Narrator No country, no people, suffered so terribly in the war, as the Soviet Union. Nowhere else are the memories of war so alive today, and so profound. The German invasion brought about a catastrophe which seemed at first no nation could survive. In the siege of Leningrad alone, which lasted for over two years, more human beings died than the total war dead of Britain and the United States, combined. Yet it was here that Hitler was broken. The Russian people faced the possibility that they might perish, and overcame it.
“Red Star”
Narrator In bleak places, lacking food or sleep, the Russians reconstructed a new war industry beyond the reach of the Nazis.
Narrator (describing conditions in Leningrad) Bread was now made with sweepings, cattle cake, sawdust. People ate soap, linseed oil, the paste for wallpaper.
One can bear anything -the plague, hunger and death -but one cannot bear the Germans. One cannot bear these fish-eyed oafs contemptuously snorting at everything Russian. We cannot live as long as these grey-green slugs are alive. Today there are no books, today there are no stars in the sky. Today there is only one thought -kill the Germans. Kill them all and dig them into the earth. Then we can go to sleep.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The World at War pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.