Top 40 Antony Beevor Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.”

— Antony Beevor

2. “That the Soviet regime was almost as unforgiving towards its own soldiers as towards the enemy is demonstrated by the total figure of 13,500 executions, both summary and judicial, during the battle of Stalingrad.”

— Antony Beevor

3. “The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have.”

— Antony Beevor

4. “German soldiers made use of Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks, such as filling water-bottles, were dangerous when Russian snipers lay in wait for any movement. So, for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Russian boys and girls to take their water-bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.”

— Antony Beevor

5. “The vital thing for me is to integrate the history from above with the history from below because only in that way can you show the true consequences of the decisions of Hitler or Stalin or whomever on the ordinary civilians caught up in the battle.”

— Antony Beevor

6. “Hitler had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing.”

— Antony Beevor

7. “The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime.”

— Antony Beevor

8. “The army’s exact losses are still uncertain, but there was no doubt that the Stalingrad campaign represented the most catastrophic defeat hitherto experienced in German history.”

— Antony Beevor

9. “When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.”

— Antony Beevor

10. “As supreme commander, Eisenhower had to balance political and personal rivalries, while maintaining his authority within the alliance. He was well liked by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the commander-in-chief of 21st Army Group, but neither rated him highly as a soldier.”

— Antony Beevor

11. “This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.”

— Antony Beevor

12. “I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.”

— Antony Beevor

13. “The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.”

— Antony Beevor

14. “I joined the Army in 1965 and served with the 11th Hussars, which I loved. The regiment was so relaxed – a salute was more like a friendly wave.”

— Antony Beevor

15. “These ‘mine-dogs’, trained on Pavlovian principles, had been taught to run under large vehicles to obtain their food. The stick, catching against the underside, would detonate the charge. Most of the dogs were shot before they reached their target, but this macabre tactic had an unnerving effect. It.”

— Antony Beevor

16. “The great help of being in the Army is to understand why are the armies clever in what they describe as emotional intelligence, making soldiers come to terms with the death of comrades by certain rituals.”

— Antony Beevor

17. “I can’t envisage stopping writing.”

— Antony Beevor

18. “It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.”

— Antony Beevor

19. “This, perhaps, is why it is unwise to try to judge the terrible conflict of seventy years ago with the liberal values and attitudes that we accept today as normal.”

— Antony Beevor

20. “I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.”

— Antony Beevor

21. “I think it’s outrageous if a historian has a ‘leading thought’ because it means they will select their material according to their thesis.”

— Antony Beevor

22. “Churchill had foreseen the consequences of the dramatic Red Army advances. He dreaded a Soviet occupation of central Europe. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had convinced himself that by charming Stalin instead of confronting him, a lasting post-war peace was a real possibility.”

— Antony Beevor

23. “In Soviet eyes the definition of ‘fascist’ included anyone who did not follow the orders of the Communist Party.”

— Antony Beevor

24. “Red Army cavalry divisions also ranged far into the rear, mounted on resilient little Cossack ponies. Squadrons and entire regiments would suddenly appear fifteen miles behind the front, charging artillery batteries or supply depots with drawn sabres and terrifying war-cries. The.”

— Antony Beevor

25. “It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: ‘Why not try writing a novel?’ partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother’s family.”

— Antony Beevor

26. “I believe passionately in preemptive pessimism, especially before a book comes out. I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales, and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.”

— Antony Beevor

27. “Hemingway, eager not to miss the big battle even though he was suffering from influenza, managed to reach Colonel Buck Lanham’s command post near Rodenbourg. The house had belonged to a priest suspected of being a German sympathizer. Hemingway took great delight in drinking a stock of communion wine and then refilling the bottles with his own urine. He claimed to have relabelled them ‘Schloss Hemingstein 1944’ and later drank from one by mistake.”

— Antony Beevor

28. “The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan’, the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.”

— Antony Beevor

29. “The degree of ignorance claimed after the war by many officers, especially those on the staff, is rather hard to believe in the light of all the evidence that has now emerged from their own files.”

— Antony Beevor

30. “To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make.”

— Antony Beevor

31. “I just write the sort of book that I would enjoy reading myself, a book that is both scholarly and recreates the experience of people at that time.”

— Antony Beevor

32. “Churchill once remarked that the Americans always came to the right decision, having tried everything else first. But even if the joke contained an element of truth, it underplayed the fact that they learned much more quickly than their self-appointed tutors in the British Army. They were not afraid to listen to bright civilians from the business world now in uniform and above all they were not afraid to experiment. The.”

— Antony Beevor

33. “If you smash a city when you’re trying to capture it, you actually end up providing the perfect terrain for the defenders while blocking the access for your own armoured vehicles.”

— Antony Beevor

34. “American doctors did not of course know then what the Germans had discovered after the battle of Stalingrad. The combination of stress, exhaustion, cold and malnourishment upsets the metabolism, and gravely reduces the body’s capacity to absorb calories and vitamins.”

— Antony Beevor

35. “General Montgomery, despite his considerable qualities as a highly professional soldier and first-class trainer of troops, suffered from a breathtaking conceit which almost certainly stemmed from some sort of inferiority complex.”

— Antony Beevor

36. “A quarter of them came from countries overrun by the Nazis as well as from the Dominions: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa. There were so many Canadians that they formed separate RCAF squadrons, and so later did men from other countries, such as the Poles and French.”

— Antony Beevor

37. “You must leave your imagination behind or it will do you harm.”

— Antony Beevor

38. “When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it.”

— Antony Beevor

39. “I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.”

— Antony Beevor

40. “If British planes appear, we duck. If American planes come over, everyone ducks. And if the Luftwaffe appears, nobody ducks.”

— Antony Beevor

41. “I saw then that he had lost touch with reality. He lived in a fantasy world of maps and flags.”

— Antony Beevor