, and terror of the war in a way that nothing else I've seen has even come close to doing.

Re: X EndQuote52
 

I don't want to belabour the points that others have made, but even Satan gets quoted in the Bible!

Anyway, there are 100 quotes in the game.
I did work on a quote mod a while back, but never finished it.
Perhaps I'll post it some time.

Here's the vanilla list:

1. "Engines of war have long since reached their limits, and I see no further hope of any improvement in the art."*
*
_Frontinus, 90 AD

2. "Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."*
*
_Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke to his staff

3. "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."*
*
_Sun Tzu

4. "No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account."*
*
_Winston Churchill

5. "There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear."*
*
_George S. Patton

6. "Never cut off a man's escape route unless you want to see just how hard he can fight"*
*
_Sun Tzu

7. "Only the dead have seen the end of war."*
*
_Plato

8. "I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me."*
*
_Arthur Wellesley, Duke Of Wellington

9. "Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."*
*
_Arthur Wellesley, Duke Of Wellington

10. "Men are seldom born brave but they acquire courage through training and discipline - a handful of men inured to war proceed to certain victory; while on the contrary numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter."*
*
_Vegetius,(3rd c. AD)

11. "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,*
And the women come out to cut up what remains,*
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,*
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.*
*
_Rudyard Kipling

12. "The beginning of leadership is a battle for the hearts and minds of men." *
*
_Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

13. "There is no point in having the capacity if you haven't got the will to use it."*
*
_Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

14. "It is always a good thing to persuade the soldier that what you want him to do is right." *
*
_Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

15. "A piece of paper makes you an officer, a radio makes you a commander." *
*
_General Omar Bradley

16. "There are no bad regiments, there are only bad officers." *
*
_Field Marshall Lord Slim

17. "All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know from what you do." *
*
_Arthur Wellesley, Duke Of Wellington

18. "A great part of the information obtained in war is contradictory, a still greater part is false and by far the greatest part is of doubtful character."*
*
_Carl von Clausewitz

19. "If you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be in danger in every single battle."*
*
_Sun Tzu

20. "War is the province of uncertainty; three-fourths of the things on which action in war is based lie hidden in the fog of uncertainty."*
*
_Carl von Clausewitz

21. "The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose." *
*
_Henry Kissinger

22. "The way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak."*
*
_Sun Tzu

23. "Opportunity in war is usually of greater value than bravery.*
Terrain is often of more value than bravery.*
Bravery is of more value than numbers."**
*
_Vegetius,(3rd c. AD)

24. "It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph."*
*
_Edmund Burke

25. "Tanks are easily identified, easily engaged, much-feared targets which attract all the fire on the battlefield. When all is said and done, a tank is a small steel box crammed with flammable or explosive substances which is easily converted into a mobile crematorium for its highly skilled crew."*
*
_Brigadier Shelford Bidwell

26. "Being shelled is the real work of an infantry soldier, which no one talks about. Everyone has his own way of going about it. In general, it means lying face down and contracting your body into a small a space as possible."*
*
_Louis Simpson

27. "War is fear cloaked in courage."*
*
_General William Westmoreland

28. "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."*
*
_Dwight D. Eisenhower

29. "No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb."*
*
_Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fireside Chat (December 29, 1940)

30. "Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and privates."*
*
_F E Adcock

31. "Youth is the first victim of war; the first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him."*
*
_Baudouin I

32. "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon."*
*
_Napoleon Bonaparte

33. "Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in."*
*
_Napoleon Bonaparte

34. "The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes."*
*
_Napoleon Bonaparte

35. "Veni, Vidi, Vici" ( I came, I saw, I conquered)."*
*
_Julius Caesar

36. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill

37. "A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill

38. "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill

39. "The British and Americans do not want war with races or governments as such. Tyranny, external or internal, is our foe"*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill

40. "Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar"*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill

41. "Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill

42. "To secure peace is to prepare for war."*
*
_Karl Von Clausewitz

43. "In a man to man fight the winner is the one who puts an extra round in his magazine"*
*
_ Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

44. "Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity."*
*
_Karl Von Clausewitz

45. "I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war."*
*
_Georges Clemenceau

46. "War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."*
*
_Georges Clemenceau

47. "There is deceit and cunning and from these wars arise"*
*
_Confucius

48. "The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten."*
*
_Calvin Coolidge

49. "No one would be foolish enough to choose war over peace - in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons."*
*
_Croesus of Lydia

50. "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity"*
*
_Dwight David Eisenhower

51. "The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on"*
*
_President Ulysses S Grant

52. "Strength lies not in defense but in attack."*
*
_Adolf Hitler

53. "In war there is no substitute for victory."*
*
_General Douglas MacArthur

54. "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."*
*
_General Douglas MacArthur

55. "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed."*
*
_Mao Zedong

56. "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."*
*
_Lao Zi

57. "Only fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force."*
*
_Lao Zi

58. "Great empires are not maintained by timidity."*
*
_Tacitus

59. "Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive. And don't ever apologize for anything"*
*
_Harry S Truman

60. "Pain is weakness leaving the body."*
*
_Unknown U. S. Marine Corps slogan

61. "I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy"*
*
_General William C Westmoreland

62. "History shows that there are no invincible armies."*
*
_Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

63. "All war is deception"*
*
_Sun Tzu

64. "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,

65. "A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood."*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,

66. "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."*
*
_General George S Patton Jr

67. "Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory"*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,

68. "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived"*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,

69. "The best tank terrain is that without anti-tank weapons." *
*
_Russian military doctrine

70. "Tomorrow's battle is won during today's practice."*
*
_Samurai maxim

71. "All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us, they can't get away this time !."*
*
_Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller USMC

72. "We're Surrounded, that Simplifies Our Problems!"*
*
_Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller USMC

73. "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."*
*
_Winston Churchill

74. "Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry."*
*
_Oliver Cromwell

75. "There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry !"*
*
_George Armstrong Custer

76. "War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over"*
*
_General William Tecumseh Sherman

77. "When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend."*
*
_U.S. Army training notice

78. "If the enemy is in range, so are you."*
*
_Infantry Journal

79. "If your attack is going too well, you're probably walking into an ambush."*
*
_Infantry Journal

80. "It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed"*
*
_U.S. Air Force flight training manual

81. "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."*
*
_George Orwell

82. "It is good that war is so terrible, else we should become accustomed to it."*
*
_Robert E. Lee

83. "If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail."*
*
_General Ulysses S. Grant

84. "Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!"*
*
_General William T. Sherman

85. "The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain."*
*
_Sun Tzu

86. "Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve."*
*
_Sun Tzu

87. "Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience"*
*
_Otto Von Bismarck

88. "People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."*
*
_Otto Von Bismarck

89. "An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy."*
*
_Mao Zedong

90. "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."*
*
_Mao Zedong

91. "When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue."*
*
_Mao Zedong

92. "Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts."*
*
_Mao Zedong

93. "Artillerymen believe the world consist of two types of people; other Artillerymen and targets."*
*
_Unknown

94. "Ultima ratio regum." (The final argument of kings) *
*
_Inscription on French cannons, on order of Louis XIV

95. "Artillery conquers and infantry occupies."*
*
_J.F.C. Fuller

96. "The first shot is for the Devil, the second for God, and only the third for the King."*
*
_Napoleon Bonaparte

97. "Leave the Artillerymen alone, they are an obstinate lot."*
*
_Napoleon Bonaparte

98. "One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."*
*
_Soviet, Junior Lt's Notebook

99. "Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent."*
*
_Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

100. "Everything which the enemy least expects will succeed the best."*
*
_Frederick the Great





Cross

Re: X EndQuote52 - Best Quote
 

Well, let's see, I think endquote98:

"One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine. Soviet, Junior Lt's Notebook."

Is by far the best quote in the game with the worst being #52.