6/8: The Commanders: The Leadership Journeys of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel by Lloyd Clark (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2022
⏱️ 9 minutes
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6/8: 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.
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| 0:56.9 | Say lecture as a scholar of the battlefield, a man who pictures things in his mind before |
| 1:04.8 | he gives the order and he's not looking for debate. He's not looking for another method |
| 1:09.5 | or committee work. This is a man who dictates. He had a father who preached and when he gets |
| 1:16.9 | into the pulpit, this is the word of the Lord. And it is the word of Bernard McCumray. |
| 1:23.3 | So Bernard McCumray is assigned to the eighth army, my note here, with some expectation |
| 1:31.7 | that he will be able to turn around what has been a catastrophe so far with the Germans |
| 1:38.3 | and the Italians pushing them around. So by January of 42 is my reading here. I'm going |
| 1:46.4 | pretty fast. By January of August of 42, he takes up the southeastern command, the |
| 1:57.2 | hundred thousand and then he's pushed to the eighth army, which is in Cairo. He takes |
| 2:03.9 | Freddie D. Cunnan, his brother-in-law with him and everybody in the eighth army is curious |
| 2:10.0 | about this man. What was his reputation before when he joins North Africa? |
| 2:14.9 | There was not much known about him in the wider army. Alan Brooke, the chief of the Imperial |
| 2:21.5 | General Staff, the head, the professional head of the British army, is his great patron |
| 2:26.3 | and I think that Montgomery owes a great deal to him. Churchill was circumspect about Montgomery, |
| 2:33.7 | believing that he didn't have the pernash, the drive, the risk-taking requirements to |
| 2:40.4 | turn the situation around. But eventually because there was perhaps nobody else that was |
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