Many of the principle weapons that the Nazis used during World War II had their first trial in combat in Spain
ADAM HOCHSCHILDNo one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush’s Iraq War.
More Adam Hochschild Quotes
-
-
I think one thing writers can do is point out that you don’t have to say openly racist things, like [Donald] Trump, to be a racist or a xenophobe.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
I think in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
The Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane for example, the Stuka dive bomber, the 88 millimeter artillery piece, which could be used both for antiaircraft purposes and also shelling on the ground.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
So people at the time really saw fascism not just as an evil but as an aggressive evil that seemed to be spreading.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Newt Gingrich seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
And tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others’ lives.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush’s Iraq War.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
It sure is a rising tide, and we have a particularly nasty exemplar of it in the U.S., in Donald Trump.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Hitler and Mussolini jumped in on the side of Francisco Franco and his Spanish nationalists, sent them vast amounts of military aid, airplanes, tanks and Mussolini sent 80,000 ground troops as well.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
And he learned a great deal from it about the strengths and weaknesses of these different weapons.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this trend.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
You can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD -
One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place within the half-time show at a Dallas Cowboys football game.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD