Founders - #224 Charles de Gaulle

Starting point is 00:00:00 De Gaulle's admirers have included both Henry Kissinger and Osama bin Laden. He has been compared by admirers and detractors to French figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, Henry IX, Louis XIV, and Napoleon, and to non-French figures as diverse as Bismarck, Mussolini, Mao, Castro, and Jesus Christ. The range of these comparisons reflect De Gaulle's extraordinary contradictions. He was a soldier who spent most of his career fighting the army, a conservative who often talked like a revolutionary, a man of passion who found it almost impossible to express emotions. In France today, Charles de Gaulle is everywhere, in memories, in street names, in monuments, in bookshops.

Starting point is 00:00:46 At the most recent count, over 3,600 localities had a public space—a street, an avenue, a square, a roundabout—named after him. When an opinion poll in 2010 asked the French to rank the most important figures in their history, 44% placed de Gaulle at the top, far ahead of Napoleon in second place with 14%. Throughout his career, he was a brutally divisive figure. He was reviled and idealized, loathed and adored, in equal measure. Hatred went beyond words.

Starting point is 00:01:18 De Gaulle was the target of about 30 serious assassination attempts. If the lives of the French were so passionately caught up in their relationship with de Gaulle, it was because he was the central actor in France's two 20th century civil wars. The first civil war resulted from France's defeat by Germany in 1940, when the government of Marshal Pétain signed an armistice with Hitler. Refusing to accept this decision, de Gaulle departed for London to continue the battle. His act of defiance transformed him into a rebel. Over the next four years, de Gaulle claimed that he, not Pétain, represented the true France. He returned to France in 1944, acclaimed as a national hero. De Gaulle challenged the way that the French thought about their

Starting point is 00:02:05 history and politics. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is De Gaulle, and it was written by Julian Jackson. And before I jump back into the book, I want to tell you why I spent so much time studying and learning about Charles De Gaulle. So this might be outside of the episode I did where I read all of Warren Buffett's shareholders letters. This is probably the episode that took the most amount of time and preparation. So I listened to the audiobook before I read this book. Previously, I told you I listened to the audiobook. I said it was 60 hours.

Starting point is 00:02:33 It's not 60 hours. It's 35 hours long. And then I read the book. The book is 800 pages long. It might be the most detailed biography I've ever read. And then I also watched, there's a movie that just came out. It's in French with English subtitles. It's called De Gaulle. It came out, I think, like two years ago. And so I watched that movie as well. And the reason that I thought

Starting point is 00:02:53 spending all this time studying Charles De Gaulle was valuable came from just a simple quote that I read in a book about two years ago. All the way back on Founders number 110, I read this book called Distant Force. It's the closest thing we have to a biography of Henry Singleton. And the quote comes from this guy named Arthur Rock. Arthur Rock is one of the first venture capitalists. He funded companies like Intel, Apple, and Teledyne. Teledyne was the company that Henry Singleton founded. And this is what he worked, Arthur works with some of the most gifted entrepreneurs in history, one of those being Henry Singleton, and this is what he said about Singleton. And he says, Henry reminds me of the gall.

Starting point is 00:03:30 He has a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he's going to do. Yes, he is rather aloof, operating more or less by himself and dreaming up ideas in his corner office.

Starting point is 00:03:47 Let me tell you this, that corner office produced a cornucopia of ideas. And Arthur Rock's not the only famous person in the history of entrepreneurship that sang the praises of Henry Singleton. I actually discovered who Henry Singleton was through Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Warren Buffett, not only in shareholder letters, but also in speeches, he talked about that. He thought Henry Singleton, he says, Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business. If you took the top, the 100 top business school graduates and made a composite of their triumphs, their record would not be as good as Singleton. He went on to say that the fact that business schools didn't study Henry Singleton, he said that was a crime.

Starting point is 00:04:31 And then Charlie Munger, this is a quote from Poor Charlie's Almanac. It says, sharing Buffett's admiration for Henry Singleton, Charlie wonders, given the man's talent and record, have we learned enough from him? And so when you have three people that have studied entrepreneurs for multiple decades, people have dedicated their life to this, like Arthur Rock, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and they're telling you, hey, this is the guy, this is the guy you should study, you need to learn from him. And then one of those people say, hey, he's very similar to this other historical figure. I took that as a challenge to, okay, let me go and study de Gaulle. And I

Starting point is 00:04:59 really want to know what Arthur Rock meant by he is like DeGaulle, that Singleton is like DeGaulle. And so that is why I decided to spend all this time, why I read an 800-page biography and did all these other things, because I think it's important. It's another reminder that I don't look at these as separate episodes. I look at founders as just one giant discussion on the history of entrepreneurship, a discussion that is already hundreds of hours long, and hopefully a discussion that will continue decades into hours long, and hopefully a discussion that will continue decades into the future. So with that, let's jump into the book. There's just a few things in the introduction I want to pull out before I get into his early life. And then

Starting point is 00:05:32 from there, the book flows in a chronological order. So it's easier to follow. And so the very first thing is the fact that de Gaulle built his myth. So it says one of the de Gaulle's greatest achievements was the myth that he constructed around himself and that myth was launched by the radio so just like podcasts are I consider miraculous today radio before it was a miracle because it allowed you to speak directly to a gigantic audience all around the world and in de Gaulle's case, he was broadcasting to people mainly in Europe. And so it says the deed that launched him in 1940. So this is after Germany defeats France. And so the single singleness of purpose that Arthur Rock was describing with Henry Singleton, de Gaulle's version of that is continue fighting. He absolutely refused to accept defeat. And this absolute refusal, no matter what happens, to accept defeat, is what makes him a national hero,

Starting point is 00:06:30 because he looked at the French government that signed an armistice with Hitler that gave up as treasonous. And so he flees to London. The only ally that really left fighting Hitler at this point is Churchill in England. I covered that back on the podcast, uh, the splendid and the vile. It was a few months ago. If you want to listen to that, if you haven't already. Uh, so at this point he's in London, he has fled and he's saying, I am the French government

Starting point is 00:06:57 because I am the only, the only one that's not giving up. And he's got a great quote. De Gaulle's got a great quote in that movie that i watched of his and it's describing himself and he says don't turn your back on he who will not accept defeat so it says the deed that launched him in 1940 was a speech a speech almost no one actually heard but subsequent speeches fared better and for millions of french people between 1940 and 1944, de Gaulle existed as a voice heard on the radio. And so he used the radio as a tool to build up support. In fact, it was so remarkable by the time he comes back to France after the liberation, a lot of people running up, they see this congregation of generals,

Starting point is 00:07:40 and they run up to other generals thinking, okay, this must be who de Gaulle is. So many of his followers didn't even know what he looked like um so this is a little bit about something i i observe over and over again these biographies is the fact that um the greatest founders in history have identified a series of things that are extremely important to them and then they repeat them over and over again because they all understood that repetition is persuasive and so this is de gaulle talking many years in the future about this. It says, de Gaulle commented, the things that I want to be known, that I consider to be important, I think about them for a long time. I write them down.

Starting point is 00:08:16 I learn them by heart. This costs me the most terrible effort. They are the only things which count in my eyes. And these things remained remarkably consistent throughout his whole life. This is a little bit about that. It says there seems to be a granite-like consistency to his personality and beliefs. The most famous sentence he ever wrote is all of my life I've had a certain idea of France. And that's another thing I need to pause. It's extremely important. This is the same thing. If you go back and look at the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, all of a lot of these founders, they repeat things so much that they become,

Starting point is 00:08:55 in Jeff's case, they're called Jeffisms. And they're very consistent. Their philosophy about how to build a company, what's important, what they're trying to teach everybody around them that's engaged in the same mission as they are. They repeat that over and over again, and it stays relatively consistent. De Gaulle's the same thing. And the reason that I left stuff on this page is, in fact, the paperback version of the book that I'm holding in my hand, and I'm struggling to hold in my hand because it's so large, it was reprinted with a completely different title. So this one just says De Gaulle by Julian Jackson. I don't know if they did this because it was more descriptive or it could sell better.

Starting point is 00:09:29 You can find the same book in paperback version called A Certain Idea of France, The Life of Charles De Gaulle. So that comes from his memoir. It's the very first sentence in his autobiography. It says, All my life I've had a certain idea of France. And this is where I want to draw another comparison to Henry Singleton, to the Steve Jobs, to these people. It's the fact that in De Gaulle's case, he has a certain idea of France. We take the ideas that are in this book and we say, I have a certain idea for my business.

Starting point is 00:09:56 They spend an enormous amount of time figuring out what do I want my company to be. Another way to apply this idea is to have a very certain idea of my life. What do I want my company to be? Another way to apply this idea is to have a very certain idea of my life. What do I want my business to be? What do I want my life to be? De Gaulle thought for decades a certain idea of France. And to him, there's nothing more important than country. I would say he even put his country above his family or anything else like he did Arthur Rock was dead on he had a singleness of purpose and that was France is going to survive we are not going to accept defeat so I think that applying that idea to this is exactly what I want my business to be like right this is exactly what I want my life to be and it's more important than the business part is

Starting point is 00:10:40 what do you want your life to be to have a certain idea of your life and to never give up on that idea. I think that's an extremely powerful idea that you learn by studying the life of Charles de Gaulle. Okay, so I want to move on. There's just so many good de Gaulle quotes. This guy's unapologetically extreme. This is one that's coming from after the liberation of France when he's actually in power. So he said, and this is how crazy it is. He says, from after the liberation of France when he's actually in power. So he said, and this is how crazy it is. He says, there is no moment of my life when I was not certain that one day I would be at the head of France. But things worked out in a way that I could not predict.

Starting point is 00:11:18 And so the crazy thing about this is he was obsessed with this idea since he was a little boy. His father was served in the French army. He would take him to the battle, when he was a young kid, take him to the battlefield or the cemetery where all the soldiers that died in battles in like the Prussian war and things like that, where he'd make them read the headstones

Starting point is 00:11:37 and then they would like recite passages and stuff. So almost like he was brainwashed. By the time de Gaulle was 10 years old, he decided he was going to pursue a life in the military. At the age of 15, de Gaulle writes an essay, which he projects himself forward to the year 1930. And in this vision that he's writing in the essay as a 15-year-old boy, he is a general of the French army, and he has just defeated Germany. Okay, so then the book begins.

Starting point is 00:12:03 Now, after the introduction, it talks about, hey, he's a voice before he was a face. And really, more important than he's a voice, he's an idea. He was an idea that France was not doomed. So let's go into his first speech and the one he's most well known for, even though not that many people heard it. So it became almost like a legend, like a meme, I guess, is the way to think about it in today's terms right de gaulle was a voice before he was a face he entered history through a short bbc broadcast from london on the evening of 18 june 1940 six weeks earlier the german army had launched its assault on france the french were overwhelmed with extraordinary rapidity and on 17th of june the head of the french government marshall marshall patan okay another

Starting point is 00:12:43 thing so highly recommend the audiobook if you do want to reading the book because they have this great uh the the voice on the audiobook has just these great pronunciations i have no idea like i can't even i can't even pronounce english words much less i'm not gonna i have no idea if i'm butchering i know i'm butchering these names so just bear with me uh these these French names but the reason I recommend the audiobook so much is because it's just it's I think French is like a beautiful language even though I don't understand it it just sounds beautiful to me um and the the the narrator on the audiobook just did a fantastic job so it says Patan that's who I'm going to call him and he's actually a really important person

Starting point is 00:13:23 this was actually the crazy thing is this was de Gaulle's mentor. De Gaulle ghost wrote books for him. They wind up being enemies. In fact, this guy sentences de Gaulle to death when he leaves France for England. And then once the Allies overtake the Germans and they take back control of Paris. Pétain is then sentenced to death. And then when – and he's like 89 years old. He might be 90 years old at the time.

Starting point is 00:13:53 It's remarkable. And then de Gaulle commutes his sentence. But they wind up having a very close relationship and then they have this fracture and they become bitter enemies. So it says Pétain announced on French radio that he would be suing for an armistice with Germany. de Gaulle's speech the next day was a challenge to Pétain's defeatism. Remember, this is, I just love the idea of what de Gaulle said. Don't turn your back on he who will not accept defeat. So this is what de Gaulle said.

Starting point is 00:14:18 I'm just going to pull out some highlights from his speech here. This government, alleging that our armies are defeated, had made contact with the enemy to end the fighting. Certainly, we have been overwhelmed by the mechanized forces of the enemy on the ground and in the air. Infinitely more than their number, it was the tanks, the airplanes, and the tactics of the Germans who forced us into retreat. It was the tanks, the airplanes, the tactics of the Germans that took our leaders by surprise to the point of bringing them to where they are today. I want to pause here. That sentence is extremely important because for 10 years before the war,

Starting point is 00:14:50 de Gaulle is writing. He's giving speeches. He's building relationships with different people in France. He's talking about we need to mechanize our forces. He wrote a book, and they wind up finding Hitler had de Gaulle's book and had notations and notes. And so he almost used it like a blueprint. De Gaulle, what's so remarkable, I mean, there's a million things that's remarkable about this guy, but so remarkable is he has receipts. For a decade before this happened, he was warning you,

Starting point is 00:15:16 if you do not update your army, if you don't start embracing the strength needed for a military, we are going to get run over by Germany. He called this shot a decade before. So this is what he's talking about. The tanks, he talks about, he was a, he saw, he serves, he winds up getting injured. He winds up getting shot twice in World War I, actually. But he's like, hey, war has changed, and we have not updated our strategies. We're still fighting the last war, and if we don't update our ideals,

Starting point is 00:15:43 we're going to lose the next war. And the next war inevitable in his in his view and he wound up being right about that so it says but has the last word been said must hope disappear is the defeat definitive no i tell you that nothing is lost for france the same means that conquered us can one day bring us victory he goes on despite all of our mistakes all of our failures to catch up all of our sufferings there are in the world all the means necessary one day to overcome our enemies the destiny of the world is at stake he always talks like this like he was on a mission he is you go back to that that um that that that mental model that jeff bezos taught us a long time ago he's like listen when you're recruiting people to your company,

Starting point is 00:16:26 you want missionaries, not mercenaries. Mercenaries are just there for the money, maybe for the perks or whatever. Missionaries will always make better products because they believe in your mission. So make sure you siphon off the people you're recruiting and put them into two camps and only bring the missionaries with you. De Gaulle was a missionary. Whatever happens, listen to how he talks, whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished, and it will not be extinguished. De Gaulle spoke many more times over the following

Starting point is 00:16:55 weeks, and increasing numbers of people started turning into his speeches. Okay, so we're going to jump into his early life way before World War II. This is one of the most, I would say probably the most influential person on the life of Charles de Gaulle was his father. So this is what he wrote about his father in his autobiography. My father was a man of thought, culture, tradition. He was imbued with a sense of the dignity of France. He made me discover its history. Later in life, when asked to name the person who most influenced him, he would always mention his father. Now he's talking about his early life in this family intellectual work was all that counted Henri passed on to his son a reverence for writers and the life of the mind

Starting point is 00:17:38 okay so at this point in the story de Gaulle's about 18 years old I already said by the time he was 10 hey I'm going to dedicate my life to the military. He says his only fascination was with war, the last war and the next one. So he goes to this military academy. It's called like Saint-Cyr. I'm most likely pronouncing that incorrectly. So it says he graduated from there in the summer of 1912. We have no evidence that he stood out in any way except for his height.

Starting point is 00:18:01 So that's another thing that he's well known for. And if you look at pictures of him on Google Images, he's like a foot taller than everybody else. So he was 6'5". At the time, the average height in France for a man was 5'3". So they call him like a giant. They called him the giant asparagus or something was his nickname. Something to do with an asparagus.

Starting point is 00:18:23 And that relates to his height. So there was many other odd features. Okay, so this talks about his physical appearance being odd. He's a very odd person in general, just like Singleton. There were many other odd features of his physical appearance. His small head, his heavily hooded eyes, his long neck, and his lack of chin. Although de Gaulle was not prone to intimate self-revelations, he made an okay he

Starting point is 00:18:45 made occasional comments which which hint that the icy reserve he projected was rooted in a certain physical awkwardness about his appearance i did not have a physique that pleases he wrote so he graduates he just he elects to join the infantry and this is what he writes about that when i joined the army it was one of the greatest things in the world under the criticisms and insults that had been hurled at it it waited with serenity and even muted hope for the days when everything would depend on it so the note i left myself on this page is de gaulle talks about the army the way enzo ferrari spoke of his cars so there's a great quote from go that book go like hell i think it's like founders number 97 something like that and it says enzo ferr Ferrari spoke of automobiles as if they were animate. Cars possess unique

Starting point is 00:19:29 behaviors. They breathe through their carburetors. They were skinned with metal. When Ferrari was asked which of his cars was his favorite, he answered, the car which I have not yet created. And which of his victories meant the most? The one which I have not yet achieved. So there's like almost like this poetic, like they speak of these things as if they're speaking to like a lover. So de Gaulle finds himself at the right place for him at the right time and the right place in history because he was obsessed with war. He was obsessed with defending the glory of France and maintaining its empire. And so World War I breaks out.

Starting point is 00:20:00 He's a young man. He's already in the military and he gets shot for the first time. War between France and Germany broke out in on august 1914 he was a platoon commander and a lieutenant at this point and he had about 65 men under his control so now he's going to describe this he's writing about this later in the hospital after he gets shot and so it says de gaulle wrote up his impressions on that first morning while they were still fresh in his mind and I'm pretty sure he got shot the very first day the first shots of the campaign what impression did this make on me why not admit it two seconds of physical emotion a knotted throat and that was all I could even say that a feeling of satisfaction now think about how crazy this is you were getting literally putting your life on the line you you could die

Starting point is 00:20:44 in a few minutes. People around you were dying. And this is what he says. I could even say that a feeling of satisfaction came over me. At last, we're going to get them. So he thought of Germany as France's historical enemy. And that's why when he's 15, he's writing this dream essay where I'm, you know, fast forward in 15, 20 years of my future, and I'm a general in France, and I've just defeated Germany. And now he's getting a shot as a young man to actually fight the Germans. And so, yeah, I was right. He winds up getting injured in the first 20 seconds.

Starting point is 00:21:14 This is what he says about that. I screamed out, first section forward with me. Remember, he's leading 65 people into battle. I rushed forward, realizing that our only chance of success was to move very fast before the enemy. It's funny that he says that now because that he's default aggressive and that's one of his biggest criticisms about the french generals in world war ii is they just sat around and waited for germany to attack

Starting point is 00:21:33 instead of taking the fight to them i was hardly covered i hardly covered 20 meters when i felt a kind of whiplash on my knee that's when he gets shot in the knee which caused me to stumble uh four other men with me were also moaned in the same instant. This other, his friend was killed outright right next to him. For the next half a minute, there was a terrible hail of bullets around me. I could hear the bullets entering with a dull thud into the bodies of the dead. With my leg completely numb and paralyzed, I extracted myself from the bodies around me and crawled along the street underneath the same ceaseless hail of bullets. How I was not pierced like a sieve will forever remain one of the great questions of my life in his uh in his 20 seconds of combat de gaulle made two discoveries one about himself the other

Starting point is 00:22:15 about modern warfare and this is also going to be something that he warns people that decade before world war ii uh begins the first was that he was indifferent to physical danger. He was like this his entire life. He's an insane person. This was the first that he was indifferent to physical danger. Throughout his life, he would display the same bravado he had shown at this river crossing to the despair of those in charge of his security. The second lesson was summarized in one sentence where he winds up writing this book. In the twinkling of an eye, it became clear that all the virtue in the world is powerless against firepower. And so he winds up being sent to the hospital.

Starting point is 00:22:58 He was so desperate to take part in the fighting that he left the hospital before his wound was fully healed. So he heals up, goes back into war, and he's shot again. De Gaulle was wounded in this time in the hand by a bullet. The injury became severely infected, and he was hospitalized for a second time. And then it says right after this, and this is, I think, the most important thing to know about De Gaulle, and I underline the sentence. It's said a million different ways in the book. Nothing dented his belief in victory. Nothing dented his belief in victory. There's just no quit. There's no other option. I have a single purpose. I'm going to win. France is going to be glorious or I'm going to die trying. We must, he writes about this,

Starting point is 00:23:36 we must conquer. He italicized that. The victor is the one that wants victory most energetically. His view remained that the French could accept nothing less than the absolute and definitive victory of our forces. The peace must be dictated by us. We must harden our hearts and concentrate our energies to repel the multiple temptations that a cunning enemy is starting to offer us. And so that's, again, when I read stuff like that, I think about not just what de Gaulle's doing in this battle in World War I,

Starting point is 00:24:07 but really it's like, let's come up with a, he came up with a certain idea of France. Let's come up with a certain idea of our life and never give up on that. The absolute and definitive victory of our forces, the peace must be dictated by us. We must harden our hearts and concentrate our energies. Concentrate our energies on our certain idea of our life, our business, or whatever we want out of this experience

Starting point is 00:24:28 that we call life. And really, that's what I'm taking away from spending, you know, who knows, 60 hours studying De Gaulle. It's unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:24:36 He heals up. He goes back into battle. Okay? Oh my goodness. Okay. Then he goes back into battle. By the end of, and then the Germans

Starting point is 00:24:44 are just destroying them because, and that's's if you ever study World War I. All military historians talk about people that actually served and fought in combat. They're like, listen, you put me in any—like I'll fight in any war. I don't want to fight in World War I because they did not update the fact that they essentially just sent a bunch of young people to die against machine guns, which did not exist before on this scale before that war. And so they all talk about that's the absolute worst because there's no tactics or no strategy. It's just, OK, go over that hill. We lost 90 percent. Let's do it again. Wave after wave. And it's talked about in the book. Obviously, I'm going to skip over it. But I want to bring up this point. This is when he's going to become a prisoner of war.

Starting point is 00:25:21 And this is extremely important in his life story. By the end of the day, his company had been almost entirely wiped out. He was believed to have been killed. And Pathan, remember, this is the guy that's going to sign the armistice with Hitler. And before he does that, he's a mentor to de Gaulle. Pathan signed a citation commending him for his bravery in the field, thinking he's dead. A few days later, it became known that he had been taken prisoner. And so de Gaulle tells us what happened. I set off crawling along the trench. I had barely gone 10 meters when down a trench perpendicular to mine, I caught sight of some Germans crouched down to avoid

Starting point is 00:25:52 bullets. They spotted me at the same moment. One of them gave me a bayonet thrust that wounded me in the thigh. Another killed my, it's a French word for like kind of like an assistant, at point blank range. Seconds later, a grenade exploded literally under my nose and I lost consciousness. It's astonishing that he survived the explosion. So I want to pause here. So far in battle, right? This is the first year of battle. I think the first like six months, if I'm not mistaken.

Starting point is 00:26:25 He's been shot twice, bayoneted, and hit by a grenade. So so he's gonna spend the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp he's gonna try to escape five times but this is also the first incidents he has like this melancholic nature throughout his life so he's in a deep deep depression he endlessly he returned to an inexpressible sadness caused by the humiliation of being a prisoner at At this moment, I am gripped by a grief so bitter and so deep that I do not think I will ever again experience anything like it. And it will only end when my life ends. So that is, if I'm not mistaken, he is 24 years old when he's saying that. So eventually World War I ends. He's released. This is November 1918. So that would put him at what, 28? And now it says, as he wrote on returning to France,

Starting point is 00:27:09 the great joy I share with you is mixed for me, more better than ever, with the indescribable regret at not having played a greater role. Remember, he dedicated his entire life to this. And he's like, I'll never get another chance. I think that for the rest of my life, whether it will be a long or short life, that regret will not leave me. Let it at least serve as a spur to think and act better. And so now the book goes, and it covers a large part of his life rather quickly.

Starting point is 00:27:37 So from, let's see, he'd be, from the time he's like 29 to 42. This is all before the war is going to break out in Europe. He's still back in the army. He's getting a lot of experience. But this goes more on the fact that he suffered depressive states intermittently throughout his entire life. It says, when de Gaulle became famous, his aides would despair at what they called his temperament,

Starting point is 00:28:00 his volatile and unpredictable mood swings, his sudden descent into the blackest pessimism. This is something they're going to draw an analogy that Winston Churchill also had to deal with. Churchill called these periods of his life the black dog. Like Churchill's black dog, these moments of despair became incorporated into his myth. The man of destiny surmounting the temptation to give up. This temperament is already at evidence at the end of the war uh so when he's writing to his mother i am one of the living dead you offer to send me books to work for what to work one must have an aim what aim can i have

Starting point is 00:28:39 my career but if i cannot return to fight before the end of the war will i stay in the army and what mediocre future would await me? And really the point of pulling that out is because everybody's going to go through that experience. If you're trying to do something difficult, building a company, being one of those things, it's inevitable that you're going to go through these periods of depression, darkness, whatever you want to call it.

Starting point is 00:29:01 It's just you're not thinking. Think about what he's writing there. He's got a, I mean, he doesn't know at this point, but he's got, you know, five decades of public life, uh, in front of him. He's going to become one of the most important, uh, play, play one of the most important roles, uh, in, in human history. And it's just like, when you're in, I guess, reading these stories and seeing other people experience it, the benefit being, and why I think all the smartest, most productive people, smartest, most productive people to ever live, all read biographies and all continue to read

Starting point is 00:29:29 biographies is because you see this play on other people's lives and you just realize okay i can take a step back and realize i'm just not thinking clearly here and i just need to wait for this this feeling to pass this this dark period of my life that i'm currently experiencing to pass and then i'll be able to to have a clearer perspective on what like my life is going to be and what my future is going to be right now de gaulle does not have that so as we we go through this like next decade and a half of his life i just want to pull a few things here and i'm doing a lot of this selfishly because singleton henry singleton has there's a lot of ideas that that I learned from him that I'm going to apply to my work. And I think I'm going to wind up doing another podcast on him.

Starting point is 00:30:09 There's not a lot of, I've read the two books, The Outsiders and then Distant Force, that actually talk about him. But there's also material online. So it's like maybe reread those two books, read a bunch of things that you can find online, and then combine that into a podcast. And then maybe I can tell you then like how the ideas i stole from him and like my application of them because again like i think ideas scale up and down like he used it to build this giant conglomerate called teledyne like i can use some of those ideas just for founders right so i really a lot of my highlights was like okay i look at it through the viewpoint of what arthur rock said like Singleton is like DeGaulle.

Starting point is 00:30:46 Well, this is very interesting. DeGaulle keeps himself apart from his peers. And if you listen to those two podcasts on Singleton or if you read the two books, you realize he did the same thing. He was not like, he purposely kept him apart from his peers because, I't know he never explicitly said this but we're all you know we're prone to copy or to be influenced by the people around us and what we let in our mind and i think for singleton like why he sat in his corner office alone with just his apple to computer like because he wanted to come up with unique interesting ideas usually from like first principle thinking and that's why Singleton's ideas were so different

Starting point is 00:31:25 than most of the ideas of famous CEOs or founders at that time in history. And I think that's what gave him the difference in his thinking, gave him what Warren Buffett said is the greatest record in American business history. So we see a little bit about this here. De Gaulle kept aloof from other French officers. So he's a French officer as well and did not join their social outings. They found it hard to understand why he never came to the mess, meaning he ate with them, never joked. He would speak little and ruminate and he would be ruminating on thoughts one could only guess at.

Starting point is 00:32:01 And so this idea of keeping to yourself, keeping your ideas to yourself, this is very interesting because there's a quote by Claude Shannon, the legendary creator of the information dairy, right? In that book, Disenforce, and I'm going to read it to you. I just grabbed it real quick. And he's talking about Singleton. He says, he always tries to work out the best moves, Shannon said, and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much. Because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is. Another idea from this period in De Gaulle's life. And this is really, he's saying this 20 years before De Gaulle becomes De Gaulle. He is Charles De Gaulle now, the person.

Starting point is 00:32:41 He's not Charles De Gaulle, the idea, the revolutionary, the hero. But he's seeing this war that's happening between with Poland. And he says the lesson he drew from Poland's victory was that a country is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight. This was a lesson which influenced his view of his view of francis plight in 1940 that is happening 20 years so that's what i always like about when you when you're reading these biographies you realize that they spend an enormous amount of time having these experiences learning from experiences uh reading books learning as much as possible because they're they know that like these ideas are useful they just don't know when and so they're exposing themselves to as many ideas as possible. And then they use an idea that they may have learned a decade or two decades previously

Starting point is 00:33:30 to an opportunity they couldn't have possibly predicted. So that idea that's like, okay, I'm seeing what's happening here. A country is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight. de Gaulle winds up being the only person in the French government that never lost the will to fight. de Gaulle winds up being the only person in the French government that never lost the will to fight. So now he goes back and analyzes Germany's defeat in World War I. And another thing I want to pull out to you that I think de Gaulle shows with a lot of people, like some of the greatest minds in history,

Starting point is 00:33:59 is he's obsessed with the importance of self-belief and morale. If you remember that book I did on Ernest Shackleton, it's called Endurance. And he's this legendary polar explorer and he realizes like as one of the greatest leaders uh i think that i've come across at least and um he said something in that book that was fascinating he says like he was more like obviously you could freeze to death there's all you're in the arctic for God's sake. But he says, I fear the loss of morale, like a low morale more than I fear the cold. And this is somebody that led multiple expeditions, life and death expeditions. And that's the takeaway he has. I think de Gaulle would agree with him.

Starting point is 00:34:40 And so this is what de Gaulle's identifying. And I don't know if I've made this point clear enough, but de Gaulle has this insane, extensive knowledge of history. He's one of the most well-read people you can come across. And so he took everything he learned from history and would apply it to present day, which again, I think the smartest, the most productive people in the world that have ever lived

Starting point is 00:34:59 do the exact same thing. So he's like admonishing the president of the president of france and right before germany overtakes he's like you need to be like this guy and i look up the guy i was like who is he talking about i look up and it's like the guy had lived in like 1600s and to go somewhere well his situation this is what he did so we should copy this and it's just like wow this guy's no joke so here's many years after the fact i looking back at the defeat in Germany and identifying important factors. Okay, so it says, de Gaulle's argument centered around the importance of self-belief and morale in warfare. He was fascinated by the fact that although the

Starting point is 00:35:36 Germans still had massive military resources, their will to fight had suddenly snapped. So this is what he says, as if by the fatal strike of a magic wand, a sort of moral stupor annihilated the warlike qualities of the German people. German troops were still in enemy territory. German factories remained intact and her fields fertile. However, she surrendered. She refused to make further sacrifices,

Starting point is 00:36:03 hoping to end her suffering. And that line really hit me at the end. She refused to make further sacrifices, hoping to end her suffering. And that line really hit me at the end. She refused to make further sacrifices, hoping to end her suffering. And I think one of the greatest quotes I've come across from any of the books that I've read comes from the founder of Four Seasons, Izzy Sharp. And he's got one of the best maxims. And he says, excellence is the capacity to take pain. Most people don't do that.

Starting point is 00:36:25 That's why everybody quits, right? Steve Jobs tells us half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the unsuccessful ones is just not giving up. That's a crazy statement from the person that created the most successful consumer product of all time. Half. What separates success from failure is just not quitting.

Starting point is 00:36:43 Is he sharp? Excellence is the capacity to take pain. If you want to end your suffering, you're not willing to take that pain anymore. And so you quit. I want to give you a little bit more insight into his personality. He's extremely disagreeable, extremely arrogant. So he's attending a military academy that trains senior army officials and he doesn't hide his disgust because he feels like what they're teaching is how to to to win a war that no longer exists and if you think about it

Starting point is 00:37:12 he was completely correct this is very similar to if you read warren's shareholder letters or you hear charlie munger speak they are relentless and they're like listen you business school professors are destroying generations of entrepreneurs and investors because you're teaching them bumpkiss. And so you can think about that, this kind of analogy of what he's saying. He's like, I'm going to military academy. You're supposed to be training senior army officers. And what you're teaching us is BS. So it says, what singled de Gaulle out was less of his contempt that he felt for his teachers than his refusal to disguise it. So one of these colonels that's teaching him commented that

Starting point is 00:37:45 De Gaulle was intelligent, cultivated and serious, with brilliance and facility, but he spoils incontestable qualities by his excessive self-assurance and his harshness towards other people's opinions. He has an attitude of a king in exile. This remarkable sense of self-belief from the 34-year-old captain shows why de Gaulle's attitude must have seemed quite insufferable to his superiors.

Starting point is 00:38:13 And what is he doing? He's systematically refuting the dogmatism of official teaching. And so his point, this is where it's also going to... Okay, so I just said, Munger and Buffett definitely do that over and over again, right? If you've read their words and you listen to them, you know that. But he's also, this is where he's going to parallel Singleton again, Henry Singleton again.

Starting point is 00:38:37 And so in this case, de Gaulle is like schooling his teachers. He's like, listen, you're not even deriving the right lessons from Napoleon. So it says there was never, he's like listen you're not even deriving the right lessons from napoleon um so it says uh there was never he's talking about napoleon he has some he definitely criticizes napoleon quite a bit too but this is something that he thought napoleon did right there was never a single corpus or doctrine in the army of the first empire that's napoleon seizing the circumstances adapting to them exploiting them that was the basis of napoleon's conduct so seize the circumstance adapt to them exploit them that's the basis of napoleon's contact con uh conduct this is something that the gall believes his entire life that you have to adapt to ever-changing circumstances

Starting point is 00:39:18 herb keller founder of southwest airlines talks about this over and over again he's like listen planning is orderly and logical reality Reality is chaotic. Planning does not square well with reality is Herb Keller's advice to future entrepreneurs, right? And part of the reason he was able to build the only airline that was profitable for 40 straight years. That's insane. So what did Henry Singleton teach us? Often criticized for not having a business plan, just like Herb Keller was, okay? Henry replied that he knew that a lot of people running companies, remember, this is the person that had the most successful record in American business history. This is what he's telling us. This is why he was so different from his peers at this point.

Starting point is 00:39:56 This is like, I think, the 1960s is when he's saying this. Henry replied that he knew that a lot of people running companies had very definitive plans they followed assiduously, but we are subject to a great number of outside influences on our businesses and most of them cannot be predicted this is still singleton talking to us okay so my plan is to stay flexible he told a business week reporter who was interviewing him my only plan is to keep coming to work every day i like to steer the boat each day rather than play plan way ahead into the future. What did that book I just did with Charlie Munger on damn right? What did he

Starting point is 00:40:30 tell us? There's no master plan at Berkshire Hathaway and there's no master planner. It's the same idea, the same idea expressed by Charles de Gaulle, by Herb Keller, by Henry Singleton, by Warren Buffett, by Charlie Munger. That is the stuff that makes me excited. These people did not know each other in real life. They worked in different industries, different time in history, different parts of the world. And yet some of the most gifted people that have ever lived arrived at the same conclusion. There's a bunch of quotes on leadership in this book, but I want to continue his theme. Action. This is what? He's 34? 34 when he's writing this. If I'm not mistaken.

Starting point is 00:41:06 Action must be constructed on contingency. So at this point in his life, this is 1925. This is when he's the protege of Patan, right? Who I'm most likely mispronouncing the name. The guy I told you about over and over again. What de Gaulle ruminated later on in the career of Pétain, he would invariably comment that Marshall, I think that's his first name, was a great man who had died in 1925. What makes this remark curious is that 1925 was the year that de Gaulle started working directly for him.

Starting point is 00:41:37 And so it talks about there's two main military legends in France at this time, Pétain being one of them, this other guy named Focke, F-O-H maybe, that's how you pronounce that, and they each represented a different approach to war. And so Fok was the exponent of the offense, okay, and the believer in the importance of will as a key to victory. That is very much de Gaulle, okay? Pathan was known for his emphasis on the need for meticulous preparation. And de Gaulle really believed that his caution bordered on defeatism. And so de Gaulle has these great quotes.

Starting point is 00:42:13 This is from that movie I watched. To be passive is to be defeated. And then he's talking about, this is a quote from when Germany's just, in the Second World War, just destroying France with great rapidity, I think is the word. He says the old generals never attack. He's talking about Pétain and people like this. I think one theme that comes up over and over again in these books is the fact that belief comes before ability. People think it's the opposite.

Starting point is 00:42:40 It's like you achieve something and you believe you could do it way before you had the ability to do it. De Gaulle's, the way he's taught, listen to how he talks. He's ghostwriting a book for Pétain. He's been in battle for, what, 20 seconds? Not 20 seconds, but not very long, maybe a few hours. He's been shot twice, bayoneted, grenade. He spent the vast majority of the war in World War I as a prisoner, right? Pétain is the most

Starting point is 00:43:07 decorated French military leader that you have at this point. And listen to how he talks to him. Again, this goes, he's got this unbelievable self-belief. And I think the reason this is important is because founders need that. Why is this, we keep comparing

Starting point is 00:43:23 de Gaulle and Henry Singleton. Singleton was able to trust his own judgment he knew that he could think things through independently and come up with the best plan of action right and you have to have a large degree of self-belief to do that and the fact that Singleton had this large degree of self-belief led him to take actions that resulted in this miraculous record that he had so i think this is an extremely important thing to like remind ourselves of so it says um they're just like fighting over this this book that that they're ghostwriting and so it says de gaulle's outrage response displays a remarkable degree of self-belief and this is what he says to the legend

Starting point is 00:44:01 the main legend of the french military at this point a A book is a man. That man, up to me, up to now, was me. If anyone else becomes involved in this, only two things can ensure. Either he will write another book, or he will demolish mine. If you want to do another book, I have no objections. I will simply take my book back. But if it is a matter of mauling my philosophy and my style, I oppose it. A few days later, de Gaulle compounded his insolence by writing another letter in a tone quite extraordinary for a mere captain addressing the most venerated military figure in France. He warned Pétain against changing anything in their agreement. He would not allow others to be involved in the writing of the book.

Starting point is 00:44:46 So de Gaulle was very hard for people even around him that were around for a long time to feel like they knew who he was. He spoke very little, would not tell you what he was thinking. I've told you over and over again that, you know, one of the great things about reading biography is like when you get to the end, you feel like you know the person. I don't feel like I know who de Gaulle is. I have, I know his ideas and I think his ideas are extremely intelligent and inspiring. And I'm just shocked that no matter what you throw in front of this guy, he's just refusing to quit. I think that's very admirable. But I have no idea who, like, he was not forthcoming in who he was.

Starting point is 00:45:17 There's one area of his life where that's different. So his third child, little Anne unfortunately was was uh born with down syndrome and at the time it was very common history like if a child they call it like mongolism at this time in history you would send the child off to you know some kind of like facility hospital you know place that they somebody else takes care of them de gaulle and his wife said no no she's staying with us in fact she was with him the whole time she winds up dying when she's 20 years old in their arms but you see the human side of de gaulle that he hid from other people um so he talks about her birth was a trial for my wife and myself but believe me anne is my joy and my strength she is the grace of god in my life bless his heart for saying that after am's

Starting point is 00:46:01 premature death he wrote to his sister, her soul had been liberated. The tenderness of the relationship between de Gaulle and his little daughter, the one person perhaps who was not in awe of him, shines out in a photograph of de Gaulle sitting in a deck chair on the beach with his little girl on his knees, her fingers entwined in his. This strangely austere man, who found it so hard to express affection would spend hours playing with his child bless his heart there's another great story in the book where um i think like they just had a meeting uh one of the military leaders that's serving under him came back unannounced a few minutes later because they forgot his briefcase and he walks in and again de gaulle's super serious never betrays like he has the greatest poker face in history never betrays what he's thinking to

Starting point is 00:46:48 anybody and does that intentionally and he finds he stumbled upon de gaulle like with his daughter in his arms singing her dancing with her and singing her a song that was just you just couldn't believe there was that side of de gaulle ever even existed because de Gaulle refused to show that side. But this idea I found extremely touching, like his love and affection for his daughter. Okay, so now we're in the 1930s before war. He writes this book. Actually, I think it was published in 1932. It's called The Edge of the Sword.

Starting point is 00:47:19 And it's amazing because this is what I meant earlier when I said de Gaulle has receipts. And I wanted to find this book. I cannot find it. I want to say it was like $1,500. And it says the book is a tract on leadership. De Gaulle returns to his obsession about the perils of a prior thinking. So let's define that. That's relating to or denoting reason or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation of experience.

Starting point is 00:47:44 Come on. That's again Warren and Charlie right there, right? So it says it returns to his obsession about the perils of a priori thinking. In his view, the successful leader has to combine, quote from de Gaulle, a creative spark with a capacity for abstraction and critical intelligence. The leader also has to cultivate mystery and keep his distance while exercising a large dose of egoism pride and hardness leadership this is a crazy quote and one of my favorite lines in the book and he's a very the way this guy communicates he writes really the way

Starting point is 00:48:19 he writes is he's got some great lines it, leadership is a solitary exercise of the will. This book is a timeless meditation on leadership. And it also serves a contemporary purpose, which at this point he was articulating de Gaulle's disillusionment with the trend of French politics and diplomacy since the mid-1920s. So again, he's got a certain idea of France, just like Singleton had a certain idea of his business and anything that went against that. One of the last interviews Singleton gave right before he died, he was famous because he bought a lot of his stock back

Starting point is 00:48:56 and he did this like 10, 15 years before other CEOs were doing it. But he says, right, maybe even longer, maybe like 20 years before that. But at the end, a lot of CEOs are doing that. And so he said like he was asked, like, what do you think of the fact that all of them are doing it? He's like, if everybody's doing it, it must be wrong. There's a bit of that in de Gaulle's thinking. And so he says the French embarked on a policy of reconciliation with Germany.

Starting point is 00:49:19 The backdrop to this policy was a public mood of pacifism. This is where they they're not building up their army. They're not being strong. This is what de Gaulle was calling. He's like, you think this war is over. This isn't it. It was Dan Carlin, my favorite podcaster in history. He has this great series on World War II called The Ghosts of the Ostfront.

Starting point is 00:49:40 And he talks about, he's like, listen, the gap between, he quotes somebody. I don't remember who it was. But, you know, that 20-year gap between the end of world war one and the beginning of world war ii he's like that wasn't a the end of the war it was an intermission and de gaulle picked up on that too and he says de gaulle believed it uh talking about francis and francis uh policy of reconciliation trying to plac placate Germany in between the two world wars. He says, it believed to be a fantasy contrary to the laws of history. And he says, this war is not the last. Whatever the horrors, sacrifices, grief, tears that it was brought, that it brought in its wake,

Starting point is 00:50:18 men have not been changed by it. So what he's saying, history doesn't repeat, human nature does. Human nature is constant. He's writing this in 1917. How crazy is this? And he's describing exactly history doesn't repeat, human nature does. Human nature is constant. He's writing this in 1917. How crazy is this? And he's describing exactly what's going to happen. For some years, there will be a sense of shame and fear. Then the smell of blood will fade, and everyone will sing its glories.

Starting point is 00:50:38 The century-old hatreds between these two countries will revive in more extreme form, and one day peoples will hurl themselves at each other, again determined to destroy each other, but swearing before God and mankind that they had been attacked by the other. The Edge of the Sword was written to remind the French that war has always been a motor of history. This is what he says. That war was as integral to human existence as birth and death and part of the endless cycle of decline and renewal.

Starting point is 00:51:13 De Gaulle viewed this not as a glorification of war, but as a statement of fact. And so now this is right before, where a few years before he's going to be proven correct, he winds up getting promoted to a battalion commander and this is what he said about this it is indeed a pleasant advance up the ranks but the real issue is to make a mark that's de gaulle at 37 years old saying i want to make a mark on the world so he writes another book called Towards a Professional Army. This is the one that Hitler takes notes from. And de Gaulle was correct about conventional French military thinking, right? So the book had two central arguments. The first was that mechanization, so technology applied to modern warfare is the way to think

Starting point is 00:52:08 about that, okay? Especially the invention of tanks had revolutionized warfare and rendered obsolete the central lesson that the French high command had taken from the experience of World War I, that fire power gave supremacy to the defender over the attacker. So that's what he talks about. He's like, the old generals never attack. They're following a playbook that no longer works. But de Gaulle argued that if tanks were deployed autonomously their combination of speed and firepower would make it possible to wage offensive warfare

Starting point is 00:52:32 without risking the terrible massacres of world war one this is very similar to patton's thinking if you ever look at patton he's like listen i'm not holding anything i don't want to hear any of my soldiers saying that i'm holding anything let me me, I'm going to read some quotes. Patton's got, General Patton's got famous speech. This is a speech given to the 3rd Army. It's even appeared in that, there's a movie, I think the one on Oscar, like in the 70s, that he gives a speech in. But I'm going to read you Patton's thinking on this, because he was also in favor of tanks, you know, when he was a tanker, maybe the most famous. And this is really the way that De Gaulle acts. And I think there's a lot of parallels between some early, like, some examples in entrepreneurial history.

Starting point is 00:53:15 Like if you look at how Bill Gates approached Microsoft, I would say how Mark Zuckerberg approached the early days of Facebook. This is very, very similar. So this is what Patton says. I don't want to get any messages saying I'm holding my positions. We're not holding a goddamn thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing.

Starting point is 00:53:51 And so that central idea is completely opposite of what the Germans generals thought, the lessons they took from World War I that no longer is going to apply when Germany and when World War II breaks out. It's this idea. It's like we're not holding anything. We are advancing constantly. It's like we're not digging trenches. We're not sitting here waiting for the enemy we're taking the fight to them and this super default aggressiveness that Patton and DeGaulle are advocates for you also see in people building businesses this hardcore I'm going to go out and find as many customers as possible sign up as many people as I possibly can I'm not sitting

Starting point is 00:54:20 there waiting every day I'm on the attack it's a very similar idea that's central to this criticism that de gaulle is now making in this book and this is the book that hitler winds up taking notes on and i just read this book a few months ago called in the company of giants and it talks about it references bill gates there's like 16 founders in that book. You can find it in the archive. And two MBA students in the 90s wind up interviewing 16 technology company founders. And so that's what the book's about. And one of those is Bill Gates. And the title of Bill Gates' chapter is something like the leader of the Panzer division of Microsoft. And so what they're referencing there is the fact that Germany had this panzer tank strategy, this like default aggressive constantly movement, attack, attack, attack strategy in World War II.

Starting point is 00:55:12 That is exactly what de Gaulle is writing about five years before Germany uses that tactic. So it says, I already read the part about tanks. So he's saying, listen, we need, this is my solution. We need to create a professional army of 100,000 men operating alongside the normal army. Not only would these professional soldiers have technical expertise, but they would be imbued with a sense of purpose. And so it says, when de Gaulle arrived in London after France's defeat in 1940, the book was rapidly translated into English under the title The Army of the Future. On the cover were the words, A 1934 Prophecy. France disregarded it.any worked on it a copy of the german translation with some approving annotations by hitler himself was

Starting point is 00:55:52 found okay so this is what i referenced earlier where he's like hey we need we need more people like this guy and i don't know how to pronounce it's like louis voy or something like that and this is the guy that was alive in the 1960s or excuse me in the 1600s and he's like we need people like this now and so we hear we see de gaulle describing basically what i'm like we have to look at the traits that de gaulle admires and this is who like these are the traits that this this person he studied that was alive a couple hundred years before the events that are happening in this book this is the traits that this guy possessed disdaining theories he was careful not to disrupt or destroy but as a realist he never ceased in his efforts to reform and improve they really you can think about the way he's describing this guy

Starting point is 00:56:35 is the way he views himself though obstinate in pursuing his ends he was capable of being flexible there's that idea again an enthusiastic enthusiastic planner, he also knew how to bide his time. Unencumbered by scruples, he used whatever means seemed simplest and most expedient. He was severe in his judgments of men while not despising them. Clear-sighted without being skeptical. Devoid of illusions while not lacking faith. He was implacable regarding incompetence. He was distant but also approachable, ready to read reports while in the end making his own judgments, welcoming advice but jealously keeping the final decision for himself.

Starting point is 00:57:19 This is de Gaulle through and through. He had enemies and allies but no friends. And another thing about de Gaulle is he saw himself as this like, he was destined for greatness to play this role, right? And so he's talking about the fact that people have to have great people, in his case, great men to lead them, right? So he says, crowds in modern urban society were irrational and malleable. Their emotions needed to be harnessed and manipulated by leaders who knew how to exploit their irrationality. Men cannot do without being led any more than they can do without eating, drinking, and sleeping. So he's definitely a bit of an elitist, okay? In short, the leader was a

Starting point is 00:58:00 this is his description of leadership leadership the leader was a master towards whom people's faith and dreams are directed and so now we're in 1936 hitler is already making this is right before world war uh world war ii right and well let me just read this to you hitler's bold action in occupying the rhineland had been a bluff since he was not yet ready to fight but this was a bluff to that the French government had been unable to call because its army was not organized in a way that would allow it to take rapid offensive action. So England at this time, just like France at this time, is being led by these weak people. This is not the Churchill and this is not the de Gaulle.

Starting point is 00:58:41 And as I'm going to ask myself on this is, if only there was someone who had previously warned about the need to have an army capable of taking rapid offensive action. This is ridiculous. And then, um, he, so he's, he's meeting with this guy, uh, Blum and says the Gauls count of the meeting, uh, would make a point about the workings of a Paul parliamentary government. And he's really, so what he's about to describe is how distracted there's no long periods where they can actually think and and plan and strategize and i i'm going to read this to you but i'm going to tell you my note before i read it to you the history of entrepreneurship is extremely clear about the need to be able to concentrate and if you have a schedule like this you can never do

Starting point is 00:59:23 that during our this is dugald talking about the meeting during our conversation the telephone rang 10 times diverting blum's attention to minor uh or minor parliamentary or administrative questions as i was taking my leave and the phone rang again he made a weary gesture you see if you see if it is easy for a head of government to keep his mind on the plan you have you have outlined uh when he cannot remain five minutes thinking about the same idea so that's a weird sentence but he's basically saying how can i even plan in the future i cannot remain five minutes thinking about the same idea this is also a weird thought i had is like the destruction of our like a there's a depressed depressing stat for me at least it's like 98 of all books sell less than 5 000 copies

Starting point is 01:00:12 and i think i greatly overestimate how much people read based on my own experiences and it's just like if we keep truncating or reducing our attention spans to something that can be read in tweet size or a 15-second video, we're doomed. We cannot have shriveled attention spans. We have got to have the need to think about the same thing for an extremely long period of time. And then in this section, DeGaulle has one of the greatest quotes,

Starting point is 01:00:44 all that matters is to survive the rest is just words more on this these machinations these early machinations by hitler and myself on this page this guy is so on point he just he saw things so much more clearly than anybody else did hitler's demand took france and britain to the brink of war with germany this was averted at the last minute by the Munich Agreement, which gave Hitler most of what he wanted. De Gaulle was plunged into despair and indignation. This is what he says.

Starting point is 01:01:13 The French, like startled chickens, utter cries of joy while German troops enter triumphantly into the territory of a state that we ourselves helped to construct, whose frontiers we guaranteed and which was our ally step by step we accept the habit of humiliation and retreat so that it becomes second nature so now the war has begun with germany and he's writing to the prime minister the president of france he's going to wind up being in his cabinet for like 11 days before Germany overtakes France. But he just, again, more another, they call it a prophetic letter.

Starting point is 01:01:56 And so de Gaulle right now is just pointing out like this is a problem with your stupid strategy where you're just waiting around. What are we doing? So actually I'm wrong this is after germany invaded poland but before they start fighting uh in france and really the way you think about this is the same thing i've repeated default aggressive is the path that gall wants to take here our military system has been exclusively built around defense if the enemy attacks us tomorrow i am sure we will hold out but if he does not attack we are reduced to almost complete impotence then when he judges that we are wary with waiting disoriented and unhappy about our own inertia he will launch an offensive with

Starting point is 01:02:33 from a psychological and material point of view much better cards than he holds today so he's like go attack him now while he's weak and you can actually take him in my humble opinion there is nothing more urgent and necessary than to galvanize the french people instead of comforting them with absurd illusions of defensive security and he was dead on because i think it takes germany six weeks to take over france he's like you're comforting them he again prophetic galvanized the people now instead of comforting them with absurd illusions of defensive security. But nobody is listening to him. So he goes again. De Gaulle took the bold step in January 1940 of sending a long memo, setting out his ideas to 80 important political military figures.

Starting point is 01:03:20 I'm just going to pull a couple highlights here for you. The striking successes that the enemy has achieved in Poland, thanks to motorized warfare, will only encourage him to go further down this new road. To break this mechanical force, only mechanical force is certain to be effective, which is exactly what he wanted you to build up five years before you found yourself in this position. The creation of an instrument of shock and speed is absolutely imperative to us. The conflict which has just begun could well be the most widespread, complex, and violent ever. Again, he was right about that. And it is high time that the French drew the

Starting point is 01:03:49 necessary conclusions. In sending this document, de Gaulle was appealing again to the political class above the heads of the military. As in the past, this extraordinary step got him nowhere. So he's still serving the army at this point. And so now he gets to fight the Nazis. And so this is a description of he gets to fight the Nazis. And so this is a description of de Gaulle fighting the Nazis. He has three battles with them. All witnesses were unanimous about his resource. Remember I said earlier that he's unapologetically extreme and a crazy person?

Starting point is 01:04:20 It says, all witnesses were unanimous about his resourcefulness, energy, and complete indifference to physical danger. Between May 15th and June 2nd, he slept only three nights. Does he take time to eat? Does he, this is somebody that's in his division describing this period with De Gaulle. Does he take time to eat? No one knows. Does he sleep? The cigar butts one finds in his room in the morning allow one to calculate the extremely short time, or cigarette butts, I'm sorry, short time between the last and first cigarette a map a map properly set up and properly lit a map constantly and exactly updated that is the essence of his command post so he's just he doesn't sleep he pushes oh i guess i'm gonna run over my own dot here he pushed himself

Starting point is 01:04:56 to the limits and he expected the same from his men this is more of a description at this time de gaulle remember remember what what we know about Henry Singleton, what other people have said about him, what Claude Shannon just told us. De Gaulle is very often alone. Alone when he eats. Alone when he has his coffee. Alone when he takes a stroll around the command post. Alone when he visits the front.

Starting point is 01:05:18 He heads off with a complete indifference to any danger. To study with his binoculars the position of the enemy and possibilities of an offensive. I offensive i ask why are you always alone and again the way this guy communicates is just he's it's it's he almost speaks like he like he wrote it down beforehand right and this is what he says why his answer to why are you always alone One does not speak in an operating theater or while piloting a ship. What I have to say as a leader, putting my men and my tanks into battle, requires calm and reflection.

Starting point is 01:05:52 All those who have done something valuable and durable have done so alone and in silence. Here's another person describing his impression of de Gaulle as a commander. De Gaulle exercised a command that was independent, exclusive, authoritarian, and egocentric, based on the conviction that his judgment was, in every case, the best. He has a lot in common with a lot of history's greatest founders. They had the conviction that their judgment was the best. He received a report without saying a word.

Starting point is 01:06:29 His constant presence on the battlefield among his men created and propagated a feeling of confidence. And so he comes to the realization, the the battle of france is clearly lost okay but his point is just like we're an empire fine we're not giving up this is this is a world war so since this battle of france was clearly lost the issue was essentially political would the government sign an arms armistice ending hostilities or would it leave french soil and continue the struggle from north africa from one of its colonies, or elsewhere. And so for de Gaulle, there's this great documentary on Netflix I recommend. If you haven't seen it yet, it's called 14 Peaks. I actually just ordered the autobiography.

Starting point is 01:07:17 It's this guy, never climbed a mountain in his life up until 2012, decides to have this idea. It's like, I'm going to climb the 14 highest peaks in the world. I going to do it in like a year or something like that and it's he's from nepal his name's like nims or something like that but he's just got fantastic energy and outlook that i absolutely found like that that washington documentary fired me up and he's got one of the greatest quotes in that documentary he's like giving up is not in the blood sir it's not in the blood for de gaulle giving up is not in the blood, sir. It's not in the blood. For de Gaulle, giving up is not in the blood. There is no issue. Or are we going to sign an armistice?

Starting point is 01:07:49 Are we going to keep the fight? We're going to keep fighting. This dude's going to have to kill me. I'm not giving up. And so at this point, he writes, the letter he writes to the president of France is remarkable. I'm going to pull out a couple things from you here. We are on the edge of abyss and you bear France on your shoulders. I ask going to pull out a couple things from you here. We are on the edge of abyss, and you bear France on your shoulders. I ask you to meditate on this.

Starting point is 01:08:07 Our initial defeat comes from the application by the enemy of ideas that are mine, and from the refusal of our commanders to apply those same conceptions. After this terrible lesson, you were alone in supporting me. So this guy actually, Renard, is actually at this point in his life. Later on, they have some kind of issues. But at this point, he agrees to the call. You were alone in supporting me. And you were in charge in part because you supported me and the people knew it.

Starting point is 01:08:37 You have achieved power. But having achieved power, you have abandoned us to the men of the past. I do not deny their past glory, nor the merits they once had. But I tell you that the men of the past, if left to themselves, will lose this new war. These men fear me because they know I have the necessary dynamism to force their hand. The country senses the need for renewal and a matter of urgency. It would salute with hope and appearance. Excuse me. The country would salute with hope the appearance of a new man, a man of the new war.

Starting point is 01:09:13 Shake off conformism. I pronounced that incorrectly. You know what I mean? Shake it off conforming, established positions, and the influences vested interests or we will perish so it says on june 5th he was appointed under secretary of state of defense for the next 11 days until the resignation of bernard on june 16th and so other people are talking about de gaulle at this this like week in history and he says his ideas and his manner of expressing them seem to be incompatible with democracy and to that i wrote he would have made a good founder

Starting point is 01:09:52 this is before he meets churchill for the first time before he flees there the war is still going on this is before france gives up and real recognize real we see it here although the meeting solved nothing de gaulle made an excellent impression on Churchill, who was only too aware of the defeatism affecting many of France's leaders. So Churchill's like, I'm not going to quit. This guy's not going to quit either. All right, we can work together. They wind up maybe hating each other because you have two people that are similarly stubborn and bullheaded. De Gaulle's just obviously completely cantankerous and disagreeable.

Starting point is 01:10:28 So I understand that. But FDR and Churchill wind up just not knowing what to do with this guy. Let's just put it that way. And so this is when they give up. Renard is going to step down. Patan is going to get in his place. And he's going to step down, Patan's going to get in his place, and he's going to give up. So really,

Starting point is 01:10:47 the note I left myself on this page are people make all the difference. Renard's will broke. De Gaulle's is still intact. So it says, Renard resigned. De Gaulle rushed to see Renard, who seemed to him like a man relieved

Starting point is 01:11:00 of an unbearable burden, but also someone who had come to the end of any hope. De Gaulle planned to return to London in the British plane in which he had just arrived. So this happened. He's trying to have Churchill come in and support them. He flies back. By the time he flies from London back to Paris, they've already given up.

Starting point is 01:11:19 And this sets us up for the turning point of De Gaulle's's life which is an act of rebellion de Gaulle writes of this moment in his life I appeared to myself alone and deprived of everything like a man on the edge of an ocean that he was hoping to swim across I felt that a life was ending a life that I had lived in the framework of a solid France and an indivisible army. At the age of 49, I was entering into an adventure. It is indeed, now this is the author giving a great summary of this point for us, it is indeed hard to exaggerate the extraordinary nature of the step that de Gaulle was taking. Equipped with two suitcases, a small stock of francs, their currency, he was heading for a country in which he had set foot for the first time 10 days earlier,

Starting point is 01:12:07 whose language he spoke badly and where he knew almost no one. He was going into exile. And this is where his prophetic nature was almost spooky. Because in The Edge of the Sword, the book that he wrote in the early, what, 1932, I think, he's going to describe himself here, what's going to happen in his life. The intervention of human will in the chain of events has something irrevocable about it. Responsibility presses down with such weight that few men are capable of bearing it alone. That is why the greatest qualities of intelligence do not suffice.

Starting point is 01:12:46 Undoubtedly, intelligence helps. An instinct pushes one, but in the last resort, a decision has a moral element. de Gaulle, who had spent most of the interwar years reflecting on the nature of leadership, had written the script. Now he was ready to act it out, even if this meant disobeying France's most revered military leader and his former mentor, right? This was the moment for which de Gaulle had been living in his mind for many years. As he wrote in the 1920s, when events become grave, the peril pressing, a sort of tidal wave, pushes men of character. So think about him. That's his view of himself, right?

Starting point is 01:13:29 Pushes men of character into the front rank. And then the, I almost called him Jeremy. Julian Jackson, the author, does a great, I just love this paragraph where he says, Without the fall of France, de Gaulle would undoubtedly have become a leading general in the French army, probably a minister of defense, perhaps even head of the government. But he would not have become de Gaulle. And so this is when he's in exile. This is when de Gaulle becomes de Gaulle.

Starting point is 01:13:58 These are the four most important years of his life. It is unbelievable that he goes from exile with almost no resources to triumphant and beloved leader in four years and so this is a description of this there's a quote at the beginning because now we've entered in a new part of the book and there's a great quote because i think what they're describing here describes the path for every founder right anybody's trying to do any difficult in life are for purposes of this podcast, we normally focus on, you know, running, being as good as possible at your work

Starting point is 01:14:29 and running a company. What everyone seems to ignore is the incredible mixture of patience, of obstinate creativity, the dizzying succession of calculations, negotiations, conflicts that we had to undertake in order to accomplish our enterprise.

Starting point is 01:14:49 So the parallel, they're saving France, they're saving a country, but that is a great description of the circuitous, unclear path that lays in front of every single founder. So they sign this

Starting point is 01:15:03 armistice with Germanyice with germany and they go back and forth and then he finally he's on the radio i've already read the part of the first speech but then this is where he just he he attacks his former mentor because he the really the way to think about the gauls he really believed that giving up was treason that you that you deserved death for giving up um and so i'm just going to pull out a couple of these things where he just goes right after and it says uh reiterating that the armistice would reduce france to a state of servitude he plunged the knife in to accept such an act of enslavement, we did not need you, Marshal. Anyone would have done.

Starting point is 01:15:48 This was the first time that de Gaulle had directly addressed Pétain. For the most junior ex-general, because they stripped him of his general when he fleed to London, for the most junior ex-general in the French army to address as an equal, France's most revered soldier was blasphemy. Now think about that, how things are going to change. At this point, he's like, oh, this is blasphemous. You can't do that. He is sure in his certain idea of France, his trusting of his own judgment,

Starting point is 01:16:15 he knows he's doing the right thing even though the outside world is telling him you're crazy. And here's the punchline. He was preparing to assume the role of savior himself. And so this is really the important part there's there's one sentence here but there's so much more to think about here and this is why he was put in the front and because at this point he's the only one taking like the the position that churchill agrees with because he's in lond And at this point, England's almost like the last one standing in the way of Germany taking over all of Europe, right? de Gaulle's strength during these 10 days was that he was the only political figure in London

Starting point is 01:16:58 who knew exactly what he wanted to do. So remember, de Gaulle has one purpose. He has a singular mind. Continue fighting. And so this idea of if you, it makes it so much easier for people to work with you if you know exactly what you want to do. I did a bonus episode on this book called Creative Selection. Anybody building a product, I think, should read that book

Starting point is 01:17:22 because it's written from a programmer that worked at apple when steve jobs was alive and he like designed he helped design the the keyboard on the first iphone and i think i forgot what our safari and a couple other projects i can't remember off the top of my head but he has a story in that book where you know steve did everything through demos so you have to show him your work, and then he'd give you feedback. But he says that everything at that point was like, Steve was like the Oracle of Delphi in the Apple ecosystem. Every single important product decision went through him.

Starting point is 01:17:54 But his name's Ken Kosienda, if I'm not mistaken. But the author, Ken made the point. He's like, but the Oracle of Delphi spoke in riddles, and it was like, what the hell? It gives you an answer to a question, it just leads to more questions. And he's like, the oracle of delphi you know spoken riddles and it was like what the hell like i don't gives you an answer a question this just leads to more questions and he's like steve wasn't like that his communication was crystal clear and you always knew exactly what he wanted you to do next and again that comes from having a clarity of purpose understanding exactly think about this he's the goal is the own the goal strength was that he was the only one who knew exactly what he wanted to do and the important part there though is it's

Starting point is 01:18:31 you know he knows he knows exactly what he wants to do but you don't know how you're going to do it yet and so i think that's really important it's like okay i know exactly i'm i'm very strict in what i want to happen but i'm very flexible in how I accomplish that. I think it's a good, like the combination of those two ideas is extremely powerful. Now, there is an unbelievable amount of detail in this book. This is why it took me so long to read this book, why it took me so long to make this podcast. I read multiple pages over and over again because I'm like, what the hell is going on here? They mention these people and I have to go and research who they are and what happens to them.

Starting point is 01:19:08 So I'm going to skip over a lot of this stuff just know that he's having all kinds of trouble recruiting people and gathering supplies like i said it's a miracle that he went from exile to triumphant hero in four years i don't it it's it's unbelievable but his response to these difficulties is perfect so you, you know, they wind up losing out. I didn't even know, like, the French. So he considers him, he is the true France, right? So he refers to the people that quit and that are working with Hitler now as the Vichy government. Vichy, I've heard it pronounced a bunch of different ways. Who knows how to say it?

Starting point is 01:19:43 Vichy government. So they wind up having fights. It's like french kill wind up killing french people so it's like the gauls french and then the vichy french which is so crazy to me and so at this point the vichy government gets to the spot before the ball can get there and so they get the resources they get the soldiers and supplies and his response here is perfect he says we had a reason to hope that our friends would have been able to assist our operation. Unfortunately, Vichy was there before us. These things happen in war.

Starting point is 01:20:10 Most important sentence of this entire page. Fortune cannot always be favorable to us. And then one of his soldiers says, the soberness in his expression and the calmness of his tone worked on us. And it's important. He's projecting a sense of, hey, we're in control. We're going to be okay.

Starting point is 01:20:28 Underneath the service calm, though, which reassured his followers, de Gaulle was badly shaken. Another setback. After another setback, he writes a letter to his wife. However intense de Gaulle's despair, it was brief. The letter he wrote to his wife is not that of a man about to give up. For the moment, the entire roof has fallen on my head, he said. Yet I am hopeful for the next stage.

Starting point is 01:20:53 Let us hold firm. No storm lasts indefinitely. And so one other strategy that De Gaulle had is he liked to pick fights. He thought there was an advantage in there and being on the offense. He thought it would use it as a negotiating tactic um so he he's going to pick fights unfortunately with allies but he also constantly picks fights with his enemies and he feels that people that gave up on the his idea of free answer is his sworn enemies so he's going to say something to Pétain again and this is because Pétain meets with Hitler and then after the meeting

Starting point is 01:21:24 announces to the French people that he's ready to go down Pétain meets with Hitler and then after the meeting announces to the French people that he's ready to go down the road of collaboration with Hitler de Gaulle's apoplectic he just cannot believe this happening he's still doing these radio addresses which some which people in France are hearing secretly and so this is where he starts like de Gaulle is really born it's not de Gaulle the person it's de Gaulle the idea and the minds of his followers okay so it says de Gaulle raises stakes even further by issuing a manifesto announcing that there was no longer any proper French government because that organism situated at Vichy was unconstitutional

Starting point is 01:21:53 and subject to the control of the enemy, which is his interpretation of saying you're going to collaborate with Hitler, right? Consequently, he had a sacred duty to take on the French effort in war. And so this is when he starts, he realizes, he has an epiphany that he's not a person anymore he's an idea and he'll start to speak in the third person the goal had an epiphany there without this is him writing there were thousands of people uh there were thousands of people and they began to shout to gall to gall i was taken aback until then in l London, my contacts had all been personal and individual. But here was the people, the voice of the crowds, and suddenly I realized for the first time what a heavy burden I bore. What a responsibility I had

Starting point is 01:22:35 to all these people who were counting upon a man named De Gaulle to liberate them. There was a person named De Gaulle who existed in other people's minds and was really a separate personality from myself from that day on I would have to reckon with this man this general de Gaulle I became almost his prisoner and so he would from this point it says now this is the author of this book it was from this moment in his memoirs that de gaulle starts to talk of himself in the third person de gaulle appears as a figure whom the narrator of the memoir watches and so now they're realizing oh my god the radio broadcasts are working the people are hearing and they're rallying around this person that just think about it it. Like I remember when I read Arnold Schwarzenegger's biography, he talks about – he was in Austria right after World War II.

Starting point is 01:23:29 And he was – he's like, I have to get out of here because the Austrians along with the Germans had just lost. And he says, I was surrounded by people that felt like losers. And so imagine being in France at this point. Your country is overtaken you have hitler who's you know the one of the most evil people to ever exist and your government collapsed with almost no resistance i guess is a way to put that um and yet that's not changed like you don't want to be under the subjugation of a foreign entity like no one like of course i guess looking back in hindsight now that you realize like of course he's going to have this silent hidden majority these people that are not going

Starting point is 01:24:10 to be able to speak out because of fear of you know being killed germany's literally like occupying the streets of paris at this point and yet on the radio they hear this guy's like no we're not defeated this is a world war we have allies amer. We have access to Britain. America is going to jump in the war. They have this huge industrial might. We have an empire. We're going to fight. We're going to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. And they're going to have to kill us to the last person. And so here's what happens. At first, no one in London had any idea if anyone in France was listening. These broadcasts were a bottle thrown desperately into the sea. But gradually, letters started to reach London from France. One letter stated, at 8.15, because that's when the broadcast would come on, our entire family falls silent and drinks in the voice

Starting point is 01:24:56 of the English radio, of our free French. An invisible thread ties us to you in august 1940 de gaulle was condemned to death for desertation for desertion in december he was stripped of his nationality so again that's a government that he feels illegitimate saying okay we catch you we're going to kill you and guess what you're no longer a french citizen but here's thing, and there's a weird parallel I draw here, and maybe that's not, it might be obvious, I'm not sure. But it doesn't matter what that government's saying. If the people are with you, that's all you need. And the weird parallel I would describe here is that that's also the same thing in business. If you have customers that love you, and you're constantly focused on serving their needs,

Starting point is 01:25:45 don't look about the competition, don't focus on anything, but building the best solution for that person, that group of people, these customers that love you, that's the most important thing in business. It's the thing you never want to take your eye off of. There's a quote by the founder of AOL, Steve Case, that made me think of this. He's like, everything is, I forgot the exact quote, it's like something like, everything else is subservient to the fact of building something that your customers love so much that they will tell other people about. And if you just do that and focus on that, that is the most important thing to do. And so you really think at this point, de Gaulle is saying, I'm not worried about the Fiji government, I'm not worried about Britain,

Starting point is 01:26:21 I'm not worried about Germany. I'm worried on one thing, the continuation of the French country as an idea, as a place, as a people. We are not subservient to the Nazis. If you are with me, spread this message, listen to these radio broadcasts and tell more and more people. So that's how he goes from celebrating, you know, at one point, there's all these like battles that happen and these uh ex-french soldiers that wind up uh sneaking into london and they all report to de gaulle and at this point he's just happy like there's like 152 i think is the number that that happens in one time right and you have a think about that how crazy this is in world war ii you had tens of millions of people fighting right and this guy's just like okay i got 150 people this is a great day 152 great people this is a fantastic day eventually that goes I got 150 people. This is a great day. 152 great people. This is a fantastic day.

Starting point is 01:27:05 And eventually that goes to 152 people to thousands. To I'm walking down the streets of Paris and people are going crazy because this guy did not give up. This voice is here in the flesh. This idea of de Gaulle never folded in the face of the axis of the face of the Nazis. And not only did he tell you like he he said he wasn't going to fold and he gave you the strength to not fold just want to pull out one sentence for you here the note i left myself is de gaulle has a certain idea of france and is willing to be disagreeable to accomplish that uh so it talks about like he's having all these negotiations

Starting point is 01:27:41 with churchill it says the british found him so different from the more pliable Frenchmen that they had known in the past. Again, same idea spread throughout the pages of the book, spread throughout the years of his life. Here's the goal. No question our discussion. We must go forward. Whoever stands still falls behind. I mentioned the fact that he's disagreeable with everybody, including his allies. You know, he's got this, he's going to have this strained relationship

Starting point is 01:28:09 with Churchill. I want to give you an update. This is 1941. And this is Churchill's view of De Gaulle in 1941. They've been working together for about a year. Churchill was appalled by the reports of De Gaulle's behavior. His initial decision to support De Gaulle had been slightly impulsive gamble, which had not entirely paid off since de Gaulle failed to attract as many supporters as either of them had hoped. But Churchill had stuck with him because the romantic and sentimental side of his nature was seduced by the nobility of the general's solitary struggle, and he never imagined that from a position of complete dependence, which is where de Gaulle's at this point, de Gaulle would cause him any serious problems. What he had not understood was that de Gaulle's ambition was much more than just to lead a group of Frenchmen to fight for the interest

Starting point is 01:28:55 of the allied cause. Given the treason, that's what he saw, of the Vichy government, de Gaulle believed that it was his mission to embody and represent the interests of the Vichy government, de Gaulle believed that it was his mission to embody and represent the interests of the French nation. It meant showing vigilance wherever France's interests seemed to be threatened, even by her allies, and to show that France still had teeth. He was ready to bite the hand that fed him. Churchill's attitude to de Gaulle never fully recovered from the shock caused by General's behavior in the summer of 1941. And so in the British government

Starting point is 01:29:33 at this time, they're like, is this guy crazy? Are we going to find out that we backed an insane man? Moving forward in the timeline a little bit, again, I think the main theme here and the one I just hammer home and take away from if you read the book or this podcast is I only have one aim. I am single minded. I have a single purpose. When asked about his political views by a journalist, De Gaulle declared, I am a free Frenchman. I believe in God and the future of my homeland. I declare solemnly that I am attached to no political party nor linked to any politician of any kind. Here's his punchline.

Starting point is 01:30:10 What he prioritizes is not the same thing as other people. So a lot of people are hearing about him. They're hearing his message. They're resonating. They're coming to join his mission. And a lot of these people are Jewish people because they just happen to be Jewish Frenchmen that want to fight against Hitler's Germany. And yet there's a huge anti-Semitic wave in France at the time. And de Gaulle's like, I don't care about that.

Starting point is 01:30:34 And listen to what he says here. So it says de Gaulle excluded no one. He was unusual in his seemingly immunity to the anti-Semitism that was such a feature of French society at the time. So this Jewish guy comes to try to, he's like, i'm signing up i will i'm i want to fight with you and i love what de gaulle says says the officer in duty made it clear to boris that he was not welcome as soon as this came to de gaulle's attention he overruled the decision this is what he said whether he is a jew a partisan or all manner of other things i only see one thing that he is a frenchman who at the age of 52 has enrolled to fight and this is his punchline i know only two kinds of frenchmen

Starting point is 01:31:12 those who do their duty and those who do not so again that same idea is like when you're crystal clear about what you want to do it makes your decisions easier i don't think are you going to do your duty and fight for a free france or you're not and it doesn't matter what other attributes you have the people that are willing to fight those are my people the people are willing to not get them away from me so now he's reflecting on the fact that the british are you know saying hey this guy's really hard to deal with really to think about this or the way i would think about this is the gauls intransigence and disagreeableness their features are not bugs and so he illustrates this point in a very simply just one sentence very simply the british think perhaps i'm not someone easy to work with but if i were

Starting point is 01:31:56 i would today be in patan's general staff so he's got diplomats from other countries coming to visit him this is uh somebody from the united states that observed de Gaulle, and this is what they thought. We're getting further deeper into the war. We're in 1942. Observed with amazement the monastic austerity of his surroundings. There's no gadgets, no exterior signs of anything, no showcase of cabinets with objects. This is more than simplicity. Remember, they're talking about him. Really think about De Gaulle's. He belongs to his job, his mission. This is more than simplicity. There's no caricature of him, no souvenir, no object, nothing. And no one would guess visiting

Starting point is 01:32:35 him whose house one was in. I have never seen that before with any man in a prominent position. He belongs to the job with a noble tranquility. De Gaulle's style remained authoritarian. Meetings were brief and important decisions were taken by him alone. The general lives alone in Olympian solitude. He thinks alone. He decides alone. He does think and he, but he does think and he does decide. And then the book starts out with, you know, his contradiction, the fact that he was a mass of then the book starts out with his contradiction, the fact that he was a mass of contradictions like almost any historical figure, right? And so the truth is more complicated.

Starting point is 01:33:12 De Gaulle could be a good listener. And one observer noted how he would fix his cobra-like gaze on the person he's talking to. De Gaulle's default reaction to advice was to reject it. But those with strong enough nerves to hold their ground were often surprised to find subsequently that he adopted their ideas. It was, however, almost physically impossible for de Gaulle to admit that he was wrong. This is such a crazy statement by him. I only esteem those who stand up to me, but unfortunately, I cannot stand them. So this is more observations of de Gaulle's relationship with other people. De Gaulle never ceased to emanate a chilly reserve which repelled intimacy.

Starting point is 01:33:51 He found it impossible to express affection or gratitude and was incapable of apologizing. When this other guy remarked that he wished De Gaulle might occasionally show a more human face, another guy that knew him, the reply was that it's impossible to make someone who is tone deaf appreciate music any more than it's possible to ask de Gaulle to suddenly develop human contact. Another person that knew him intimately, or as intimately as one can know him, described him like this. He felt the dishonor of his country as few men can feel anything.

Starting point is 01:34:21 As Christ, according to the Christianian faith took on himself the sins of the world so that's he's saying he took on the sins of france on himself i think he was like a man during these days who had been skinned alive and that the slightest contact with friendly well-meaning people got him on the raw to such an extent that he wanted to bite this just goes goes back to just how difficult he is to deal with and how he just won't budge another description of de gaulle here the arrogance that makes him from time to time almost impossible to deal with is the reverse side of an extreme sensibility i have never known a man at once so ungracious and so sentimental but he's sentimental for france that's what people people are surprised by he belongs to the race of the unhappy and tortured souls

Starting point is 01:35:07 to whom life will never be a pleasure to be enjoyed, but an arid desert through which the pilgrim must struggle. And then another one. This comes from somebody that served under him. A Frenchman who had joined de Gaulle in July 1940 with considerable reservations was two years later reassured that his necessary act of faith had been vindicated. And so this is what he says. In my eyes, the crucial fact of these last two years is that in the general, meaning de Gaulle, France has a genuinely great man.

Starting point is 01:35:37 I have seen him operate in the most difficult circumstances, and each time he comes out, he comes out of it bigger in my eyes. He has learned a lot from his responsibilities over the last two years. He continues to see what is essential. He needs around him men who administer, who look after the details, who sometimes need to soothe wounds, because he's so abrupt, right? But he is in the great line of heroes who have saved France from the perils that have faced her. Another portrait of de Gaulle and really the idea of de Gaulle. Really think about what he inspired in others, the belief that he inspired in other people.

Starting point is 01:36:15 And again, this is why he could not bend, he could not break, he could not quit. When I learned the news of the armistice, de Gaulle gave me back my honor. The possibility of being able to look people in the face against. Again, my sense of being a Frenchman. He has the most profound, far-reaching, and often prophetic views on events. There is no doubt that he has a very high sense of his duties and his mission. In my view, he would be a great man, even a very great man, if his understanding of men equaled his understanding of events and ideas, and if he could more easily make contact And then he wraps up this section, are willed. He likes to say being as weak as he is in transience is his only weapon. And then he wraps up this section, the same guy saying, it has been said, and this is true,

Starting point is 01:37:13 that he does not incline naturally to democratic ideas. And again, there was a statement in like that previous book or previously in the book. And I said, hey, that made me think this guy's going to be a good company founder. I don't know the reason why. I don't even think the reason why matters. But if you go through the history of entrepreneurship, it's always one. Like you might start a company and there might be co-founders, whatever the case is. But inevitably, the greatest companies are led by a formidable individual. And it's always going to be one person.

Starting point is 01:37:40 They could have partners. They could have co-founders. They could have people that help them. But it's always one. The greatest companies are not run as a democracy so fdr and churchill are extremely loyal to each other and they tell the goal over and over again if you ask us to choose between each other like we're going to choose the other person over you so like stop like you you have no resources like what are you doing you're crazy and so but they're surprised at how effective the goal is at gaining support and just operating from a relatively weak position compared to the position that britain is in at the time in the

Starting point is 01:38:16 united states isn't at the time and so they have this idea of like okay we gotta we gotta get rid of this guy so we got what do they do to like try to diminish his influence they make a committee right that's kind of the opposite uh point that i was just trying to make to you a minute ago and within a couple days he takes over the committee so there's a lot like way more detail than i'm giving you but i just want to point out a couple things like the complexities that de gaulle had to deal with are really unbelievable but But I think besides the fact that he just said, my only weapon is the fact that I don't give up, I'm intransigent, that's what I have to lean on.

Starting point is 01:38:54 It goes back to what I was just saying. As long as you have the support of the people, and you don't take your eye off serving those people, you're going to be fine no matter what. So it says, Roosevelt suddenly realized that after only 10 days, de Gaulle was close to assuming full control of the committee. In what one diplomat described as a historical diatribe,

Starting point is 01:39:12 Roosevelt wrote to Churchill, suggesting again that the time had come to break with de Gaulle entirely. They go back and forth on this over and over again. Eisenhower, he's not the president this time, he's the general. General Eisenhower was instructed to tell de Gaulle that French North Africa was occupied territory and the Americans would permit no weakening of Girard's authority.

Starting point is 01:39:34 Girard is this other French general that the Americans were trying to see. Okay, let's put Girard in charge of the French, not de Gaulle. But they couldn't do that, and the reason they can't do that, and this is how it ties to the fact that all you need is customers to love you and never take your eye off that. All he needed was the French to love him. So the French did not get behind Girard like they did de Gaulle. So it says, the Americans would not permit no weakening of Girard's authority.

Starting point is 01:40:02 Good luck going against, that's exactly what he does. He winds up having a fight with this other general and de Gaulle becomes the victor. This was the exactly wrong tactic. Not for the first time, de Gaulle had goaded his adversaries into such an extreme reaction that even those who deplored his methods felt obliged to rally around him overt foreign intervention in a french colony was guaranteed to cement french unity and where do you think that unity is cementing around it is not cementing around the person the americans wanted it's not cementing around gerard it's cementing around de gaulle and so this is a great summary of this event that's taking place in the book and really an effective formula to anything.

Starting point is 01:40:49 It says, Gerard's only asset was the support of the American government, but this was ultimately a liability. Faced with de Gaulle's political ruthlessness, brilliance as a popular tribune, and total clarity about what he wanted to achieve. There's that statement again, total clarity about what he wanted to achieve there's that statement again total clarity about what he wanted to achieve gerard never stood a chance so his de gaulle's formula the effective formula de gaulle used in this circumstance was one ruthlessness two brilliance and three total clarity about what he wanted to achieve. And then this interaction between Churchill and de Gaulle, it winds up giving us the perfect description of de Gaulle. So this is right before they're about to do,

Starting point is 01:41:31 they're about to, the Allies are about, Germany, I was listening to the podcast that I mentioned, The Ghost of Ausfront, the Dan Carlin Hardcore History one. And I think Dan says in that, like by 1943, it was pretty obvious that Germany wasn't going to win the war. And so it was just a matter of time so now we're pushing into 1944 they're about to take uh land on normandy they're gonna the allies are going to take over france this is

Starting point is 01:41:53 going to lead to de gaulle being instated and and basically liberating helping liberate paris and the rest of france as well but before that they're like going back and forth and you know the relationship with roosevelt and church Churchill just not good at this point. And it says, De Gaulle had less success with Churchill, who arrived in Marrakesh and invited, this is a French colony at this point though, and invited De Gaulle to meet him. Remember, the section is a perfect description of De Gaulle, okay? De Gaulle was insulted that Churchill would presume to issue an invitation to a French leader on French soil. Churchill was insulted that De Gaulle did not that Churchill would presume to issue an invitation to a French leader on French soil.

Starting point is 01:42:26 Churchill was insulted that De Gaulle did not leap at the chance to see him. Think about everything Churchill had done for him at this point. The meeting solved nothing. On the British side, they reported that De Gaulle had been very difficult and unhelpful, behaving as if he were Stalin and Roosevelt combined. The French side said that there had been a good atmosphere. A good atmosphere meant that the two men had not actually screamed at each other. Churchill reported what he had said to de Gaulle, and this is so fantastic. Here's Churchill to us, right? Look here. I am the leader

Starting point is 01:42:57 of a strong and unbeaten nation, yet every morning when I wake, my first thought is how I can please President Roosevelt. And my second is how I can conciliate Stalin. Your situation is very different. Why then should your first waking thought be how you can snap your fingers at the British and the Americans? And so once again, I think this is a main, main point of the book. Once again, they try to route around de Gaulle. And de Gaulle is saved by the loyalty of the French people. And so Eisenhower and Roosevelt are trying to organize the French resistance. These are the people that have been in France all the time fighting, fighting the government, fighting Germans, fighting anybody else. It's not for free France. Right. And so we're going to organize these. And they won't organize because they all want to fall behind de Gaulle.

Starting point is 01:43:47 So Eisenhower is saying, he's like, we have our own direct means of communications with the resistance, with the resistant groups in France. But all of our information leads us to believe that the only authority that these resistant groups desire is to recognize, desire to recognize is that of de Gaulle. De Gaulle is now controlling the only French military force that can take part in this operation. Consequently, we must deal with him alone. So once again, the business equivalent is the loyalty and love of customers, right?

Starting point is 01:44:17 Put a premium on that above everything else. Once again, de Gaulle is saved by the loyalty and the love of the French people. This made his position extremely strong. Again, de Gaulle is just a crazy person. So this is the day, I think this might be the speech right before the Allied invasion of France. And it says, it was one of de Gaulle's great rhetorical performances.

Starting point is 01:44:37 And this is just insane that he says this. He says, the supreme battle has begun. It is of course the battle of France and the battle for France, for the sons of France, wherever they may be, whoever they may be. The simple and sacred duty is to fight the enemy by all the means available. The directives given by the French government must be followed to the letter. Behind the heavy clouds of our blood and our tears, the sunshine of our grandeur is re-emerging. The Allied invasion of France was successful.

Starting point is 01:45:09 De Gaulle was there. And this is De Gaulle, finally, in Paris, after years and years of struggle. De Gaulle then launched into a speech which he claimed in his memoirs was improvised, but which he had carefully prepared in advance. Its opening is one of the great passages of French 20th century political oratory, still hard to hear today without being moved. This is what he said. How can one hide the emotion that grips all of us who are here, in Paris, which has risen up to defend itself and which has done so by itself. No, we will not hide this sacred and profound emotion.

Starting point is 01:45:49 There are moments which go beyond each of our poor lives. Paris, Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated. Liberated by itself, liberated by its people. With the help of the armies of France. With the help and assistance of the whole of France. Of that France which fights. Of the only France. Of the true France. Of eternal France.

Starting point is 01:46:20 After the speech, de Gaulle was asked if he would now declare that the Republic was restored. De Gaulle's curt reply expressed the thought behind every action he had taken. The Republic has never ceased to exist. Vichy was always, and remains, null and void. I am the President of the Republic. Why should I proclaim it? de Gaulle had instructed that on the next day he would stage a procession down the Champs-Élysées. His plan was not for a military parade, but to walk slowly and show himself to the population, to his people. There was no precedent for a walkabout of this kind, risky in a city swarming with snipers, but the idea was a supreme example of de Gaulle's instinctive showmanship. Even so,

Starting point is 01:47:15 no one could have predicted the extraordinary success of the parade. The size of the crowd is impossible to estimate. It was probably the largest gathering of its kind in the history of France. The extraordinary intensity of those strained faces who were seeing him for the first time, it was indeed de Gaulle towering over everyone else whom the crowds had turned out to see and to cheer. The voice london was made flesh at last and that is where i'll leave it he lives for another 25 years but that his singleness of purpose was completed with the liberation of france and it goes back to tie this all together which would spawn this idea that quote from arthur on Henry Singleton,

Starting point is 01:48:05 he reminds me of de Gaulle, he has a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he's going to do. And if you think about that statement and the reaction of the French people, de Gaulle gave them absolute confidence in their ability, being led by him, to accomplish whatever they said they were going to do. If you want the full story, I recommend reading the book. In my opinion, I enjoyed, I think the audiobook is the way to go for this one, especially for something this long. It's 35 hours. It's an unbelievable story. But if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time i want to thank all the people in december that bought gift subscriptions i was

Starting point is 01:48:49 blown away that so many people value founders that they would be willing to spend more money to give it to friends to co-workers to family members motivates me i'm working on founders every single day i do not take a day off i'm reading and studying now more than i have in my entire life and so i hope we can continue this momentum I know it's not the holidays anymore but if you want to buy gift subscriptions I really really appreciate if you do that there's a link below you can do that rather easily I have the next three or four books already picked out that I'm gonna do I'm gonna be inspired by the goal and we default aggressive so I'm gonna be attacking them as fast and as thorough

Starting point is 01:49:22 as possible I'm never to obviously you know cut corners but i am going to be completely obsessed with with building up founders even better this year and spreading it to as many people as possible so please if you have the ability to tell friends about it share it on social media buy gift subscriptions whatever you can do to help i really appreciate it just know i'm working every day to make sure that's valuable to you that is 224 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

Your Ad Here

Founders - #224 Charles de Gaulle

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.