Commando colonel: [after the failed attack on Rommel's HQ at the beginning, Aldinger finds the wounded commando officer] Did we, did we get him?
Capt. Hermann Aldinger: [smirking] Are you serious, Englishman?

Adolf Hitler: Where's Goering?
Staff Member: He's on his way.
Adolf Hitler: Well, when you are fat you don't move so fast.
[laughter]

Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: I don't know how the men on the line feel about it, but so far as the staff is concerned, I'd just as soon have a commander-in-chief with a little touch of cowardice about him. Just enough to get him back to his headquarters every now and then.

Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: Nothing yet, though?
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: No, but he
[Hitler]
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: knows the situation. I sent him the whole story last night. If there's anything he can do, he will.
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: No matter what you say, to Berlin we're only a sideshow - and you know it.

Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: [Hitler just sent an order not to retreat from El Alamein] It's an order, Bayerlein, a military order from General Headquarters. A clear, straight, stupid, criminal military order, from General Headquarters.
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: And what are you going to do, double the insanity by obeying it? We've got the best soldiers in the German Army here. They may be just hanging on now, but they're still a force, they're still fighting. If we take them out now, they can fight again tomorrow. But this! This is sheer madness! It's out of the Middle Ages. Nobody had said "Victory or Death" since people fought with bows and arrows. Why, this is an order to throw away an entire army!
Gen. Schultz: If I may remind you, sir, here in the field, these men are yours, not his.
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: I just can't understand it.
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: I can. He's insane.
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: He's not insane! He's - but neither am I.
[tears up the message and throws it away]
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: Pull them out, Bayerlein! I'll argue with him about it later.

Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: I'm told you once called me a clown... A clown of Hitler's. I must tell you I've said worse about you... Many times.
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: I find it very hard to concentrate on remarks made about me.
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: Did you say it?
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: Whoever said it, you've given ample reason to regret such a foolish remark.

Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: You've been uncommonly fortunate, I see, in deathbed confessions.
Gen. Wilhelm Burgdorf: It's all perfectly legal, I assure you, sir.

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: [It's] too late for me. I'm seventy now - too old to fight, too old to challenge authority, however evil... but not too old, however, to wish you and your friends the best of luck in their extremely interesting enterprise.

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: From the moment the Bohemian corporal promoted himself to the supreme command of our forces, the German Army has been the victim of a unique situation: not only too many of the enemy, but one too many Germans.

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: His astrologers have informed him that this is only a feint, that the real invasion is yet to come, north of Calais. The Fifteenth Army is sitting on those cold beaches up there, waiting for an invasion that is already taking place, is an excellent example of war by horoscope.