Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

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.