The WAY to WOW Shows
6 Lessons from Patton’s Rescue at the Bulge
June 25, 2024
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[0:01] hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time and that equates as those of you on the East Coast know it's 1:00 p.m on the east coast and our purpose each week is to talk about military history military Doctrine the practices of great military leaders and distill from them lessons that we can use in order to run our businesses better improve our professional prospects and and all around um take a

[0:39] lot of the uh knowledge and and wisdom from the military and translate it to the civilian world so as as advertised today I'm going to talk about um for those of you who have watched the show you know this one of my um favorite military people General George S Patton Jr and how he rescued the 101 airborne division during the Battle of the Bulge so just to to to set the scene a little

[1:14] bit so um D-Day um June 4th 19 uh 40 I'm sorry June 6th 1944 um marked the Allies um essentially their reent entrance into Continental Europe at the beaches on Normandy and from there they eventually broke out through the beach into what was called the bokage country this was the the hesg r that that separated fields in northern France and started making their way

[1:51] toward uh Germany and the um Allied uh what was known as the Allied expeditionary Force um was commanded by General Dwight D Eisenhower and um his his headquarters was known as scha sh um sh AE F Supreme headquarters Allied expeditionary force and under uh um uh Eisenhower was Omar Bradley um and um under Omar Brad and

[2:29] and Bradley was a um army group commander and he commanded two armies um and um under one of the armies under um under uh um Omar Bradley General Omar Bradley was uh General Patton Patton's famous third Army um and he was kind of moving through the middle um and to the north um uh field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was working his way

[3:05] through uh the Netherlands and then uh down into Germany from there so um by this point which is in the winter of 1944 things were looking pretty desperate for for Nazi Germany and uh Hitler was um uh although he Pro he probably didn't think so at the time was was coming down to to the end of his uh reign of of Terror as the dictator of Nazi Germany and so he pretty much bet the farm on a uh military plan to um

[3:47] basically sweep out of Germany and through the um um through the Argan Forest um and into the Netherlands um in in along the way to capture um petrol supplies for his tanks um and eventually reaching the ports in the Netherlands where he hoped to cut off the Allies supplies um and therefore Force the Allies to if nothing else uh sue for peace it was by any standard an

[4:23] audacious plan and um it it it it wasn't has many people have have said that it was completely full hearty it there was no chance it was going to succeed and yet um the reality is it came very close to succeeding so as um Hitler's armies work their way through the forest um the um 101st Airborne Division was dropped into Bastone with the intention of holding the line um against the Germans and they

[5:00] were very quickly surrounded by uh by by the German Army um and um there's of course the famous um uh incident where um General um mlli was called upon by um the Nazi army Commander to surrender and he responded with the one-word message nuts meaning he was not going to surrender um but the situation in Bastone was nonetheless

[5:35] quite desperate and so Eisenhower convened a meeting at scha of of his senior leaders including Omar Bradley um uh George Patton um I don't believe Montgomery was there but Montgomery's number two was there and Eisenhower asked the simple question you know what what can we do to um essentially save the 101st Airborne Division and um you know there was some you know kind of mumbling around the table and patton

[6:12] spoke up and he said well I can attack with uh I think he said I think it was he said two divisions or three divisions within um you know 48 or 72 hours um and and patent made the statement very matter of factly it there was there was no you know bragging behind the statement um and uh and and the response he got was um incredulity on the part of

[6:48] U Montgomery's number two and even Omar Bradley um Patton had been fighting a a a tremendous fight with th third Army driving east his men had been fighting for a long time without rest and the uh um uh uh Montgomery's number two suggested that uh you know it it wouldn't be possible for his men to March roughly I believe it was a 100 miles to the north engage with a German Army in battle and um

[7:25] Patton's simple response was I've trained these men and they will do what I have trained them to do so he had um he had absolutely unshakable confidence so before I go any further I I'm GNA play for you just a very short video of footage from um the the the um um Battle of the Bulge by the way it was called the Battle of the Bulge because Hitler attacked the Allied lines and which which were essentially in a line and he pushed them back

[8:02] creating a bulge in their lines and that bulge b Stone was within that b bulge and and and what uh Patton proposed to do was to drive directly north into the Bulge in in in an effort to rescue the 101st Airborne Division and essentially stop the the the Nazi offensive so like I said I'm going to play a h a short uh video it's about two minutes um and uh it's it's it's actually called um uh you know George

[8:37] georgees General georgees Patton um at the Battle of the Bulge so just just take a look at this and see um you know the obligatory commercial of course um you can you you you'll get a feeling for um you know what what's what's going on or or what what was happening um during the Battle of the Bulge I'll unmute after the commercial is open is is is over uh okay so you know um I guess uh Volkswagen gets a a a a free uh commercial at the expense of

[9:12] the way to wow shows so okay all right here we go so of course this this is the this is the Nazi army see December 16 for so the Allies were not expecting this this counter offensive um and and that was part of the reason part of the

[9:47] reason why it was so effective this is this was actual footage so you know it gives you a sense of um how terrible the fighting guys

[10:49] so the weather was terrible and for several days the Allied Air Forces couldn't fly but eventually they were able to take to the air and they were able to drop supplies as you can see here also start bombing the notzi positions

[11:35] so the the caption there about running out of ammunition Etc fuel um was was was accurate um but it it was a near run thing um among the tactics the Nazi used were they had specially trained units um dressed as as American um soldiers who infiltrated um the American lines um looking to to get um uh to get uh

[12:10] Fuel and um and uh um they they were quite effective um and they they caused quite a bit of Havoc um in the in the um with within the Allied lines so so that gives you an idea of the kind of fighting that was going on how desperate it was um artillery machine gun fire the snow the cold um while the Nazi army was prepared for those conditions um as as the um uh veteran there who was who was at the Battle of the Bulge me said um

[12:45] the American Army uh was not um and so there was frostbite and there were um soldiers freezing to death and into this um milia came U General Patton and he um was successful in relieving the 101st Airborne um from at bstone um and and and that sort of gave a um morale boost to the Allies um and they were able to stop the German counter

[13:20] offensive um in it pretty much in its tracks at that point and and then reverse the the ground that they had made um and eventually of course they pushed into Germany and and as we know the the the Allies won okay now of course the Russians were coming from the East the Allies were the uh allies meaning the the British the Americans along with uh some French forces and some other there were polish flyers for example um they were coming from the West um and

[13:55] eventually they met and and and uh and Germany was forced to surrender by then Hitler um had committed suicide with his his mistress well she was actually his wife at that point he married her just before they committed suicide um their bodies were burned outside of a bunker they were hit in um so that they wouldn't be um taken by the allies and and and displayed um which which Hitler did not want to have happen so why was um General Patton able to accomplish

[14:30] this feat that pretty much everyone else at scha thought could not be done so I I've I've draw I've drawn up six points that I want to share with you um that I think reflect not just Patton's overall genius but but how he was able to embrace the moment and turn what looked like catastrophe into opportunity and I think we all like to be able to do that in our businesses um it it it's you know it it

[15:05] takes a certain set of um capabilities if you will um but but none of these I think are um things that were born with and certainly Patton was not born with these abilities if you read any comprehensive biography of General Patton um he he his family and he made himself what he became he was not born to it in the sense that he had some inborn Talent so first and foremost is

[15:42] Patton schooled himself in Warfare in his the history of warfare so thoroughly he was able to create a strategic vision of how the war could be won by the allies and he he held very firm to that strategic Vision because he knew it was based on thousands of years of military history that he had deeply studied he he knew a tremendous amount of military

[16:18] history by heart um he he could go to uh ruins of fortresses and such and describe the battles that had been that had taken place but from memory from you know the earliest days BC um into the into you know contemporary times for him and because he was so well steeped in what is often called The Art of warfare he was able to understand not only what the Allies needed to do but what the

[16:55] Germans needed to do um in order to try and win the war so it's it's very likely although I don't recall ever reading that this was the case but it was very likely that Patton anticipated something like the um Battle of the Bulge offensive or counter offensive on the part of Hitler um and and and and had you know because he could understand the battle from both sides and that was a large part of what we might call his

[17:31] genius is he could sit on the other side of the table and as effectively understand his opponent as he could himself and his colleagues and so he he knew that um the only way to defeat the the Nazis was to defeat the Nazi army he he didn't ever believe that strategic bombing would uh destroy the milit I mean the industrial capability of Nazi Germany he had no faith in that he had no faith in set peace battles

[18:09] indeed the way Patton saw it is the only way to defeat Germany was to defeat her armies to the point where Germany could no longer fight and so all of his effort mental effort spiritual effort and physical effort of course was directed to how do I engage with the Nazi armies in a way that I can destroy them and therefore break Nazi power and um essentially convince Nazi Germany to

[18:44] surrender so we too in our businesses need to have a firm well-grounded strategic vision and that comes from a thorough knowledge of our industry of economic conditions of our competitors of our suppliers so the more we know about all of the various aspects

[19:19] that impact our our business the the better the Strategic vision is that we can develop and that strategic Vision needs to be there if we're going to succeed so to to use an example um uh everyone probably knows about Elon Musk I've never met him this is not a comment good or bad on him this is only to say that um if you if one listens to or reads about Elon Musk you see he has

[19:55] a very clear strategic vision for what he is doing he believes in using technology to the utmost in order to solve big problems facing mankind you know he may not say it exactly that way but that is his strategic vision and he is so deeply immersed in technology um there probably aren't many people who are more deeply immersed in it um if um that that he's able to he was he was

[20:31] able to create companies like Tesla like um SpaceX um even even his Venture in in buying Twitter and and converting it into X um is part of that larger Vision so we need to create a strategic vision and we need to share that Vision with our people and get their Buy in so that we're all working toward the accomplishment of that strategic Vision now it's not enough just to have a

[21:06] strategic Vision um Patton was incredibly adaptable he could change course very rapidly as is demonstrated by his Rescue of the 101st Airborne Division at the Bulge where he literally turned on a dime made a 90 degree turn headed north and in over you know after marching a 100 miles or so was able to engage the enemy in combat and Prevail now why was he able to do that you know it it seems

[21:43] like okay well it's no big deal he just turns his army and starts marching well yes except for armies that fought in World War II had huge logistical needs they and and you you you didn't just merely in a different direction we're talking about hundreds of thousands of men who were involved all this needed to be coordinated you know down to um you know to the divisions to the regiments to the battalions to the companies to the platoon to the squads Etc all all that had to happen and it had to happen in a

[22:19] very coordinated way otherwise it it would have been disastrous so one of the reasons why Patton was so adaptable is he was always having his planning team his staff develop alternative plans based on what he thought the enemy might do and in fact before he left his headquarters to go to the meeting at scha to discuss the response to the German counter offensive he had already set his staff planning for making that

[22:57] 90 degree turn and engaging With the Enemy at Bastone and so he you know he had that almost foresight if you will to to know where he might need to act and therefore to plan for it so while by the time he was sitting at scha and talking you know talking to this meeting of all the senior leadership he already knew that his staff was working on the logistics to make happen what he said he could do

[23:32] and in fact he said that at the meeting so I already have my staff working on the plans and so all I've got to do is get back there and tell them you know we're we're moving on B Stone so it was this kind of this kind of foresight that gave him a level of adaptability that was really unique to Patton among the Army commanders in World War II okay okay so um and and there were other things that that helped him be adaptable I'm going to talk about those in a minute but I want to talk about something else that people typically

[24:08] don't associate with Patton because he especially in the aonomus movie Patton from 1970 he's he's portrayed as this Reckless you know individual he didn't care about the the the safety or care of his men that that that couldn't be more that couldn't be farther from the truth indeed um everything that Patton did was geared toward the um the the the safety of his army in the sense that um he

[24:45] didn't want to suffer or have his army suffer one more death or one more casualty if it could be avoided here but here's the difference between Patton and a general like Omar Bradley Patton knew the reality of War and the reality of war is soldiers are killed and soldiers are wounded so it's not a matter of avoiding having any soldiers killed or wounded it's a matter of minim minimizing how many soldiers and uh how

[25:21] many soldiers are killed and wounded and his his method of doing that was to always keep pressure on the enemy always drive forward never stop never give the enemy time to relax to regroup to resupply whereas for example field Marshall Montgomery he like he would he would set up a battle he'd fight the battle he'd win or he'd lose he' he'd fall back a little bit he'd regroup and then he'd go again the problem is as while he's regrouping so is the enemy

[25:56] and and General Patton believed that that was a huge mistake uh he once remarked to Montgomery I don't when Montgomery said I would he said to Patton I would think you would want to fall back and and regroup rest and regroup and Patton's response was I never want to pay for the same real estate twice now that sounds like a a bragging kind of statement but what Paton meant is it took it took the deaths and wounding of soul es to gain this ground to fall back and then spend

[26:33] more uh soldiers lives and limbs taking it again made no sense to patent at all rather his his idea was always be planning for the next stage the next stage so we can keep going keep going keep going even if we have to rotate units in and out um so that we can keep pushing we keep pushing we keep pressure on the enemy we never let up on the enemy and and that is how he managed risk right and and it it sounds somewhat counterintuitive how can you manage Risk by always fighting but the reality is

[27:11] that um by continually keeping pressure on the enemy and gaining ground it meant that George that General Patton was getting closer and closer to the objective of winning the war okay and so in reality um you know the the the casualties among third Army were not really any higher than they were in any of the other armies um because he didn't have the repetitive casualties of of advancing falling back resting regrouping going again etc etc so so Patton had a a unique way of looking at

[27:48] risk management and those two things adaptability and risk management need to go together because we don't want them working out of concert so at the same time that we're looking strategically at our businesses and saying okay we've set our strategic Direction what could push us off and and and keep us from meeting that objective and how do I plan for that okay and at the same time how do I minimize the risk that that that I incur

[28:23] by getting put off my objective and it may not be by standing down rethinking things you know taking a formal regrouping it may be by continuing to press on and press through the problem in order to gain the objective okay so that's that's something each of us has to figure out based on the industry that we're in the kind of business we have um the the resilience of our um of our team etc etc etc but adaptability and risk management Le need to be dealt with um you know and

[28:59] meshed basically otherwise the the the the risk that we're not that we're not managing could cause one of our alternative plans to fail okay so we need to look at those two together all right excuse me the next thing that made Patton's rescue at at the Bulge or at Bastone um so effective was his decisiveness as a leader excuse me so at the point where Patton said at the scha meeting I can attack with two

[29:36] divisions in in I think it was 48 Hours it may have been 72 hours um he he that he committed right then to make that happen that's why I say the statement was not made with any bragging it was it was a simple statement of fact he was that decisive he had molded his staff his army and he knew what their capabilities were and he knew that if he told them okay you created this plan to attack Bastone we're going in 72 hours

[30:14] so make it happen he knew it would happen because number one his staff and his army knew if General Patton made a decision that was it this is what we were doing he did not walk he was not wishy-washy he followed through now how could he be so decisive and and the reason he could be so decisive there were really two of them one is he practiced being decisive okay now that sounds strange practice being

[30:50] decisive uh General Patton studied leadership especially military leadership and he learned the qualities of great military leaders and then he practiced those qualities and embedded them in himself that's number one and then number two he trained his army to know that when he made a decision that decision had to be carried out and so he spread that sense of decisiveness throughout his staff and

[31:26] throughout his army so when you have a group of people who are emulating decisiveness and you make a decision they drive forward and decisiveness often times is the difference between success and failure and for Patton he wanted success did he always get it no clearly not there were times when he failed but the fact that he made decision pursued the the decision as assertively as he could okay

[32:04] there were times when he had to take a different alternative but then when at the point where he knew he had to do something else he made another decisive decision and off he went in the New Direction so for those of us who are running businesses we need to practice decisiveness so when we talk to our staff we can take in their information we can take in their recommendations we can discuss it with them but before we leave we need to say

[32:42] okay here's what we're going to do and after a time if we stick to that our staff will learn okay the decision has been made and we're going to go forward and if we reward the people who whether they agree with the decision or not are most committed to Bringing about the realization of that decision people will see that decisiveness is valued and so they will develop their own

[33:17] decisiveness okay and that's that's what Patton did with third Army and that's what we need to do in our businesses now one of the things that made Patton such a great leader was he was an extremely effective Communicator now again he did not grow up as a great communicator far from it in fact he was probably dyslexic um he had a difficult time because of that he was he had a a somewhat high pitched voice um he did

[33:54] not sound like George C Scott okay and and so Paton spent time basically practicing communicating while looking in the mirror to to to to see what are what what are my facial expressions how do I need to change them in order to communicate more effectively how do I need to modulate the tenor of my voice in order to communicate more effectively what work words do I need to

[34:29] use in order to communicate more effectively so um a woman once ask Paton about his use of profanity um despite the fact that that that George Patton was a deeply religious man and what he said was essentially you know ma'am when I need to give orders I lay it on nice and thick so they'll remember it and that was his excuse for using Prof ity he never used profanity in front of women and in fact in social situations

[35:04] he never used profanity either he used it in in battle in dealing with his staff and his army during combat operations but beyond that he didn't so it again it was a trait that he practiced that he developed now by the way I am not recommending using profanity but all I'm saying is or what I'm saying is is that we can become effective communicators through practice through reading about um how to communicate effectively and and of

[35:41] course decisiveness helps with effective communication because if we're clear about what we want to happen that that's the first step and then being able to communicate clearly and effectively what we want people what we want our team members to do finally and and and although this is the last point I'm going to mention it's by no means um you know the most minor Patton was a master at motivating and inspiring his

[36:17] soldiers so PE you know it said that that that soldiers either loved or hated General Patton and that's generally true most of his soldiers loved him they loved how decisive he was how uncompromising he was in defeating Nazi Germany how much he cared about their welfare and and how he admired them there's no doubt that Patton loved and admired the soldiers of third Army and

[36:56] so he because of his commitment to them he was a tremendously motivating force behind the soldiers in third Army and again this was not something that he had as a natural Talent so to speak Patton's father and his aunt from his earliest days read him inspiring stories about battles from from history from from the Bible and they encouraged him to emulate

[37:31] these great leaders and to and to practice and so when he was a child Patton would enlist his sister in in creating you know um uh um mock scenarios of of battles um that he had you know been told stories about and so from his earliest days he had to motivate his sister to join in him with this you know with this it was really play they were little kids um but from those earliest days his his uh father and Aunt were training him to be able to

[38:09] motivate and inspire people and we too as Business Leaders we need to develop the ability to motivate and inspire people now some people say that um Patton motivated his army through fear that is not my read of Patton quite to the contrary what he motivated them through was pride in what third Army can accomplish and that's why he was very strict about matters of dress matters of deportment so all of these things he

[38:45] felt gave a soldier pride in himself in his unit in his army and he felt that a soldier that was proud of the the organization of which he was a part would be motivated not to let his colleagues down his fellow soldiers down so it wasn't about for Patton it wasn't about people adulating him it was about them having a reverence for third Army and and wanting to act to have third

[39:20] Army painted with Glory or reversed to not want third Army to be painted with igny because they had so much pride in this and so it bound the soldiers together and that was a tremendously inspiring a tremendously motivating force and we can do the same thing if we have a strategic vision for our company if we en if we encourage Forward Thinking so that we can be adaptable while at the same time

[39:55] work to identify risks that we can mitigate or manage if we can be decisive in our decision making and communicate those decisions effectively we will in essence create morale we will create um an in an inspiring feeling in our team and and and now we've come full circle because we've created an organization that will actively pursue achieving our strategic Vision so those are the lessons of the the res of

[40:32] Patton's Rescue of of the 101st airborn division at the Battle of Bulge in in bstone um look there there are certainly other lessons we could draw um but the reality is I think those are the ones that are most important for us in civilian business to emulate to replicate in order to gain success so that's our show for today I did go a little bit long so hopefully uh you know you you you were okay hanging in there with me tomorrow at 10: am Pacific time is my

[41:10] show people making money and I will be talking about my favorite book on investing at least Securities investing called a random walk down Wall Street the book first came out 50 years ago and I think it is as cogent an investing strategy uh today as it was when it first came out so I invite you to join me tomorrow at 10: a.m. Pacific as well I invite you to sub uh to post your comments your thoughts your criticisms on on the show today um especially if

[41:46] you know something about um uh General Patton the other uh uh leaders that I mentioned you know the history of the Bulge uh let's let's engage in in in a dialogue and and share some ideas that that's always a a very fruitful process so you can post in social media all of the links will be in the show notes after this episode um posts on YouTube so again thank you so much for joining me wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off as I always do by saluting my dear friend Marie you are my

[42:22] bell courage at all times