S8 Ep732: 8. Lloyd examines the "twinned" battles of Verdun and the Somme in 1916. He contrasts Falkenhayn’s ruthless attritional goals with Haig’s optimistic breakthrough attempts. The source concludes with the failure of Nivelle’s 1917 offensive, which pushed
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2026
⏱️ 6 minutes
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Summary
8. Lloyd examines the "twinned" battles of Verdun and the Somme in 1916. He contrasts Falkenhayn’s ruthless attritional goals with Haig’s optimistic breakthrough attempts. The source concludes with the failure of Nivelle’s 1917 offensive, which pushed the French army toward mutiny before Americanintervention changed the war's momentum. (8)
1945 BERLIN
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| 0:34.7 | This is CBSI on the world with Professor Lloyd Clark. |
| 0:38.8 | He's director of research at the Center for Army Leadership at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. |
| 0:45.3 | That is why the major theme here is leadership, not who wins the battles, but how the men responded to the leader, how the junior leaders learned from the senior leaders. |
| 0:56.8 | We'll begin with Erwin Rommel only because he's executed as a traitor by Adolf Hitler. |
| 1:04.2 | And what I learn about Erwin Rommel is that his wife, Lucy, never relented on the idea that he was persecuted because he was |
| 1:14.8 | successful and that he was not involved in the plot against Hitler. |
| 1:18.9 | But then again, Lucy was looking at it from the point of view of a survivor of the Second |
| 1:23.1 | War in Germany, which was a deprived land for many years afterwards, not until the Marshall Plan |
| 1:30.4 | showed up in the late 40s. Did Germany stop starving? So I don't ask Lucy Rommel to have an opinion |
| 1:38.5 | that stands up in the 21st century. Professor, the fact that there was a plot against Hitler |
| 1:44.0 | recommends all of these |
| 1:46.7 | officers. Is there a moment you can see in what we have of the letters to Lucy or his memoirs, |
| 1:53.2 | where Rommel realized that he was working for the devil? I think that what we see increasingly is Romel recognizing that Hitler was a very |
| 2:08.0 | flawed man, not necessarily as a leader or even as a politician, but as a personality, |
| 2:15.8 | his behavior traits were something thatommel increasingly didn't like. |
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