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Trivia

War & Politics

Who Said What?

1.Which Irish-born author claimed in his "Man and Superman" that "in the arts of peace, Man is a bungler"?
*James Joyce
*Oscar Wilde
*George Bernard Shaw
*Brendan Behan
2.Who claimed in a talk with David Frost that, "When the President does it, it is not illegal," later said he was not a "crook," but nonetheless got in trouble for his illegal presidential initiatives?
*Lyndon B. Johnson
*Ronald Reagan
*Bill Clinton
*Richard Milhous Nixon
3.Who was married to a Lady Byrd and said in a State of the Union speech to Congress: "This administration today, here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America"?
*Bill Clinton
*Lyndon B. Johnson
*Jimmy Carter
*Ronald Reagan
4.Which of these "celebrities" said, belittlingly about the Falklands War of 1982 -in which his, her own country was involved- that it was a "fight between two bald men over a comb"?
*Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*General Galtieri
*Margaret Thatcher
*Jorge Luis Borges
5.Modern historians tend to be critical of the harsh terms applied to Germany after World War I in the "Treaty of Versailles" (1919). Which of these French war veterans (born at Tarbes; died during the Interbellum) also was critical of the terms, but felt they were not harsh enough and warned his countrymen that in his view, it was not a solid peace-treaty, but only a 20-year armistice?
*Georges Clémenceau aka the Tiger
*Marshall Pétain
*Marshall Foch
*General Weygand
6.Which Italian politician was belatedly aware that, halfway World War II, the tide was changing against his country and disappointedly noted in his diary that "Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan"?
*Benito Mussolini
*Cavour
*Garibaldi
*Mussolini's Foreign Secretary Count Ciano
7.Who asked at the Potsdam Conference in 1946 to Britain's Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill:
"Mr. Churchill, Mr. Prime Minister, how many divisions did you say the Pope had?"
*Franklin Delano Roosevelt
*von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Secretary
*Harry Truman
*Joseph Stalin
8.Even members of the Labour Party occasionally had their hesitations about democracy as a political system. Which of these was an ex-Prime-Minister of Great Britain in 1957 and said in a speech at Oxford, on 14th of June of that year : "Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective, if you can stop people talking."
*Neil Kinnock
*Clement Attlee
*Michael Foot
*Harold Wilson
9."Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few" was a critical comment from an ex-member of the Fabian Society:________________
*Sir Winston Churchill
*George Bernard Shaw
*Adolf Hitler
*Vladimir Lenin
10.How must this quotation from a speech by Sir Winston Churchill to the French people in the first year of World War II be completed: "We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So ________________ "?
* are the Americans
* is General de Gaulle
* are the German soldiers
* are the fishes

Answers

1. George Bernard Shaw.
"Man and Superman" was published in 1903.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900); George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950); James Joyce (1882-1941) and Brendan Behan(1923-1964) all were Dublin-born.
2. Richard Milhous Nixon.
Quoted in David Frost, "I Gave Them a Sword" (1978) ch. 8.
Richard Nixon(1913-1994) was 37th President of U.S.A. Stayed in office from 1969 till 1974.
3. Lyndon B. Johnson.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) on 8 Jan. 1969. Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th President of the U.S.A. Was in office from 1963 till 1969.
James Earl aka Jimmy Carter (°1924) 39th President of U.S.A.(from 1977-1981). Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002.
Ronald Reagan(born 1911) succeeded to him in 1981 as 40th President. He stayed in office till 1989. Longest-lived President of U.S.A.
4. Jorge Luis Borges.
Leopoldo Galtieri played a major role in the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. Margaret Thatcher, British Prime-Minister from 1977-90 was his formidable opponent.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges are important 20th century South-American authors. Borges lived from 1899 till 1986. He was born in Buenos Aires and died in Geneva. Famous as a poet, essayist and short-story writer.
Marquez was born in Colombia in 1928 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Best-known for "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
5. Marshall Foch.
Foch was born at Tarbes in 1851 and died in Paris in 1929 and was one of the leading French generals in World War One. He was criticised for his obsession with "offensive warfare."
Henri Philippe Petain (1856-1951) was another French general from World War One. As a leader of Vichy France from 1940 till 1944 he was held responsible for France's collaboration with Nazi Germany and condemned to death after the war. General de Gaulle changed his sentence in life-long detention on the Isle of Yeu off the Breton coast.
Georges Clemenceau(1841-1929) became France's Prime Minister in the course of World War One. He played a major role in refusing any leniency to France in the Treaty of Versailles.
Maxime Weygand, a Brussels-born French general (1867-1965), was a French military commander in First and Second World War. He was criticised for his somewhat ambivalent role in the Vichy government.
6. Mussolini's Foreign Secretary Count Ciano.
"La vittoria trova centi padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l' insuccesso." From Count Galeazzo Ciano's Diary, entry of 9 Sept. 1942.
7. Joseph Stalin.
Roosevelt (1882-1945) was the 32nd President of U.S.A. Served four terms.
Harry S Truman(1884-1972) was his successor and served from 1945 till 1953.
Stalin (1879-1953) became the 2nd leader of U.S.S.R. after Lenin's death.
Von Ribbentrop(Born in 1893) had been Germany's's Foreign Minister from 1938 till 1945. He was sentenced to death by hanging in 1946 at the Nuremberg trials.
So Roosevelt and von Ribbentrop were not involved in the Potsdam Conference.
8. Clement Attlee.
9. George Bernard Shaw.
Vladimir Iliych Lenin was born at Simbirsk in Russia in 1870 and died at Gorki in 1924. He became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1918.
10. are the fishes.
Churchill made this radio-speech on 21st of October 1940. His message was that he felt confident about the superiority of the British Navy to the German "Kriegsmarine." In his view the fishes were already waiting for the corpses of the drowned Germans.
The invasion that the Americans or General de Gaulle may have been waiting for was the Landing in Normandy. And that was 1944.