Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It might be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently is nothing short of criminal.
We both agreed that Stalin was determined to hold out against the Germans. He told us he'd never let them get to Moscow. But if he was wrong, they'd go back to the Urals and fight. They'd never surrender.
The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.
Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.
Even now we feel that Stalin was devoted to Communism, he was a Marxist, this cannot and should not be denied.
No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
It is inconceivable that even the gang who runs Russia would be willing to take on war, but one always has to remember that there seemed to be no reason in 1939 for Hitler to start war, and yet he did, and he started it with a world practically unprepared.
When history looks back, I want people to know that the Nazis could not kill millions of people with impunity.
There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.
A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.