Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
Thomas SowellRead
In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not. All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the immense and often unrecorded human cost of war, particularly the loss of life in the context of World War I.
Paul Von Hindenburg's quote emphasizes the tragic irony of war, where the exact toll on human life is often obscured or unrecorded amidst the chaos of battle. The ripping out of the page recording Russian losses symbolizes both the disregard for human life and the overwhelming scale of suffering in war. It serves as a haunting reminder that behind military statistics and strategies, there exists an unimaginable loss of life that is often forgotten or ignored.
Themes
WarLossSufferingHuman CostMilitaryDeath
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the impacts of war during a Memorial Day event.
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