German Military Quotes

#1. A number of politicians, including those within your own party, believe Germans would be safer if the German military didn't insert itself into so many of the world's hot spots.

Wolfgang Schauble

#2. We are seeing reports that NATO's sending early warning radar planes and German military personnel to Turkey. That might reduce the chances of another incident like this jet shoot down. And obviously both NATO and the U.S. are pressing their ally Turkey to urgently deescalate the situation.

Peter Kenyon

#3. I'd rather have a German Division in front of me than a French one behind.

George S. Patton

#4. Friedrich von Bernhardi, one of Germany's most influential military thinkers. Bernhardi believed the German people were destined to become the master race, who would prevail over lesser breeds and rule the world.

Paul Ham

#5. He called for military supremacy, no welfare and cultural rebirth. It was a nice speech, but it sounded a lot better in its original German.

Argus Hamilton

#6. Because all this stuff about military targets is absolute rubbish. There's no point in bombing German factories, because they just rebuild them. So we're targeting large areas of dense working-class housing. They can't replace the workers so fast.

Ken Follett

#7. It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

James F. Byrnes

#8. The Russian contribution to peace in Ukraine is not sufficient. [German Chancellor commenting on 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea]

Angela Merkel

#9. The strongest army in the world [the French] facing no more than twenty-six [German] divisions, sitting still and sheltering behind steel and concrete while a quixotically valiant ally was being exterminated!

J. F. C. Fuller

#10. [Vladimir] Putin wants to keep [Bashar] Assad in power and expand his own military base in Syria, whatever the cost. I even believe he has an interest in more and more people fleeing the country. The flow of refugees improves his negotiating position toward the West, including the German chancellor.

Garry Kasparov

#11. Moltke closed upon that rigid phrase, the basis for every major German mistake, the phrase that launched the invasion of Belgium and the submarine war against the United States, the inevitable phrase when military plans dictate policy - and once settled it cannot be altered.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#12. I believe German soldiers are good and decent, and if they did anything wrong it was because of military necessity.

Wilhelm Keitel

#13. I sometimes read that it's time for German democracy to finally grow up. I don't see it as a sign of maturity if we treat military missions as something normal.

Guido Westerwelle

#14. After World War I, while France and other Allies were building military defenses modeled on trench warfare, German commanders were shaping a nimble fighting force.

Charles Duhigg