Читать книгу Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 - Max Hastings, Sir Max Hastings, Max Hastings - Страница 6

War is human, it is as something that is lived like a love or a hatred…It might better be described as a pathological condition because it admits of accidents which not even a skilled physician could have foreseen.

MARCEL PROUST

‘Oh, surely they’ll stop now. They’ll be horrified at what they’ve done!’ he thought, aimlessly following on behind crowds of stretchers moving away from the battlefield.

Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov at Borodino, 1812

In 1944, there seemed absolutely no reason to suppose that the war might end in 1945.

CAPTAIN LUO DINGWEN, Chinese Nationalist army