The following are deliberately selective, only intended to give the more obscure sources or as afterthoughts.
1. (p. 8) Martin Gilbert, in Winston S. Churchill 1939-1941 (p. 844) quotes from Churchill’s introduction to a volume of Pitt’s speeches:
A Nazi victory would be an immeasurably worse disaster for us and for all mankind than Napoleon’s victory could ever have been. As modern France, and not France only knows Napoleon could construct as well as destroy. There can be no comparison, indeed, in the scale of civilisation between the Nazi system and that of the Napoleonic Empire; nor could the humane, free-spirited French people ever have become the docile instruments of such barbarism as now issues from Berlin.
2. (p. 13) See R. Aron, Penser la guerre, Paris, 1976.
3. (p. 13) And other strategists too, according to Keitel:
Er studierte auch während des Krieges in Nächten in all den grossen General-stabswerken von Moltke, Schlieffen und Clausewitz. Maser, p. 196.
4. (p. 15) See Taine, Les origines de la France contemporaine. La régime moderne, tome 1, pp. 111-12.
5. (p. 16) Jacques Charles Bailleul (1762-1843), a former member of the Convention and of the Council of Five Hundred.
6. (p. 62) Letter of Major W.E.L. Seward MC, of Unter den Linden 56, Berlin, dated 17 August 1926. [Later he was suspected by the Gestapo of having been a British agent and in 1936 was warned by a friend in the SS not to return to Germany.
7. (p. 83) ‘It’s not my job to do justice,’ Goering told the Prussian police in February 1933, ‘it’s my business to annihilate and exterminate’. In the same speech he informed them: ‘From now on every bullet fired from a political gun is my bullet. If that’s called murder, then I commit murder, since it’s me who orders it.’
8. (p. 89) Desperate attempts have been made to discredit Mme de Rémusat’s memoirs ever since their publication in 1880. But if some letters written under the Empire express admiration for Napoleon and if the book was rewritten in 1818 – the original having been burnt during the Hundred Days – she wrote her memoirs without any thought of being published.
9. (p. 100) It fits the mordant humour of both Talleyrand and Fouché, though some authorities credit the jibe to the jurist Count Boulay de la Meurthe. However, in his memoirs Fouché says specifically:
‘ “It’s more than a crime,” I observed, “it’s a mistake!” ’
Words which I record because they have been repeated and attributed to others.
10. (p. 110) Information from W.E.L. Seward.
11. (p. 111) Personal information from the Prince’s widow.
12. (p. 111) Otto Dietrich, the Nazi party’s former press chief and Goebbels’s right-hand man writes in very similar vein:
In Hitler’s soul, sincere warmth and icy heartlessness, love of his fellow creatures and ruthless harshness, dwelt side by side.
13. (p. 112) Otto Dietrich comments on the Führer’s outbursts ‘Death penalties or the concentration camp were as often the result of his uncontrollable rages as of his “ice-cold” reflections – to use his own phrase.’
14. (p. 118) Information from W.E.L. Seward.
15. (p. 120) ‘I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces and that, as a brave soldier, I will be ready at any time to stake my life for this oath.’
16. (p. 123) See Maser p. 199 for a discussion of his library.
17. (p. 124) ‘For decades he promoted humane treatment for animals,’ wrote Otto Dietrich. Nazi Germany was to be the first state to forbid hunting an animal with hounds.
18. (p. 126) If some historians are to be believed, Napoleon’s attitude to Jews was more complex, even if the general consensus is that he was fundamentally benevolent towards them. For a survey of the literature on this aspect see Tulard pp. 377-8.
19. (p. 140) For all his ‘philosophical’ attitude and urbanity of style, Clausewitz’s approach was brutal enough. ‘Philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skilful method of disarming and overcoming the enemy without bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War … This is an error which must be extirpated.’ Or ‘Let us not hear of generals who conquer without bloodshed.’
20. (p. 154) ‘There can be no doubt on this subject,’ Field Marshal von Manstein stated after the War. ‘Hitler always wanted to avoid a struggle with England and the British Empire.’
21. (p. 155) See T.H. Geer, What Roosevelt Thought (Michigan, 1958), pp. 181-2.
22. (p. 158) This is A.J.P. Taylor’s final opinion – see ‘Second Thoughts’ in the revised edition of his Origins of the Second World War.
23. (p. 165) See J.I. Shulim, The Old Dominion and Napoleon Bonaparte.
24. (p. 171) William Wordsworth, Sonnet XVI.
25. (p. 217) One must distinguish between Continental Blockade and Continental System; the exclusion of Britain from Europe and the French political and economic domination of Europe, even if the first led to the second.
26. (p. 222) See Taine, Les origines de la France contemporaine. La régime moderne, tome 2, pp. 188-9.
27. (p. 235) Personal information.
28. (p. 239) Information from Colonel Beauclerk, the late Duke of St Albans. Obersturmbannführer D’Alquen later hanged himself in his cell.
29. (p. 283) On 15 January 1814 he dictated instructions for fortifying Paris which, if necessary, must ‘be buried in its own ruins’. See M. Guerrini, Napoléon et Paris, Paris, 1967.