Quotations

"Moscow consistently favored the Nazis over the Social Democrats, whom it called ‘social Fascists’ and continued to regard as its principal enemy. In line with this reasoning, it forbade the German Communists to collaborate with the Social Democrats. In the critical November 1932 elections to the Reichstag (Parliament), the Social Democrats won over 7 million votes and the Communists 6 million: their combined votes exceeded the Nazi vote by 1.5 million. In terms of parliamentary seats, they gained between them 221, against the Nazi 196. Had they joined forces, the two left-wing parties would have defeated Hitler at the polls and prevented him from assuming the chancellorship. It thus was the tacit alliance between the Communists and the National Socialists that destroyed democracy in Germany and brought Hitler to power."

Richard Pipes, Communism: A History of the Intellectual and Political Movement (2003), p.96 

"Even as the Fascist leader, Mussolini never concealed his sympathy and admiration for Communism: he thought highly of Lenin’s ‘brutal energy,’ and saw nothing objectionable in Bolshevik massacres of hostages. He proudly claimed Italian Communism as his child."

Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994) p. 252

“Through all our history she [Ireland] clings to us, a poor, half-witted, gypsy relative, defying our improvement, spoiling our appearances, exposing our pretences, an irreclaimable, irrepressible slut, dirty when we are most clean, superstitious when we are most rational, protesting when we are most complacent, and when we are most prosaic, inspired.” 

Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Dacre 

"O'Connell I called a real specimen of the almost obsolete species demagogue. Why should it be obsolete, this being the very scene for it? Chiefly because we are all dilettantes, and have no heart of faith, even for the coarsest of beliefs. His 'cunning' the sign, as cunning ever is, of a weak intellect or a weak character."

Carlyle's diary, quoted in Froude's Life.

"Negative feelings about Britain, and particularly about England, seem far more important for Remainers than positive feelings about the EU. Their idealised “Europe” seems to be mainly attractive for being far away from Stoke, Walsall or Barnsley, but it is equally remote from Lens, Chemnitz, Bari or Piraeus."

Robert Tombs today in the Daily Telegraph