The Bitter Taste of Victory (93 page)

Ussbusters: W. H. Auden and James Stern (
right
) in Germany, May 1945.

‘A kind of lunar landscape – a sea of devastation, shoreless and infinite’: Berlin, 1945.

‘We sit side by side with death – and death by the million – wherever we are.’ Laura Knight,
The Nuremberg Trial
, 1946.

‘I had never met anything like her before, and I doubt if there was anything like her before’: Rebecca West.

‘Isn’t it curious that the only aristocrat on the bench is American?’ Francis Biddle

‘So you make a trial for propaganda. Why should we pay any attention? We’re cold. We’re hungry.’ Nuremberg, 1945.

‘The consequences we inflict on the Germans today, we will inflict on ourselves.’ Carl Zuckmayer.

The Pope and High Priestess of Existentialism: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, 1948.

‘As the planes touched down, and bags of flour began to spill out of their bellies, I realised that this was the beginning of something wonderful.’ American Air Force Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft waiting to unload at Tempelhof Airport during the Berlin airlift, 1948.

‘As a rule you can say victory and defeat both come expensive to us ordinary folk. Best thing for us is when politics get bogged down solid.’ Helene Weigel as Mother Courage at the Deutsches Theater, January 1949.

‘Want to buy some illusions? Slightly used, just like new?’ Billy Wilder on set with Marlene Dietrich filming
A Foreign Affair
.

‘I was enchanted by the light, by the special fragrance of the air, by the blue of the sky, the sun, the exhilarating ocean breeze.’ Thomas Mann at his house in the Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles.