The First World War by John Keegan (Introduction) w/Jesan Sorrells

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Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand

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yet another business book on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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Podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting and analyzing the great

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books of the Western canon. You know, those

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books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in

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between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high

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school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the

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entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn’t have the time

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to read, dissect, analyze and leverage insights from

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literature to execute leadership best practices in

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the confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now

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inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western

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Civilization at the intersection of literature

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and leadership. Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books Podcast. Hello, my name

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is Jesan Sorrells and this is Leadership Lessons from the

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Great books podcast, episode

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168

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postmodern leaders, particularly in the west, are

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increasingly a literal yet not literary

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and even barely literate people. They this

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means we miss the forest for the trees, our

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expectations of other people don’t match their inherent and obvious

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capabilities or lack of capabilities, and we

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arrange social, political, cultural and business systems to

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minimize as much risk to ourselves as possible.

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And when all that delicate arranging, organizing and planning fails,

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we are either paralyzed into inaction or or we run and

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hide in dopaminergic distraction, or we

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lash out in anger at others, which

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of course creates the circumstances that lead to interpersonal conflict

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based on hurt feelings, disordered desires and

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appetites, and of course the ever present loss

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of face. We are

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obsessed with leadership on this show. Sure, it’s a literary

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and book focused show, but at the core

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of the show is the tension between leadership and book

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topics that appear on the surface to be antithetical to entire

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practices and assumptions inherent within

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postmodern leadership practices which are

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designed to reinforce that delicate balance I was just talking

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about or practices that are oriented towards creating

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a new heaven and and a new earth

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with the same old followers we’ve always had. Rather than informing

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leaders and informing followers of tragic truths and

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the consequences of not heeding them,

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the book we are introducing today is one that while on the surface may

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seem to not be about leadership, is

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at the end of the volume, a book about nothing but the

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tragic truths of leadership and and the long term consequences

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of not heeding the ignorance or the dismissal

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of those truths, today

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on this episode of the podcast we will be

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introducing and discussing one particular

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core theme from John Keegan’s

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the First World War

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Leaders. No reference to the Second World War can be made without

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talking about the exegesis of the First World War for sure.

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And no reference to any of the civilizational

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problems in our postmodern era can be made without

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deep understanding of the causes, the execution and

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of course, the tragic results of the First World

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War.

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SAM.

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And we open with an examination of

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our volume, the First World War by

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John Keegan. The the book

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is set up in an interesting way, by the way, the version that we have

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is, is published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House,

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published back in 1998. And so of course,

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as with all books that are under copyright, we will not be reading

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directly from the book. However, I do want to give you a brief overview of

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what you can expect when you open up this,

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this volume. So the there

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are 10 chapters in the First World War War

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by John Keegan, starting off with

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Beginning with A European Tragedy, where

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he puts forth his initial thesis

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that the war that

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was called the First World War was a tragic and

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unnecessary conflict.

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He goes further in stating that the

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crisis that led to the First World

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War could have been avoided and that

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the suffering that was inflicted upon

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the Germans, the British and the French, and of

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course, many others worldwide could have been

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avoided. It could have been ameliorated in

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the crisis or during the crisis of 1940,

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14, during that summer.

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Then he goes into talking about the battles, the

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frontiers and the Marne, the battles that are

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in or that occurred in the east between Germany and Russia,

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the stalemate of battles and the war beyond

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the Western Front. And that’s one of the things that we tend to forget about

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World War I. We tend to really focus on the European

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nature of the Western Front, that long swath

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of land that went from,

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from, from south

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eastern France all the way to,

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all the way to Holland and into, into the Netherlands.

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We tend to really focus on the trench warfare that occurred in that area. And

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we tend to forget that there were colonial powers

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that were involved, not there were colonial powers. We tend to forget that the major

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players were colonial powers and that as a result

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their colonies got involved in the war. We also tend to forget the

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Ottoman Empire and of course the Arab revolt that

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occurred there that was documented by a favorite of our

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show, Thomas Edward Lawrence, T.E. lawrence, in his book The Seven

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Pillars of Wisdom. We also tend to forget that this war

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was a war beyond the Western Front that also

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occurred in the form of submarine

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warfare and naval battles between the

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Germans and the Eng. And of course

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we forget about the role that Russia had in the,

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in the war in World War I, primarily because

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through the wonderful tender mercies of Germany

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who allowed Lenin to pass through their country and

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through Finland Finland Station to

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Petrograd in 1916, effectively removing

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millions of Russian soldiers from from the field of battle on the

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Eastern Front and technically speaking, winning, if that

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term can really be used, the war for Germany on the

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east, we tend to forget Russia’s contributions to World War I.

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Then we move into the year of battles and the breaking of armies,

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where Guy Keegan talks or writes very

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coherently about generalship and about the nature of

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morale as the war ground on into nineteen

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six through nineteen sixteen and into nineteen seventeen and finally

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America’s entry into the war. America and

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Armageddon. That’s the chapter that focuses on America’s entry into

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the war in 1917 and the nature

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of America bringing to bear millions

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and millions of men to

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fields that had been bled red

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with the blood, soaked red with the blood of British,

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British, French and German

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warriors for the previous three years.

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World War I is indeed or was indeed a European

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tragedy. But the

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world that we live in today, the world that we

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take for granted 111 years later,

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the social and cultural and even, or especially

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the geopolitical arrangements that we think are quote, unquote,

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normal, had their beginning

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in the killing fields of World War

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I.

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SA.

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Back to the book, Back to the First World War by John

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Keegan. So when you open up the book, the

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first three chapters lay out

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Keegan’s assertion, lay out some of the King’s, Keegan’s

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basic assertions about the causes of the First

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World War. And he asserts

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several that we’re going to talk about in

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toto or in aggregate here today. And then one that we’re going to

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focus on specifically in the next

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couple of sections or the next couple of segments of, of

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the show. So he opens up in his first three

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chapters, chapter one, a European tragedy, chapter two, war plans, and

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chapter three, the crisis of 1914, by laying out

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in, in order all of the

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reasons Europe had Pre

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World War I, Europe had to not go to war,

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right? But then he also lays out these same

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reasons as reasons that that would

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inexorably prove to drive

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Europe and European powers to war.

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So one of the first things he lays out is that the

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folks in Europe, both the civilians and the political class

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during the time previous to World War I,

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had an abstract understanding of war due to

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a long peace that actually began in

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1870 and continued with fewer hiccup,

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with few hiccups into 1914

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that created almost a generation

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and a half of people who had not known a

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Major continental struggle, sure,

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Napoleon and Wellington and all that had happened earlier in

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the, in the 19th century. And yes, there were the

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Russian wars in the middle part of the 19th century.

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And of course, America had had her civil war,

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which none of the European powers paid very much attention to,

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as they viewed it as an internal struggle in

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America between 1861 and

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1865. But beyond that, there hadn’t

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been a major world enveloping great

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power, enveloping conflagration for

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a generation and a half previous to

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World War I. So people were lulled. This is, this is Keegan’s

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point. People were lulled. Politicians were lulled, Leaders were lulled into a

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false sense of security. The second factor

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that led to this European tragedy being played out in

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World War I was the fact of

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men under conscription, men under the

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control of folks who could make them march, make

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them dig, and claim that it was all for

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the protection of a nation state. There was an

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entirely militaristic society that. Existed

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underneath the European power structure. And Keegan points this out, that

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actually allowed militaries, allowed great powers

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to think of and to consider how they would mobilize

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hundreds of thousands of men and bring the force

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of those hundreds of thousands of men to bear against hundreds of

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thousands of other men. Military society also,

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or the creation of a military society, a military subculture

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in and amongst the European powers of the British, the French and

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most, of course, notoriously the Germans, allowed

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politicians and generals

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more so generals and politicians to make war plans.

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And war planning was something that Keegan points out had become

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more formalized during the back half of the 19th

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century. As he points out in the first three chapters, when he talks about

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Schlieffen’s plan that was eventually adopted

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by Moltke in Germany and eventually

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executed by the generals, the German generals in World

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War I, to stalemate results.

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These war plans were created by men who had very

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little actual practical work, war experience,

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right? And so when you have actual practice, we have very little actual practical

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war experience. Most of your war planning at war

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colleges, where your subordinates are going to be, who are going to

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execute these war plans if they are ever to come to fruition.

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Also, that’s going to be based on theory. And at a certain point,

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as we pointed out when we covered why don’t we ever learn from

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history? At a certain point, you have to move from theory

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to actuality, because things change

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when plans change, when they make first

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contact with reality. There were two

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other factors that Keegan talks about. The first three chapters in the

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lead up to the First World War that were critical to the

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First World War occurring. And the first one of these two is

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technological change. There was rapid technological change that was. Occurring

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at the beginning of the. The 20th century. The

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Telegraph, the telephone, radio,

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airplanes, these kinds of. And of course, trains,

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these kinds of technologies were coming to the forefront

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and were being used not only for transporting people

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and communications, but they were also, or could be. They

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also could be used for making

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war, and they would be used to make war during World

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War I with tragic results.

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Because, unfortunately, it wasn’t just the technologies that

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were advancing. It was also the

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mindsets of the people that were going to be

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leveraging these technologies that had to be examined

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as well. And when Keegan looks at the mindsets, one of the points that

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he makes in his very dry British historian, with

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his very dry British historian sense of

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exactitude, the point that he makes here in the first three

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chapters, is that the politicians, the

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ambassadors, the diplomats, and fundamentally later on during

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the war, the generals came from a certain

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class structure in Europe that we cannot appreciate

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here in the 21st century and really

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couldn’t appreciate in the end of the. The

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20th century. When Keegan was writing this book,

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the aristocratic class of sensitive men

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who were class conscious

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was rife throughout European capitals. In particular,

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as I said before, the British, the French, and

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of course, the Germans, we

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in America Post World War II, post

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Vietnam, post Korea, post Iraq, post

265
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Iraq, too, we have fallen

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into the grip of egalitarianism, and we believe in the

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power of the demos. But the aristocratic

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class, the kings and the princes and the people that they

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appointed to run their wars and expand their colonial

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empires believed in the right to rule, and

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they believed that it was also a burden.

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And so a person with an

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aristocratic mindset who is faced with new

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technologies that they don’t fully understand or appreciate,

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faced with a long piece in an abstract

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understanding of war among their populaces, but

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also having access to the greatest resource

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of military mind can possibly think is the greatest

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possible resource. Bodies and plans.

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There is certain level of inexorability that comes along

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with all these factors that ground the

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Europeans towards an

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apocalyptic tragedy.

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Sam,

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Hello. So I’m gonna do some shelling here,

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00:20:12,550 –> 00:20:16,200
and hopefully this will be a pause. In

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So what are we to take from all of those ideas that Keegan

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puts forth in the first three chapters of his

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one volume overview of the First World

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War? Well, there’s a great quote

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actually in in the book, and

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it sort of summarizes a larger idea

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in a very British fashion that I want to

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I want to talk about. And it’s, it’s in his

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section marked, marked A Europe of soldiers are labeled a

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European, A Europe of soldiers. And it says this

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There was admittedly a fear of war in the

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abstract he’s talking about in Germany, but

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it was as vague as the perception of what form modern war

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itself might take. Stronger by far,

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particularly among the political classes in every major country,

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was the fear of the consequences of failure

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to face the challenge of war itself.

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That’s an interesting idea to me, because

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enveloped inside of that idea

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are concepts of honor, integrity,

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ethics, truth, and just how

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far population

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or leader is willing to take their population in order

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to fulfill all of those social

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contracts. The

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idea of not being able to meet the

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moment that war would require is one that is

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foreign sounding to our postmodern ears

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and to our postmodern psychology. It even it sounds

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brutal and it sounds unfortunate, and it

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sounds savage. This is because we live in a

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time where not meeting the moment that X would

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require or Y would require is such a common

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occurrence that we have had an explosion in the number of lawyers

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minted by law schools in the last 40 years, ensuring

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that people will meet the moment that X requires

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or else there will be contractual consequences.

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Failing to quote, unquote, beat the moment, of course, comes from an inability to

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understand that ethics, morality, personal accountability,

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and this idea of social coherence are bound together

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in ways that we as individuals cannot understand

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fully. There’s a great line from

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BH Liddell Hart in his book why Don’t We Learn From History,

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which I would like to quote from here. And I quote, although

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they political leaders up to and during World War

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I may have been fools in disregarding the conditions necessary for the

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effective fulfillment of pledges, they at least show showed

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themselves men of honor and in a long view, thinking

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towards the causes of World War II, of more fundamental common

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sense than those who argued we should give aggressors a free hand

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so long as they left us alone. Close quote. That’s from

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BH Ladell Hart, why don’t we learn from history, page 74.

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Which one is better? This is a huge question for

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leaders. Is it better to appease, to miss the moment,

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or is it better to worry about

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failing to meet the moment and work yourself up into a froth in

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order to meet the moment? Failing to meet the moment the

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conflict sometimes requires is a failure we all struggle with in our

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own comparatively geopolitically peaceful, postmodern

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era. In business, of course, we call this failure to meet the

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moment imposter syndrome when we feel it personally.

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But there is no term other than maybe cowardice

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or appeasement to describe it when we see it

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in others. This is one

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of the major disconnects between us reading the history

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of World War I right now in 2025

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and the folks who actually experienced World

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War I in the early part

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of the 20th century.

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Sam.

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Right back to the book, Back to the First World War by John

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Keegan. So I’d like to bring up a point here

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that really, I hope not really, but that I hope

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will buttress a larger point that I’m going to close out the

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the show with. So I

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talked initially in a previous segment about the

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aristocratic cadre of class sensitive men

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who were the diplomats, the ambassadors, the kings, and especially the

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00:27:20,720 –> 00:27:24,400
generals who ran the First World War.

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00:27:25,760 –> 00:27:29,320
Hagen points this. Sorry, Hagen. Keegan points this

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out in his chapter entitled the

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Breaking of Armies. There’s an interesting

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paragraph here that I’m going to quote a line from,

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and I quote, would changes in command, however, change

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00:27:44,510 –> 00:27:48,110
anything, talking about the number of deaths in the Western Front?

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The generalship of the First World War is one of the most contested issues of

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00:27:52,470 –> 00:27:56,229
its history historiography. Good generals and bad generals

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00:27:56,229 –> 00:28:00,030
abound in the war’s telling, and so do critics and champions of this

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00:28:00,030 –> 00:28:02,830
man or that among the ranks of its historians.

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This is the, this is the key quote here. In their time, almost all the

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leading commanders of the war were seen as great men, the imperturbable

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Joffre, the fiery Foch, the Titanic, Hindenburg,

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00:28:15,320 –> 00:28:18,760
the Olympian Hague. Between the wars, the

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00:28:18,760 –> 00:28:22,360
reputations crumbled largely at the hands of memoirists

401
00:28:22,440 –> 00:28:25,640
and novelists Sassoon, Remarque,

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00:28:25,720 –> 00:28:29,080
Barbuse, whose depiction of the realities of

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00:28:29,800 –> 00:28:33,400
war from below relentlessly undermined the standing of

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00:28:33,400 –> 00:28:37,090
those who had dominated from from above,

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00:28:38,930 –> 00:28:42,730
close quote Then, of course, Keegan

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00:28:42,730 –> 00:28:46,570
goes on later on in the paragraph to talk about and to quote or to

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00:28:46,570 –> 00:28:50,330
paraphrase from British historians who framed British

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00:28:50,330 –> 00:28:53,330
generalship as, quote unquote, donkeys leading lions.

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00:28:53,890 –> 00:28:57,610
And of course, this is follow up to a previous chapter in the

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00:28:57,610 –> 00:29:01,450
Year of Battles where he talks about Haig, Doug

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Haig, the British general, the leader

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00:29:05,210 –> 00:29:09,050
of the British Expeditionary Force at the Somme.

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And and Haig was a man who, as he

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00:29:13,290 –> 00:29:16,650
paraphrased there, who would be framed as Olympian.

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00:29:19,850 –> 00:29:23,450
But he also points out, Keegan does

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00:29:23,770 –> 00:29:27,450
this line and I want to make, I want to make this point as well.

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00:29:27,450 –> 00:29:31,170
He says, he says the successful generals of the First World War,

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those who did not crack outright or decline gradually into pessimism, were a

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00:29:35,050 –> 00:29:38,890
hard lot as they had to be, with the casualty figures accumulating on their

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00:29:38,890 –> 00:29:42,730
desks. Some nevertheless managed to combine toughness of mind with some

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striking human characteristic. Joffrey imperturbability,

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Hindenburg gravity, folk fire, Kamel certainty.

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Haig, in whose public manner and private diaries no concern

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for human suffering was or is discernible, compensated for his

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aloofness with nothing whatsoever of the common

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00:30:01,960 –> 00:30:05,400
touch. Close quote

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00:30:05,880 –> 00:30:09,080
JOHN keegan, the First World War.

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How can you lead people? And this is a question that has

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00:30:14,680 –> 00:30:18,440
become even more sharp or gotten sharper and

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00:30:18,440 –> 00:30:21,800
sharper as we have gotten away from mass casualty in the

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00:30:21,800 –> 00:30:25,290
military and as fewer and fewer grown men have

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served in the armed forces, at least in America, than ever before.

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00:30:29,650 –> 00:30:32,850
How do you lead men if you have no

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common touch?

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00:30:48,300 –> 00:31:03,420
SAM.

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00:31:33,190 –> 00:31:36,910
So what are we to do with that piece, right?

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How are we to square the circle with

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00:31:40,440 –> 00:31:44,120
the aristocratic leadership and the

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00:31:44,120 –> 00:31:47,960
lack of, well, the ability to

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00:31:47,960 –> 00:31:51,400
be hard hearted right in the face of casualty figures or in the face of

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00:31:51,720 –> 00:31:55,240
bad things, the ability

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00:31:55,240 –> 00:31:58,760
to stare disappointment in the face

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consistently over a long period of time and not flinch.

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00:32:02,920 –> 00:32:06,660
What is the one thing that sort of binds

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00:32:07,220 –> 00:32:11,020
folks together, that allows

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00:32:11,020 –> 00:32:13,940
the top and the bottom to

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00:32:14,660 –> 00:32:17,860
work together during times when

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00:32:19,300 –> 00:32:22,820
mass casualties are happening in a war or when

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00:32:22,820 –> 00:32:25,140
maybe mass firings are happening in a business?

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00:32:26,500 –> 00:32:30,220
Well, in order to make a civilization, we have to agree on

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00:32:30,220 –> 00:32:33,780
what is at the root of of a civilization,

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what is the thing that binds us, what is the what is

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00:32:38,540 –> 00:32:41,460
the. The act that binds us all together. And

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00:32:42,020 –> 00:32:45,780
BH Liddell Hart made the point

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00:32:45,780 –> 00:32:49,300
in. In his book why don’t we learn from history that

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00:32:49,620 –> 00:32:53,460
civilization is built on the keeping of promises.

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We can see that this began to break apart after World War I

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and has continued to break apart, first in

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00:33:03,770 –> 00:33:07,450
our political class and now even interpersonally between

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00:33:07,450 –> 00:33:10,090
all of us in 2025,

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00:33:11,450 –> 00:33:13,530
eroding like sand on the beach

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00:33:15,450 –> 00:33:19,170
because of the nature of the way World War I was

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fought, where people who were given a lot of

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00:33:22,610 –> 00:33:26,410
trust, those aristocratic generals and kings,

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00:33:27,380 –> 00:33:31,140
proved to have very little humanity when it came

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to stopping the casualties and

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preventing even more casualties at the Somme and the

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Verdun and at Marne, at Gallipoli and

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even east at Lemberg

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when the time came for there to be no more

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dead bodies.

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I’m not the first person to point this out, this. This breaking of

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trust from another, according to John Keegan,

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00:34:00,870 –> 00:34:04,710
anyway, less impressive historical writer who lived during that

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00:34:04,710 –> 00:34:08,309
time, T.E. lawrence, who we have talked about on this

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00:34:08,309 –> 00:34:12,030
show, comes this sentence from the introduction to his World

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00:34:12,030 –> 00:34:15,790
War I memoir, I guess is what Keegan would

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00:34:15,790 –> 00:34:19,460
say of the Arab revolt. The seven pillars of

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00:34:19,460 –> 00:34:23,220
wisdom, and I quote, we were fond together

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00:34:23,300 –> 00:34:26,700
because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wider winds, the

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00:34:26,700 –> 00:34:30,380
sunlight and the hopes in which we worked. The

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00:34:30,380 –> 00:34:34,140
moral freshness of the world to be intoxicated us. He’s talking

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00:34:34,140 –> 00:34:37,860
about the people who joined up with him to engage

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00:34:37,860 –> 00:34:41,060
in the Arab revolt from the Mecca of Sharif

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00:34:41,860 –> 00:34:45,459
all the way down to the average man who were

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00:34:45,459 –> 00:34:48,019
suffering under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire

487
00:34:49,459 –> 00:34:53,259
back to the quote. We were wrought

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00:34:53,259 –> 00:34:56,939
up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be

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00:34:56,939 –> 00:35:00,659
fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling

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00:35:00,659 –> 00:35:04,339
campaigns, never sparing ourselves. And this is the money

491
00:35:04,339 –> 00:35:08,179
quote. Yet when we achieved and the new world dawned,

492
00:35:08,579 –> 00:35:12,360
the old men came out again and took

493
00:35:12,360 –> 00:35:15,880
our victory to remake in the likeness of the former

494
00:35:16,040 –> 00:35:19,320
world. They knew youth could win,

495
00:35:19,640 –> 00:35:23,400
but had not learned to keep and was pitiably weak

496
00:35:23,400 –> 00:35:27,080
against age. We stammered that we had

497
00:35:27,080 –> 00:35:30,880
worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and

498
00:35:30,880 –> 00:35:34,360
they thanked us kindly and made

499
00:35:34,760 –> 00:35:38,170
their peace. Close

500
00:35:38,250 –> 00:35:42,050
quote. Yeah. Those old

501
00:35:42,050 –> 00:35:45,690
men who thought that they had not lost trust, those old

502
00:35:45,690 –> 00:35:49,530
men who believed that they had behaved

503
00:35:49,530 –> 00:35:53,210
with honor and had kept the political and

504
00:35:53,210 –> 00:35:56,250
cultural and civilizational promises to others in Europe,

505
00:35:56,730 –> 00:36:00,490
didn’t quite realize that the

506
00:36:00,570 –> 00:36:01,770
millions of dead

507
00:36:04,180 –> 00:36:07,380
indicated that they had kept the wrong

508
00:36:07,700 –> 00:36:08,340
promises.

509
00:36:11,380 –> 00:36:15,180
The genuine guarantee, the only guarantee of civilization, is built on the

510
00:36:15,180 –> 00:36:19,020
rock of keeping promises. And the one thing you could say about all the

511
00:36:19,020 –> 00:36:22,580
players in World War I, from the Kings and the princes to the

512
00:36:22,580 –> 00:36:25,380
generals and even the ambassadors, was that they were trying

513
00:36:26,180 –> 00:36:29,790
to keep promises, or at least to avoid committing to new

514
00:36:29,790 –> 00:36:33,550
ones. But the mistake they made

515
00:36:34,110 –> 00:36:37,710
was that they didn’t realize when those promises should be

516
00:36:37,710 –> 00:36:40,990
broken. And this concept that promises

517
00:36:41,390 –> 00:36:45,070
given by men of honor to other men of honor, regardless of

518
00:36:45,070 –> 00:36:48,830
class, status or wealth, this concept that those promises mean

519
00:36:48,830 –> 00:36:52,230
something, was one that died terribly and

520
00:36:52,230 –> 00:36:55,710
tragically in the fields of the Western Front battles of the Somme and the

521
00:36:55,710 –> 00:36:59,020
Verdun. In the Verdun, the Eastern Front battles at

522
00:36:59,020 –> 00:37:02,260
Lemberg, and away from the Western Front in places like

523
00:37:02,260 –> 00:37:05,740
Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. But

524
00:37:06,460 –> 00:37:10,100
this concept that promises means something was not

525
00:37:10,100 –> 00:37:13,900
fully destroyed until after Vietnam and well into

526
00:37:13,900 –> 00:37:17,260
our own era. We are still

527
00:37:17,420 –> 00:37:21,180
eating out on the last seed corn of a high

528
00:37:21,180 –> 00:37:23,950
trust society. And this,

529
00:37:25,230 –> 00:37:29,070
this is something worth defending, this

530
00:37:29,070 –> 00:37:32,790
is something worth withholding up. If you run a

531
00:37:32,790 –> 00:37:36,350
business, this is where it relates to you. And you have

532
00:37:36,350 –> 00:37:39,990
shareholders, to whom do you owe your

533
00:37:39,990 –> 00:37:43,590
trust? To the people at the bottom who are doing the

534
00:37:43,590 –> 00:37:46,830
work or to the shareholders in the boardroom

535
00:37:47,550 –> 00:37:50,960
who control the capital flows?

536
00:38:43,260 –> 00:38:47,020
So what are we to make of John Keegan’s book the First World War?

537
00:38:47,990 –> 00:38:51,750
What lessons are we to take from this book and apply to Our

538
00:38:51,990 –> 00:38:55,590
leadership lives 111 plus years after

539
00:38:55,750 –> 00:38:58,950
the end of the war? After the beginning of the war, actually,

540
00:39:01,270 –> 00:39:05,110
111 years after the guns started up and then fell silent?

541
00:39:06,230 –> 00:39:10,030
What are we to take from the First World War?

542
00:39:10,030 –> 00:39:13,780
What are we to take from Keegan’s writing about it

543
00:39:14,650 –> 00:39:18,450
as a Britisher writing about a British war? What are we to

544
00:39:18,450 –> 00:39:22,130
take as American leaders from this? Well, we’re going to go,

545
00:39:22,130 –> 00:39:25,610
we’re going to do a deep dive into some of these other topical areas that

546
00:39:25,610 –> 00:39:29,290
we didn’t really focus on in this introductory episode when we talk with

547
00:39:29,290 –> 00:39:32,490
Tom Libby in our next episode?

548
00:39:32,650 –> 00:39:35,850
169. So I would encourage you to check that out.

549
00:39:37,050 –> 00:39:40,570
But there are some things I think that we can glean about

550
00:39:40,570 –> 00:39:44,270
civilization from this book, some lessons that I

551
00:39:44,270 –> 00:39:47,990
think will be helpful for us as leaders, whether we are leading in a

552
00:39:47,990 –> 00:39:50,790
small business, leading in a community, leading in a family,

553
00:39:51,590 –> 00:39:55,390
or even leading a larger enterprise, a larger

554
00:39:55,390 –> 00:39:58,790
business, where the decisions are

555
00:39:58,870 –> 00:40:01,830
much more, well,

556
00:40:02,470 –> 00:40:05,030
weighty and potentially even difficult.

557
00:40:07,520 –> 00:40:10,960
A couple of things to point out, though. In some ways we are

558
00:40:10,960 –> 00:40:14,800
returning now in our own time, and I think this is part of what’s

559
00:40:15,120 –> 00:40:18,760
flummoxing us in our own time. We are returning to the world that

560
00:40:18,760 –> 00:40:22,480
existed before any of us listening or hosting this podcast

561
00:40:22,480 –> 00:40:26,200
were even born. We are returning. In many ways, we

562
00:40:26,200 –> 00:40:29,440
are turning back to a pre World War I world

563
00:40:29,840 –> 00:40:33,440
of power politics, honor being more important than

564
00:40:33,440 –> 00:40:36,290
words and treaties, civilizations

565
00:40:37,570 –> 00:40:41,210
that are relying on trust to keep

566
00:40:41,210 –> 00:40:45,050
going. This feels fragile to us when I say

567
00:40:45,050 –> 00:40:48,650
it out loud. And it also sounds delusional because it is

568
00:40:48,650 –> 00:40:51,810
unknown and also because we

569
00:40:52,130 –> 00:40:55,890
are in a world where all of that kind of

570
00:40:55,890 –> 00:40:59,250
pre World War I stuff seems.

571
00:41:00,770 –> 00:41:04,450
Seems so. Seems so abstract,

572
00:41:04,690 –> 00:41:08,130
right? And seems to be fragile and

573
00:41:08,210 –> 00:41:11,650
lacking robustness because, well, we

574
00:41:11,650 –> 00:41:15,450
fundamentally, culturally frame the reality of our lives in a

575
00:41:15,450 –> 00:41:18,770
Post World War II context of supernational

576
00:41:18,770 –> 00:41:21,170
institutions, mega corporations,

577
00:41:22,290 –> 00:41:25,810
and quote, unquote, gee whiz technology, where everyone,

578
00:41:26,680 –> 00:41:30,320
even the poorest among us, gets richer and fewer and

579
00:41:30,320 –> 00:41:34,160
fewer people have anything to fight about or anything much

580
00:41:34,160 –> 00:41:36,200
to fight about anymore.

581
00:41:37,880 –> 00:41:41,680
This thinking, of course, this post World War II

582
00:41:41,680 –> 00:41:45,080
focused thinking has its dissenters, and

583
00:41:45,400 –> 00:41:49,080
the minority report on such thinking is based, such as it were, in the

584
00:41:49,080 –> 00:41:51,720
Pre World War I mindset that.

585
00:41:52,720 –> 00:41:56,360
That encompasses strict hierarchies, martial

586
00:41:56,360 –> 00:41:59,800
obedience, minimal egalitarianism, and

587
00:41:59,800 –> 00:42:02,960
limited democracy. Because

588
00:42:03,360 –> 00:42:07,000
the demos, as all of those Pre World War

589
00:42:07,000 –> 00:42:10,080
I ambassadors, kings, generals,

590
00:42:10,400 –> 00:42:14,200
queens and leaders and politicians

591
00:42:14,200 –> 00:42:17,680
knew the demos are loud. They are confused.

592
00:42:18,560 –> 00:42:20,080
Fundamentally, they are stupid.

593
00:42:22,480 –> 00:42:25,760
Hmm. And we don’t like.

594
00:42:26,160 –> 00:42:29,680
We in the demos don’t like being called stupid.

595
00:42:31,200 –> 00:42:34,960
The tension between both those polls, of course, is reflected

596
00:42:34,960 –> 00:42:38,800
in the minor leadership struggles at the minor levels that we

597
00:42:38,800 –> 00:42:42,600
have today. Sure, we use terms from the

598
00:42:42,600 –> 00:42:46,300
military, like Vuca or Frontline or Service,

599
00:42:46,860 –> 00:42:50,580
interchangeably with other civilian terms to

600
00:42:50,580 –> 00:42:53,940
describe what the actions are that people are making in our

601
00:42:53,940 –> 00:42:57,740
organizations. But with fewer and fewer of us in the west

602
00:42:57,740 –> 00:43:01,540
having either carried a gun and marched or having killed someone to gain

603
00:43:01,540 –> 00:43:05,260
a strategic position, we don’t really know what

604
00:43:05,260 –> 00:43:08,780
we’re talking about. And of course,

605
00:43:10,110 –> 00:43:13,390
I was just reading an article on Substack about the potential

606
00:43:14,270 –> 00:43:17,710
about. Well, that was asking the question, are we in America

607
00:43:18,030 –> 00:43:21,710
currently in a civil war? And then you go and read

608
00:43:21,710 –> 00:43:25,549
the comments. By the way, here’s a pro tip. Never

609
00:43:25,549 –> 00:43:29,350
read the comments on a Substack article or read the

610
00:43:29,350 –> 00:43:33,070
comments on anything else on the Internet. What you read

611
00:43:33,070 –> 00:43:36,440
there is the. Is the

612
00:43:36,440 –> 00:43:39,880
assertions of people who’ve never

613
00:43:40,600 –> 00:43:44,400
actually had to shoot anybody in anger, who don’t

614
00:43:44,400 –> 00:43:48,200
understand where a martial spirit winds up at,

615
00:43:49,240 –> 00:43:51,640
but also people who feel

616
00:43:53,080 –> 00:43:56,760
that we are in a declining society.

617
00:43:59,640 –> 00:44:03,490
I don’t know how we solve those tensions, and I

618
00:44:03,490 –> 00:44:07,250
don’t know that. Keegan, if you were writing a book today,

619
00:44:07,250 –> 00:44:11,050
if you were Even still alive 25 years on from the publication

620
00:44:11,050 –> 00:44:14,370
of the First World War, I don’t know that he would have anything to tell

621
00:44:14,370 –> 00:44:18,090
us. I do know that if we return

622
00:44:18,090 –> 00:44:21,770
to a pre World War I world, at least in

623
00:44:21,770 –> 00:44:23,850
mindset and maybe in leadership,

624
00:44:25,290 –> 00:44:28,820
maybe that ameliorates some things.

625
00:44:29,860 –> 00:44:33,700
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe our technology is too far gone,

626
00:44:34,020 –> 00:44:37,140
our mindsets are too much changed and

627
00:44:37,460 –> 00:44:41,020
colored by the exigencies of the Second World

628
00:44:41,020 –> 00:44:44,620
War, a war that would not have happened without the First

629
00:44:44,620 –> 00:44:47,060
World War. And maybe,

630
00:44:48,020 –> 00:44:51,460
maybe we have nothing to look forward to

631
00:44:52,830 –> 00:44:56,430
other than a continuation of

632
00:44:56,590 –> 00:45:00,270
experiencing the consequences of that

633
00:45:00,270 –> 00:45:03,750
first horrible European tragedy at the

634
00:45:03,750 –> 00:45:06,590
beginning, at the beginning of,

635
00:45:07,310 –> 00:45:09,390
well, of the, of the last century.

636
00:45:12,590 –> 00:45:16,310
We’re going to talk to Tom more about all of this and

637
00:45:16,310 –> 00:45:18,990
kind of see where this goes. But for right now, well,

638
00:45:21,020 –> 00:45:21,820
that’s it for me.

639
00:45:45,910 –> 00:46:09,670
Sam.

640
00:46:13,040 –> 00:46:16,640
Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast today.

641
00:46:17,360 –> 00:46:21,160
And now that you’ve made it this far, you should subscribe to the

642
00:46:21,160 –> 00:46:24,960
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643
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00:46:32,080 –> 00:46:35,800
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649
00:46:47,290 –> 00:46:51,130
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650
00:46:51,130 –> 00:46:54,570
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651
00:46:54,570 –> 00:46:58,410
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652
00:46:58,810 –> 00:47:02,490
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653
00:47:02,790 –> 00:47:06,070
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654
00:47:06,070 –> 00:47:09,790
Leadership. By the way, if you don’t like what we’re doing here,

655
00:47:09,790 –> 00:47:13,110
well, you could always listen to another leadership show. There are several

656
00:47:13,350 –> 00:47:17,190
other good ones out there. At least that’s

657
00:47:17,190 –> 00:47:20,550
what I’ve heard. All right, well,

658
00:47:21,270 –> 00:47:22,390
that’s it for me.