The Night of the Generals (1967)

Peter O'Toole: General Tanz

Photos 

Quotes 

• General Tanz : It's like the natural functions. Revolting, but inevitable.

• General Tanz : [outside Maxim's]  An adequate restaurant, very clean.

• General Tanz : [to Hartmann]  I don't want to have to blow your handsome head to pieces.

• Major Grau : Preliminary investigation has established that each of you was... well... unaccounted for last night.

  General Tanz : To whom should we be accountable, Major?

• General Tanz : [complaining about his orderly]  Filthy pig. Last week he offered me an unwashed glass, now he enters my sight looking as though he just exhumed his grandmother with his bare hands! Absolute cleanliness, that's what I demand from the people around me, do I make myself clear?

• General Tanz : You've been a satisfactory orderly, and companion.

  Corporal Hartmann : Thank you, sir.

  General Tanz : Except for the bath water this morning.

  Corporal Hartmann : I'm sorry, sir.

• General Kahlenberge : General Tanz, forgive me, but, uh, just as a matter of curiosity - what do you feel is the exact purpose of this exercise?

  General Tanz : You've read the memorandum.

  General Kahlenberge : Oh yes. Yes, I have indeed...

  General Tanz : And what does the memorandum say?

  General Kahlenberge : That Phase One is intended to intimidate the population, to search houses, to find and arrest resistance.

  General Tanz : Then that is the exact purpose of the exercise.

  General von Seidlitz-Gabler : An excellent plan, by the way - much like my own when I first came here, only I was never given the ultimate authority to implement it.

  General Kahlenberge : But, um... am I to understand that if there is resistance during Phase One, you would then go to Phase Two, and even Phase Three, which would mean the destruction of the entire city?

  General Tanz : You are to understand exactly that.

  General Kahlenberge : Well, uh... isn't that somewhat... excessive?

  General Tanz : Excessive.

  [goes to map] 

  General Tanz : You will be aware that we are thirty miles from Moscow. We are moving ahead on a 5,000 mile front. Every available soldier is needed if we are to conquer Russia. Yet here in Warsaw, three divisions are rotting, because of a few thousand criminal Poles and Jews hiding in slums. It is... excessive to permit this state of affairs.