How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Within a few minutes they were giving the Poles, soldiers and civilians alike, the first taste of sudden death and destruction from the skies ever experienced on any great scale on the earth and thereby inaugurating a terror which would become dreadfully familiar to hundreds of millions of men, women, and children in Europe and Asia during the next six years, and whose shadow, after the nuclear bombs came, would haunt all mankind with the threat of utter extinction. (3.17.2)
As Shirer describes the death and destruction caused by the German Luftwaffe during the invasion of Poland, he tells us that air warfare on this scale was unprecedented. Like the First World War before it, the Second World War introduced forms of violence that had previously been unimaginable. Technical "progress," right?
Quote #8
This was their—and the world's—first experience of the blitzkrieg: the sudden surprise attack; the fighter planes and bombers roaring overhead, reconnoitering, attacking, spreading flame and terror; the Stukas screaming as they dove; the tanks, whole divisions of them, breaking through and thrusting forward thirty or forty miles in a day; self-propelled, rapid-firing heavy guns rolling forty miles an hour down even the rutty Polish roads; the incredible speed of even the infantry, of the whole vast army of a million and a half men on motorized wheels […]. (4.18.3)
In this remarkable passage, which fills a full quarter of a page with one long, steamrolling sentence, Shire's writing mirrors the very intense attack he describes. It's one of the most artfully-crafted passages in the book, but one of the grimmest as well.
Quote #9
The skill of British Fighter Command in committing its planes to battle against vastly superior attacking forces was based on its shrewd use of radar. From the moment they took off from their bases in Western Europe the German aircraft were spotted on British radar screens, and their course so accurately plotted that Fighter Command knew exactly where and when they could best be attacked. This was something new in warfare and it puzzled the Germans, who were far behind the British in the development and use of this electronic device. (4.22.122)
Shirer has more than one opportunity to point out important "firsts" that came along with the Second World War. This newfangled technology—radar—was a huge advantage for the British.