# The Start, 1904–1930 ![rw-book-cover](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71mH-Kkw2ML._SY160.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[William L. Shirer]] - Full Title: The Start, 1904–1930 - Category: #books ## Highlights - We could see in our own country as late as the 1960s and 1970s how good Christian and Jewish men, the pillars of our society, when they acceded to political and military power, could sit calmly and coolly in their air-conditioned offices in Washington and cold-bloodedly, without a qualm or a moral quiver, plan and order the massacre of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children and the destruction of their homes, farms, churches, schools and hospitals in a faraway Asian land of poor peasants who had never threatened us in the slightest, who were incapable of it. Almost as savage was the acceptance by most of us citizens of such barbarism, until, toward the end, our slumbering—or should one say, cowardly?—consciences were aroused. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07H18TCDK&location=85))