Dan Snow's History Hit - Soldiers and Military History

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

I am very excited to be joined by Colonel Kevin W. Farrell, who spent over 30 years in uniform and commanded at the platoon, company, and battalion levels. He finished up in the army as the Chief of the Military History Division at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I am fascinated to hear about how the modern army chooses to teach history to its future leaders. He acted as an advisor to the Afghan National Army and the commander of a 1,000-soldier combined arms battalion conducting extended combat operations in East Baghdad, Iraq. Kevin and I discussed how a deep understanding of military history and leadership theories can benefit military and civilian workers in all sorts of ways. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today I'm talking to a highly decorated soldier, Colonel Kevin Farrell of the US Army, about his experience in combat and why military history matters. He's not only a career soldier serving with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, but he also went to head up, he became chief of the Military History Division at the US Military Academy at West Point. He's a well-known military historian in the US with books and TV and other media appearances. And he also, since leaving the military, he now works on leadership programs, drawing on military history to talk to corporate clients, big, huge companies. And I'm fascinated by this world that exists where senior executives

feel they can learn something practical from history and i wanted to ask kevin who they look to what are their inspirations who are all these boardroom alexander the greats and ulysses s grants all that works run through his company battlefield leadership it's also just a great opportunity to talk to a practitioner and a historian of war we got a lot of military history programs lots lots of other history programs available on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. A whole TV channel dedicated simply to history. We've got hundreds of documentaries on there,

hundreds of podcasts on there. It's growing all the time. If you want to go to historyhit.tv, you sign up if you use the code POD1 for a month for free. Not a penny charged, not a dime, no nickel. And then your first month is just $1, £1, €1 after that. So please, please, please go and check that out. In the meantime, everybody, here's Colonel Kevin Farrell.

Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you. It's my pleasure and privilege really to be with you. Well, I love talking to soldiers and particularly academic soldiers because you guys understand the kind of practical uses of history in a way I don't think anybody else does. There's something about soldiering, the way you look back at military history, how your forebears have done things that seems to be a part of your job, almost like no other profession. It's a great point. It's expected, I think, of any serving career professional military person that they have an appreciation for the lessons of history,

for looking at past campaigns. And I was struck by the fact that how for many years, not just adolescence, but in my adult life, I had studied, I'd read, I'd researched, and I had published military history. And that was before actually experiencing combat. And then experiencing combat and reflecting on the past lessons and then coming out of it afterwards, it's kind of a before, during, and after perspective, which I found more surprising than I would have thought. And what is it? Why, when you were at West Point, why do you want young officers and senior officers to rake over tank battles in Tunisia, for example, where I know you take groups up? Surely we should be looking at the future of drone warfare. How is history going to be useful

to those men and women in their careers? Well, on the one hand, history really does not repeat itself. You know, Santayana's old phrase that those who don't study it are bound to repeat history. But what we gain from looking at past historical examples is not that they'll be repeated, but that we can see how our forebearers behaved in similar situations, in situations that were ambiguous, in cases where there was great pressure for results and decisions with incomplete information. And seeing how they reacted and behaved under those conditions really does have great value today. Nobody's going to fight in the manner that Wellington did for, say, the battlefield 200 years ago. battlefield 200 years ago, but looking at how he processed information, how he dealt with the ambiguities and the pressures actually is quite relevant even today. You've written about sort of

quite niche for an American, I would say, but the Duke of Cambridge and the military reforms there and perhaps the reforming zeal of a modern prince in the 19th century. But what are some of the campaigns and battles that you like to use in your teaching and some of your lessons? Well, it actually, it's a broad range. Everything from full-scale industrialized warfare. I mean, the major campaigns of the Second World War have a great cachet. But in another way, little episodes from the history of the British Empire, the far-flung case studies, because they have relevance. If you think of a small professional standing army that Britain has today and the United States has today, fighting these campaigns that really don't involve the full mobilization of their nation, but these soldiers and small units serving in places

most people have never heard of, it does bring value if you look at campaigns in the Sudan or other things. It's like, or even Churchill as a young officer on the Northwest frontier, they're strangely relevant to what many of our junior leaders are experiencing even right now. I remember in the 90s, people like Tony Blair, Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK, you know, we started talking about America not as a superpower, but a hyper power. It seemed that there was a falling away of great power rivals particularly in the 90s china was as yet uh didn't appear threatening conventionally on conventionally russia appeared to be either in sort of chaotic or even a sort of loose friendship radical islam radical islam hadn't appeared on the scene as dramatically it did post 9-11 i imagine in those circumstances it's quite difficult to convince young officers of the

importance of history. Because if Prime Minister Tony Blair is like, well, what's the point of studying history? It's completely different nowadays. America's a hyper power. It must have been tough. In that timeframe, in the 90s, it was. On the one hand, I don't think that the Western world has actually come to grips fully with the realignment that took place with the end of the Cold War. We more or less stumbled into these ongoing engagements in the Middle East without a clear sense of purpose. The world very conveniently or not was divided in these two halves, perhaps more artificially than we realized at the time, but it did cover over a lot of fissures. When that

disappeared in the 90s, there was a sense that, well, the world is flat, this is a new beginning, and yet what reappeared were old rivalries, realignments. Situation in the Pacific Rim, I think, is gaining the attention now that it has not received for a long time and yet deserves. I would jokingly say, though, that just give it time, even if people are saying, oh, well, the history is no longer relevant. Within the passage of a few years, you realize that that's actually not true. And I think increasingly we're moving toward a world that's going to look a lot more like the 19th century than the 20th century in terms of political and strategic considerations. You've got a fascinating career because you've moved between teaching the general officers of

the future and also now teaching the CEOs and the CFOs of the future as well. I mean, you work with a lot of corporate entities. What do they gain from studying history? Do they all just want to be told basically they're like Alexander the Great? Or do you think that it's a really useful part of professional development in that world? You know, it's funny, you alluded to the fact I've had different stages of my career, I often joke, I need to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. But in a strange way, beginning as a career army officer, and the hard knocks of leadership and serving in different conflicts, leading in different conflicts, provided one perspective. And then my academic portion of my career kind of built on that and then filled in another gap or another perspective,

let's say. And now that I work mostly with corporate executives, it's funny because it all comes together in a way that's surprising. What I think that is most of value for corporate clients looking at the lessons of history isn't the history itself, obviously, but the parallels between leaders trying to pull their organizations together to communicate a vision, to make decisions in a very often stressful situation, the need for time sensitive. We have to make decisions now. We have incomplete information, but the consequences of getting it right or wrong are very significant. Oftentimes my corporate clients will say, well, nobody's shooting at us. And that will lead to the military context, the metaphor of battle, how does that really work?

And I'll come back politely and say, in many ways, your decisions are probably even more momentous than ones that are made in a military setting. Because what are the consequences of getting it wrong? When tens of millions of dollars or pounds can be lost or hundreds of millions of dollars or pounds? How many thousands of lives can be affected? What can the damage to the brand be? Or in a positive way, look, if we're a cohesive, aligned organization, we're more agile than the competition, this is going to lead to spectacular market success. I personally believe that the single most important competitive advantage in the corporate sphere, it's not the product, it's not the service.

It is having an organization that is cohesive and aligned and able to adapt more quickly than the competition. The great British historian Sir Michael Howard once wrote, the side that wins in war is not the one that gets it right. It's that they get it the least wrong compared to the last one, right? And this ability to adapt. You could think, if you look at the Second World War, you know, Germany started, I think, well ahead of the Western allies and certainly the Soviets. But the allies were able to adapt more quickly and change to the new reality so that that initial advantage obviously was lost. And thank goodness it was. But I think that that holds true also in the corporate sphere.

You think of the disruption that the world is experiencing right now and has really with the IT revolution, the companies that have been able to adapt more quickly are the ones that are doing well. It doesn't mean they're the best boys. Remember, it was Kodak that invented the digital camera, but they're no longer on the landscape because they couldn't adapt to those new realities more quickly. So you do think that you take away the violence. There are still huge institutional, organizational communications, all sorts of ways in which lessons that are learned on the battlefield can be applicable to all sorts of other parts of life. And I believe that that is the single most important thing that's going to drive an organization to success or to failure. If you can get members of your team to recognize that they're all leaders, they're all influencers, that's a huge step forward. And people often say, yeah, that military leadership thing, OK, that's fine.

But we don't salute. We don't wear uniforms, we don't come to attention. And I say, yes, of course. But let's say we put on uniforms right now and my insignia were different than yours. And all of a sudden, boom, I'm going to say, go charge that machine gun nest and throw your life away. You're not going to do that. And it's no different in a military context, even though in a civilian organization, think of a sports team, think of a philanthropic organization. It is building trust and cohesion amongst members of the organization. This is why you stick it out when times get rough. And good, effective leadership, leaders of character, are always going to succeed, whereas those that are lacking, they can achieve perhaps short-term results. But organizations that will overcome significant upheaval, disruption,

they stay together because there's trust, because leaders care, and people in the organization care about each other. I meant to ask you, I always ask military historians this, do you think, and I'm sure you'll be very humble about this, but do you think there i'm sure you'll be very humble about this but do you think there is something about writing military history which having been in the forces having commanded in the field gives you a particular insight to land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient e and avoid the Poisoner's

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records have taken pen to paper and have not been that successful. I think of the great British military historian, now deceased, John Keegan, who captured, and we can always debate the strengths and the merits, the weaknesses of various schools of historiography. But one thing he did exceptionally well, I think, is to capture the mindset of the ordinary soldier getting ready to go into battle. When you read The Face of Battle, obviously his most famous work, but other things, you say, wow, this individual really gets it. On the other hand, you can think of great generals and lesser soldiers that have served, and I'm not going to mention any, but they're writing, let's say it's dull to put it mildly, and they can get caught up focusing on units and engagements. Another thing that happens is that there can be a loss of perspective, that what you see and experience at your level is the be all end all. And it's hard sometimes to have context for where your organization fits in the larger scope.

Presumably, you're also more generous to people in the past. I mean, I think when I was 15 and I was falling in love with Metrist, I thought these generals are useless. What's the problem with these guys? I mean, if I'd been Robert Lee, I'd have launched pickets, charged up, like not Cemetery Ridge, right? But you know, the hills to the south of the battlefield, little round top. So as I get older, I realised that, okay, life is a little more complicated.

Friction is a little more complicated. Because you've been in the field, you've had vehicles bogged down, you've had guys charging off in the wrong direction. You're presumably as a historian quite understanding of these apparently bizarre mistakes or poor decisions. Dan, that is so accurate that even just being on a field problem for a week as a junior officer, let alone serving in conflicts, when you write and you read these accounts, you know, they should have done this. They should have attacked the left, right. So first of all, try land navigation in the dark. Try just being out on campaign for weeks on end without shower. Try not having steady meals. And when I used to teach history, I would try to explain this to the

cadets and say, rather than critique them so badly as it's easy to do, we need to see the other side. The most classic example of this, I think, if you think of the British Army, British senior leadership in the First World War, I don't think the passage of time has been very kind to leaders such as Haig and others who are often treated as unthinking robots that just really didn't care about their men. But I'll often say to people, okay, let's say you're a battalion commander, you arrive at the front in 1917. You're trying to find a solution that hasn't been found yet. So it's not that these are unthinking individuals that want to see their men slaughtered. I can tell you having lost soldiers, there is nothing more painful than losing your men or having them wounded. And the human condition, I don't think, changes.

I think very much in these units and organizations in past wars, they would have felt losses that I can't even imagine. And it wasn't for lack of trying. I think it was for other things that are going on. And what differentiates the good, even the really good, from the genius is the genius of that top one-half of 1%, top one-tenth of 1% of military leaders that are actually able to see that breakthrough and get through. But you put it better than I, Dan. It is the experience of serving in the service and then actually experiencing combat makes you look at the past leaders, I think, giving them a little more benefit of the doubt. I had a joke I'd often say, it was hard enough to figure out what the bad guys were doing, let alone my own guys, you know, and that's, oh, well, it's true.

Okay, well, then speaking of geniuses and leaders, who are the ones after, you know, decades of study, who are the ones that really you like to focus on? Well, I think one that's not given nearly enough credit, far and away out of mind, but the Viscount Slim, I think he's one of my all-time favorites. I think Chester Nimitz, who commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the Second World War, really deserves just an extraordinary amount of credit for what he accomplished after the reversal at Pearl Harbor and continued to experience defeats at the hand of the Japanese, but the victory at Midway and everything that came after that. I've just been digging more

into Patton. Patton is a one of a kind, but in many ways deserves the accolades that he get with some serious flaws as well. It's personality. I think another, I would say military genius, but with some significant character flaws would be Douglas MacArthur, especially, you know, the Inchon campaign. There are many great things that he does and then many other shortcomings. I think Heinz Guderian, the German army of the Second World War, another brilliant mind, just a towering figure. We could go back further, but those are just a few off the top of my head. Oh, well, you've made lots of friends on this podcast. A lot of British people listen to this one and Slim will have gone down very well.

So thank you for that. When you're briefing the captains of industry, right, to the senior people in organizations, what aspects of the case studies are they particularly drawn to? I think what they all have in common is when you can humanize them. them. I mean, you mentioned earlier at the start of the podcast, and I don't know how many of our listeners or viewers will be familiar with the U.S. Battle of Gettysburg that took place in the American Civil War, July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of 1863. But there are a number of case studies where there is a John Buford, who was a Union cavalry commander, or a Lieutenant Colonel, newly promoted to Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who really turned the tide of the battle. And he's a mid-level manager, if you will.

But on the Confederate side, there's Richard Ewell, who famously fails to attack when he could have and maybe secured victory for Robert E. Lee. But for leaders to look at them not as a historical figure, but instead to try to understand the context of the situation they were in. What are the ambiguities that they faced? And how did they react to that environment? It's striking how familiar it is to so many business leaders in a similar way. Again, as I started earlier, nobody's shooting at them, but my gosh, we have to make these big decisions. Go forward, not invest, whatever it might be.

And I don't have all the information. What's the right time to act? And I think personalizing, humanizing these historical figures is what really connects. I must ask about your time in Iraq. I could keep questioning you all night, sir. I must just ask, before I let you go, about your time in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's been lively debate, I think, in the UK and in the US about whether we were sufficiently aware of the kind of historical context, the societal context for those operations. You were on the ground, you saw it up close. Do you think that, looking back there, perhaps should have been more awareness about the very complicated and very, very particular histories of both of those areas in which we're intervening? Very much so. And as a student of history at the time, I remember both

our involvement in Afghanistan and then went into Afghanistan, was part of a multinational force advising the Afghan National Army. My immediate supervisor was a British officer. I was very privileged and proud to serve under Colonel Max Little. And also, again, in Iraq, I think you're spot on that the United States in particular believe that, well, we'll go in, everybody wants democracy and freedom, and these are universally held things. Anyone with a modicum of historical understanding would realize that that's not the case. Being a child of the Cold War, I remember in the 1980s, the satisfaction we took seeing the Soviet Union struggle in Afghanistan. And here are these fearless freedom fighters standing up against the evils of Soviet tyranny. And when I was in Afghanistan for the first time and I looked around and I said, OK, here are some interesting parallels.

The Soviets, they wore desert tan camouflage uniforms. We wore desert tan camouflage uniforms. The Soviets came in with the desire to educate the people to provide equal rights for women, surprisingly enough, to provide freedom of religion. We actually believed in many of those same things. The Soviets wanted to build infrastructure, roads, schools, improve the standard of living. We wanted to come in and build roads, infrastructure, improve the standard of living. The Soviets wanted to bring in what they believed to be

the most enlightened form of government and economic systems, that being socialism or communism, whatever label we want to put on it. Well, of course, what did we want to try to import? Representative democracy, a different political system, but just like theirs, completely at odds and unfamiliar to the way the tribal peoples had lived for thousands of years. And so as I looked around and said, wow, it's not surprising. And then being a student of British history, I realized that we have our closest ally has a very long history in Afghanistan. And I see it as though the one place, if you look at the

British empire, I believe it to be the one place, if you look at the British empire, I believe it to be the most successful and least bloody of any empires in the history of the world. And there was one exception to the whole glorious and interesting history of it. And that would be Afghanistan. Three attempts, really, that didn't turn out with the intended results. That should have given us pause. If you remember, initially, when we went in, the claim was really just to take out al-Qaeda and give word that the Taliban could not serve as a breeding ground for terrorist strikes against the United States and the West. Well, around December of 2001, that changed into, we want to bring Afghanistan into the community of nations. And here we are coming up on 19 years later, and we don't seem to be any closer.

We could also look at Iraq. I just say that Saddam Hussein did not come from Mars, in that he was a product of Iraq. He understood the divide or how to manipulate the tensions and harness or keep them at bay between Sunni and Shia. And by removing him, there was a power vacuum. And I don't think that we gave enough consideration to the cultural context and the long pre-existing histories in Iraq. And hopefully we're figuring that out now. Fascinating stuff. Now, listen, we've got a lot of budding leaders out there listening to this podcast. What's one key piece of advice, both from your own experience and from studying some of the great leaders of history? What do

you want to send everyone away with? I would say the importance now more than ever of leading by example. There's an altruism that you can fool the boss, and I'll put it politely, you can hear it expressed more colorfully, but you can fool your leadership more easily than you can fool those that you lead. Never give instructions, whether a civilian or military context, never give guidance to your subordinates that you yourself are not willing to carry out. People will watch you every day and they'll know if you're genuine. Very nice indeed. Well, thank you very much indeed

for coming on this podcast. That was fantastic. Thank you, Dan. It's my pleasure. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand

if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review,

purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.