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It remains unwise to ban the sale of armaments to nations whose policies one wishes to change; they will need spare parts, repairs, and replacements and will have to bargain for them.

— Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton (Page 139)

There was no teleprinter communication between the HQs and the army commanders. At Gamelin’s HQ there was not even a radio. Gamelin’s usual way of communicating with Georges was to go to him by car. Questioned about the lack of radio, Gamelin said it might have revealed the location of his HQ. Questioned about the speed with which he could get orders to the front, Gamelin said that it generally took forty-eight hours.

— Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton (Page 116)

From the beginning to the end of the war, the metronome at headquarters was always set at too slow a beat.

— Strange Defeat by Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch

The low standard of the reservists was more indicative of the extent of France’s mobilization – one man in eight – than of the state of its regular army formations.

— Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton (Page 112)

Flying home from his Anschluss triumph, Hitler had shown General Keitel how his mind was working. He put his hand across a small newspaper map of Europe so that his finger and thumb covered Germany and Austria. He nipped Czechoslovakia and then winked at Keitel.

— Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton (Page 71)

But as the war continued, it was Hitler’s political dogma that ensured the failure of his military aims. His worst military decisions – the refusal to let units withdraw to better positions, the obsession with towns that had strong psychological overtones (such as Leningrad and Stalingrad), and the political interference with the army – all these stemmed from his fears of political consequences. Politically motivated plans can be fatal to world conquest as to car factories.

— Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton (Page 64 - 65)