How Stoicism Won World War II

Out on the English Channel, 82 years ago, the ocean hosted a moving city. Thousands of ships and vessels holding some 150,000 tense young men bob in the sea under gloomy skies. Some of them begin to vomit in anticipation of what lies ahead. It's nearly 6:00 in the morning when the flashes start. The whole horizon lights up. British and American battleships begin an enormous barrage raining fire down on the French coast where these soldiers will soon land. As the boats approach shore, the ramps drop. Machine guns from the bluffs begin to to rake and sweep the boats and the men with horrendous fire. Many of the men die before their feet even touch the water, let alone the beach. Some men jump over the sides and are dragged down by their packs and gear. The ones who do land have to make a mad dash across 200 ft of open sand in some of the most hostile territory imaginable. By nightfall, almost 5,000 men are dead, and yet most of the beaches in Normandy are taken. These are the events of June 6th, 1944, one of the most momentous days in world [music] history. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces at Normandy, has pulled off one of the most stunning and impressive victories in all of military [music] history. And in this moment, he turns the tides not just of the war, but of the 20th century and Western civilization. He changes the world as we know it. And that's the story filled with a number of stoic lessons that we're going to talk about in today's episode. So, the Stoics have this phrase called premeditatio malorum, which is a premeditation of evils. It's basically the idea of doing a postmortem rather than a postmortem. Postmortem is when you look after the fact of what went wrong, what you can learn from it. The Stoics try to think in anticipation of what could happen and prepare [music] for it. "Rehearse it in your mind," Seneca famously said. "Exile, torture, war, shipwreck," he says, "all the terms of this human lot should be before our eyes." He quotes a famous military historian from the ancient world, in fact, who said that leaders are never allowed to say, "Wow, I didn't think that would happen." For the Stoics, it it's the unexpected who are crushed. It's the [music] unexpected blow that lands heaviest. And if you want to be resolute, if you want to be successful, if you want to be victorious, >> [music] >> you can't be naive and and you have to understand that hope is not a strategy. And so, by doing this exercise, Seneca is trying to prepare for what could go wrong, trying to mentally manage his expectations, but he's also trying to anticipate, toughen himself up, put into place what he needs to be in place in order to handle defeat or victory. And I think this [music] pertains to Eisenhower at D-Day. Because he uses a version of this practice there as he prepares for the invasion. The night before Operation Overlord, Eisenhower writes a short [music] 64-word letter where he takes full responsibility for it failing. Like he's not sitting there doing positive visualization the night before, imagining it all going his way. [music] He's actually thinking about in advance it not going his way. [music] Because he understood that there were a ton of factors totally outside of his control. >> [music] >> The weather was touch and go. In fact, there's a new movie coming out just about the weather reports the day of the invasion and what a difficult call that was >> [music] >> to make. He knows that the defenses could turn out to be uh stronger than [music] anticipated. He knows that despite everything he did, it might not go his way. And in fact, Eisenhower had a a saying that [music] he liked. He said, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." He understood that you had to plan and anticipate and imagine every contingency. And yet, he also understood fundamentally this other Stoic idea, which is there some things in our control and some things aren't. [music] And that fortune, as the Stoics say, doesn't care about your plans at all and very often dashes them completely to pieces. >> [music] >> And yet, being the kind of person who plans, who thinks about these contingencies, is developing the competence as well as the confidence that allows you to [music] adapt and improvise and adjust to these things as they're happening. If all you can imagine is things going the way that you want them to go, and then they don't go your way, that's when you're in real trouble. That's the blow that lands heaviest, as Seneca is saying. [music] But if you understand that you have to have plans, plural, right? That that part of your plans should be planning for your plans falling apart, now we're in very different, much more resilient territory. One of the things I talk about in Stillness Is [music] the Key is is creating some space, right? Time and space for reflection, for talking things through, for for thinking about yourself from a little bit of a distance. [music] And therapy can be a great place to do that. And that's where today's sponsor comes in, BetterHelp. Because that time and space [music] is so important for me, I don't want to drive all the way across town for therapy. I don't want to look for parking. I don't want to get stuck in [music] traffic. I just want to be able to talk to someone on the phone or over text. And that's what you can do with BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it super easy to get started. They match you with a therapist based on your preferences, their own clinical experience. [music] You just do an online quiz, they match you with a therapist, you can switch therapists at any time at no cost, and BetterHelp has over a decade of matching expertise. And you [music] can join 6 million people who have gotten help from BetterHelp. It's a platform [music] you can trust. You can click the link below or just go to betterhelp.com/dailystoic to get 10% off your first month of therapy with BetterHelp. And as it happens, he didn't need that first letter because the initial landing >> [music] >> was successful. But not long after, he does begin to run into problems. In In In the days after the successful landings, as they're trying to make this thrust into France and to liberate Europe, the Allied troops get bogged down mostly in the hedgerows of France. They just have It It's slower than they wanted, and what it does is it gives the Germans a chance to to throw an enormous counteroffensive at them. The Germans know that basically the whole war is on the line, and they throw everything they have at it. Something like 200,000 troops in this massive counteroffensive where they're attempting to throw the Allies back and defeat this landing, um which which Churchill had had always dreaded happening, and in fact, why he had delayed landing at Normandy over and over and over again. He was He just understood that if it failed here, they'd [music] probably have to sue for peace in some way. And so, it's almost unimaginable what a 200,000-men Nazi counteroffensive would have looked like. But the the German Blitzkrieg was one of the most overwhelming and intimidating developments in modern warfare. At the beginning of the war, like these columns of of Panzer or tanks rushing into Poland and Belgium and France were unstoppable. And part of the reason that they were so unstoppable was this perception that they were unstoppable. Many armies simply surrendered in the face of them and there was a real chance that this would happen to the allies. [music] That order would break down and they would get thrown back to the sea. And so it it's here at this moment that I think Eisenhower is at his absolute [music] best and in a way at his most stoic. There's this magnificent scene. He strides into his field quarters. He has all of his generals gathered there, many of whom are are are rattled. They're they're convinced they're outmatched. They're not sure what's happening. And Eisenhower says, "Look, I want this situation to be regarded not as a disaster, but as an opportunity." He says, "There will only be cheerful faces at this conference table." And what's he doing here? Is this just Is he just trying to cheer people up? Is he just Is it just wishful thinking? Is this the opposite of the negative visualization from before? Just positive manifestation? And no. What Eisenhower is realizing is that there's an opportunity inside this enormous obstacle that's being thrown at them. Yes, there is a huge rush of German troops coming at them, but he realizes that if they can absorb this if if if the psychological part of the blow doesn't work, that if the Allied lines absorb this blow, that actually it can be their chance to sort of sew this thing up. Patton grasps this quite clearly, too. He says, "Oh, I get it. You know, the Nazis have stuck their head in a meat grinder." I I think this is actually quite similar to what Marcus Aurelius talks about in Meditations where he says, "You know, the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. If you're only seeing what they're doing to you, and not what you can do in response to them, if you don't see how you can work with this, you're going to miss what's in front of you. And Eisenhower doesn't. So, by allowing this sort of German wedge to come at them, and then attacking from the sides, the allies basically encircle the Germans and win the war. And look, I I don't mean to be glib about this. This was an extremely difficult thing to do, and it cost thousands and thousands of lives, and and it was waged over many, many weeks. But, if you've heard of the Battle of the Bulge, the word bulge there is illustrative. Basically, by absorbing the energy of this giant thrust of German men and material, eventually, they encircle and ensnare something like 50,000 German troops. And actually, my grandfather landed at Normandy, I believe, 2 days after D-Day. He fights in the Battle of the Bulge. He wins the French Croix de Guerre. The invincible, devastating, unstoppable German Panzers become not just >> [music] >> impotent, but it's it's a suicidal overreach, a a textbook example of why you can't leave [music] your flanks exposed. I think of this moment, this choice that Eisenhower makes, >> [music] >> to see the opportunity instead of disaster in a moment, to be kind of the [music] definition of stoicism in action. Here he is, the commander of this enormous army, more manpower and firepower [music] than you can really wrap your head around. And yet, what he's thinking about [music] is not that he is invincible and indestructible, but he's thinking about the unpredictable nature of war. He's thinking about all the things that could go wrong. He's thinking about how narrow run the whole thing >> [music] >> is. I talk about him in Discipline is Destiny as the model of this kind of >> [music] >> emotional and physical discipline that we need. I say in 1944 when he was appointed supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II, he suddenly controlled an army of some 3 million men, the tip of a war effort that ultimately involved more than 50 million people. And there at the head of an alliance of nations totaling an upward of 700 million citizens, he discovered that far from being exempt from the rules he had to be strict with himself than ever. And he came to find that the best way to lead was not by force or fiat, but through persuasion, through compromise, through patience, by controlling his temper, and most of all by example. And he recalls in this moment and in moments throughout his life something that his mother used to quote from the book of Proverbs in the Bible that he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city. And this is something the Stoics talk about that that to be in power you have to first be under your own power. And so we have to understand that Eisenhower conquers [music] the world, he is victorious at D-Day, you know, over eight decades ago because he is first victorious over himself, victorious over, you know, delusions of grandeur, wishful thinking, and then later victorious over pessimistic thinking, over panic, over doubt, over fear. But when we control our emotions, when we can see things objectively, when we can stand steadily despite everything that's happening around us, it becomes possible to to to do that mental flip, right? To to not just see what's bad about a situation, what's hard about a situation, what's going wrong, but the opportunity within it. I mean like imagine being in Eisenhower's shoes, like this enormous army is racing on you. You've pushed all your chips into the center. Everyone around you is discouraged and disillusioned and doubtful. And he was able to see not just a way to muddle through it, but to use this to his advantage to turn the whole thing around. And that's what stoicism is. It's not this passive, resigned, hopeless thing, but it's something deeper than that. It's something more profound than that. And it's something we cultivate in our study and in our thinking so that in these big moments, big in the scheme of the world and in our own lives, so that we can use them when it counts.