Sven Hassel

“Nobody believes that – or, rather, nobody dares believe it. What is this curse that makes us all so inert and cowed that we cannot pull ourselves together and deprive the generals of their grants? We are oafs most of us, lazy and ignorant, and we nod our heads and are satisfied when we hear a lot of profound nonsense about ‘balance of power’ and ‘interplay of forces’ and all the rest of the jargon. Balance of power? If every Tom, Dick and Harry were to exert himself and demand that the money should be spent on making him better off instead of on arms and war there would be no war and we should all be better off. But the Toms, Dicks and Harrys must first bang their fists on the table and let it be known who holds the power and how that power is to be used.”
― Sven Hassel, Legion of the Damned: The iconic anti-war novel about the Russian Front