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The John Batchelor Show

5/8: The Commanders: The Leadership Journeys of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel by Lloyd Clark (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

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5/8: The Commanders: The Leadership Journeys of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel by Lloyd Clark (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Commanders-Leadership-Journeys-Bernard-Montgomery/dp/0802160220/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Born in the two decades prior to World War I, George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel became among the most recognized and successful military leaders of the 20th century. However, as acclaimed military historian Lloyd Clark reveals in his penetrating and insightful braided chronicle of their lives, they charted very different, often interrupted, paths to their ultimate leadership positions commanding hundreds of thousands of troops during World War II and celebrated as heroes in the United States, Britain, and Germany.
Patton was born into a military family and from an early age felt he was destined for glory; following a disjointed childhood, Montgomery found purpose and direction in a military academy; Rommel’s father was a former officer, so his pursuit of a military career was logical. Having ascended to the middle ranks, each faced battle for the first time in World War I, a searing experience that greatly influenced their future approach to war and leadership. When war broke out again in 1939, Montgomery and Rommel were immediately engaged, while Patton chafed until the U.S. joined the Allies in 1942 and the three men, by then generals, collided in North Africa in 1943, and then again, climactically, in France after D-Day in 1944.
Weaving letters, diary extracts, official reports, and other documents into his original narrative, recounting dramatic battles as they developed on the ground and at headquarters, Clark also explores the controversies that swirled around Patton, Montgomery, and Rommel throughout their careers, sometimes threatening to derail them. Ultimately, however, their unique abilities to bridge the space between leader and led cemented their legendary reputations.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you by Slack. With Slack, you can bring all your people and

0:05.9

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0:26.9

Slack.com slash DHQ. This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchler.

0:40.2

Professor Lloyd Clark, his new book The Commanders, the leadership journeys of George Patton,

0:45.9

Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. Three men were about to meet on the battlefield

0:50.5

as commanders in the catastrophe known as the Second World War. The professor's director

0:56.8

of research at the Center for Army Leadership at the Royal Military Academy at Sanhurst

1:01.8

and the theme of this book is leadership. How did they prepare themselves? How did they

1:07.1

conduct themselves as leaders in, to say it's a life-and-death struggle? It's the planet.

1:13.1

This is risk here. We go to war with George Patton by going to exercises. Professor,

1:19.0

the US again does not enter into the war for some time. The attack by the Nazis in September

1:25.7

of 39 and Britain and France are all in, fully in the war. So is Russia, except for it's

1:32.7

not an adversary of Berlin yet. It's just bullying the polls and mistreating people in

1:39.6

the east. However, George Patton knows there's a war coming and so does the command of the

1:46.6

US Army. George Marshall will emerge as the commander of the army. Their exercises in

1:52.1

Louisiana, Tennessee and the Carolinas in 1940 and 1941. At this point that the army

2:01.0

know the tank was going to be a major factor. Had they accepted it, Professor?

2:06.8

I think that this was the period during which all of the new ideas about armed warfare

2:13.4

were coming to our head and had these exercises been a complete failure. We may have looked

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