Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership
Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number
127. And I
quote, the First World War was a tragic
and unnecessary conflict.
This is how the author and historian John Keegan opens his book
focusing on the history of the First World War, and it is the
conclusion we will begin with today on our podcast.
Because the First World War fought between 1914 and 1918,
1918, and involving the loss of the lives of over
10,000,000 people and the destruction of the colonial and
aristocratic European nation-state was so
influential, it makes sense to cover it almost
a 110 years later.
On this podcast, we have covered books written by American veterans of World War
1, including Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.
I would encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes.
We have also covered the writing of authors who were deeply impacted by the Spanish
influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed more people
globally, 21,000,000, than the World War itself.
But its impact was dwarfed by the apocalyptic collapse of European
civilizational assumptions about morality,
mortality, and welfare in the trenches of
the Western front. There are few
good books, however, written about the direct soldiers' experience in
World War 1. A Farewell to Arms assumes that the reader
understands and can empathize with the horrors of
war. Pale Horse, Pale Rider, the short story by
Catherine Porter, assumes that the reader understands the gap in the home
front from a soldier leaving to go off and die in the trenches of
Verdun and the Psalm. However,
all those books stand in the shadows or live in the shadows
of the book we are covering today. Addressing the
1st World War from a cultural, social, and military level, this book
was dismissed by John Keegan as well as the
entire National Socialist regime that replaced the corrupt and
feckless Weimar Republic that came after
World War 1 in Germany.
It is a novel that addresses honestly and fort rightfully the tensions between
the old European aristocratic assumptions of how warfare should be conducted
and the reality of the horrors of warfare at the front
itself. This novel takes the measure of those
leaders, generals, politicians, and others who
led from the rear and finds them to be criminally
wanting. Or as the band Pink
Floyd would put it many years later in their seminal
song us and them from their seminal album, The Dark
Side of the Moon and a quote forward
he cried from the rear and the front
rank died. The general sat
and the lines on the map moved from side
to side. Today on the
podcast, we will be reading and pulling
from Leadership Lessons for Leaders
from All Quiet on the Western Front
by Eric Marie Remark.
Leaders, you cannot lead from the rear if all your
decision making data comes from on the ground up at
the front. And we pick up
from All Quiet on the Western Front by
Eric Maria Remark. We're gonna open
up, with my version of this book,
translated from the German by A. W. Ween.
By the way, the original German,
title for all quiet on the western front is.
I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, although
maybe not. And I
quote, we are at rest 5 miles behind the
front. Yesterday, we were relieved and now our bellies are
full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and
at peace. Each man has another mess tin full for the
evening. And what is more, there is double there's a double ration
of sausage and bread.
That puts a man in fine trim. We have
not had such luck as this for a long time. The cook with his caroty
head is begging us to eat. He beckons with his ladle to everyone that
passes and spoons him out a great dollop. He does not see how he
can empty his stew pot in time for coffee. Jaden and
Mueller have produced 2 wash basins and have had them filled up to the
brim as a reserve. In Jaden, this is a veracity, and Mueller,
it is foresight, where Jaden puts it all as a mystery for he is and
always will be as thin as a rake.
What's more important still is the issue of a double ration of smokes. Ten cigars,
20 cigarettes, and 2 quids of chew per man. Now that is decent. I
have exchanged my chewing tobacco with Kaczynski for his cigarettes, which means I have
40 altogether. That's enough for a day.
It is true we have no rights to this windfall. The Prussian is not so
generous. We have only a miscalculation to thank for it.
14 days ago, we had to go up and relieve the front line. It was
fairly quiet in our sector, so the quartermaster remained in the rear head requisitioned
to the usual quality quantity of rations and provided for the full
company of 150 men. But on the last day, an astonishing number of
English heavies opened up on us with high explosive drumming ceaselessly in our
position so that we suffered severely and came back only 80
strong. Last night, we moved back and settled down to get
a good night's sleep for once. Kosinski is right when he says it would not
be such a bad war if only going to get a little more sleep. In
the line, we have next to none, and 14 days is a long time at
one stretch. It was noon before the first of us
crawled out of our quarters. Half an hour later, every man had his mess tin,
and we gathered at the cookhouse, which smelled greasy and nourishing.
And the head of the queue, of course, were the hungriest little Albert Cropp, the
clearest thinking among us, and therefore only a Lance Corporal Mueller, who
still carries his school textbooks with him, dreams of examinations, and during a
bombardment, mutters propositions in physics. Lear, who wears a full beard
and has a preference for the girls from the officers' brothels.
He swears that they are obliged by an army order to wear silk chemises
and to bathe before entertaining guests of the rank of captain and upwards.
And as the 4th, myself, Paul Baumer, and 4 are 19
years of age, and all 4 joined up from the same class as volunteers for
the war. Close behind us were our friends,
Jaden, a skinny locksmith of our own age, the biggest eater of the company. He
sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as
a bug of the family way. High Westus of the same age, a peat digger
who can easily hold a ration loaf in his hand and say, guess what I've
got in my fist. Then Dieterring, a peasant who thinks nothing of
thinks of nothing but his farmyard and his wife. And finally,
Stanislaus Kaczynski, the leader of our group, shrewd, cunning,
and hard bitten. 40 years of age with the face of the soil, blue eyes,
bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food,
and soft jobs. Our gang formed the
head of the queue before the cookhouse. We're growing impatient for the cook paid no
attention to us. Finally, Kaczynski called to him, say, Heinrich, open up the soup
kitchen. Anyone can see the beans are done. He shook his head, sleep really.
You must all be there first. Jaden grinned. We are all here.
The sergeant Cook still took no notice. Then let me do for you, he said,
but where are the others? They won't be fed by you today. They're
either in the dressing station or pushing up daisies.
The cook was quite disconcerted as the facts dawned on him. He was staggered, and
I have cooked for 150 men. Cropp poked him in the
ribs. Then for once, we'll have enough. Come on. Begin.
Suddenly, a vision came over Jaden. His sharp, mousy features began to shine. His eyes
grew small with cunning. His jaws twitched, and he whispered hoarsely,
man, then you've got bread for 150 men too,
Sergeant Cook nodded, absent minded and bewildered. Jaden seized him by the tunic and
sausage. Ginger nodded again. Jaden's chaps
quivered, tobacco too? Yeah. It's everything. Jaden beamed,
what a bean feast. That's all for us. Each man gets wait a minute.
Yes. Practically, 2 issues. Then Ginger stirred himself and
said, that won't do. We got excited and began to crowd around. Why won't that
do you, old carrot? Demanded Kosinski. Any man can't have what is
meant for a 150? We'll soon show you, growled Mueller. I don't care about the
stew, but I can only issue rations for 80 men, persisted Ginger.
Kaczynski got angry. You might be generous for once. You haven't drawn food for 80
men. You've drawn it for the second company. Good. Let's have it then. We
are the second company. We began to jostle the fellow.
No one felt kindly toward him for it was his fault that the food came
to us in the line too late and cold. Under shellfire, he
wouldn't bring his kitchen up near enough so that our soup carriers had to go
much farther than those of the other companies. Now Buke of the first company
is a much better fellow. He is as fat as a hamster in winter, but
he trundles his pots when it comes to that right up to the front line.
We were in just the right mood, and there would certainly have been a dust
up if our company commander had not appeared. He informed himself
of the dispute and only remarked, yes. We did have heavy losses yesterday.
He glanced into the Dixie. The beans look good.
Ginger nodded cooked with meat and fat. The lieutenant looked at
us. He knew what we were thinking, and he knew many
other things too because he came to the company as a noncom and was promoted
from the ranks. He lifted the lid from the Dixie again and sniffed.
Then passing on, he said, bring me a plateful. Serve out all the rations. We
can do with them. Ginger looked sheepish as
Jaden danced around him. It doesn't cost you anything. Anyone would think the Quartermaster store
belonged to him. And now get on with it, you old blubber sticker, and don't
you miscount either. You'd be hanged, spat out Ginger.
When things got beyond him, he throws up the sponge altogether. He
just goes to pieces. And as if to show
that all things were equal to him of his own free will,
he issued an addition half pound of synthetic honey
to each man.
Eric Maria Remarque born June 22,
1998, died September 25, 1970,
was born in Olsna Bruch to Peter Franz Remarque and
Anna Marie in a working class Roman Catholic
family. During World War 1,
Remark was conscripted into the imperial German army at the age
of 18. On 12th June 1917, he was
transferred to Western Front Second Company Reserves field depot of the 2nd
Guard Reserve Division at Hem Lenglet.
After the war, he continued his teacher training and worked from August 1,
1919 as a primary school teacher in Lone at that
time in the county of Lingen, now in the county of
Bethheim. He worked at a number of different jobs in this
phase of his life, including working as a librarian, businessman, journalist,
and editor. His first paid writing job was as a technical
writer for the Continental Rubber Company, a German tire
manufacturer. Remark had made his first
attempts at writing at the age of 16. Among them were essays,
poems, and the beginnings of a novel he that was finished later
and, published in 1920 as The Dream Room.
All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929,
although he started writing it in 1927,
almost a full 10 years after he had signed
up for the Imperial German
Army or was conscripted into
it. Remark was at first unable to find a
publisher for All Quiet on the Western Front, and
primarily this was because in the 1920s,
Germany was ruled by the Weimar Republic,
and its texts describe the experiences of German soldiers during World War
1. And it was considered to be, well,
not great, and that's being moderate
in my assessment. One of
the challenges with All Quiet on the Western Front is the challenge
of Eric Maria Remarque who by the way, the reason
Maria is there is because he had a problem with his
father and he really wanted to honor his mother.
Eric was also a ladies' man. And when All Quiet on the Western Front was
eventually turned into a movie in the 19 thirties, Eric Marck
Maria Remark, wound up having access to
and becoming the paramour of actresses.
And he wound up at the middle of his life and at the end of
his life, being married to Paulette
Goddard, famous actress
of the era.
Eric Remark was never embraced by
Germany. He was never embraced by the very people that he wrote
about. The National Socialist regime didn't
like him. They didn't like the book. Matter of fact, Goebbels
directly had his books burned. And when the movie premiered in the
1930s in Germany, the the
Nazis did everything they possibly could, to get
people to not go and see the film up to and including
sabotaging the film houses and movie houses where the
movie was showing. All Quiet on the
Western Front is known as and is is
placed in the pantheon of being one of the greatest war novels of
all time. But in reality, All Quiet on the Western Front
is an anti war novel. And that's
the thing. See, Eric wasn't
writing about things that were happening to him that he thought
were great. He was writing about things happening to him that
he thought were not great. And the fact of the matter
is he was writing them from a soldier's direct
experience, and this direct
experience ran counter to the ideas
that were being characterized and
were eventually turned into legend on the home
front after the war, after the
death had long since stopped.
Back to the book, back to All Quiet on the Western
Front. We're going to pick up
in All Quiet on the Western Front in chapter 5.
And I quote, Mueller hasn't finished yet. He
tackles crop again. Albert, if you were really at home now, what would you
do? Crop is contented now and more
accommodating. How many of us were there in the class exactly?
We count out. Out of 20, 7 are dead, 4
wounded, 1 in a madhouse. That makes 12.
3 of them were lieutenants in Mueller. Do you think they would still let Kantor
exit on them? We guess not. We wouldn't let ourselves be sat
on for that matter. What do you mean by the 3 fold theme when
William tells his crop reminiscently and roars with laughter?
What was the purpose of the Poetic League of Guttningen? Asked Mueller
suddenly and earnestly. How many children has Charles the Bald?
I interrupted gently. You can never make anything of your life,
Balmer, coax Mueller. When was the Battle of
Zanna? Coke wants to know. You lack the studio's mind,
Cropp. Sit down. 3 minus, I say. What offices
did Lycurgus consider the most important for the state? Asks Mueller, pretending
to take off his Pinznaes. Does it go, we
Germans fear God and none else in the whole world, or we the Germans
fear God and I submit. How many
inhabitants has Melbourne? Asks Mueller. How do you expect
to succeed in life if you don't know that? I asked Albert Hartley.
When do you hear what you calves with? What is meant by cohesion?
We remember mighty little of all that rubbish. Anyway, it has never been the
slightest use to us. At school, nobody ever taught us
how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could
be made with wet wood, nor that it is best to stick a bayonet
in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed as it does in the
ribs. Mueller says thoughtfully, what's the
use? We'll have to go back and sit on the forms again.
I consider that out of the question. We might take a special exam.
That needs preparation. And if you do get through, what then? A
student's life isn't any better. If you have no money, you have to work like
the devil. It's a bit better. But is Rod all the same? Everything they teach
you. Crop supports me. How can a man take all that stuff
seriously when he's once been out here?
Still, he must have an occupation of some sort, is this Mueller, as though he
were a hand to work himself. Albert cleans his nails
with a knife. We are surprised at his delicacy, but it
is merely pensiveness. He puts the knife away and continues.
That's just it. Cat and Dieterring and Hyde will go back to their how
their jobs because they had them already. Him will toss too,
but we never had any. How will we ever get used to one after this
here? He makes a gesture toward the front.
Well, one is a private income, and then we'll be able to live by ourselves
in a wood, I say. But at once, I feel ashamed of this absurd
idea. But what will really happen when we go back? Wonders
Mueller, and even he is troubled. Croc gives a
shrug. I don't know. Let's get back first, then we'll find out.
We are all utterly at a loss. What could we do? I ask.
I don't wanna do anything, replies Cropp wearily. You'll be dead one day,
so what does it matter? I don't think we'll ever go back. When
I think about Albert, I say after a while rolling over on my back.
When I hear the word peace time, it goes to my head. And if I
really came and if it really came, I think I would do
some unimaginable thing, something, you know, that's worth having laying
here in the muck for. But I can't even imagine anything.
All I know is that this business about professions and studies and salaries and so
on, it makes me sick. It is and always was disgusting. I
don't see anything at all, Albert.
All at once, everything to me seems confused and helpless.
Cropp feels it too. It will go pretty hard with us all, but nobody at
home seems to worry much about it. 2 years of shells and bombs.
A man won't peel off that easy as a sock.
We agree that it's the same for everyone, not only for us here,
but everywhere, for everyone who is of our age, to some more and
to others less, is the common fate of our
generation. Albert expresses it. The war has
ruined us for everything. He is right.
We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by
storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves, from
our life. We were 18 and had begun to love
life and the world, and we had to shoot it to pieces.
The first bomb, the first explosion burst in
our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from
striving, from progress. We believe in such
things no longer. We believe
in the war.
According to John Keegan, the author
of the First World War,
the cultural, moral, and social environment of
Europe leading into the First World War, which is
exemplified in that little piece that I just
read from all quiet on the western front where
Paul Balmer and his fellow soldiers
are sitting in a trench talking about and reminiscing about
their school lives and the culture they left behind in
Germany. This reminiscence these
reminiscence are reflective of general
German intellectual and cultural thought and, of course, European intellectual and cultural thought overall. At
the beginning, and cultural thought overall
at the beginning of World War 1.
European statesmen, cultural gatekeepers, public intellectuals, and
others had a generally favorable view of war in
general, stemming from notions of honor,
expectations of a swift victory, particularly on the part of both the Germans
and the French, and the burgeoning impact of the concept
of social Darwinism as a robust replacement
for Christianity, particularly an idea
that had particularly grabbed the attention of the intellectual
class in Europe. Such
beliefs led to the creation of an environment in Germany, France, and
Britain where the overall cultural zeitgeist held up fighting and
warfare as quote unquote glorious, but,
of course, with all this glory, failed to adequately
prepare the actual soldier, like Paul Baumer
and all of his compatriots, both in
the French trenches and the British trenches,
failed to adequately prepare the actual soldier for the harsh realities
of warfare, particularly warfare
conducted with the new technologies of
the 20th century. In addition
to all of the old devils that bedevil warfare and
come along with them, including pestilence,
death, and
moral and psychological breakage.
War was seen particularly by folks in
Baumer's age, where the vast majority of them
between 1834, war was seen
as an escapism from daily life. And
particularly in Germany, sacrifice in the name of the state was
considered a patriotic duty. Bismarck
had done a really good job of establishing that and really
pounding that into the German psyche.
Now during this time in Europe, the industrial
revolution, was really moving forward,
and the industrial revolution would, of course,
allow industrial scale killing in places like
Verdun and the Somme.
But along with that industrialized revolution came critiques of the
industrial revolution, most notably in Britain from Charles Dickens
earlier in 19th century. But
as time had gone on, there was growing lifestyle decadence,
that was perceived by the cultural elite in Europe.
And this growing lifestyle, decadence, and unmanliness in
European society, it was believed
could only be cleansed with steel. And it's
amazing when you read the history of World War 1 as reflected
not only in All Quiet on the Western Front, but in the 1st World War
by John Keegan and in other books. It is amazing how the, European intellectual class,
the artists, the writers,
the burgeoning filmmakers, but mostly the artists and the writers, in
particular, the poets, they believed that
the only way you could change Europe,
the only way that you could increase the manliness of the European
man was through doing the hard thing of going to
war and shooting the other European man.
In Germany and in other countries in Europe, officers were selected from the
country's elite classes. And for the
vast majority of them, particularly at the general the major level and above,
the elite classes expected warfare to be conducted under the rules of the
17th 18th century. Although, I already mentioned
technology, the technology employed to fight war allowed for
mass indiscriminate and, quite frankly, anti elite slaughter
of human beings. And the best generals, the
ones who actually rose to the forefront, although there were
no good generals in the First World War, But the
best out of the bad bunch that rose to the
front, names we know,
those individuals were able to understand and figure
out how to best use these new technologies in order to
gauge and in order to temper
the indiscriminate slaughter in an attempt to try to break the
German lines, move on to Berlin,
and force a German surrender.
But the folks on the ground, the folks at the lieutenant level and at the
sergeant level, the folks are going to make sure you get a pot of
haircut beans. It's double your regular portion, tobacco and a
little bit of honey and are gonna threaten the cook. Those
folks, the NCOs, were,
the ones that understood the brutal reality of trench
warfare and were able to stare it in the face.
The elite officers were unprepared, unable, and in many cases,
unwilling to lead the troops assigned to them. And this was
one of the critical factors. Keegan kind of brushes over it, but
Aquana on the western front stares at it directly. This is one of the key
factors that led to the static nature of trench warfare
conducted and led by NCOs with little
information about what was happening in the rear. A lot of information
about what was happening at the front, but the inability to make
decisions, particularly command decisions, that
would change and shift with the times.
By the way, if you're wondering, the new technology
of radio communication was just in its
infancy. And many generals and European
powers and even the diplomats in the run up to
the First World War in that horrible summer of
1914 couldn't see the use in the
new technology. It wouldn't be
the last time in the 20th century
that a bureaucrat didn't understand a
technical innovation.
Back to the book, back to All Quiet on the
Western Front. We're going to pick up in chapter 6,
knee deep in the middle of a
shelling that these
soldiers are experiencing in the trenches.
I pick up from the book. Suddenly, the shelling begins to pound again. Soon,
we were sitting up once more with the rigid tenseness of
blank anticipation.
Attack, counterattack, charge, repulse, these are words,
but what things they signify. We have lost a good many men,
mostly recruits. Reinforcements have begun
again to be sent up to our sector. They
are one of the new regiments composed almost entirely of young
fellows just called up. They have hard
hardly any training and are sent into the field with only a theoretical
knowledge. They do know what a hand grenade is. It is true, but they have
very little idea of cover and what is most important of all, have
no eye for it. A fold in the ground has to be quite
18 inches high before one can see it.
Although we need reinforcements, the recruits give us almost
more trouble than they are worth. They are helpless
in this grim fighting area. They fall like flies.
Modern trench warfare demands knowledge and experience. A man must
have a feeling for the contours of the ground and an ear for the sound
and character of the shells, must be able to decide beforehand where they will
drop, how they will burst, and how to shelter from them. The
young recruits, of course, know none of these things. They get killed simply because they
hardly can tell shrapnel from high explosive. They are mown
down because they are listening anxiously to the roar of the big whole boxes falling
in the rear and miss the light piping whistle of the low
spreading daisy cutters. They flock together like sheep instead of
scattering, and even the wounded are shot down like hairs by the airmen.
Their pale turnip faces, their pitiful clenched hands, the fine courage of these poor
devils, the desperate charges and attacks made by the poor brave wretches who
are so terrified that they dare not cry out loudly, but
with battered chests, with torn bellies, arms and legs only whimper softly
for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them.
Their sharp, downy dead faces have the awful expressionlessness of dead
children. It brings a lump into the throat to see
how they go over and run and fall. A man would like to spank them.
They are so stupid and to take them by the arm and lead them away
from here where they have no business to be. They wear gray coats
and trousers and boots, but for most of them, the uniform is far too big.
It hangs on their limbs. Their shoulders are too narrow. Their body's too slight.
No uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.
Between 510 recruits fall to every old hand.
A surprise gas attack carries off a lot of them. They have not yet learned
what to do. We found 1 dugout full of them with blue heads and black
lips. Some of them in a shell hole took off their masks too soon.
They did not know that the gas lies longest in the hollows. When
they saw others on top without masks, they pulled theirs off too and swallowed enough
to scorch their lungs. Their condition is hopeless. They
choke to death with hemorrhages and suffocation.
In one part of the trench, I suddenly run into Himmelstas. We dive into
the same dugout. Breathless, we are lying one beside the other waiting
for the charge. When we run out again, although I am very
excited, I suddenly think, where's Himmelstas? Quickly, I jump back in the dugout
and find him a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded. His
face looks sullen. He is in a panic. He is new at it too,
but it makes me mad that the young recruit should be out there and he
here. Get out, I spit. He does not
stir. His lips quiver. His mustache twitches. Out, I
repeat. He draws up his legs, crouches back against the wall, and
shows his teeth like a cur. I seize him by the arm and
try to pull him up. He barks. This is too much for me. I grab
him by the neck and shake him like a sack. His head jerks from side
to side. You lump. You will get out. You hound. You skunk. Sneak out of
it, would you? His eyes become glassy. I knock his
head against the wall. You cow. I kick him in the ribs. You swine. I
push him toward the door and shove him out head first.
Another wave of our attack has just come up. A lieutenant is with them. He
sees us and yells, forward, forward, join in, follow. And the word of
command does what all my banging could not. Himmelstoss
hears the order, looks round him as if awakened, and follows
on. I come after him and watch him go over.
What's more, he is the smart Himmelstoss of the parade ground. He's even
outstripped lieutenant and is far ahead.
Bombardment, barrage, curtain fire, mines, gas tanks, machine guns, hand
grenades, words, words, words where they hold the horror of the world.
Our faces are encrusted. Our thoughts are devastated. We are weary to
death. When the attack comes, we shall have to strike many of the men with
our fists to waken them and make them come with us. Our eyes are
burnt. Our arms are torn. Our knees bleed. Our elbows
are raw. How long has it been? Weeks, months, years, only
days? We see time pass in the colorless faces of the dying. We cram
food into us. We run. We throw. We shoot. We kill. We lie about. We
are feeble and spent, and nothing supports us with the knowledge that there are still
feebler, still more spent, still more helpless ones there who with staring
eyes look upon us as gods that escaped death many times.
In the few hours of rest, we teach them, there, see that waggle top? That's
a mortar coming. Keep down. It'll go clean over. But if it comes this way,
then run for it. You could run from a mortar.
We sharpen our ears to the malicious, hardly audible buzz of the smaller shells
that are not easily distinguishable. They must pick them out from the general den by
their insect like We explain to them that these are far
more dangerous than the big ones that can be heard long beforehand.
We show them how to take cover from aircraft, how to simulate a dead man
when one is overrun in an attack, how to time hand grenades so that
they explode half a second before hitting the ground. We teach them to fling themselves
into holes as quick as lightning before the shells with instantaneous fuses. We show
them how to clean up a trench with a handful of bombs. We
explain the difference between the fuze length of the enemy bombs and our own. We
put them wise to the sound of gas shells. Show them all the tricks that
can save them from death. They listen.
They are docile. What it begins again in their excitement,
they do everything wrong. High Westus drags
us drags off with a great wound in his back through which the lung pulses
at every breath. I can only press his hand. It's all up, Paul. He
groans, and he bites his arm because of the pain.
We see men living with their skulls blown open. We see soldiers run with their
2 feet cut off. They stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell hole.
A lance corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands, dragging his
smashed knee after him. Another goes to the dressing station, and over his clasped
hands bulge his intestines. We see men without mouths,
without jaws, without faces. We find 1 man who has held the artery of his
arm in his teeth for 2 hours in order not to bleed to
death. The sun goes down. Night
comes. The shells whine. Life is at an
end. Still, the little piece of
convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We have
yielded no more than a few 100 yards of it as a
prize to the enemy. But on every
yard there lies a
dead man.
1 of the pieces of wisdom that
we fail to understand as leaders, whether we are
leaders in warfare,
leaders at work, leaders in our
homes, or even leaders in our communities, one of the
fundamental things we fail to understand is
that there are, when a conflict begins or a disagreement,
people on the other side.
And in recording this,
a couple of days after the most recent
election general election in the United States for
president, it's healthy to remind folks
that the enemy gets a vote.
We don't like that. Right? We want to impose
our will on others. We want to make them change. We want
to make them submit to us. We want to make
them do what we want them to do. And yet.
And yet they want to do the same thing to us.
This is what a fight is.
When a fight, a conflict, a disagreement, or even just an
argument starts, the outcome is not assured,
no matter how prepared, confident, or even
prideful each party may be.
The party that wins the fight or wins the war, quite
frankly, if we're going to be honest and rational about what
happens in a fight, The party that wins the fight or the war is the
party which adapts better to the conditions of the fight
itself and the condition of the other
fights to be fought after the first battle is
concluded. If you are
incapable of adjusting or adapting to the conditions,
if you keep seeing the ground as being the same as the one you fought
on before, if you are unwilling to shift
your strategy, shift your thoughts, or shift your approach
in a fight of any kind on any ground with any
enemy, you will lose.
You don't like to hear that.
One of the massive lessons of World War 1
and the reason why it dragged on for 4 years when it probably could have
been wrapped up in 2 was that
neither party could break the other one
using the same old techniques they had always
used. And so Paul
Baumer and Himmelstoss and Haidt
and all of the others who are mentioned in the book
wound up bleeding out their life force in
the mud and the muck of
trenches in Europe
to move mere yards or
even in some cases, suspended their lifeblood
over mere inches. And the reason they
did this is because their leaders could see no other way
forward than through doing the same things they
had always done in the same way they had
always done them. And
interestingly enough, expecting a
different outcome.
Believing in the superiority of your own weapons, your own
strategy, your own tactics, your own mindset, or your own
philosophies before you strike iron with another
person is prideful driven hubris. But this
is what we do. Right? We believe we are right. We believe that we
own the high ground and that no one else can join us. And so
we are shocked and amazed that the
enemy might believe that they have the high ground. And by the
way, they might have an opinion and their opinion might not match ours, and
they might be willing to go all the way to the wall on it.
If you're a leader, the thing
to remember is if you're going to set out on a
conflict, if you're going to set out on a fight, remember that the
enemy gets a vote
and they're not gonna stop voting. They're not
going to stop casting their ballots. They're not going to stop
having an opinion. They're not going to stop with their strategies,
their tactics, their techniques, their weapons, their mindsets,
their philosophies. They are going to keep going, and
they are going to adapt to a new environment if
you don't. If you fail to
adapt, if you are blinkered, if you are prideful,
if your ego is so big you
can't make a change, you
will lose.
The Germans lost World War 1.
Whether they believed that in the run up to World War 2 or not
is irrelevant. The Germans lost.
And, of course, as John Keegan points out in his great book, the
First World War, which we've already referenced a couple of times here, the
seeds of the Second World War were planted in the
ground, in the trenches of the First World War.
There were many people who fought in the First World War who wound up being
players in the Second World War. John Pershing,
Harry Truman fought in the First World War and led men
when the Americans finally showed up.
Hitler, the much talked
about boogeyman, secular boogeyman of the
20th and now 21st century,
was a runner in the 1st World War. He
survived gas attacks. He survived getting shot
at. He earned an iron cross.
And after World War 1, he became
something else. He, in the most
horrible way possible, adapted
to the new ground of the Weimar Republic
and shaped what would come afterward.
Churchill, by the way, also served in the First World
War with the British.
Those men learned lessons they would apply
later. Think about the names I just said.
Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Adolf
Hitler. These
men fought in a war where
they understood at a principled level
and at a gut level that the enemy
gets a vote. But how they applied
that understanding to their future leadership practices was
as varied as their personalities, their approaches,
and their goals in leadership.
Pay attention here closely, leaders. Don't
ignore the 1st World War. By the way, in
America, because we piled into that war all the
way at the end there and against our will, being poked and
prodded into it by a gentleman named Woodrow Wilson,
who, of course, promised us that he wouldn't put us in the war.
We don't study World War 1 and nearly as
closely as we should. As a matter of fact, it's considered to be a European
war. It is considered to be the collapse of European civilization, but
we're Americans. That don't have nothing to do with us.
But just like the Europeans failed to study the
conflict of the civil war in the United States, a
war almost a generation and a half earlier than
World War 1 that was a pre
modern equivalent of what happened in the
trenches and in the fields of
Europe and in the Western front. Just as the
Europeans failed to study the American Civil War with
any interest at all whatsoever, We, in the first
part of the 21st century, should not make the same
mistake. We should study the first
world war that occurred in the first part of the 20th
century so that as a multipolar world
descends upon us in the next 10 to
15 years, we will not be surprised
by the things that may occur.
As usual this year on the podcast, as
we get to the close of 2024 and, well, I
think we'll continue this into 2025, We are
focusing on what are some solutions to
problems that we that currently bedevil us in the
West in general and in America in particular. What are
the solutions? What are some solutions to problems that we can find
by reading books like All Quiet on the Western
Front or About Face or
Von Klaus, which is On War? What are
lessons we can apply from the great books from
Shakespeare, from Moliere, from Solzhenitsyn
and from Hannah Arendt? What are the
lessons we can apply from fiction that
seems innocuous and built for entertainment,
but really is deep and can help us understand
morality, humanity, help us prepare
emotionally for the future, and of course as I said
before provide solutions to our most bedeviling
problems. What is the
problem the main problem that All Quiet on the Western Front presents to
us? Well, I would assert that the
main problem that the that is proposed
by Eric Maria Remarque in his
dramatization of his experiences in the trenches
of World War 1 fighting for Germany, a country
that because it started World
War 1 has not ever fully been allowed to
explore the impacts of World War 1, except
as an antecedent to World War 2.
Marie Remark was seeking, I think, to solve the
problem of how leaders lead
without the respect of the people that they are tasked with
leading. This is indeed a massive
problem, and it is one
that still bedevils us in the west today,
particularly as we are seeking
to get to the other side of
the current crisis of competency that we are
in in the West in general among our leaders and in
America in particular among our
political, cultural, and moral class.
How do you lead those who don't
respect you? How do you lead people
who don't give a damn? To be quite blunt
about your status, your title, your money,
your salary, your benefits, your hair, your
race, your gender. They only give a damn about
what you do or what you do not do.
And when you fail to act.
They fall away from you. And they go find another
leader who will do for them. You
cannot. If you're
incompetent, you probably don't know you're incompetent, which means you're probably not
listening to this podcast. So that's fine. If you are listening to
this podcast, you probably are competent, and yet you probably
struggle with feelings of being incompetent or thoughts of being
incompetent. You're probably looking to level up. You're probably looking to
change. You're probably looking always to get better, to
improve, to move the needle,
and to become more of the thing
that will allow you to
lead other people. You've probably
pushed past the current shibboleths around
race or gender or class or economic distinction
or education. You know, all the things that are used
by folks in the media and in the culture
and in the intellectual class in America to divide us
along lines in order to
manipulate us. You probably move past
those things as a leader a long time ago. And if you are in the
space of competency, you probably believe in merit. And
merit merely means the best person
who can actually act in the best way and do what
is required in the best way gets the position
regardless of what their external
proclivities or abilities or
gifts might be.
Merit is brutal, and we don't talk about IQ and we won't on this podcast
today. And we're going a little bit fur far afield to make a point about
the problem that All Quiet on the Western Front brings to us
because it is a problem of class that this
book brings to us. Should people have a certain
elite class lead us because they are
elite?
That's a penultimate question for our time. What does
elite even mean? What does
leadership mean? Does it mean you're smarter than me because you're able to
manipulate a financial algorithm? Or does it mean
you actually built something?
You actually made something in the world. You actually solved a
hard problem.
These are all questions for you as a leader to consider
when you read All Quiet on the Western Front. And by the way, this
book will pound you in the face, just like those shells
falling on the trenches with this question repeatedly
over and over and over and over again until you
recognize it and until you seek to find the answer in
your own experience.
But I have some thoughts as you probably can imagine
about how to lead without the respect of
those you seek to lead because everybody won't like you. That's not
what I'm talking about. I'm talking about respect.
If you don't have it, how can you get it?
Well, there's a few key ways, actually, probably only
really 2, maybe 2 and a half, that will lead you
to getting that respect that you so desperately crave. By the
way, don't confuse that with liking. Don't make that mistake.
One of the things you wanna do is you wanna watch out for overconfidence based
on your past successes. In a battle, in a conflict, in a
disagreement, or in a leadership challenge of any kind,
past performance is only indicative of a future, Dunning
Kruger effect. You know,
believing that you're better than your last
win. And the opposite of that, believing
that you are worse than your
last loss. Another
thing you might wanna consider is this, asserting your will to win over and
past another person's resistance, psychological or physical,
is a matter of patience, guile, observation of acted
out behavior, and an understanding of the results, not only of your actions,
but also an understanding and a curiosity about the
actions of the enemy. If you
lack curiosity about what the other side is doing,
you cannot lead the people to battle the other
side. Because if you lack curiosity about those folks, guess
what? You probably lack curiosity about the motivations of your
own people, And that's a real problem.
Final point. Gaining
respect cannot come from speeches well delivered, fervor
well rallied, or manufactured
emotions that don't really exist.
Gaining respect comes from discipline, hard work,
taking on risks that your followers can't or won't take on.
And here's a big one, actually
enjoying the process.
People pick up on that. They know when you like the
fight. And as Ronald Reagan
infamously said way back in the
70s 80s, People want to follow
a happy warrior.
In our time, in our 4th turning, which
is rapidly coming to a close,
We've been a lot of there are a lot of dower warriors in our
businesses, in our communities, in our families, and
in our churches.
But spring is coming. And don't worry.
There'll still be wars and conflicts and battles and disputes. Those are
natural human nature. You will still have to fight for
love and fight for happiness.
But when a secular spring shows up and it is coming,
well, you'll be able to smile
and gain the respect of your followers and genuinely
connect with them.
And well, that's it
for me.