Office Hours with Victor Davis Hanson: Patton

And welcome back to Pepperdine University and the School of Public Policy. I'm Pete Peterson, the Dean of Pepperdine's Graduate School of Public Policy, and it's a delight to welcome you back to the second installment of Office Hours with Dr. Victor Davis Hanson. Dr. Hanson began with us this fall teaching a class on Roots of American Leadership. He serves as our Giles Omali Distinguished Visiting Professor and is delighted to welcome him back.

Welcome back. Thank you for having me, Pete.

So, the theme of Office Hours is, uh, we're filming this on the day after a class that you've taught here, yes, in, uh, on our campus in Malibu. And I, the, the intent is to have a conversation that might be similar to what our students experienced with you yesterday. Uh, Roots of American Leadership is the title of the class. Uh, you have used as a kind of ongoing theme, uh, biographies, histories of great military leaders from ancient times through today. Um, tell us why you think for policymakers like our students, who may not be going into military service, maybe working at a local government, maybe working on Capitol Hill, maybe working in, uh, the Foreign Service, but why is it important for them to understand these, uh, stories and biographies of military leaders?

I, I think it's because in war, um, there's no avenue, uh, for pretense, for bureaucracy, for rhetoric. It, you, because the stakes are so existential, you get down to just ideas and personalities, but most, most importantly, action. And that was pretty much the thought of ancient writers. Plutarch's Parallel Lives, ostensibly they have people like Cicero, but, but it's usually Cicero himself as a Roman statesman who had military experience. And so they all do. And every one of those lives contrasts someone with military experience, and most often generals. The same thing with histories. History starts with Herodotus, as Persian Wars. It continues with Thucydides, Punic Wars. It continues with Xenophon's Hellenic Wars. It continues with Polybius's Roman Wars, and on and on and on. And it was the view of the Greeks and Romans that, unfortunately or tragically, during war, all, all veneers are stripped off, and you see human nature in its most raw form, and therefore the most pure way of studying it, and characteristics of leadership. No margin of error. And certain people, as the ancients pointed out, thrive in peace. They like consensus, they like to be in the majority point of view, they like deliberations, they like to be so judicious, they like inaction. But those traits don't necessarily translate to war. And then in the class, I'm raising the question, well, are those traits that become manifest in war also in great political leaders? Uh, also important? In other words, do great generals make great leaders? Or do great leaders have certain traits that generals have, of decisiveness, or, uh, you know, people are revising their view of, um, Ulysses S. Grant as a president. George Washington was a good president. Dwight Eisenhower was a good president. Not all generals are. But it, there is, there are those traits that become important in war and politics as well.

Well, let's get into, uh, the class that you taught just yesterday. The focus, uh, of our last conversation was on, uh, Themistocles. We are now catapulting into the 20th century with, uh, General George Patton. Um, one of the themes that has been coming through, both in the last conversation but also this one, and a lot of your important work, is the, uh, foundational concept of irony in human affairs. Uh, that sometimes the, uh, the smartest isn't the right person for the position. Sometimes the one who is most uncouth and aggressive is the, the right person. Sometimes they're not. There really can be, uh, moments when certain leaders are right in certain positions in certain ways. You mentioned before, uh, certain military leaders are great in military situations, but in political environments where there needs to be more, uh, essentially, uh, deliberation and agreement, consensus building, uh, that's not always the case. So, Soul of Battle is the, is your book that students are reading, looking at three generals. Um, and we're going to focus this conversation on Patton. And I thought a way to do that was to, uh, begin with the comparison of Patton that you make with other generals that were serving at the time. So, specifically, we're looking right at the beginning of 1944. We are, uh, we'll get into a second what has just preceded this with the so-called slapping incident. We'll touch on that in a second, but just to kind of set the time frame, uh, we, we are beginning in that period as we move toward, uh, the Battle of the Bulge and into, uh, 1945. But I wanted to read this comparison and get your thoughts.

"There were also humane and capable generals in the Second World War: Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley, and Clark. Those whose armies did much to shorten the Holocaust. But all the latter, in comparison to Patton, were irresolute and let opportunities repeatedly slip when real daring was called for. Unlike Patton, they relied on superior Allied material and manpower and factored into that strategy that a great number of young men would have to die in a methodical frontal assault against the German Army. In the Second World War, as in the annals of military history, it is possible to find firebrands at the head of murderous soldiers, and similarly, satisfactory leaders of armies of liberation are common. It is nearly impossible to find both at once: fanatical generals who put their unstoppable citizen armies in the service of freedom, not slavery or conquest."

Well, the thing about Patton was that he understood something that the war against the Axis by 1942 was going to be won, but it was going to be won at a terrible cost. Because Churchill and Roosevelt had declared unconditional surrender as the ultimate goal. That meant they were not going to have a World War I armistice. They had to go into Germany and physically destroy Germany, at least to the extent the Nazi Party was destroyed. And as true as it is of Italy and Japan. And therefore, a lot of Americans were going to die. And he understood that it was the typical mindset of generals to say, as the war goes on, this huge economy kicks in, we are going to have more Sherman tanks, more planes, more M1s, more bombers, more everything than the Axis. And therefore, we have to play it safe. And this, I think, sums up the mentality of Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Effort in Europe. It's General Hodges, his counterpart, Patton in the First Army, Omar Bradley, the theater commander, both, uh, Hodges and Patton, and, uh, almost all the other generals, Mark Clark in Italy. Patton's idea was that just because you have the material advantage and you may be able to use that, that's no reason why you wouldn't want to shorten the war as quickly as possible. To shorten the war as quickly as possible, you cannot take 18-year-olds from Kansas that weren't even soldiers when the war broke out, and when the American military in general was the size of Portugal's military, at about 250,000. It grows to 12 million. So we are asking Americans from Fresno or Kansas to go against SS Totenkopf soldiers who've been fighting since 1939, the most vicious and effective soldiers in the world. So his idea was, we're going to have to be innovative. We're going to have to be moving. We're going to have to use the American innate advantage that we are a nation of mechanics. Germans are not a nation of mechanics. You have a Tiger tank that's highly craftsman, demands high craftsmanship. If the transmission goes out, they'll send it back to the factory. Sherman, less tolerance on, um, pistons or transmission components. Americans know how to fix it. They love machines. They love to travel fast, and they have that Western spirit of adventure. So he tries to institutionalize that by doing what Sherman did. We're going to take the indirect approach, vast sweeping movements. Traditional doctrinaire military theory says you cannot do that without your flanks protected. And he says, we have overwhelming air superiority, if not supremacy. So we have P-38, P-47, P-38. They're going to protect my flanks. First time we really saw air support used that way. And we're going to go around and shock the Germans, and we're going to have vast envelopments. And this shocked everybody because, uh, accompanying that idea, he also did something that was quite ironic to your point. He talked about blood and guts. He said, nobody ever won a war by dying for their country. They won it by killing the enemy. Uh, you'll, you'll want to fight when the guy next to you, stomach is goo. It just was crude and atrocious. But what he was trying to do was give the impression that he loved frontal combat because he wasn't going to do that. And he thought he would be accused of timidity or too much refinement.

So how did that translate on the battlefield? His army is activated roughly at the end of July, and the first major contest is at Falaise. He sweeps around the right flank of Army Group B. There's 250,000 Germans, and he finds himself parallel with them and quickly to their rear. And he pleads with Bradley, with Montgomery, with Eisenhower, "I made the large hook, and all you have to do is close it, and we've got the war over with because they're way across the Rhine. They've got SS armor divisions, and they're trapped. And we are going to just hold them, destroy them with air power, and wipe them out." And of course, everybody looks at, "Doire, or George, you were supposed to go west and secure the ports at Brittany. You have, George, you have the longest pathway into Germany. You're making a hook through Check." This was not what was on the plan. "George, if you tighten this ring, it's going to be like a balloon, and they're going to force it, and it's going to burst because they have to go somewhere." And so for critical days, they did not close the Falaise Gap. And then when they did close it, about, oh, 75% of the army escaped. And two things were important about that. Where did they go? At least 50,000 went right into Holland. They re-equipped, and in a month, Montgomery's Operation Market Garden would drop airborne divisions right on top of them and almost be annihilated. And those should not have existed. The second thing that was very important about it, when Eisenhower looked at the Falaise Gap, it was horrific carnage because they did finally close it, and these troops were trapped and destroyed. 10,000 Germans were, it, language doesn't describe what we did to them. Eisenhower walks through and said, "This is just ultimate carnage." Bradley says, "Look at what we did. We've never been this successful." Patton is saying, "I don't look at the dead. I look at how many got away." So, yes, it's good we did this, but we could have done more. So his, he's famous, essentially, for August of 1944, September of 1944, October, November, is five great months. And that is characterized by four to five occasions where he could have encircled retreating German soldiers, and he was partially successful. And he was stopped at the Saar River, at Lorraine, and after '45, at the Falaise, but especially the Battle of the Bulge. So, and we'll get to that in a second. The fact that Patton was held back from that opportunity in the summer made the Battle of the Bulge even possible, right? He predicted it, right?

And so I want to get to this aspect in a second. So let's, let's walk back. Uh, I want to get back to where Patton is as he is, as he lands in Europe. This is right after the D-Day invasion with his Third Army. Talk a little bit about where, where he is in being considered by senior military leadership. What's happened in Sicily, the slapping incident, and so forth, how he is being viewed. And then I want to get to a very interesting part here, which goes back to a theme we brought up in the first session about one of those unique qualities of leadership, leaders that you profile, is their seemingly prophetic nature. So I'll get to that in a second. But take us back to where Patton's career is, essentially, how he is being viewed as he comes into Europe following the D-Day invasion.

Remember that when the war breaks out for the Americans in '41, George Patton is in his mid-50s. He's drinking a little bit too much. His lifestyle is undisciplined, and he's very angry that somebody with that brilliance was not a general. He's been a colonel too long. But the Americans are looking what happened in '39 in Poland and '40, and they say, "War has been revolutionized. It's now an armor assault. It's not horses. It's not frontal assaults." And we have this guy who's been yelling about this for years. So we're going to put him in Indio and let him try it. And when they think that we have Pearl Harbor, and then they don't know what to do about Europe. How do you get over there? Uh, the B-17 people have said, "You don't need ground troops. We'll have daylight bombing raids." It's a disaster. So by November, we think the place that where they're weakest are the Vichy French in North Africa. And Patton, uh, is one of the chief generals. They land in a series of war, uh, battles. We find out that our existing command is incompetent. Patton comes over, he revolutionizes the expeditionary army. It beats the Germans. It's on its way with Montgomery to trap more Germans than were lost in Stalingrad. Then the next idea is, you go to Sicily and get up through the S. This is, uh, Churchill's idea. You get into the soft underbelly of Europe. The Italians are supposedly weak. You go in there, and then you, you not only get into Germany quicker than going from the west through France, but you beat the Soviets to Germany, and then you don't have communism. Patton is saying, "Does anybody ever attack Italy from the south? Even Hannibal went from the north in the winter. You cannot work your way up. There's the Apennine Mountains, and you've got this backbone, and they will make a wall, retreat to another wall, to another defensive." And maybe we should go to Corsica and go across, or Sardinia. And everything he says turns out, in retrospect, to be true. But in Sicily, he's given a subordinate role. So Montgomery would be the first to get to Messina and cut off. And what is he doing? He's yelling and screaming, "Why am I going to Palermo? It's the wrong direction." But then he says, "I can go to the wrong direction and still get back ahead of Montgomery." And he does. And it's just like the Falaise Gap. They take Sicily, and he says, "There's 100,000 Germans that escaped. That's 100,000 Germans that are going to kill Americans." And in that process, he's now acclaimed the most successful American general, not the best liked. But other than Eisenhower, who's an administrator, if you're going to invade Europe, he's the likely guy. And everybody had grudgingly acknowledged it. And then on two occasions, he goes into the hospital, and he's frustrated that the Germans have relieved and they've won. And he sees somebody that doesn't seem to be ill. He has a fever. And he asks the person, "Are you ill, or what's wrong with you?" And he says, "I can't take it anymore." Well, I think he actually probably had malaria. Contested. So he slaps him and he screams and yells, and that's kept quiet. He does the same thing two weeks later. And there's reporters are outraged. Uh, they report back to the Americans that an American general slapped a soldier. Well, the Germans have good intelligence. They can't believe this. So they think it's a ruse. Nobody would, you know, if Guderian or Von Manstein, they shoot their soldiers. If they, they would never, they think this can't be true. It's all a ruse. But the result of it is, he does not get the command to go into Italy. Mark Clark, who, he looks like a general, he talks like a general, but he's not a general, not in the sense of Patton. So that, that campaign will be, to be frank, a disaster. And we will never get into Austria when the war ends. Very bloody. All you can argue, it ties German, Germans down. So for one year, he's idle. So they come up with, and he's not allowed to plan the attack on Normandy, on the Normandy beaches. So the Germans are wondering, "Where's Army Group Patton?" So Eisenhower and Montgomery and Bradley come up with the idea that, well, if the Germans think he's going to be the key to the attack, we'll make a fake Army Group Patton, and we'll take him to Germany, and we'll build cardboard tanks and balloon-like trucks and have false intelligence fed to the German agents, and it'll be Army Group Patton. And as long as he stays put in England, they will think that the real attack is coming to Calais. So when we go to Normandy, they won't release the pen.

All of that actually pretty much followed script. But the irony was, here the Germans are most afraid of their, the swashbuckling, successful general that terrifies them. And the Americans know that. Why, why he terrifies them, and they know that that's the type of general they need to terrify him. But they still won't use him, which helps the Germans, right? And so he's not, after the D-Day beaches are taken, they hit, in the case of Omaha, to a lesser extent Utah, they hit the hedgerows. Patton had warned them, you know, I was in Germany in World War I and France, and I saw the French hedgerows, the bocage. So after that brilliant D-Day, June 6th, they just stay there, and they lose more casualties than they did on D-Day, and they're stalemated. And then they use bombers to break out. And then on August 1st, he's activated, and he starts outflanking Germans.

So I want to touch on this aspect, and this is really just a beautiful paragraph here. Patton has been brought in as the decoy, as you say. It's almost, it feels like in the ways that you described it, that Eisenhower and Bradley are almost being forced, even to bring him in as a decoy, much less, I mean, that is they don't want him there. Yeah, that's how broken that relationship is between Patton and his superiors. Which, which will go into another question about how one operates in both democratic and bureaucratic systems, which I think really goes to one of the leadership skills here. But I wanted to get to this, uh, one paragraph here, uh, which looks at Patton's perspective in, in where he's, where he's been brought in here in '44.

"Inside the brain of George Patton was quite a different idea." Now, this is different than what Eisenhower and Bradley had intended him, uh, to the role that they were intending him to play. "Quite a different idea, one that would now draw on some 40 years of intellectual contemplation, training in the field, and combat experience. No command of an army group? Better that way. He could command more directly from the front as a leader of a single army. I think," quote, "I think the slapping incident was a good thing," Patton wrote his wife upon arriving in England. "And again," quote, "but for it, I would probably have had Bradley's job, which I certainly would not have liked, certainly not in this present form. The altitude is too great." Yeah.

So this ability of Patton and others who you profile to work in bureaucratic systems that are actually, and in ways that seem very personal, working against you. He takes it in and says, "If these are essentially, these are the cards I'm dealt, this is how I'm going to respond." Whatever the other plans others have for me. His career was predicated on sort of a guardian angel that would mean an enlightened commander or superior who had to make allowances for his genius, which included his crudity. And he thought that Bradley, being his subordinate in both Sicily and North Africa, would be that person. But Bradley was a small man. He really was. I mean, psychologically, cognitively, and he didn't have Patton's talents, and he was insanely jealous of Patton, and he wanted Patton removed back to the States. Eisenhower was ambiguous. He had his finger in the air. The people who saved Patton were George Marshall and FDR. And FDR did it because of the pressure from Patton's wife and that very wealthy family and the Republican base who loved him. So political pressure on FDR, and his record of shortening the war. FDR thought translated into Marshall saying to Ike, "You do what you want, but I would like to have Patton stay." And his idea was that if he was brilliant on the field, then there would be somebody who would say, "I can't, I can't lose this guy." And so when, what he was thinking of is when Grant, for example, after Shiloh, was supposedly drunk and on the first day almost lost the battle. Lincoln said, "I can't lose this guy. I don't care what he drinks, he fights." Or to make jokes, whatever he's doing, give it to the other generals. And so he needed somebody like that. He never quite found it. And that explains the tragedy that before, uh, the invasion of North Africa, he was stymied and suppressed. And then after the capture of Berlin and the, uh, in Germany fell, he was, he was for the next six months nobody again, and he died tragically. But that, the entire Patton mystique is based on the idea of taking a citizen army, army of inexperience, he had some people from Sicily, but creating an army with a Third Army and then outdoing the Germans in Blitzkrieg and talking about killing a lot of Germans. But when you actually look at the figures, they captured enormous, they captured over a million Germans. And he didn't kill all of those people. And just the intricacies and the minutiae that he was caring about the soldiers. Nobody in the American Army at the highest commands said, "You've got to keep your socks dry, or you're going to get trench foot. You have to have three meals. You have to have mail. You have to clean your weapons. You have to know how to fire them." And that was the all of the fundamentals daily. And everybody thought he was, you know, he was just spouting off. He, he slept very little, he studied constantly, and he had that prophetic ability that the mystique had and others. That why most people are glued or concentrated or focused in the present, he's always thinking of the future. So when he gets there in August, everybody's saying, "Well, it's the Americans are here. We landed. We broke out. We're on the way. We're going to go right through France." And he's thinking, as he writes and he tells people, "Our lines are getting longer. Theirs are getting shorter. We have three times, uh, the army that Britain does. Britain has been in the war longer. They're going to finally want their due, and they will take things from me to give to Montgomery, who does not have my talent. So we've got to move, move, move." And also, "The days after June 21st are getting shorter, shorter, shorter. So we have less time for air supremacy to make its mark, and the weather is going to get bad. They are in German villages. We're out sleeping out here. They have wide-track tanks. We have narrow-track, high-profile Shermans. All of our advantages are going to disappear if we don't get across the Rhine." And everybody said, "What are you crazy? We're going 50 miles an hour." And sure enough, by the time he approaches within 100 miles of the Rhine, half of the gasoline to deliver to him from the Normandy beaches is consumed by the trucks that are delivering it. And then it's diverted to Montgomery for Market Garden. And he literally gets some 30,000 gallons after instead of 300,000 a day. And right when he's ready to leapfrog the Rhine, he's stopped. And then he starts to examine the line, and the American line. He said, "Wow, these, this American Army is top-heavy. It's got 12 million people in the military, but the actual people fighting Germans is very small. It's only about a million, and they're worn out. They've been fighting for three months. And this division is worn out. This division is green. They've got a hundred miles. We haven't heard from the Germans. We count all of the dead. We count all of the wounded. We count all of the captives, and we can't come up with enough soldiers to suggest there's not a lot more in Germany waiting for us. And we know what Germans do. They take risks, and they like motorized attacks. And we haven't heard from them. They're not using the radios." So he writes things like, "If December is cloudy and we can't use our air supremacy, and we still don't hear what the Germans are doing because they're obeying strict radio silence, and we can't account for some of the most fearsome SS divisions, they're going to go right through this hundred miles." He, he predicted it. He predicted it.

And in that, I think you're making an important distinction there. There seems to be in many of these leaders that you profile, a, as I said, a kind of a prophetic quality. But there's also another that may be hard for, it's hard to teach prophetic qualities. It's not hard to teach forward thinking. And I think that's the other part of that you highlight here about Patton as well. I mean, if you're not content with resting on your laurels there in August, then you really are making your, your thinking ahead to what does December look like in Europe? What does that mean for air cover? In this instance, um, it's great that we've had these military successes, but who escaped and where did they go? These very kind of logical questions, in a certain sense, but certainly forward-thinking questions.

They're very closely connected. If you think forwardly and anticipate likely scenarios, then people will deem that prophetic. But it's not based on mystery or, or, uh, religion or divine inspiration so much as close analysis. It's a very rare trait. You think it'd be very common. But you look at, say, just to divert a bit, the 2024 elections. On either side, are Democratic handlers saying, "We are looking at President Biden, and now we're going back and looking at films since he was elected and inaugurated, and there is a rate of decline that should it continue at this rate, in a year when he's out on the campaign trail, he will not be able to campaign." On the same token, are there people on the other side who are saying, "This is Fani Willis, this is Letitia James, this is Alvin Bragg, this is Jack Smith. These are four lawsuits. They are going to have progressive prosecutors, progressive juries, progressive judges, and the entire institutional support of the left, the corporate boardroom, the media, Silicon Valley, the university." And if you look at a calendar, are they saying, "These are the court dates for summonses, for objections, for gag orders, for house arrest, and it's going to be very hard for Donald Trump to campaign in a manner that anybody has campaigned." Everybody has done this, but no one will have to campaign the way he will have to if he can. I don't think either side is thinking like that. And so that's what makes, uh, Themistocles, they use the Greek word *pronoia*, he's thinking ahead. What it would be like. What when they come down to Athens, the only way to get out is to evacuate the city. And he's thinking like a Phocian. If it's winter, they're not expecting me. If I announce that I'm going to liberate the Phocians, I'll have a moral crusade. If I, if, if, and that all Sherman was the same thing. So it's kind of ironic that when you have thinkers like that, you would think that they would be, I don't know what the be word would be, nerdy, calculating. But they're not usually. They're, uh, eccentric, and they're bold in the dynamic. And they're bold in the dynamic because they are not reckless. They have confidence in what their preparation, and they see patterns. They do, right? And it's one thing to see patterns. It's another thing to see patterns and understand that this is probably where this is going to go. Because I do think there are people that can say, "Oh, you know, this, this person kind of acts in this way." Well, let's extrapolate that out. And often times that step isn't taken. But many of these leaders that you profile, and obviously Patton here, um, not only had some of those prophetic qualities, but was also able to, to see those patterns and, and follow them out.

I would just say the choice and the Soul of Battle of Epaminondas, Theban, and Sherman, was not my originality. I had talked to people in the military, just as I taught the Naval Academy and other places. I'd always ask him, had anybody heard of Epaminondas? Most hadn't. And when they heard of Sherman, they usually preferred Grant. But when I started to read Patton's Wars, I knew it. Are letters, are Martin Blumenson's comprehensive compendia of everything he wrote or said. Guess what? One of his heroes was Epaminondas, and one was Sherman. And why? Because they were able to take huge armies and destroy their enemies without losing a lot of soldiers. And so it was, it was he was, he was consciously thinking of past precedent and he was going to follow in that same paradigm.

Well, I want to touch on one other aspect here of, of the leadership, which is more true of Sherman than Epaminondas, in that one of, one of the environments, the leadership environments that you explore here is the difference of leading other people in a democratic system. Yeah. And in that, the importance of, especially in high-stress environments like this, in war, the importance, and sometimes the decisive importance, of building a cohesive identity, and one that sometimes will take not only a certain type of person, but a certain set of communication skills. So we, we've, we've looked at how one can operate in a bureaucratic environment. We have, we've looked at about the importance of foresight and following patterns. But something that sometimes gets, especially with military leaders, where I think many people when they're thinking of military leaders will say, "Well, obviously you have to follow the general. These are hierarchical systems, and if somebody tells you to do something that's of a higher rank, you have to do it." But what you get into is that even in comparable hierarchical systems, one unit will perform better than the other if they have this sense of, of an identity together. And that can be founded on communication skills and rhetoric. So I wanted to touch on, uh, read this one paragraph here in which you explore Patton's skills in this, and, and in comparison to others in this regard.

"Patton's constant speeches and written proclamations about the evil of the Germans were entirely consistent with guidelines set out by the Anglo-American High Command, whereas Eisenhower, Bradley, and Montgomery were usually content to remind their soldiers of the global issues at stake or to express hatred for the Germans in private letters. Patton was far more graphic, crude, and public, insisting that his soldiers in the field, if they were to fight well, must feel exactly as he did about the enemy. As one observer pointed out, 'Patton had to harden his troops for battle in a country remote from the actual fighting, with little conception of the realities of war, and still enjoying the luxuries of peace. Furthermore, he had to do this in the teeth of lively and at times malicious criticism.' Unquote. Thus, Patton's evil Germans became real, living, breathing monsters who wished to kill Americans and to do terrible things to the innocent, not abstractions that threatened world peace and global harmony."

Unlike his experience in World War I, when his men sought to destroy the German Army, Patton's aim now was to lead an army to ruin a very culture. As they neared the German border, Patton reminded his men, "The friendship and cooperation of the French people will be replaced in Germany by universal hostility, which will require that we regard all Germans, soldiers and civilians, men, women, and even children, as active enemies. It is expected that we shall encounter sniping, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and treachery. Everyone must be warned of these probabilities and prepared to take all possible protective measures."

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. And his trademark was to pull up to a German village and warn the mayor that they had to evacuate and expel SS troops, but all German troops, troops as well. And if they didn't, he started shelling it. And then after four or five examples, usually they followed his command. But again, he's, he's considered a blood and guts general, but not a geopolitical strategist. But he, he said things and he acted in ways that showed a lot more acumen than his superiors. One good example of what you're talking about is he's given deliberately the long route, as I said, from the Normandy beaches into Prague. He gets to Prague after they cross the Rhine, and he understands that the Soviets are going to, they're only 20 miles out, according to the Yalta agreements. That's going to be in the Soviet sphere. And Patton says, "I'm, they're all there. They've been treated terribly by the Germans. The Soviets, they expect will treat them the same. I can take Prague tomorrow." And so he's ready to go. And he's told by Eisenhower, "You can't do that." And he said, "That will mean it'll be communist forever, and we're going to lose." Same thing when the question comes up, who's going to be the first person to Berlin? Well, Patton and the Americans are closer to Berlin than the Russians. Eisenhower says, "Why would you want to go to Berlin? We have a postwar division of French, American, and British zones of occupation, and Berlin is in the Soviet occupation." And Patton says, "It's the iconic center of Nazism and German culture, and we can take it." And they said, "It'll be a bloodbath." And indeed, it took 100,000 Russians to take it. But his point was, one of the reasons that we're going through Germany so quickly is the Germans understand that we're different. That we don't kill prisoners, and we're not communist. So they are putting, switching their best divisions that were against us, because we were closer when we landed at Normandy, and they thought we were the more existential threat. Now they're transferring to the Eastern front. And that means that a lot of Russians will die in Berlin, but not a lot of Americans, because they won't fight as ferociously against us. We can take it, present Stalin with a fait accompli, and we will not end up, as he said, going to war. Because in 1939, Eastern Europe fell under totalitarianism, and then going to war and ensuring that it continues under totalitarianism by a different name. And that's, historians usually say, "Well, he was crazy. It was all, he would just upset the Yalta agreements. Why would he do that?" But he understood that the way the Soviets understood things, these agreements meant nothing. All that mattered was who was on the ground with the biggest stick. And he felt if we go in there very quickly, not only will the Germans not fight us, but they will turn into French populations that are friendly to us. And that got him in big trouble because of course, he got to the point where he saw the Soviets as a greater existential threat than conquered Germany, not Nazi Germany, but conquered Germany. Conquered.

Yeah. I want to come to a conclusion here about the, the leadership skill takeaways. But I, I have to touch on this aspect, and again, one of the many ironies that you touch on here in regards to all of these leaders, but in this case, Patton, that the speed with which he went, the language that he used, the, the aggressive ways that he approached everything that he did, was actually for the reason of reducing casualties. And I think this, as he's been perceived, and as you've written, I mean, he's perceived as a crazy man, a lunatic, and so forth. And at one point, you write that he loved war, but he hated death. And so that aspect, you know, it's probably a poor analogy, and you're going to correct me, but I remember there was a time in, uh, after the first couple years of Mike Tyson's reign as a boxing champ, that people just didn't want to even get into the ring with him. And if they did, it was usually over within a minute and a half. And in part, it wasn't because the person wasn't, the opponent wasn't trained well or strong, but there was a sense of fear that turned what could have been a 15-round fight into a minute and a half. And that was it.

Yeah. I just, I just think it's, it's, I'll put this in the form of a question. How do we think about leadership when the things that seem utterly contrary to what we construe to be someone's goals, whether it's in their rhetoric or language or actions or strategies, are actually the things that are, if they were in fact carried out, would have prevented the Battle of the Bulge, would have prevented tens of thousands of not just American deaths, but even German deaths and citizen public?

Think the answer is that certain leaders understand and manipulate human nature. And they understand there's a veneer that we all put over there because we're civilized. But that does not mean our limbic system or our lizard brains don't exist. And certain leaders understand that in war, that pretense is stripped off, and human nature then starts to act. And so if your example, the Battle of the Bulge, 250,000 German troops, shock and kill and wipe out a whole division, and maybe two divisions, 30,000 dead, and they're on their way all the way, they think, to, uh, the Atlantic ports in Belgium, Antwerp is what they want to go. And the further they go, the more Americans are terrified, and no one can stop them. And they call on George Patton with the largest army. And of course, he's already seen it's going to happen. And he phones back a code, and an entire three divisions turn. And nobody thinks, and Eisenhower said, "Stop. It's time to be serious, George. Just stop this." And he said, "It's already happening. I gave the code." In fact, it was. But he was angry that here is this huge bulge, and he's going to be directed at the tip of it to save Bastogne. And he was saying, "If the thing keeps going and thinning the base is more vulnerable, and I'll cut it off at the base, and then the whole thing will be trapped, and that's all they have left. And the war will be over because we will destroy the entire quarter-million army and just walk across the Rhine." And they think he's reckless, he's dangerous, he wants to get into a big war. We just want to save Bastogne. But he understands that. And same thing with William Tecumseh Sherman. They said, "Why would you dare go down in the middle of the South when Grant's outside Richmond? He's lost 100,000 casualties this terrible summer of 1864, Cold Harbor, all this. And you want to go down in the middle of those people? And then you want to go where? To the coast? And then you won't be happy with that. You've got to go up to the Carolinas." And he says, "This entire society is based on a false sense of invincibility, of chauvinism, of chivalry, of plantationhood, of slavery. Of, I'm going to destroy the whole image. And I'm going to do it by burning a swath that avoids people's homes, avoids the average person, frees slaves, but it targets that emblem of the South. And I'm going to humiliate it. And once I humiliate it, I'm going to get stronger and stronger and stronger, especially if I don't fight these gratuitous head-on. And I'm going to end the Civil War because I'm going to pull up right behind Lee with this huge army of Westerners, the best army in the world. And then he's going to surrender to Grant." It's exactly what happened. And he saved thousands of lives. And he was hated for it because of his rhetoric and burning plantations. But he didn't, it's, he understood something about human nature that the South would blame a man more who humiliated them. As Thucydides has said, "We can forgive a person who kills our father, but not somebody who destroys our inheritance." And they would not get as angry about Grant who killed thousands of them. Right? And the same thing with Patton. He would be angry at him, angry at him for saying he wanted to kill Germans, he wanted to do this, he wanted to do that. And then in the process, they would not give him credit for these huge sweeps. And getting, especially when he got across the Rhine, he just went crazy. And, and but to this day, we think of George Patton as this, believed in reincarnation, he was crazy, he was foul-mouthed, he was kind of a Donald Trump character. He loved battle. And Bradley said, you know, "It was better than George died because there was no future for him." It wasn't better than George died. He was a, but he understood this element of human nature. And I was trying the other day in the class to take that phenomenon we're talking about and apply it to current events. So we're in Gaza. And traditional, traditional understanding of diplomacy and foreign affairs and diplomats suggest that Hamas has done this terrible thing, so you want them to stop. But the IDF is attacking Gaza. So to end the cycle of violence, you show magnanimity. So Anthony Blinken, our Secretary of State, on the mistaken assumption that a hospital was hit by the IDF, suggests that our embassies lower the flag half-mast. And then he suggests that we, go to Joe Biden goes to all the capitals who are recipients of multi-billion dollars in USA, Jordan, Palestinian Authority, and then he suggests we give a $100 million more. We've already given $700 million. And the question Patton or Sherman would ask is, will the Palestinians interpret that magnanimity as kindness to be reciprocated with a cease, with a surrender? Or will they see that as weakness to be exploited? Forget what we say or what they say. What does human nature say? And I think the answer is, they'll interpret it as weakness. With one caveat, and this is important too, that when you become a realist and you understand that you're going to use real force to stop the killing and the bullying, you yourself can't descend to the level of rhetoric as the enemy. So when Patton was doing all of what he was doing, when he did say, "We're going to flatten your village," then he went out and was very nice to them. And he said, "You know what? Get this guy over here and get him on the water, get him on the electricity, get him on this." And then he said, "My, after the war, when he was the war was, I'm not an enemy of the German people. I don't like what I'm doing." And so what I'm getting at is, if the IDF decides that they have to destroy Hamas, and I think they do, they will save lives in the long run because they will get rid of a group that slaughters, and they will liberate that group, some of the Gazans from that group. They will be damned for it. They will be called murderers for it. But it won't matter as long as they don't descend to the tactics of Hamas. So as long as they can say every day that we are telephoning and dropping leaflets to people to get away from these rockets that are put in hospitals and schools and mosques, and every day that they are shooting rockets at us indiscriminately, designed solely to kill civilians, and so that we are using our rockets to protect civilians, and they are using their civilians to protect rockets, there's a moral difference. And ultimately, if we're successful, people will appreciate that. However, if we're unsuccessful and we're weak, then we would expect, no matter what we say, people will coalesce. And so this is the irony that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, maybe even Turkey, they're all screaming and yelling at the IDF, "Stop." But I think we could be assured that they're calling privately and saying, "This terrorist organization threatens our regime, and we will continue to attack you publicly, but we will support you because you're going to save lives in the long run." With one caveat, you don't boast about your killing, and you do kill them. If you go in there and you stop, and it's Stalingrad, then we're going to turn on you in every aspect. If you go in there and destroy Hamas and don't revel in it, then you're going to be our biggest benefactor, and in the future, we're going to be allied with you. And that's hard for people to take because it goes against the therapeutic sense that we all have conditioned ourselves. We don't want to go back to our limbic, tragic sense because it suggests that people aren't very nice. And it depends, you know, and when you say, "I don't think the Gazans want Hamas." But every, I, but equally, I, I think that the Western narrative that they have nothing to do with Hamas and they hate Hamas, and if you go in and destroy Hamas, you'll give them, they'll start liking Hamas, is completely invalid. Because, uh, they hated Hamas because it was crooked, it was barbaric, it stole their international aid, it diverted it to tunnels and rockets, and it did not do what it said it was going to do, was kill Israelis. It was impotent. Once it started to kill Israelis, hundreds of civilians followed that army into southern Israel and joined in the rape and the murder and killing. And when hostages were brought back, and you got a glimpse of the Gazan street, people celebrated in the death. So you can make the argument, yes, Hamas was unpopular as we were making it. Yes, they didn't represent, but an element of that anger with them, they were willing to put up with the corruption and the barbarity of as long as they were effective and destroyed Israel. Once they showed that they could envision that type of success, then people were happy and celebrated. And so when you're trying to deal with that, it's not enough to say, "Well, people of Gaza, they didn't really represent you. They took all of your money and built tunnels and built rockets, and we know deep down inside you didn't want that." You also have to say, "And they're going to lose, and they're going to be humiliated. And anybody who's going to be allied with them is going to be destroyed." So separate yourself because you were deluded. And we understood that you, they were popular when they were winning, so they're going to be unpopular because they're going to be defeated and humiliated. And anybody who allies himself, and that's what Sherman and Patton were trying to teach us. And it's very, and it apparently doesn't seem to have reached a resonant audience because many of the people in the international community, I think understandably, have a therapeutic view of what, how people function. It doesn't. And again, I really want to emphasize, I'm not calling for a Melian dialogue where the Athenians say to the Melians, "We're going to wipe you out." That's the way of human nature. But if you, you articulate what you're going to do, and you don't get gratuitous in your cruelty, but you are very firm, and you say that, "I'm going to wipe out evil, and that's going to save lives," then I think people will come to appreciate what you were trying to do.

Well, Dr. Hanson, thank you very much for this time. I think just in these last few minutes, what you've perfectly captured is the importance of studying leaders and events that go back centuries, if not millennia, but to understand not just the history, but their applications. Human nature has not changed, as you say. And I wish it had, but it hasn't. Right. And I also wish that some of the people in leadership positions would be taking your class as well. Hopefully, at least some are watching this video. But again, uh, it's, it's an honor to have you on campus and, and great to speak with you.

Well, thank you for having me.