by Lynne Olson
“Never”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 145.
“One had to be”: James H. Huizinga, Mr. Europe: A Political Biography of Paul Henri Spaak (New York: Praeger, 1961), 154.
“It would be difficult”: Mollie Panter-Downes, London War Notes: 1939–1945 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 70.
“every crank in the world”: Bell, A Certain Eventuality, 93.
“All we knew”: M. Lisiewicz et al., eds., Destiny Can Wait: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War (Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1949), 35.
“Tell your army”: Jan Ciechanowski, Defeat in Victory (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947), 15.
“to make every effort”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 574.
“The war is over”: Lewis White, “The 1940 Evacuation,” On All Fronts: Czechs and Slovaks in World War II, ed. Lewis White (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991), 71.
“than an army”: Lise Lindbaek, Norway’s New Saga of the Sea: The Story of Her Merchant Marine in World War II (New York: Exposition Press, 1969), 33.
“France has thrown in”: Huizinga, Mr. Europe, 157.
“if you give up”: Roger Keyes, Outrageous Fortune: The Tragedy of Leopold III of the Belgians, 1901-1941 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1984), 417.
“You must have”: Ibid., 382–83.
“virtually the entire”: Ibid., 383.
“were in too deep”: Huizinga, Mr. Europe, 150.
“lacked all social vices”: Harold Callender, “General de Gaulle—The Legend and the Man,” New York Times Magazine, July 9, 1944.
“an improbable creature”: Lord Moran, Churchill at War, 1940–45 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002), 98.
“the character of”: Dorothy Shipley White, Seeds of Discord: De Gaulle, Free France, and the Allies (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1964), 27.
“brilliance and talent”: Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 70.
“an ‘undisciplined act’ ”: Ibid., 174.
“your presence at my side”: Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 54.
“rally French opinion”: Spears, The Fall of France, June 1940, 312.
“gaping faces”: Ibid., 322.
“in a hideously difficult position”: Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, 356.
“a loser”: Lacouture, De Gaulle, 286.
“I can’t tell you”: Ibid.
“You are alone!”: François Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 83.
“Gen. de Gaulle”: Ibid.
“an act of faith”: Ibid.
“I was nothing”: de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs, 83.
“magnificently absurd”: Janet Teissier du Cros, Divided Loyalties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 98.
“I have neither”: de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs, 83.
CHAPTER 5: “SOMETHING CALLED HEAVY WATER”
“mixture between”: Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War: 1939–1945 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 80.
“The country”: Denis Brian, The Curies: A Biography of the Most Controversial Family in Science (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 277.
“not wish to”: Per F. Dahl, Heavy Water and the Wartime Race for Nuclear Energy (Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999), 107.
“For twenty generations”: John Nesbitt, “Passing Parade,” radio program, date unknown.
“those mad Howards”: William D. Bayles, “The Incredible Earl of Suffolk,” Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 28, 1942.
“Jack was a rebel”: Ibid.
“I don’t see how”: John Bartleson, Jr., “The Earl of Suffolk and the Holy Trinity,” The Disposaleer, Feb. 1994.
“won over completely”: James Owen, Danger UXB: The Heroic Story of the WWII Bomb Disposal Teams (London: Abacus, 2010), 65.
“The single thought”: Bayles, “The Incredible Earl of Suffolk.”
“an unkempt pirate”: Brian, The Curies, 292.
“a young man”: Macmillan, The Blast of War, 78.
“something called heavy water”: Ibid.
“a truly Elizabethan character”: Ibid., 79.
“I have had”: Ibid., 81.
“may prove to be”: Owen, Danger UXB, 71.
“I remember the spring”: Spencer R. Weart, Scientists in Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 170.
“Had the British”: Ibid., 176.
“If von Halban”: Ibid., 179.
“some of them”: Owen, Danger UXB, 71.
CHAPTER 6: “THEY ARE BETTER THAN ANY OF US”
“whole fury and might”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2: Their Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 225.
“with blond hair”: Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble (New York: Harper, 1941), 406.
“the infiltration of foreign pilots”: Alan Brown, Airmen in Exile: The Allied Air Forces in the Second World War (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2000), 204.
“was some one hundred”: Flying Officer Geoffrey Marsh, “The Collaboration with the English: Squadron 303, Kosciuszko,” Skrzydła, Sept. 1–14, 1941.
“a rung or two”: Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War (London: Hippocrene, 1995), 58.
“All I knew”: John A. Kent, One of the Few (London: Kimber, 1971), 100.
“The country was poised”: Josef Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of Its History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 136.
“We are only”: Ibid., 141.
“We have reached”: Ronald Clark, Battle for Britain: Sixteen Weeks That Changed the Course of History (New York: Franklin Watts, 1966), 114.
“air units in this country”: UK Air Ministry, report on Polish Air Force, March 29, 1940, AIR 2/4213, National Archives, London.
“My mind was still”: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 57.
“I’m not having”: Richard Collier, Eagle Day: The Battle of Britain (New York: Dutton, 1966), 22.
“We had to reverse”: Jan Zumbach, On Wings of War (London: André Deutsch, 1975), 66.
“we were not”: Ibid., 65.
“They were a complete”: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 79.
“Most people who went”: Daily Telegraph, July 25, 2000.
“Some I couldn’t remember”: Norman Gelb, Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 219.
“intense struggle”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 325.
“On virtually every occasion”: Richard Hough and Denis Richards, The Battle of Britain (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), 221.
“Magnificent fighting”: Ferić, diary, undated, Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London.
“You use the air”: Ibid.
“absolute tigers”: Edward Raczyński, In Allied London (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963), 70.
“They are fantastic”: Rosme Curtis, Winged Tenacity: The Polish Air Force, 1918–1944 (London: Kingston Hill, 1944), 7.
“their understanding and handling”: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 93.
“Whereas British pilots”: Ibid., 94.
“When they go tearing”: Ibid., 90.
“one of the decisive”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 332.
“Even though”: Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain (London: Aurum Press, 2000), 346.
“I am a Pole”: Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 156.
“Had it not been”: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 97.
“If Poland had not stood”: Speech by Queen Elizabeth II to Polish Sejm and Senate, Warsaw, March 26, 1996.
“in the knowledge”: Alexander Hess, “We Were in the Battle of Britain,” On All Fronts: Czec
hs and Slovaks in World War II, ed. Lewis White (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991), 95.
“stripes of streets”: Ibid.
“the stern face”: Ibid., 99.
“I am British!”: Ibid.
“A feeling of deepest gratitude”: Ibid., 101.
“Never in the field”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 340.
“rare combination of steel nerves”: William D. Bayles, “The Incredible Earl of Suffolk,” Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 28, 1942.
“He had us all”: Ibid.
“Charles Henry George Howard”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 7: “MY GOD, THIS IS A LOVELY PLACE TO BE!”
“You walk”: Quentin Reynolds, A London Diary (New York: Random House, 1941), 65.
“swimming in the full tide”: Charles Ritchie, The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad, 1937–1945 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974), 59.
“The Queen”: Henri van der Zee, The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–45 (London: Jill Norman and Hobhouse, 1982), 92.
“as he had heard”: John W. Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI: His Life and Reign (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1958), 464.
“as French as the”: Nicholas Atkin, The Forgotten French: Exiles in the British Isles, 1940–44 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003), 190.
“Everybody’s goal”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange (London: Sphere, 1982), 39–40.
“might find”: Charles Drazin, The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 236.
“Its reputation was such”: Ibid., 237.
“Basically [the British]”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 176.
“We were living”: Madeleine Albright, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948 (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 235.
“degree of separation”: Ibid., 263.
“a very pleasant”: Ibid.
“because of the daily”: Lara Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 69.
“I hope you’ll”: Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange, 101.
“It was the kind”: Ibid.
“Faced with the prospect”: Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 102.
“I do not want”: François Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 86.
“Without Anne”: Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 108.
“We in this country”: Atkin, The Forgotten French, 10.
“The generous kindness”: de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs, 102.
“I had been a spectator”: Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, 168.
“You had the impulse”: Ibid.
“The Poles flying”: Robert Post, “Poland’s Avenging Angels,” New York Times Magazine, June 29, 1941.
“The Polish aviators”: Reynolds, A London Diary, 73.
“one of the gayest”: The Tatler, March 5, 1941.
“never to invite”: Author’s interview with Tadeusz Andersz.
“That is one”: Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War (London: Hippocrene, 1995), 110.
“My God, this”: Author’s interview with Ludwik Martel.
“No matter our varied”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, In Pursuit of Life (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2003), 153.
“There was a diffused”: Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (New York: Anchor, 2002), 102.
“Well,” she replied: John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 296.
“And remember, keep away”: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 173.
“devoted her entire attention”: Nancy Caldwell Sorel, The Women Who Wrote the War (New York: Arcade, 1999), 220.
“As for the women”: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 69.
“I think English women”: Witold Urbanowicz, speech, National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, Nov. 17, 1981.
BOMBING REICH THRILLS POLES: Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few, 116.
“to get to know”: Arkady Fiedler, Squadron 303: The Polish Fighter Squadron with the RAF (New York: Roy, 1943), 181.
“As Great Britain”: Lara Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 203.
“basic principles”: Ibid., 79.
“I cried about”: Ibid., 119–20.
CHAPTER 8: “THIS IS LONDON CALLING”
“Nobody ever imagined”: Tangye Lean, Voices in the Darkness: The Story of the European Radio War (London: Secker & Warburg, 1943), 153.
“People of France”: Ibid., 122.
“escape for a few minutes”: Michael Stenton, “Introduction,” Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940–1945, http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/facts/POWE40-45.pdf.
“In a world”: Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol. 3: The War of Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 10.
“People who are almost”: Tom Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie? (London: BBC Books, 1995), 126–27.
“The initials BBC”: Briggs, The War of Words, 164.
“Assuming that the BBC”: Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (New York: Knopf, 2000), 58.
“conspiracy of silence”: A. M. Sperber, Murrow: His Life and Times (New York: Freundlich, 1986), 131.
“very angry”: Richard Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 112.
“British expeditionary forces”: Leland Stowe, No Other Road to Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 281.
“an agreeable”: Briggs, The War of Words, 20.
“an exquisitely bored”: Charles J. Rolo, Radio Goes to War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), 143.
“I want our programs”: R. Franklin Smith, Edward R. Murrow: The War Years (Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Press, 1978), 8.
“Well, brothers”: Sperber, Murrow: His Life and Times, 138.
“It seems to me”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 23.
“one of the most industrious”: Briggs, The War of Words, 163.
“I cannot but resent”: Ibid., 178.
“Noel Newsome set”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 106.
“effective control”: Briggs, The War of Words, 77.
“was the enemy”: Ibid., 303.
“one of the major neutrals”: Ibid., 77.
“being a historian”: Ibid., 21.
“the rock”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 105.
“we were packed”: Ibid., 103–4.
“People don’t work”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 104.
“halfway between a girls’ school”: Briggs, The War of Words, 20.
“Sorry, dear”: John van der Kiste, Northern Crowns: The Kings of Modern Scandinavia (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 1996), 105.
“It’s curious how”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 127.
“suddenly shouted hurrah”: Ibid., 106.
“We were very”: Ibid., 107.
“ignorant, knowing nothing”: Ibid.
“The liberty and independence”: Tim Greve, Haakon VII of Norway: Founder of a New Monarchy (London, Hurst, 1985), 152.
“Thou shalt obey”: Richard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and Norway, April 1940–May 1945 (New York: William Morrow, 1974), 104.
“had been part”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange (London: Sphere, 1982), 26.
“The Queen had been right”: Ibid., 33.
“the arch-enemy of mankind”: Ibid.
“Her speeches were”: Henri van der Zee, The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, 1944–45 (London: Jill Norman and Hobhouse, 1982), 97.
“amazingly heated swear words�
�: N. David J. Barnouw, “Dutch Exiles in London,” in Europe in Exile: European Exile Communities in Britain, 1940–1945, ed. Martin Conway and José Gotovitch (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 231.
“a country”: R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Jan Masaryk: A Personal Memoir (London: Philosophical Library, 1951), 18.
“Jan,” said: Claire Sterling, The Masaryk Case (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 125.
“The hour of retribution”: Ibid.
“one of the old servants”: Ibid., 31.
“Hear The Tale of Honza”: Ibid., 32.
“If you have sacrificed”: John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Munich: Prologue to Tragedy (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948), 171.
“the English know”: Lockhart, Jan Masaryk, 33.
“was handled”: John Lukacs, The Great Powers and Eastern Europe (New York: American Book Co., 1953), 388–89.
CHAPTER 9: “AN AVALANCHE OF VS”
“There was no great”: Tom Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie? (London: BBC Books, 1995), 108.
“it was undesirable”: Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 223.
“I, General de Gaulle”: Ibid., 225.
“As the irrevocable words”: Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 84.
“a feast of radio”: Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol. 3: The War of Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 226.
“one of the wittiest”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 115.
“Generally at this time”: Tangye Lean, Voices in the Darkness: The Story of the European Radio War (London: Secker & Warburg, 1943), 152.
“We were giving”: A. M. Sperber, Murrow: His Life and Times (New York: Freundlich, 1986), 181.
“shattered and terribly fatigued”: Ibid., 121–22.
“the mike as an old”: Briggs, The War of Words, 248.
“The French frequently”: Hickman, What Did You Do in the War, Auntie?, 116.
“With a message”: Lean, Voices in the Darkness, 157.
“would rather see”: Ibid., 160.
