No country in history ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in the Iraq war.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

What's so touching is the way we fight the war right until the moment our business is taken care of and then we turn on a dime and we immediately start taking care of people. It's like a shock and aw shucks campaign.

What we want to do is reform the welfare system in the way that Tony Blair talked about 13 years ago but never achieved - a system that was created for the days after the Second World War. That prize is now I think achievable.

I made a French film called 'Merry Christmas' which is a very European film. It's a World War I piece.

I get offered a World War II movie at least once a week just because I speak German and was born there. I have always stayed away from it because I didn't want to be put into that box.

Berlin is still going through a transition since the Cold War - both in what used to be East and West Berlin. I can still sense the confusion and the struggle for identity there in the streets. There's a pulse to it.