Jocko Podcast - 109: What Are You Doing That You Know You Shouldn't Be? "Stalingrad Memories of Hell"

Episode Date: January 17, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:14:55 - "Stalingrad Memories of Hell" 2:07:18 - Final Thoughts and Take-Aways 2:21:42 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, THE MUSTER 005 in DC. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.  2:41:22 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 109 with Echo Charles and me, Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. One September 1942, the army in the field. Comrade fighters, commanders, and political workers, heroic defenders of Stalingrad. The bitter fighting for the city of Stalingrad has been raging for months. The Germans have lost. hundreds of tanks and planes. Hitler's brutalized hordes are advancing towards

Stalingrad and the Volga over mountains of dead bodies of their own men and officers. Our Bolshevik party, our nation, our great country have given us the task not to let the enemy reach the Volga to defend the city of Stalingrad. The defense of Stalingrad is of decisive importance for the whole Soviet front. without sparing our strength and with scorn for death we shall defy the Germans the way to the Volga and not give up Stalingrad each one of us must bear in mind that the capture of Stalingrad by the Germans and their advance to the Volga will give our enemies new strength and weaken our own forces not one step back the war council expects unlimited courage, tenacity, and heroism in the fight with the onrushing enemy from all the fighters,

commanders, and political workers from all the defenders of Stalingrad. The enemy must and will be smashed on the approaches to Stalingrad. Forward against the enemy. Up into the unremitting battle comrades for Stalingrad for our great country, death to the jerk. an invader. So that is a clearly a note from the general on the ground. The member of the War Council of the Stalingrad and Southwest Front Lieutenant General Khrushchev sent to the troops, obviously, that were preparing to defend Stalingrad. Now, there was another commander in the field by the name of Paulus

and he sent a note to Hitler on 23 November 1942 my furor since receipt of your radio message of evening 22 1-1 events have come

thick and fast we have not succeeded in closing the pocket to the southwest and west impending enemy penetrations begin to emerge there ammunition and fuel are coming to an end. Numerous batteries and tanks have shot themselves dry.

A timely and adequate supply is impossible. The army will shortly be destroyed unless a concentration of forces succeeds in totally defeating the enemy attacking from the south and west. For this, we must immediately withdraw all forces from Stalingrad and strong detachments from the northern front. Unavoidable sequel must, must then be a breakout towards the southwest since eastern and northern front can no longer be held with such weak forces.

In this case, we will lose much material, but the majority of the valuable combatants and at least a part of the material will be preserved. I retain full responsibility for this message, even if I add that commanding generals heights, Strecker, Hube, Jackmill, Von Sidelitz, all share this evaluation of the situation. Based on the situation, I again request freedom of action. Heil my furor signed Paulus. So the Russians were effective in surrounding the Germans the German 6th Army as a matter of fact 250 to 300,000 men fully surrounded now by the Russians. Here's what Hitler wrote back Sixth Army has been temporarily encircled by Russian forces. I intend to concentrate the army in the area Stalingrad North, Cote Luban, Hill 137, Hill 135,

Marinovka, Zibenko, Stalingrad, South. The army may rest assured that I will do everything to bring supplies to it accordingly and relieve it in time. I know the brave 6th Army and its commander-in-chief, and I am sure it will do its duty, signed Adolf Hitler So and we'll get into this Hitler over and over again

Is asked if the troops on the ground can Try and escape from Stalingrad And over and over again He says no You cannot leave you will fight to the last bullet And on the 30th of January 1943 Herman Goring Who is the Nazi Reichs Marshal

of the entire German Reich. So he's this senior military man of the entire German army from 1940 until the end of the war. And even though Stalin Grand had not fallen yet, he gave this speech about their sacrifice of these German soldiers. And he gave it, and it was obviously heard on the radio, et cetera,

and it spread and actually the soldiers on the ground in Stalingrad, the German soldiers heard this speech. And again, we'll get more to what the reactions were, but I'm going to read that part of that speech right now. It made one shudder, but Stalin had enormous masses at his disposal and used old men, women, and children and did not bother about supplies or sufficient food or transport.

The Russians used the whip or the bullet. The Germans alone could resist and could wrestle with such an adversary. Everything depended on them. With the greatest respect to other nations, the Germans are the only ones in Europe in a position to break Russia and destroy Bolshevism. Of all the terrific battles, the battle for Stalingrad stood out like a gigantic monument, which would one day be regarded as the greatest and most heroic battle in German history. So he's referring to this in the past tense once again.

This hasn't been, this hadn't finished yet, but he's referring to it like it's in the past tense. Because for all practical purposes, it was. Back to the document, every German soldier would come to pronounce the word Stalingrad. With holy awe. And remember that it was there that Germany set the seal of final victory because people that fought like that must win.

Germany has now become the guarantor of European freedom, culture, and life. But for the fighters of Stalingrad, the Russians might have obtained their objective. Now they are too late. The defenders of Stalingrad had obeyed the law which everyone must obey, the law to die for Germany. This law was not only binding on soldiers, but on the whole German nation. the nation must not question whether it stand at Stalingrad has been necessary or not the law had ordered them to do so so here he said don't question no question the sacrifice of 250,000 men don't question it it was of no concern to the German soldier whether he died at Stalingrad in the African desert or Norway he always sacrificed himself so that his nation might live in hours When some people perhaps tried to install morbid and sly thoughts into your brains,

then we must always look at the furor, their shining and greatest example. They could believe that the Almighty had led this man, a God-sent man, to pass through innumerable dangers and become greater and greater all for nothing. That Providence had given them this man who had made them. into the strongest nation in the world these are guarantees that justify our belief in victory so we're talking about Hitler here by the way as a God sent man in difficult times a real leader is tested and people prove their worth in hard trials I the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe suffered exceptionally when I heard of the

results of the bombings and although I did my best to prevent it from happening it must be recognized as unavoidable and must not influence our will for resistance we know a tremendous heroic song from a match without equal that was called the Battle of the Nibblungs they too stood in a hall of fire and fire quenching their thirst with their own blood but fought and fought to the last Such a fight is raging there today because a people who can fight like that must win. And before these men, a millennia previous, there stood in a small gorge in Greece, an infinitely brave and daring man with his 300.

Leonides stood with 300 Spartans from a tribe known for its bravery and boldness. and an overwhelmingly numerical superior enemy attacked and attacked and attacked again and again. Even then it was a rush from the Asian East against the Nordic people. Huge numbers of men were available to Xerxes, but the 300 men did not waver or falter, fighting a losing battle, hopeless but not meaningless. And then the last man fell. And in this bottleneck, there is a sentence. Wanderer.

If you come to Sparta, report that you had seen us lying here as the law commanded. They were 300 men, my comrades, and millennia have passed, but today that battle, that sacrifice still counts as the greatest example of heroic soldiering. And today this fight is there. This sacrifice is there in Stalingrad, and one day it will be said if you go to Germany. tell them you have seen us lying in Stalingrad as the law commanded us to protect the security of our people and as I said those were the words of Herman Goring who was the senior officer of the German military at that time and those were his words and of course his words were his words were

lies. All of them were lies and no one knew that better than the men on the ground. In and around the Russian city of Stalingrad nearly 1500 miles away from Berlin, freezing, starving, surrounded, low on ammunition, lacking medical supplies and lacking cold weather gear and lacking any kind of real leadership. And they also served in a nation that lacked the moral high ground. As a matter of fact, their nation's leaders lacked any kind of morality at all, and this is clear in the aggression that they unleashed in the world and the atrocities that they committed and mass murder of millions of people. And it's clear that they had no morality whatsoever based on how they treated their own soldiers who, like many soldiers, were men that were fighting not for, political powers or for political ideals created an ivory tower thousands of miles away from them but for the ideals of a soldier himself duty and courage and honor that's what soldiers fight for and

the ultimate thing that they fight for as we have heard time and time again is for their brothers on the line with them to their left and to their right and one of those men was named Yo hakeem weeder he was an intelligence officer in the eighth core of the German six army and he wrote about his experiences in a book called Stalingrad memories of hell where he recalls what he and other German soldiers went through physically, mentally, and spiritually, as they were abandoned by their leaders, as they were abandoned by life, and as they were abandoned by hope itself. Let's, again, this is Joachim Weeder, and the book is called Stalingrad Memories of Hell.

after meticulous preparations of gigantic proportions the Russians with their overwhelmingly superior armor and cavalry forces attacking like lightning from the north and the following day from the east pressed our entire 6th army into an iron vice within three days the encircling ring was closed at caloch on the dan and on the dawn and constantly reinforced stunned we stared at our situation maps on which menacing thick red lines of encirclement and arrows showed the enemy attacks, penetrations, and directions of advance. We had never imagined a catastrophe of such proportions to be possible. The mighty wedges of the Russian armored columns could not be stopped. And a myriad of highly mobile cavalry troops increased the muddle and confusion in the rear of the bloody rent front of the army. So, you know, obviously I skipped a little bit. moving into this point, but at this point, they're completely surrounded, like I said,

cut off and the Russians are applying the pressure. The enemy appeared to be systematically evading our blows and to be withdrawing into the depths of Russia. So this is going, he's kind of reflecting back on how they ended up there. And he says that. He says, the enemy appeared to be systematically evading our blows and to be withdrawing into the depths of Russia. This is what the Russians do. It's what they did a Napoleon in 1812 and they're doing it again here and he back to the book taken as a whole this was a masterpiece of general staff thinking today I am convinced that those withdrawals of what Russian forces during the summer of 1942 were an outstanding enactment of traditional war Russian war tactics so Hitler got lowered in and they didn't pay attention they didn't

Reflect on history and as we all as most people know this was also Hitler opening another front and Trying to fight on multiple fronts at the same time Which which goes against a certain law of combat called prioritize and execute Focus your your your most important thing and then move on Hitler gets an F on prioritized and execute Back to the book it had now come to pass we were actually caught in a trap how were we to get out serious is the same as the same thing? I'm sorry? I'm sorry? I'm sorry? I'm sorry? I'm sorry? I'm sorry? pass. We were actually caught in a trap.

How were we to get out? Sirius is the situation in the pocket. He refers to this area as the pocket. This is the pocket of Russian soldiers. Sirius says the situation in the pocket was from the very outset in our bunker. There was still an atmosphere of confidence and a certain feeling of superiority. So that's, by the way, that's how you end up in these situations. And the Germans absolutely believe their own propaganda, that they were the best soldiers

and that they were the master race and that these Bolsheviks couldn't fight them. When you believe that, you think you can march right into Stalingrad and take it. The window's not going to bother you. Admittedly, an eerie memory arose within me and intensified my apprehensive unrest with each passing day. It was the memory of several fanatical statements

that Hitler had recently made in public speeches. The German soldier, he said, now stood on the Volga and no power on earth could make him leave. The Supreme Warlord, that's a reference to Hitler. And he's got it in quotes. The Supreme Warlord had emphatically committed himself. He had prophesized and demanded that Stalingrad be relentlessly attacked and taken. In presumptuous terms, he had even sworn before God and history never again to relinquency.

on this conquest, presenting it as already achieved with such an attitude as this on the part of the Supreme Warlord was giving up the vulgar and retreating conceivable at all. So Hitler had painted himself into a corner with a paintbrush of arrogance and it ended up in the situation where he's saying, nope, we're never going to leave. And he does not. Back to the book, the fate of more than a. quarter million human beings was decided over such a distance so that the fewer headquarters is 2,000 miles two thousand kilometers it's like 1,500 miles distant away and

they're making decisions this is called micromanagement by the way this is called micromanagement this is not decentralized command this is the fourth law of combat from the book called extreme ownership Hitler gets an F on decentralized command he's micromanaging his troops that are 1,500 miles away the fate of more than a quarter million human beings was decided over such a distance. From there, Hitler repeatedly addressed orders and appeals directly to the Stalingrad Army, which had been removed from under the command of Army Group B and reassigned to the newly formed Army Group Don, and the Don, D-O-N is a river. Now, everybody knew that they needed to perform a military maneuver

referred to as a breakout, which means, you picture you're in a circle. You're in a circle. You're surrounded by troops. You pick one part of that circle of the people that are surrounding you. And you attack and you break through. It sounds like what it is. It's a breakout. Everybody knew that they needed to break out. They're like, hey, we're surrounded.

We need fuel. We need water. We need food. We don't have any of that. We need to break out. And so everyone was kind of prepared to do that. Back to the book. Our army still deposed of about 130 combat ready tanks and about the same number of armored scout cars

and other armored vehicles. in other words, we still had a powerful motorized units available. Everywhere, people were waiting for the relieving signal for the breakout. With fluttering hearts, we followed the preparations that were taking place, mainly in the western sector of the Army. In anticipation of the expected operation, the order had been given to destroy all superfluous material. Everywhere, damaged guns, tanks, and trucks, useless communication and engineering equipment,

huge amounts of clothing, files, and paper, even, food were being consigned to flames. So they all think that they're going to break out. They're assuming, look, we're going to break out. This is the only solution right now. We're surrounded. We need to attack one area and get out of here. So they start going, okay, before we leave, we're going to burn this fuel.

We're going to burn this food. We're not going to leave anything for the Russians. Back to the book, according to the decision by Army Command, the retreat from Stalingrad was to begin on 26 November. We did not entertain the slightest doubt that the, supreme command must be convinced of its necessity we counted firmly on its being carried out i will never forget how stunned we all were the agitation yes the petrifying horror that befell us especially among the higher ranks of our staff when on 24 november the message came in from army that

hitler had forbidden the planned breakout and finally ordered the stalingrad army to temporarily take up a position of all-around defense. So, Hitler says no. You're not leaving. Or you're surrounded? By the way, they're surrounded by a force of about a million Russian soldiers. But it's more than that because they're surrounded by the country of Russia. Back to the book, the fatal radio message from the distant furor headquarters had come

like a stroke of lightning, forbidding. the plan withdrawal of our northern front, the detachment of our forces from Stalingrad, and thereby the hoped for the breakout. This decision by the Supreme Command was just as heavy a blow for the staff at the Army as it was for us. We were unable to satisfy ourselves as to why all the reports, admonitions, and requests for our responsible, of our responsible higher staffs who were best able to judge the events and all the dangers they entailed had not been successful.

So this is something that Patton said the commander on the ground is always right Meaning if you're sitting in an ivory tower somewhere There's a guy on the ground he's right and you're wrong He's on the ground he knows what's happening now could we come up with some Exceptions this absolutely you have better Intelligence of what's happening you maybe know some you maybe have overhead coverage or you get you get air reports or you have in these days you have Satellites looking at things so yeah there's situations where you might know a little bit more. But the default thought process should be the guy on the ground

has a better situational awareness than I do. I'm going to go with their call. And here's Hitler saying no. Now, General Paulus, who's the commander of all the, all the German soldiers, General Paulus, back to the book, General Paulus addressed himself directly to Hitler with a very serious and responsible evaluation of the situation. In this momentous radio message, he has adamantly stressed that the fact that all his senior commanding generals shared the conviction that because it would be impossible to adequately supply the army in time, it would shortly be destroyed unless a concentration of all available forces would succeed in decisively beating the enemy attacking from the west and the south. So it's not just one general at saying this.

Every but every there's 250,000 Germans there. There's a lot of senior military people. All of them. are saying we need to leave. Hitler says not. Why? Because Hitler's just that, like, no, you got, you guys don't leave because we're, we're Germans. We fight till the death kind.

It's arrogance. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely partially arrogance that he thinks, no, we'll hold out. It will still just win because we're us. Yeah, we'll just, we'll just hold it out. And I think he's being stubborn.

Oh. Yeah. call kind of thing. He made a call. And then they're like, hey, this call's no good. We're going to do this. He's like, no, no, I made the call. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ego. I mean, obviously Hitler has probably one of the biggest egos of any human being ever. And here you see it. Yeah. Sure. In full effect. Even though he had left no doubt that in his view the decision promising salvation lane an immediate breakout in the end he too, is talking about Paulus. In the end, he too submitted and obeyed for him. was an order in spite of everything. All that remained to us was to hope for a rescue operation from the outside. I will say this, actually. There's some books, the parts of this book that I'm not going to cover because we just don't have time.

There's that guy that gave that speech goring in the beginning. He had also told Hitler, hey, don't worry. We can resupply. He was the, before taking over all the German military forces, he was in charge of the German Air Force. the Luftwaffe and he said, look, we can resupply these guys.

Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And he probably said that at a time when it didn't look like they were going to get completely surrounded. You know, oh yeah, we'll resupply him. Don't worry about him. And we'll get into some of the numbers

on what they said they could do. But that's another reason why Hitler. Hitler thought, oh, we can resupply him. He also had people on the ground. He's surrounded by yes, man. Gotcha. So no one wants to disagree with the boss man, in this case, Adolf Hitler.

Sure. By saying, And so when he says, look, can't we resupply them? Yes. Yes, we can resupply them from the air? And also, he was saying, hey, can't someone, instead of them breaking out and going back towards Germany, why don't we have some German troops go towards them and break into them?

That way we can open up some supply lines. So what did he get told when he, when he offered that solution? He got told, yes, we can do it. Yes, we can do it. So he's surrounded by yes, man. And you know how he ended up surrounded by yes, man? His ego. I don't want to be told oh you're gonna tell me no you're fired

Yeah, yeah get someone in here that's gonna tell me that they can do what I'm saying Yeah, yeah, and that person's gonna get promoted and then you get surrounded by people that want to get promoted Hmm check proceeding on And there was one General that really Made it made a significant effort Here we go back to the book Initially general von Sidelitz was dumbfounded

Stunned He accepted the order, but in his heart he rejected it, particularly since he was painfully aware that his own hands were tied. Not until the following day, 25 November, 1942, did General von Sidelitz react to Hitler's orders, and his reaction was as much filled with a sense of responsibility as it was temperamental. Addressed to the Army Command, it took the form of a detailed evaluation of the situation that Corps Commander had had his chief of staff prepare. It surmised once again all the arguments against the Stalingrad army digging in and urged the breaking out of the ring immediately.

So what's cool about this book? They actually have this actual document that this guy wrote. Have you ever heard me talk on the podcast about getting all your ducks in a row? And like, hey, if my boss tells me no, cool, I'm going to get all the information. I'm going to come back and I'm going to make a bulletproof argument. My boss is going to agree with because you can't, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, Argument's gonna be bulletproof because I'm right and if I wasn't right then I wouldn't I wouldn't go this far Right I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put my

My reputation on the line Arguing something that I don't truly believe is right you know all for me I say okay well you know what he could be right So you know what I'm gonna try and execute it to my best of my ability in this case Sidlitz is like no It's not no and and he says okay I'm gonna perform I'm gonna put together this thing they have the document inside this book I would read it but it's long it's it's so detailed that it would take too much time. But it lays out every little detail of why they need to break out.

And not in an emotion. That's what's beautiful about it. Not an emotional way. Maybe I just need to check myself because maybe more emotion was needed. But generally, if you come across as really emotional, Hitler would think, oh, you, well, a boss would think, oh, you're just emotional about the Zekko. You're just emotional, buddy. You just need to calm down.

Yeah, yeah, just calm. Carry out the orders. So he didn't, he played the role or he used the strategy of just calm. This is what's going on. This is what needs to change. or this is what we need to do, and if we don't, it's going to be catastrophic.

Back to the book. In the emergency situation, intensified by the OKH and OKHs' Obercommando de'aer, which is the supreme high command of the German army. General Von Sidelitz demanded from the commander-in-chief of the army

that he act immediately against orders, in other words, against Hitler. So when Sidelits got told no, he's like, no, listen, we need to do it anyways. That's how passionate. So now he's starting to get a little bit emotional and passionate. He declared it to be an imperative duty to the army and to the German people to obey the dictates of conscience and to seize the freedom of action that had been forbidden in order to prevent threatening catastrophe.

The memo was passed on by Army command, but had no effect whatsoever. And so they had to suffer the additional pain that in the final analysis they could but give in and fulfill the bitter. soldierly duty to obey against their own better insight. Now, I will tell you that, as Napoleon said, if you execute a plan that you know is wrong, you are culpable for executing it. And these guys, they would not stand up against Hitler. Back to the book, we were all deeply disturbed and full of despair and in our hearts even outraged. What was being demanded of us nonly contradicted all military experience, it went against every soldierly feeling and robbed of us any hope of any hope of being able to save ourselves by breaking out under our own power.

In the last week of November, when the formations that had been heavily damaged during the initial retreat were hastily and with great difficulty establishing themselves on a new main line of resistance, Army issued a grave order of the day. I can still remember the exact wording. It started, Sixth Army has been surrounded. This is not your fault. As always, you have fought bravely and tenaciously up to the moment the enemy had you by the neck. It went on to point out that the hard fighting, suffering, and deprivations that would still be demanded of the troops and which they would have to endure for a time in hunger and frost, trusting in the help from outside that had been so definitely promised. So Hitler did say, I'm going to send help from the

outside. Don't worry about it. You stay put. Finally mentioned was made of the relief operation to which Hitler had personally committed himself. Psychologically clever and calculating the appeal ended with the encouraging words promising consolation and salvation hold on the furor will get you out this final sentence appealing so strongly to emotion which injected a new tone into the previously factual and sober language of military orders gave rise to discussions among our staff it made me realize on top of all that had already happened how great the sacrifice was going to be that would be demanded of the troops. By the way, these guys traveled there and had a really hard time of it.

They know how hard it was for them to get there. And now they're being told that the people that are going to, the way that they're going to get saved is by someone else coming behind them to help them, going through the same hardships that they barely got there. So their Outlook isn't good on the situation Yeah, they're doubtful Back to the book

A large number of the soldiers Who had been in constant exhaustion In constant and exhausting action In the front line for two years Without leave without having been home To see their loved ones So a lot of these guys So they had actually survived a winter

Early on They'd survived a winter as they pushed into Germany As they put it pushed in Russia And now they're waiting for another one. But these soldiers have been fighting for two straight years. Hard fighting.

Back to the book, naturally the troops were not in a position to appreciate the full extent of the suffering and deprivations they were about to face. They knew nothing of the difficult problems of the overall supply situation. So again, this guy is working at the headquarters,

meaning he's, you know, with the commanders and the leadership. So he's tracking all the logistics of the situation. The frontline soldier doesn't know. The frontline soldier expects, hey, they're going to bring me bullets. They're going to bring me, food. He realizes, because he sees what's actually happening, that's going to be a real problem.

They had no inkling of the countless worries that lay so heavily and depressantly on the higher staffs, nor at first were they aware that at one stroke, the encirclement had made it impossible to complete preparations for winter positions. Out there in the supply depots of the army lay tens of thousands of fur coats, warm stock. Protective headgear and other items of winter clothing which could now no longer reach the encircled forces For the most part the men remained completely inadequately supplied with winter gear and exposed to the murderous Frost So they had thousands and thousands of warm weather gear

Or I should say cold weather gear and now they're gonna get nothing They're cut off back the book we calculated that our own army whose total strength before the insertion Circleman had been about 330,000 men, now numbered about 280,000. So they're already short, 50,000 killed. We, the staff, the officers in the staff departments also pinned our hopes on the relief operation, which was being prepared. No one even considered that Hitler would be ready to abandon the outstandingly proven 6th Army on the Volga and throw it to the wolves.

So these guys are, even though I said that, even though I said they weren't hopeful, they're also thinking, there's no way that Hitler is going to leave 300,000. soldiers out here. There's no way. Back to the book, he was bound to find ways and means to rectify the devil's situation. There were even starry-eyed dreamers, not however, among the older and more experienced, who maintained that the furor would not only get us out, but it probably already conceived a plan to turn our apparent defeat into a glorious triumph

by encircling all the enemy's armies that are surrounding us. None of these dreamers and believers in miracles who kept surfacing here and there until the very end had a clear idea of what was implied by the fact that German soldiers were simultaneously fighting on the North Cape and the Bay of Biscay in the front of Leningrad and Viersma in the caucus in Crete and in North Africa. So again, this guy's fighting fronts all over the place. And the staff officers, the leadership knew how thinly spread the German army was. The frontline troops didn't, you know, they didn't make sense of that.

During the weeks of December, the fighting strength of the Army was deteriorating at a horrendous pace. The blame for this lay mainly in the inadequate airlift. Here, a catastrophic picture was slowly emerging. In order to be able to maintain its ability to live and fight, our Army had initially requested 750 tons of supplies per day, later reducing this to 500 tons per day. the JU 52 cargo aircraft had about a two ton load the one the H.E. one one fighter bomber had held about 1.5 tons so this is going to require like 2,000 aircraft to be able to make this happen what do they end up with back to the book they only brought

in 80 to 120 tons of the required supplies in other words, not more than one-fifth of the amount needed. Purely and simply, this meant a daily deficit of 10,000 kilograms of bread and a fatal under-supply-supply-needed fuel and ammunition. So we're getting one-fifth of what they need. Now, we have to be careful because that's a little statistic that we're thrown out there.

Right? Like, oh, we're getting one-fifth of what we need. But I'll think of a human being in what you need as a human being, just food. And you cut that down to one-fifth of what you need. You know, you need 2,500 calories a day. You're going to get 500.

That's what we're talking about. Yeah. You need, and by the way, you're fighting, and you're being attacked. So you need 1,000 bullets a day. Right? You need 1,000 bullets a day. You're getting 120 bullets.

It's, it's, there, things are not looking good. Back to the book. The sun sets. Soon after lunch and by 1400 to 1500 hours, it was already dark. So this is now we're talking rush in winter by two or three o'clock in the afternoon. It's dark. And every day, this too reminded us to depressingly here in the desolation of the snowbound step of the enormous distance that separated us from home. Were we not all the living and the dead long buried in a gigantic mass grave?

Thoughts like this occasionally befell me when I returned from various sectors of the front, where in my role as liaison officer, I had been sent on specific assignments to gather urgently needed information. There, on the heights above the infamous Roshaka Valley, the men of our divisions lay in desperate battle demanding bloody sacrifice. There in the trenches and foxholes in the snow, the soldiers were dying of exhaustion and cold. Because their steadily shrinking rations of bread and other food issued

were no longer sufficient to provide the physical stamina needed to combat frost and sickness. So they're starving to death. They're starving to death and they're freezing death and they're being attacked and killed by the Russians. With no ammo. One day in the second week of December, the staffs first heard the news that the army group Don under field marshaled, Van Mainstein had begun the long hope relief for the long hope for relief operation soon the good news had also reached the troops the words gave new impetus everywhere and particularly on the hard-pressed western perimeter of the pocket spread like lightning manstein is coming the already dying hopes burst forth anew new courage happy expectations a new spirit of initiative began to blossom the sufferings and saccharges and saccharges to date had not been in vain after all salvation was now beckoning what the furor had promised

He was bound to deliver so they get work Manstein's coming this is this this is good if everything went well they thought the hour of all relief could just coincide with Christmas The motorized groups and strong tank units being led by Colonel General Hoff elements of which had been brought in from France and great hate had begun the relief offensive. Hoth's spearhead tanks were only 50 kilometers away. Hold on, we're coming, said one of the encouraging radio messages would spread like wirefire amongst the western edge of the pocket. So they're in radio communication, 50 kilometers.

And this well-respected leader, Hoff, he's on the way and he tells him, hold on, we're coming. do you ever that isn't that like a jinx right there you know what i mean like do you ever celebrate something even even inside your head you celebrate something a little bit before you should yeah don't ever do that am i superstitious because i believe that way if you think that that's how it truly works but i think um i i think it's superstitious but i also think there's some psychology behind yeah yeah yeah where especially if you realize if you just realized oh i just celebrated early right there so it's kind of makes you uneasy there's something like that I feel like that guy that guy got a certain level of satisfaction just by saying like don't worry we're coming like

he had this moment of glory that's glorious that's a glorious thing to be able to say yeah yeah don't worry we're coming yeah it's a glorious thing to be able to say and he took that he took the easy money right there psychologically instead of being like hey we're not there yet we need to be ready right right fight harder when you go fast don't worry about where we are yeah yeah finish strong right yeah kind of thing it's like the guy who's running the touchdown right he's right he's celebrating the 30 yard line right the 25 he puts the hand out who is that there's like a classic and the guy creeps up behind them boom you know what this guy was named leon let he played for the i want to say Dallas cowboys he was like a like a deep

Around what year? I want to say 90s maybe. How many other Dallas Cowboy players can you remember the name up from the 90s? Can you remember a lot of them? Like a handful. Just let the quarter of Leigh-I-W-you- Remember him. He's infamous that's like for this. I mean, poor guy, you know, he's a defensive like line man or something, recovers a fumble,

runs it in for the touchdown. And he's doing, he's not even doing it putting it above his head. He's putting it on the side kind of like celebrating. and I think they stripped them and recovered it, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it was bad. Psychologically, you can't stop. You can't take the easy money. You got to finish.

You got to finish. Or the race is like 100 meter dash, you know, the guy's like, or the 200 meter. And he's like, yeah, I want it. Then the guy, you know, the real hungry guy gets it, you know, right at the end. So that's Hoth. Hoth takes the easy money. Dang, can't be doing it, Hoth. Back to the book.

In the sure knowledge that before us was the last chance for our salvation, we feverously awaited the decisive hour with a feeling of confidence the orders we expected could not be delayed much longer But all too soon our hopes were to be bitterly disappointed Alarming messages began to came in rapidly attacking Russian tank forces were embroiling the relieving army and heavy fighting were slowing the advance and finally leading in connection with the Russian offensive group operations west of the dawn to a serious crisis for the entire army group. One of the attacks hit Colonel General Hoff, who is hastening towards us. In fearful tension and delay mounting agitation, we read the messages we were receiving from the far distant German air reconnaissance and radio surveillance units. Soon these brought news of disaster. The relief

operation had began to run down. Hoth's forces, in turn threatened with being surrounded, were finally forced to retreat. The front fell back hundreds of kilometers, and the encircled Stalingrad army on the Volga was left to its fate. Only much later was I to learn of tragic details of the events and circumstances that had sealed the fate of the encircled army at this point.

I did not know then that Hitler was still in no way prepared to give up Stalingrad on the Volga, that for the second time and after the dramatic time, conflicts and the conflicts that he's talking about is between him between hitler and the people the advisors he had explicitly forbidden the breakout of the sixth army against the will of his chief of staff and in opposition to the demands of the army group don so hitler leaves them abandons them back to the book among the circle of our closer comrades we no longer entertained any illusions about the bleakness of our situation the german front had withdrawn a great distance away

and for the time being there would be no new thought or no thought of a new relief operation would the German front be able to hold out for several more weeks it was hardly to be expected hunger frost and sickness were cutting terribly into its waning strength and death was reaping an uncanny harvest and not only on the fire spewing iron ring around the pocket and even the conditions for a great saving breakout operation scarcely existed any longer in such an event the army would only be able to remain mobile for a few kilometers because of the lack of fuel and if solongrad were to be given up what then would happen to the growing army of wounded sick and exhausted men did the o k h intend to give up the vulga at all the measures ordered

so far seemed to point the opposite way. Once again, I was often forced to recall Hitler's fanatical words about the German soldier on the Volga, about Stalingrad, and each time an icy unease crept through my bones. Maybe, yes, maybe, we were supposed to hold on to the bitter end to stay put and fight to the last bullet. On the dark horizon, the outlines of a terrible disaster began to emerge. Christmas Eve approached. All the visible and invisible wounds which the cruel events had caused

burned even more painfully on this night. The atmosphere was depressed. Memories of former Christmas celebrations with their blissful shimmer only dimly illuminated our harsh reality as from a world long gone. The well-loved Christmas carol sounded in low, melancholy sadness.

So, Hope is pretty much vanquished at this point not completely because he's still in may he's still saying maybe maybe they're just going to leave us here and fight to the last man Which is a crazy thought because I'm going to say this number again 250 to 300,000 soldiers This isn't like hey, you've got 18 guys fight to last man. It's the Alamo right? This isn't that this because that that might have you know that that that's not going to have a strategic impact on the situation you lose 300,000 combat veterans, which was you know, hard in combat hardened veterans. This is going to have a strategic implication. I mean,

of course every soldier that dies is is a epic event in that soldier's life, obviously, in their family and everything else. But when you start talking about leaving 300,000 people to die for that soldier's life, obviously, in their family and everything else, but when you start talking about leaving 300,000 people to die for nothing. He still can't quite get that. He's still not quite there. He sees it on the horizon. He's not quite there, though.

Back to the book, The New Year had arrived. Jangling frost lay over the Stalingrodd pocket and breathed its icy, deadly breath. The sharp wind blew through the joints of doors and windows and in the bunkers, and from the floors the cold crept up to one's knees. The daily

casualty reports from our divisions that increasingly reported losses other than by enemy action represented a shattering balance on the death sheet. So what he's saying there is like, yeah, people are dying from combat, but even more people are dying just from cold and starvation. Again, the Russians furiously

attacked several sectors of our perimeter. What did we have left to oppose these powerful Russian elite troops who were protected from the frost and had a full stomach? not to mention their numerous tanks, guns, rocket launchers, and mortars, only small numbers of heavy weapons with insufficient, strictly rationed and ammunition. That's all we had. Only emaciated men, exhausted by hunger,

among whom the fighting, the cold, and spreading diseases were taking a daily frightening toll. How much longer could the perimeter withstand the pressure? It did not escape our attention that the Russians appeared to be concentrating in front of our sector in preparation for a major blow. The last sad, sad possibility grew even clearer on the dark horizon, the fate of our destruction by a shattering off-frensaf breaking over our heads. So again, it's interesting that this guy's, well, two things I should point out. Number one, it's interesting that this guy's perspective because he's in the staff and so

he sees more of what's happening from the general officers. But let's also make note that he's not on the front lines. and he's so he has it relatively good meaning he's protected by the by the rush from the Russians by some distance I mean he's still getting mortared etc. So getting artillery but he's not he's not eye to eye with the Russians like the guys like the soldiers on the front lines that are sitting in a little slit trench in the

ground and the tundra one of the things that he sees is a meeting here we go back to the book an important meeting of the general staff took place at our core which the commander in chief of the army, General Paulus, attended with his chief of staff. The serious reserved expression of the tall figure with the head of a scientist reflected something of a burden of responsibility that pressed down tormentingly on the shoulders of this man. It was the last time I was to see our army commander in the pocket.

As far as I can remember, he never visited our corps again. I soon learned of the outcome of the meeting and the grave words of our general staff officers left no doubt about the consequences of the orders that had been issued in the meeting. meantime. They dealt with the mobilization of the last reserves of the sixth army. The encircled forces were to hold on and fight to the last. For this purpose, the formation of fortress battalions was to be prepared and executed as quickly as possible. All remaining reserves of able-bodied men were to be collected and used as infantry. Members of the Luftwaffe ground personnel and anti-aircraft troops, gunners who no longer had guns, panzer grenadiers, engineers, truck drivers,

clerical staffs rear echelon and supply personnel were once again to be ruthlessly combed out The order amounted to the virtual dissolution of the rear echelon services and clearly demonstrated that the immobilized army was doomed to stay put and fight And the last man and the last bullet So there you go everyone's gonna fight cooks supply people You're all gonna become infantrymen now and this clearly indicates to it To Weeder that that means they're not going anywhere and they're going to stay there and they're going to fight to the last man Back to the book we felt that we had already been written off by the higher-ups And all that remained for us was to perform a heroic if futile gesture to ensure the fulfillment of the historic mission

And he's got quotes around that of the army of Stalingrad on the Volga The troops were again given the cheering radio message which the furor and supreme warlord had sent at the turn of the year Six Army has my promise that everything is being done to get it out But we now viewed this not just with doubt But as downright deception They don't believe Hitler anymore They used to just doubt him now they think he's deceiving him And again this is not this is no small group people

Yeah back to the book the bread ration was reduced to 50 grams per day Ringing cold gnawing hunger creeping illness, enemy fire combined in an indissoluble offensive pact. Dysentry and typhoid fever had appeared as uncanny guests and the plague of lice increased from day to day. Death danced his murder's rondo back and forth throughout the pocket. His headquarters were the numerous places of suffering despair, the dressing stations and field hospitals that filled to overflowing alarmingly. But he also felt at home on the lines day and night so death is everywhere and isn't it weird you know you think like just being sick

you were telling me you were sick a couple days ago common cult yeah yeah and you think about what being sick does to you and now this is you're being sick and it doesn't matter like there's no mercy yeah you're there's no mercy back to the back during back the book during 50 days that pocket battle lasted so far he and he's talking about death he had already cleaned out horribly among the men of the army. About one third of its manpower was gone. Of the more than 300,000 men who were present at the time of the Russian breakthrough, about 200,000 were probably still alive.

And how many of these enduring and hoping, fighting and suffering human beings had death not already marked on his own? News that we could no longer count on any relief before spring was really shattering. There was nothing more to be done save to hang on and endure the horror. Now, we get a little opportunity here. Here we go. There was a surrender proposal sent to our encircled army by the Soviet Supreme Command. The document was addressed to Paulus, who had been promoted to Colonel General and to all the officers and men of the German forces fighting at Stalingrad.

It was signed by Colonel General of the Artillery, Voices. or Voronov and by the commander-in-chief of the forces of the Don Front, Lieutenant General Rokosvinsky, who had now obviously been put in sole charge of all the forces surrounding us. The proposal began with a short, factual, and largely correct evaluation of our situation. In particular, it stressed the catastrophic state of supply of our troops who were suffering from hunger, cold and sickness, lack of winter clothing, and terribly insanitary conditions. Realistic possibilities of breaking the encircling ring no longer existed.

Any further resistance in such a hopeless situation had to be senseless. Therefore, in order to avoid further unnecessary shedding of blood, the Red Army was proposing a number of terms. The document ended with a reference directed to the commander-in-chief of Stalingrad Army, pointing out that in the event of refusal, the forces of the Red Army and Air Force would be obliged to destroy the pocket for which he, Colonel General Paulus,

would bear the responsibility. They still got 200,000 people, and you get an offer. You get 24 hours to respond. You basically surrender everybody. Yeah, everybody's going to surrender. Yeah. And they weren't sure how they were going to get treated.

I mean, they were fairly confident. It wasn't being treated good. I don't know, though, man. It's all the dysentery. That's not treated very good either. That's not treating you very good at all. Back to the book, we soon received various orders,

directives and messages whose burden was that the surrender was out of the question. The commander-in-chief had passed the Russian ultimatum onto the fewer headquarters and asked for freedom of action for all eventualities. In immediate reply, Hitler had personally forbidden surrender. And Paulus had rejected in writing the proposal of the Soviet command.

The troops were not informed, not to be informed in detail, but from now on, they were ordered to fire without warning on flags of truce appearing near the front lines. This instruction from Army, which we received by radio, was especially revealing as to the intentions of leadership. In our staff, it was received with rejection and objection because it was a clear breach of international law. So they don't get told like, hey, we're not surrendering. What they get told is, if you see anyone with flags of truce, shoot them immediately,

which is basically saying we're not surrendering. Back to the book, I was reminded again of Hitler's high-sounding words about the invincibility of the German soldier for whom nothing must be seen to be impossible. The very thought of capitulation must be an irreconciled. Must be irreconcilable with the prestige of the supreme warlord. He puts that in quotes every time I I don't call it out every time, but he does He's sort of mocking Hitler with that in his speech in Munich shortly before our encirclement He had had he not solemnly sworn you may rest assured I repeat this with full responsibility

Before God in history that we shall never again leave Stalingrad never again For life or death We were committed to the cheerless dawn step. Here, our fate must come full turn. The most terrible weeks were still before us, and during those icy days in January, the fearful premonition of what was to come descended upon us like a lead weight. On the morning of 10 January, 1943,

exactly 24 hours after the ultimatum had expired, the Russian began the destruction of the pocket with a hellish artillery barrage. It was the answer to the rejection of the surrender proposal up Up front among the staffs on the line I again entered the atmosphere of tension excitement nervousness and despair the situation was partially unclear and confused the catastrophe did indeed appear to be unavoidable Into this helpless situation orders from army came in time and time again defend hold clear up the situation fight to the last bullet from their desks two thousand kilometers away and he puts in

parentheses an exclamation point the okay h together with the constantly interfering fear her fear her headquarters forbade any independent withdrawal from endangered from endangered sectors of the perimeter and army which had to meticulously justify itself for any change in the front line caused by the pressure of the circumstances obeyed so just classic it's micromanagement not decentralized command they're even saying look if you're if you're if your perimeter's going to collapse don't fall back just die which is ridiculous because it doesn't help the situation because now there's a hole and

now more more enemy are going to come through the whole and we're going to have people behind us yeah it's like full on kind of what you were talking about last week maybe before last week it's like do it because they said so kind of thing There's no reason to die. There's no reason to do it. No strategic reason. No tactical reason, obviously. Let's do it because I said so.

Die, whatever. Yeah. The Army Corps, divisions and regiments obeyed, often with bitter criticism, with open or hidden reservations, flaring up or knuckling under. But they obeyed. And the suffering and dying of troops in the trenches and foxholes in the icy step obeyed, giving their all in the natural fulfillment of their duty or an apathy and silent despair. The higher leadership did not stint with recognition. Promotions, decorations, and medals

rained down en masse on the fighting, suffering, doomed men. But what purpose did this huge, monstrous commitment and dedication of human beings serve? in the face of the increasingly military helplessness and the daily worsening human plight, I was becoming more and more depressed by the torturing question of the why of this sacrifice of most precious blood, this pitiless dying. Was it not only for the sake of a prestige that a military supreme command, thousands of kilometers removed mercilessly wished to maintain, and for whom the price in many thousands of human lives did not appear to be too high.

This question haunted me and would not leave me until the final sorrowful ending. So he's asking why. They start to collapse from the perimeter of the pocket in towards the city of Stalingrad, because they were kind of pushed out around it, surrounding it. and now they're starting to fall back to it where they at least have some coverage. Back to the book, the withdrawal of the troops finally turned into a full-fledged flight

into which further formations and combat groups of various divisions were drawn. Whole units ceased to exist in this confusion. In the sector of our neighbor to our left, this fate also put an end to a whole division that had long been under our command and in the end had burned out, like a slag heap.

I saw its distraught general, now a commander without troops, wandering around in a bunker, desperately seeking a new assignment. So he just lost 20,000 men. He's walking around saying, what am I supposed to do now? Back to the book.

And this desperate withdrawal was being carried out in icy cold weather and pitiless snowstorms. At 30 degrees centigrade blows zero that's negative 22 at 30 degrees below zero the remnant of the regiments that had shrunk to combat groups and the suffering hordes of their shattered units moved over the empty white steps staggering crowds dragging dragging crowds of lost lightly wounded and frostbitten soldiers with them how many of those that so far had been spared enemy fire succumbed there to exhaustion

and over-exertion to the strains of hunger and to the cold. Innumerable men fell by the wayside and were soon mercifully covered over by the snow. And this was no longer an authorized withdrawal. The recoil of the front was now taking place despite standing orders to hold and maintain position at all costs and despite the line of resistance laid down by the OKH. So they finally did break And they finally said, you know what? Survival.

This is about survival And we're not staying here anymore. We're going to try and get back. Fall back. The psychological ability of the troops to resist had now also been eroded. There could no longer be any doubt about our fate. After the enemy had begun,

his decisive attack bent on destruction and our dissolution was, full progress, it was too late for a last departure attempt to break out to the West. Help from outside could no longer be considered. More devastating, even than the enemy's weapons were hunger, exhaustion, cold, and illness of all kinds among the soldiers who had not been adequately fed for so many long weeks. With the advent of the indescribable strains of daily retreats, the situation had deteriorated catastrophically. We were lacking in food. We were lacking in food, weapons, rest, warmth, hope.

In short, we were lacking in all the vital conditions for fighting. Since the long rejection of the surrender proposal, the troops had again survived a long, terrible week of tenacious defensive fighting, retreat, and flight, thereby tying down superior enemy forces in their area. Now after the loss of our life support base, Petomnik Airfield on January 16th, the time really seemed to have come to stop fighting the airlift temporarily ceased altogether no more food and ammunition came in the wounded and sick could no longer be flown out and so that's where they're getting their supplies into potomnic airfield and that's actually where this guy was for a large chunk of this battle it's now gone so now they even you know before they were they were only getting one fifth of what they needed well now they're getting zero By now, every day that the fighting was prolonged was costing thousands of human lives. There was no more time to be lost, and we waited for something to happen.

Like me, innumerable comrades and brothers in fate probably clung to the same secret hope, but nothing happened, and tragedy took its course. The Russians, by using their storm troops during the initial days of the offensive, it would probably have been very easy for them to make a further effort and liquidate the pocket relatively quickly. But they no longer needed to make such a highly costly attempt. Time was on their side. By bearing down on our tenacious defense with a crushing attack, our enemy had won its penetration into the pocket. Now he was no longer in a hurry and no longer appeared to consider his victim to be very dangerous. The battle that had begun in the meantime was merely a question of

finishing off a wounded game already marked for death. For some time already, the Russians had dictated the course of events. The date of our final end depended on their will alone. The stations of the cross of an army of 200,000 soldiers, particularly because of the slow, helpless death of such a vast number of human beings, made anything seen before, with the exception of Verdun, pale by comparison. A part of the entire German nation was sentenced to death here. and by this, its vital substance was dangerously under attack.

The moral effect of these events touched the whole nation. In the midst of the general destruction of the army, there were thousands of individual tragedies whose localities of horror were the numerous collection points for the sick and wounded. Whole convoys of mostly open trucks overloaded with their pitible freight, of freezing, wounded, groaning, sick, and dying moved deeper into the pocket. From the second half of January until the bitter end, the harsh suffering of the fighting soldiers continued by day and night.

After eight evil weeks of indescribable torture and deprivations, they were now plunged into a veritable hell of hopelessness and destruction. Time and again it was fight, resist, hold to the end, then disengage, withdraw, turn back, and dig in again for defense in the snow and stonily hard frozen earth time and again there were heavy losses panic and flight and the never-ending useless struggle against hunger and cold among the staffs there was an unending tension perplexity and despair and feverish activity leadership was still to be seen from the higher commands came continual orders directives questions admonitions threats criticism opposition and misgivings were not lacking at the lower levels but for the time being the

mechanisms of command still function so despite all this and even though they're having this this hasty withdrawal that's going against orders there's still our direction coming out there's still people being disciplined in the midst of the general suffering and dying we helplessly watch the catastrophe and of destruction approaching us mercilessly and inexorably the terrible human tragedy that was nearing its climax was finally commented upon by the war news broadcasted home in the pretty and spirited words quote in Stalingrad sixth army is attaching immortal honor to its banners by its heroic and self-sacrificing battle against crushing odds many of my comrades had mentally written themselves off intentions to commit suicide were voiced with increasing frequency others had

given their valuables and wedding rings to be to the wounded being flown out i myself had been had so far been at pains to prepare my relatives for the catastrophe by means of sparse hints now i felt the need to send home open word of farewell and gratitude the letter was hard to write in my ears once more rang rang the last goodbye my wife and imploringly and beseechingly called down the telephone line to kiev on a spring evening of last year before the seemingly endless space of Russian planes had swallowed me up now all would soon be over when I sealed the letter I was gripped by especially deep despair I felt as though I were suddenly looking into an abyss of suffering and

hopelessness towards which our whole nation was reeling as if the events in Stalingrad were a preview of an immeasurable disaster that was to break upon Germany The general of this division had a nervous breakdown. It was no longer fit for command. His hopes of being flown out with the badly wounded and sick had not been fulfilled. He now had to share the fate of his soldiers to the bitter end. This general, who a short time before was a commander of a division, had carried the responsibility for many thousands of men,

was once more a mere human being trembling for his life. then did his questions not reveal the same fear that secretly tormented all of us? We made one another realize that the impending military catastrophe was also a political catastrophe, the result of presumptuous beliefs and actions that had long shaken the healthy foundations of our intellectual, cultural, and national life had the power that we served as citizens and soldiers bent its knee before the law that was rooted in the code of ethics, or rather, had not a new gospel of violence been proclaimed and introduced that in a fatal reversal of all values had ceased to differentiate between right and wrong. So these guys are realizing what's

coming around. What's coming around? He's realizing that the path that they went down is a country, was wrong back to the book by means of destructive battle against the universal educational and cultural powers of classic antiquity humanism and christianity and anti-intellectual political religion of power had successively extracted the german people from the best of the commonly held european body of human thought and thereby also out of any commitment to the objective concepts of truth, compassion, and justice. Is that his conclusion like during this events or? Yes, during these events.

He's realizing what's happening. Yeah. Is that they were wrong and they went. I mean, the thing that's crazy about Nazi Germany is how fast that transition took place. It's like, we're talking 10 years. What? The rise of the night. Rise of the Nazis.

Or they're influenced in that. Yeah, the rise of the Nazis. Straight up, 1933. They started now, 1944. So we're 10 years. And you have a completely different viewpoint of the world. Yeah. That's great.

I mean, I wonder how much. They're going against, see what, like, they're going against the traditional values. They're going against, hey, you know, they're going against the Christian values. They're going against the cultural values. They're going against the national values. Yeah.

They're going against them. Yeah. And it's, I wonder how much of it is, you know, like the soldiers and the, even the people in the Nazi party. I wonder how much of it is like denial, you know, you know, where it's a, you know how like you're signed on to like some leader. You mean during the, during the time being? Yeah. Or are you saying right now how much of this denial? No, no, no, no.

During. During. Oh, yeah. You know, you remember rape a Nanking. You remember that there was one of the nicest guys. One of the guys who made the biggest sacrifice was a straight up actual Nazi. And he made massive sacrifice and took huge risk to save as many people. as he could by the way not white people not Aryans but but Chinese yeah so so there's a guy that

you know was more related to the traditional Christian intellectual uh values right and yet okay the the people that are in charge of the country is Nazis so I guess that makes me a Nazi yeah and here we go and so and these guys were situation because they're soldiers so now they're fighting for that evil force yeah and And like you said, there's some denial. You also get caught up. And clearly the Germans got caught up in the nationalism. They got caught up.

Hitler was a great orator and a very moving speaker. And they got caught up on that. And they were in a very depressed economy. So those things all kind of came to head. They had been in their mind screwed over in World War I and, you know, defeated and then treated badly. And, you know, there's this whole thing about Hitler's mustache. You know, Hitler's got the funny mustache. Sure.

And there's some debate on, on. how much of this is actually true, but whether it's true or not is a little bit, it doesn't really matter because of what it represents. So the deal was that Hitler's mustache, if you wanted to have a mustache during World War I because of wearing a gas mask, you had to cut your mustache like that.

Hitler still wore his mustache like that. It was like a constant symbol that he remembered. He remembered, because he was in World War I. And he was wounded in World War I. And even despite all that insane sacrifice, they didn't win. And they didn't like the way they got treated by the Treaty of Versailles. And so they had that angst. They had the economic angst.

They had all those angst built up. And Hitler came along and was ready to let them focus on something else. And now what weeder is realizing here is like, yeah, he had us focus on something else. All right. And what he had his focus on wasn't good. It was evil. this is a crude analogy. You watch Training Day?

I have watched Training Day. But that's kind of the same thing when you watch because Jay, you know, because the new year's the trainee. By the way, when I see a movie, I see it like one time in an airplane and I don't put attention to it. So I'm not going to be fully familiar with comparing the rise of Nazi Germany and the deaths of millions of people to the movie Training Day. No, no, no. And this is total respect. is just what we're talking about as far as like, you know, people, they're signed on, hey, I'm German, you know, that's cool.

And, you know, we're all German. We're, you know, solidarity. And then kind of the Nazi party starts rising, starts giving these sort of, sort of certain types of influence. And they're like, oh, all right, cool. I mean, I wasn't really thinking that. But all right, we're still Germans. We're cool. And it starts escalating. And slowly, it's like, okay. So you can't, you can't turn back. That's what happens in training day, right? Yeah, like, he's signed on. He signed on. And he's like, dang, he's like, I don't know about all this. But all right, hey, I'm signed. to the cause and after a while which is the same point that this guy got got to where it's like man okay you guys pushed it too much man I can't sign on to this and then you reflect back on all the violations you know like you start to slip you start to slip when you don't hold the line yeah that's what happens yeah and that's what makes leadership hard that's what makes life hard yeah it's really easy to get tempted to go down these trails these paths paths that are not what you should be doing. And you got a kind of admit, man, it's hard because in the beginning, like, you know,

you're going down a path. You're already signed on, right? And you see one teeny tiny violation. And it's like, what am I going to do? Like make this big stink about this teeny tiny violation. Yeah, yeah. For sure. And then you're like, all right, then you keep going.

And then you had already made that exception. And time goes on is what are you going to bring that little thing up again? I thought psychologically what Denzel Washington. He doesn't introduce, he doesn't go straight to level eight violation, right? He just gives little violations to move you down the path. Yeah, a little bit of abuse there, but hey, we're fighting bad guys. It's all good. And then like a little, like what?

You know, yeah, exactly right. And that's what that's what Hitler did. Yeah. That's what Hitler started with like, hey, you know, we don't want to have this happening. Yeah. We got to keep these things in check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, we're going to at least, we're going to put the Jews in a neighborhood.

Right? We'll put them in a separate neighborhood that way. They're not amongst us, right? Put them over there. And it's okay, you know what? We're actually not going to move them to somewhere else. We're putting on a work camp. Okay?

And then you just, right, you're slowly escalating before you're murdering to six million people. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, what? You're not signed on all of a sudden kind of thing. And you're like, dang in your head. You're like, dang, I wasn't signed on to some of the stuff earlier, but I let it go. So I'm trapped, you know, kind of thing. And now you're trapped.

And that's where he is right now and he's trapped facing his death. And recognizing that, yeah, successively extracted the German people from the best of the commonly held European body of human thought. Like you're saying exactly what you just said. Successively, it's just a little bit at a time. Back to the book, all of us who wore a uniform were entangled in a fabric of developments and circumstances

that we certainly had not sought or desired. Now, let's not make any excuses. Let's not make any excuses. But we see how it kind of happened, as you just said. We surely could not believe that our employment here in Stalingrad was part of a noble, legitimate battle for German interests. Painfully, we felt that the soldierly virtues of bravery, commitment, loyalty, and obedience to duty in their objective sense,

were being despicably misused, this deep in the tragedy of cruel events in which we now would have to atone for much that we had never wanted. So yeah, that's, you know, I've heard that argument sometimes if you, well, you're going to kill, there's a bad regime and you're going to go and you're going to attack the regime

and then some of the people that are just there by chance, you know, you hear that argument, well, they're allowing that regime to exist. Now that's a tough argument to have because you've got somebody, for them to rebel could mean death. And so they don't rebel. And so they don't rebel.

And so they're in a bad situation. That's a tough one. Yeah, fully. But somebody asked me the other day, yeah, it's along those lines. You know, some long-winded question on Twitter about what would you do if you were in, you know, in, you know,

inside of a state that was blah blah, you know, repressive and et cetera, et cetera, and it's like a one word answer, rebellion. Now, would I have the mentality that I have right now if I grown up in one of those repressive states? Probably not. I'd probably just want to survive and get some more bread. Yeah.

Right? I might not just be thinking, hey, there's something more important than me and that's freedom. And maybe I wouldn't think that. Maybe I'd just be thinking, hey, I want some, maybe I can get an extra 20 grand. of bread.

No, bro. Dang. All right. Back to the book. In, this is good. In the proximity of death, things appeared in their true light and proper order.

In such a situation, the Bible speaks to us with an insistence and clarity, the like of which we had never felt or understood before. The fear and misery at the edge of our existence had given us a religious experience. whose strength-giving power bound us together. So he's starting to see, there's no atheist in a foxhole.

Guess what? According to Weeter, that's a very accurate statement. Among my favorite books in the little private library I had taken with me to the eastern front was a copy of Marcus Aurelius's self-observation. I, too, had often found support and comfort in it. It had contributed markedly to completing my equipment for war by serving me as a suit of armor that protected me from all too frequent woundings by events and giving me an inner

equanimity. Now, this book too, like several others, had become meaningless. The wisdom of the world, The wisdom of the world, with its merely human temporal comfort, had failed. It did not penetrate into the ultimate and most profound and could no longer stand firm in the terrible shock and helplessness whose mercy I felt myself to be in. In extreme distress with the ground shaking underfoot and a menacing abyss of nothingness seeming to open before me, there was only one last support, the comforting strength of the Christian belief. Perhaps we could pass some of this comfort and support on to other comrades who bewildered were reeling toward the abyss. In their desperation faced with the destruction of a whole world of concepts, and in a view of the senselessness of the catastrophe, many a soldier on the staffs as well as within the fighting troops

had reached for his pistol to put an end to his life. There was no way back and no escape. Other disguised their secret fear and inner feelings of emptiness behind a contrived soldierly stance or even deliberately assumed the cast of mind of a langsnecht, which is like these guys were these old-schooled German mercenaries that were super hardcore. If they themselves were doomed to go under,

they would at least sell their skin so dearly to the end and take as many Russians with them as they could. Now, that's interesting. He's, he's projecting on these soldiers that, you know, that they're disguising their secret fear. You know what? I'm telling you right now that some of those Nazi German soldiers, they were, they were getting after it, right? They weren't, they weren't hiding their secret fear by acting tough. They were ready to die for the furor. So let's not just paint with a broad brush there, in my opinion.

If we agreed that suicide was out of the question for religious and ethical reasons, as normal, weak human beings caught up in error and guilt. There was nothing left to us, but to drink the cup of suffering to the last bitter dregs. Yeah. In the meantime, something unbelievable had happened and quickly made the rounds. our quartermaster, a still young general staff officer, had suddenly disappeared. His driver who had taken him to the Gumrak Air Base had waited in vain for his return. The lieutenant colonel was missing.

He had silently left the Stalingrad pocket, the zone of death and destruction on his own initiative. Probably it was a mixture of nerves, fear, cowardice in the vain, hope that in the general confusion, he might be able to fly out and save his life that had tempted him to desert. The commanding general had made inquiries by radio. The deserting staff officer had shown up at Army Group, claiming that flown out on an official assignment from the Corps on matters of supply. Our general was wild with indignation and rage. He declared that he would have the criminal flown back into the pocket and shot before our eyes. We were all deeply depressed and anticipated with horror the terrible scene that had been announced,

and which we were spared to our relief. Our quartermaster was shot outside the pocket on the spot where in his fatal weakness, he had hoped to find a door to freedom in life. So again, even though I just talked about some of the Nazis being committed to the end, there was many of them that were just trying to get the hell out of there. Back to the book. Our commanding general spoke openly of the impending collapse, accusingly, and with bitterness and secret anger, he pointed out that it was not our fault we had gotten into this deviless situation of a catastrophe. from which there was no longer a means of escape. Okay. Here he is.

The commanding general is now saying, hey, look, this is not our fault. So clearly he's obviously not taking any ownership of this. But okay, so let me ask you this. Okay, Jocko, what would, how would it help him if he was to take ownership of it right now, right? If he was to say, hey, this is my fault, would it help him?

Could, if he was to say, hey, look, this is my fault, this is why this happened? Would that help him right now? No. You're right. It wouldn't help them. Would it have helped him a month or two months ago if he said to himself, look, we're in this situation. I need to take ownership of it and get it fixed. Would it have helped then? You're damn right. It would have. He said, you know what? Hitler might not tell, might be telling us not to break out. Guess what? Hitler's not here. We're going to break out. I'll go get shot for defying his orders. That's fine. I'll save all of you. That's where ownership would have come in. But what he said was. Look, we're assigned to our fate. I talk about this all the time. Just because the boss tells you, or doesn't give you the support that you need

or gives you a bad order, that doesn't give you the excuse. You can't put the ownership on the boss. You're the one in charge. You take ownership of it. You get the problem solved. He didn't do that. So he's, I don't want to say,

allowed to say it's not our fault. But he, okay, him saying it's not our fault is kind of a different circumstance. Why? Because they're past the point of no return. because they're doomed already. Yes. Because they don't have any, you know,

take responsibility and then take responsibility for the, um, fixing the mistakes. There is no fixing the mistakes anymore. That's why. If I was him, yeah, I would have said,

Hey guys, it's not your fault that you're here. This is my fault. I should have made a maneuver. I should have stood up to the boss. I didn't. Here's what we're going to do now to defend ourselves the best of our ability. Right.

Right. Right. So that, that would still give the guys some, uh, breathing room, right? some psychological breathing room.

They fought hard, they did their best, it's my fault, I should have, I should have held you guys do something different, and I didn't. Here's what we're gonna do now. The fact that he, that he wasn't taking ownership earlier, the fact that he's able to blame now means he was able to blame earlier.

And if you're, the minute you start blaming, you're not solving anything, you're not getting things done, there you go. Yeah. Back to the book, but he left no doubt that together we still had a task to perform, namely to fulfill our soldierly duty to the last moment. In obedience to the orders from above, we would defend our perimeter, fighting shoulder to shoulder with our carbines to the last bullet.

From his words, we could surmise that he was staunchly determined to go down like a captain with his ship and not to survive the downfall of his troops. Unequivocally, he pointed out that the commandments of the traditional ethical code of the soldier now demanded our ultimate sacrifice without demure. Now, at this point, he's supposed to go out and do a, do like a reconnaissance of the lines

and see what's going on. And when he's up there, here's what he sees. In freezing cold and wild snow flurries, I rode across the desolate battlefield on a motorcycle together with a sergeant of the military police. We soon reached a road of catastrophic,

we soon reached the road of catastrophe, a rising dark gray against the backdrop of a snowbound step, marked by all kinds of abandoned rubbish, half-covered cadavers of horses and wrecked vehicles, scattered pieces of equipment, crates, destroyed weapons. The dispersed, the starving, the freezing, the sick, but all those still fit for fighting had only one objective to which they were attaching their last glimmerings of hope, and this objective was Stalingrad.

In the protective walls of the cellars of the ruins, they might still be able to find some warmth, food, rest, sleep, and salvation. And so they streamed by the remains of the shattered and decimated formation, trains and rear echelon services with vehicles that were slowly being dragged and pushed by wounded, sick, and frost-bitten men. There were emaciated figures among them, muffled in coats, rags, pitiful wrecks, painfully dragging themselves forward, leaning on sticks and hobbling along the froze on frozen feet, wrapped in wisps of straw and strips of blankets.

Drifting along through the snowstorm, this was the wreck of the 6th Army that had advanced to the Volga during the summer so confident of victory. Men from all over Germany doomed to destruction in a far-off land, mutely enduring their suffering, tottered in pitiful droves through the murderous eastern winter. These were the same soldiers who had formerly marched through the large parts of Europe as proud conquerors. Now the enemy was at their backs and death lurked everywhere. There's an interesting piece that I don't go into too much, but this guy had written a paper and presented it up the chain of command

with talking about what happened to Napoleon. and he got kind of told like, hey, that's not going to happen to us. Back to the book, the events of 1812 seem to be repeating themselves after all. Once again, the uncanny Russian space was swallowing many tens of thousands of human beings, despite Napoleon's experience the basic elements of geography and meteorology had again been ignored to a frightening degree. On top of that, the modern superstition, that with the help of machines and motors, the impossible could be accomplished

and the dangers of space overcome had also contributed to our downfall and in a fatal pact with the overestimation of mechanized means of war had stood the misapprehension of the limits of human strength and possibilities. Yeah, repeat. Isn't that one of those classic lines?

That's not going to happen to us. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it feels like, you know. That's a classic mistake. It's called ego. It's called lack of humility. Don't worry that one. won't happen to us. Happened in Napoleon, one of the greatest, you know, military leaders of all

time, but it won't happen us because we have some cars. We got some tanks or whatever. But by the way, tanks tank fuel. Where's that fuel going to come from? I mean, at least a horse can eat a piece of hay, right? Sure. You know, there's no Exxon station out there on the steps. Back to the book, Together with several wounded, we dragged ourselves onwards until exhausted and shattered, we finally reached the ruins of rubble of northern Stalingrad city area. So now he's actually was retreating back to Stalingrad itself. What travails did fate still hold in store for us? Death whom I'd faced more often and closely in recent days than ever before was still refusing me. But his trusted companion for many weeks, hunger was tormenting me with tenacious power, slowly making me ripe for the end.

and Frost, the third murderer in the trio, had also bitten me by now as the constant stabbing pains and some of my limbs warned me. Separated from our staff, our group of officers found shelter in a dark, dirty cellar, while our men went to ground in a neighboring pile of rubble. This was to be the end of our flight and our last quarters. The army had once again addressed itself to O.K.H. and pointing adamantly to the catastrophic situation had asked for immediate permission to surrender, which might possibly prevent still complete dissolution and total disaster. Hitler's answer had been a steely, no. Forbid surrender, Hitler had radioed into the pocket on 25 January.

The army will hold its position to the last man and bullet. Imagine being that freezing, hungry, tortured by the enemy at your back, and you got some guy in a nice, ridiculous. It's one thing to be like, yeah, we're going to the last bullet, and it's this big war, but it lasts, you know, I don't know, a week, not even a week. You know, like that one big last stand and we're going to fight to the death. That's one thing. And I dig it, and that's, you know.

But just weeks and weeks and weeks of just slowly dying of starvation and sickness. And it's way different. It's way different to try to fight till the last man and the last bullet in that scenario. Yeah, especially because they all kind of know that there's no strategic advantage to what they're doing. Even worse. Back to the book, Colonel General Paulus and his chief of staff whose fanatical will to hold out was well known among the staffs, Relentlessly held on to their fatal decision. On their part, many generals and their staffs remained the executioners of the orders of destruction.

Under these sorry circumstances for fighting, suffering, and dying continued. Torturingly and terribly, after the splitting of the pocket, the death agony of the army continued for a further week. In the general dissolution and catastrophe, it was every man for himself. more and more order and discipline broke down here and there in the cellars the still able-bodied and combat-worthy hid among the sick and wounded cases of uncomradarly conduct theft of provisions refusal to obey orders and open mutiny mounted it's a little late the elementary drive of self-preservation no longer allowed the question of right or wrong to be raised and in the same way that the differences Between the front line and rear line and the rear echelon were being erased,

so were the differences in rank and position. In the final day's summary, law was imposed in Stalingrad with drastic punishments for any crime. Looters were to be shot within 24 hours. Hundreds of German soldiers who had become weak in their misery, thus became victims of German bullets. One could no longer generally speak of courageous and heroic fighting. Certainly here and there, there were individual deeds of courage, personal initiative, and noble self-sacrifice.

But by and large, only a mute submission to the inescapable fate remained to the bitter end. It was rather the silent heroism of acceptance of suffering and submitting. Not the picture that gets painted very often. Now, at this point, at this point right now in this battle, when they hear that speech that goring said talking about this great sacrifice and how they fought so well and how they'll be remembered forever and compared them to leonitis and the 300 spartans at thermopyla it's just and here's what these guys thought with over exaggerated feverish pathos the the speaker

recalled the heroic example of the last of the goths and in the end the historical so famous sacrifice of the Spartan heroes at Thermopyla who had not faltered or given ground until the last fighter had fallen. And so it was at Stalingrad, just like Leonides and his loyal men and the Greek defile. So would the German heroes lie on the Volga as the law of honor and conduct in war commanded them to do for Germany. During this speech full of empty phrases and lies that outdid itself in hysterical glorification and praises, the demeanor of the deeply delusioned and incensed audience became more and more hostile. The glances, gestures, and words all around unmistakably showed the rage that was growing in people's souls. Whoever might still have

trusted in the promise of help from the outside now had to recognize with growing horror that at home, where relatives still hope for a union, the warriors of Stalingrad had finally been Written off, we felt that we had heard our own funeral oration before its time. The disgusting adulation of the torturous dying of our army and the deceitful glorification of conditions that were against all laws of humanity filled me with indignition and revulsion. Must not goring's words have pierced the hearts of our loved ones at home like daggers and robbed them of all hope now that they had been. been thrown into the most anxious fears of our for our lives at home we had been declared dead the

heroization and mythical glorification of our stalingrad army was supposed to conceal the sad truth for a long time now the heroic tale of the german soldier on the volga had become an irresponsible mass dying ordered from on high the pathetic propaganda of glorification was obviously Intended to distract from the catastrophic consequences of a criminally Amateurous leadership of war and to prevent the question of blame from even arising So you pretty much see how these guys felt at the end and now you might think You might think that there's a disconnect between Hitler Like hey, we're proud we're fighting to the end and this is the way the Germans are and this is the way we are and this is the way we are

We're superior and that the guys in the ground now they're just beat down. And so maybe they're just, maybe they're just weak, right? And they're just giving up. You might think that. You might think that. Here's, this will give you a little indication that that's the wrong thought. On the one February, the news spread among us that Paulus had capitulated with his staff and the two southern segments of the pocket and gone into captivity. So the leader just surrendered.

At the last moment, he had been promoted to field marshal. This promotion in the hour of the final catastrophe was grotesque. It was simply a gesture of thanks from above and a goodbye. So Hitler thought Paulus was going to die. Well, he didn't. Paulus surrendered. But the unhappy field marshal did not set the example of heroism expected of him from the top. The German papers broadcasts later,

Broadcasts later tried to spread the impression in the style of goring speech that in the face of overwhelming superiority, the field marshal had burned his secret papers and that the generals lying behind their machine guns had fought to the end. Furthermore, after the catastrophe, German magazines lied to the German people with faked pictures showing such heroic scenes. But the truth of the matter was something quite else. We calculated that more than 15 generals and their staffs had gone into caverns. captivity from the southern and central pockets. Soon the Moscow radio gave details of numbers and names. I was only to learn later that some of these generals had gone into captivity with neatly packed suitcases and plentiful baggage. They simply stopped fighting and gave themselves up to the victor without any further consideration for the fate of the remaining battle groups.

The last request of the field marshal had been that the Russians should treat him as a person. private citizen. With this, he had resigned the official role he had formerly played in the military political interests of the Supreme Commander and, as a broken man, laid down his marshal ship. He was driven away in a closed car and no longer needed to see the appalling misery of his sacrificed army. So there's no disconnect.

The troops on the ground were right. These leaders were liars. weak and they had no problem pursuing glory with someone else's ass but they weren't ready to do it with their own deep down inside i had increasingly begun to oppose certain military concepts of obedience honor and discipline like those that had been manifesting themselves to the end in the measures taken by our command was this only the so this is this week we went through all this and he's like only now he's starting to oppose some of some of his his military concepts of obedience if this was an American to Americans are rebellious by nature like we don't

we don't you know if you're leading us down the wrong path we stand up and say like no you're not going to do that stop no he's you know here going well they've done all this and only now am I starting to question these things and he's He even questions his question. Back to the book, was this only the revolt of my selfish instinct for self-preservation? Was it only an unsoldierly stance, fear, or cowardice at a time when things had become bitterly serious? Precisely at this point, I again remembered the awkward, deeply penetrating thoughts and feelings

with which I'd asked myself at the beginning of the war, why and for whom must you make this sacrifice? The same questions that had never really taken root rose again before me, gigantically and applicable to the whole army. Was there really a noble, high, holy objective at stake here in Salangrad in our battle, an ethically justified goal which could be served by ultimate human test of giving one's life? Did soldierly honor and obedience to orders really justify this demand so casually made of us that we hold out for this lost cause, this excess of service of, this excess of, suffering and dying was this immeasurable sacrifice really decisive for the outcome of the war and

could it serve our country and our people this is what this is you want to know why we talk about the why all the time there it is yeah now he should have been asking that question a long time ago and he said he started to in the beginning he started to ask that question but he didn't go through with it you know why because they were winning they were winning it's easy don't really need know why where I could go out there you know beat this country beat that country roll through that country it's pretty easy not getting tested yeah back to the book a foreboding I had long held grew into a terrible certainty what was happening here in stalingrad was a tragic senseless self-sacrifice a scarcely credible betrayal of the final commitment and devotion of brave soldiers our innocent

trust had been misused in the most despicable manner by those responsible for the catastrophe We had been betrayed, led astray, and condemned. The men of Stalingrad were dying in betrayed belief and in betrayed trust. In my heart, the bitter feeling of, and all for nothing became ever more torturing. In my soul arose again the whole abysmal disaster of the war itself. More clearly than ever, I appreciated the full measure of misery and wretchedness of the other countries in Europe to which German soldiers and German arms had brought boundless misfortune. So he's reflecting and he's looking around saying, look, what we did to all these other countries.

Had we not so far the victors been all too prone to close our eyes and our hearts and to forget that always and everywhere the issues were living human beings, their possessions and their happiness? So like you said, he turned a blind eye. He rolled through all these countries. He did all that evil. probably only a few among us had entertained the thought of the thought that the suffering and dying being caused by our sorry profession of war would one day be inflicted upon us we had carried our total war into one region of europe after another and thereby destructively interfered with the destinies of foreign nations far too little we had asked the reason why The necessities and justifications for what was happening or reflected on the immeasurability of our political responsibility that these entailed. Misery and death had been initiated by us, and now we were inexorably coming home to roost.

They were inexorably coming home to roost. The step on the dawn and the Volga had drunk streams of precious human blood. the Russians were certainly also making cruelly high blood sacrifices in the murderous Battle of Stalingrad, but they who were defending their country against a foreign aggressor knew better than we why they were risking their lives. So, yeah, the Russians, they're fighting, they're dying for sure, but they know that they're defending their homeland. It's a lot easier for them to understand. Many officers and commanders now began to oppose the insane orders emanating from the furor. headquarters and being passed on by army command. By this, they, they began to reject the long

eroded military concepts of honor and discipline to which the army leadership had clung until the end. In the unconditional obedience such as was fatally being upheld here in Stalingrad, there was no longer a soldierly stance, but rather a lack of responsibility. So I'm going to say that one more time this idea that unconditional obedience was was was was not seen right now as a soldierly stance but a lack of responsibility because you are responsible to do something if if you're getting bad or is you're responsible for not obeying them and you know I get asked this question all the time not all the time but you know sometimes people say what if you got we know what did you do if you ever got told something that you didn't believe in I was

like well we were all on the same page like it's not like we were getting told to do things that were immoral unethical you know they weren't saying hey go burn this village with women and children in it we weren't getting those orders you know what I mean we weren't getting told to do things that that weren't that I didn't agree with that my guys didn't agree with and then that's the way the like are there are there pockets where things happen yeah absolutely that's what that's the horrors of war. But if we got told to do things that we didn't think we should do, we'd have said, no, not doing it.

This was open mutiny. So they've gotten to the point now finally. Since there were no more urns from the center towards the end, many responsible commanders and unit leaders on the line acted on their own initiative in an endeavor to stop the senseless shedding of blood. Many desperate Stalingrad warriors in the end sought a way out by suicide or by voluntary, by a voluntary soldier's death. We learned of two generals whose extreme resolution had been shattering.

One, the commander of a division from Dresden had shot himself after having ordered his son a young lieutenant to report to him to say farewell. The other, the commander of a division from Lower Saxony, whose tactical emblem was a four-leaf clover and was known therefore as the lucky division who did not want to survive the downfall of his men had been killed on the front line while standing erect and firing his weapon. The last pockets of resistance, what was left of about six shattered divisions and the remnant of other formations that had meanwhile been left to their fate by the resignation of the Army command now had to bear the whole burden of the concentrated air attacks, artillery, and mortar fire. It was not only the fear of the coming end, the hunger clawing at my intestines and the pain from my frozen limbs that turned the last seemingly endless hours in the Stalingrad pocket into the tortures of hell for me. The proximity of death tore the last obscuring veils from my eyes and brought fruits of long years of individual experiences, observations, tormenting feelings, and thoughts into an instant maturity. Now, on the very edge of being, war in its for us, most terrible form became the inexorable revealer. of all things. He's going through like spiritual awakening as he faces death.

In my mind's eye, the horrible experiences and pictures of destruction that would not leave me in peace by day or night were strung together in a bloody chain. Experiences and impressions stretching far into the past that suddenly awoke in my sharpened memory I discovered to be logically connected links of this fatal chain. What had formerly always caused me to have now? nasty premonitions and apprehensions, what it always disquieted me, I now suddenly had to recognize as having been the warning of a fatal, fundamental evil, the dimensions of which I had thought, not thought possible. Faced with the eminently impending catastrophe, the question about the sense

of what was happening had plagued me so often during the war seized me again with cruel force hundreds of thousands of flowering human lives were suddenly being senselessly snuffed out here in Stalingrad what an immeasurable wealth of human happiness human plans hopes talents fertile possibilities for the future were thereby being destroyed forever the criminal insanity of an irresponsible war management with its superstitious belief in technology and its utter lack of feeling for the life value and dignity of man and here prepared for us a hell on earth how could the long eroded concepts of honor duty obedience soldierly heroism figure any longer into our feelings thoughts and actions to stay alive to be reunited once again with our loved ones at home this

burning desire was now the drive behind all thoughts and actions Gradually, we had accustomed ourselves to the idea of surrendering at the first opportunity and going into Russian captivity. In the end, I basically had only one wish to stay alive and healthy and go into captivity unwounded. So that's it. Goes into captivity. You know, after going through a, I don't know if you want to call it a spiritual awakening of recognition of recognition. Recognizing that his whole life had been doing something evil. Yeah.

In the it's it's pretty anticlimatic how it happens how they get how they End up in captivity back to the book in the early minutes of captivity. I felt an easing tension and and and relief in the end the insecurity of our situation between life and death had weighed down on all of us like lead What first attracted my attention, so now they're captured. What first attracted my attention, imagine this, was the fresh, healthy appearance of the victors. Their simple, enviable winter clothing and good weapons, sub-machine guns everywhere, and the uniform picture of sheepskins, padded jackets, felt boots and fur caps with broad earmuffs swinging up and down. The warmly bundled up well-nourished and splendidly equipped men of the Red Army with their chunky, mostly red-cheeked faces formed a stark contrast to our deathly pale, filthy, bearded, and freezing figures of misery who hung exhausted and sick in their makeshift winter clothing consisting of all kinds of furs, blankets, scarfs, field gray headgear, woolens, and inadequate footgear. This sudden meeting and comparison at once showed me how low we had sunk and how little we had been prepared for this murderous battle.

And the Soviets kind of, the Russians kind of have their shots at them. Fritzy, fascist, Hitler kaput. They alternated threats and obviously dreadful curses and contemptuous spit like raging wolves, vengeful. soldiers from the rear echelons fell on the helpless victims time and time again to steal personal baggage and to vent their spleen so now they're captured and the the russians start to kind of sing and dance and singing old folk songs back to the book all the noise and exuberance surrounding me formed a shrieking contrast to the inner and outer state which i found myself torn from my circle of comrades, left to myself and my emotions in the midst of the joyful

dancing and singing victors with whom no contact could be established. In my inner heart, I felt abandoned and without hope, totally depressed, uprooted, cut off from home, sunk far away, subjugated to a foreign will, pitiously, piteously thrown to the mercy of an unknown powers to be dependent on the whim of the victor, constantly watched, menacingly surrounded by barbed wire and guns, forced to relinquish, any kind of external freedom. Captivity meant an unknown form of human submission and humiliation. It is a bounty for us human beings that a merciful hand covers the future from our eyes with an impenetrable veil. That's a really great line. Had I known then that I was destined for more than seven comfortless years devoid of love and filled with previously unknown mental and physical tortures and fearful uncertainties on the borderline of life, I never would have found the strength to stand the sufferings of the initial hard months of captivity.

he's saying if he would have known what the future held seven years he's about to be in captivity for he wouldn't have even made it through he would have given up and he doesn't talk in this book about what that imprisonment was like but he does give what I think is a combination of how he survived it and what he learned from it going back to the book time and again I was soothingly distracted from my tormenting thoughts and dark visions by the wonders of the brightly shining star-filled winter sky that appeared to be so close to the touch it constantly drew my eyes upwards as if by magical force what had so far appeared to me as the downfall of a world come loose at the seams and a catastrophe without bounds suddenly took on measurable dimensions. I regained my equilibrium and found my way back to myself. Where I had felt earlier that chaos was swallowing me up, now calm and peace was flowing into my disquieted heart. The reconciling effect came from the vast order and harmony that the sparkling mass of bright

stars with their eternal laws of the universe brought back to my attention anew. The consolation that the stars sank into my soul was strange and hardly to be grasped by the intellect. It seemed to me as if my personal fate within the framework of events on Earth was secretly included within the vast, all-embracing order of the cosmos. For the mass of survivors who had escaped from the hell of Stalingrad, the aftermath of the tragedy lasted only for a short while. They died in their tens of thousands during the early months of captivity. Hunger and deprivation, frost, and sickness had already made them a sure prey for death even before the fighting stopped.

With the columns of prisoners, death also came to the various camps of reception where terrible epidemics raged everywhere. An exact accounting of the victims of Stalingrad, according to numbers, dates, and individual fates will never be made. The few that were allowed to begin a new life at home, and in freedom after long years of captivity, will always have to ask themselves how they can justify the deaths of the others by their own existence, how they can uphold and fulfill the legacy of their dead comrades. But all Germany must also loyally remember its many, many sons that lie at rest in the distant Russian step and try today and in the future to understand their unforgettable sacrifice. The Anubrumbul mounds of soldiers' graves in Stalingrad have long disappeared. The cemeteries were leveled soon after the battle and partially converted to soccer fields.

Nothing is left of the army of simple gray crosses. But it is as if a great invisible cross were rising there on the Volga, casting its shadow over our nation and addressing, penetrating, admonishing words to all of our hearts. And that closes out. this book with with some penetrating and admonishing words for us because there's a lot of warnings in this book warnings that we must pay attention to and if we don't pay attention to them then who will warnings the lessons here first of all as a nation as a culture we have to look

at the way things fell apart in Germany. Or maybe you look at the way things came together slowly. Like we talked about, the traditional values were moved aside and they were replaced with these new values, values that allegedly protected the German citizens. They were values that were going to make the world a better place. And he uses this term, this political religion. That's a powerful thought. Political religion took hold and then he used that term presumptuous beliefs that countered the foundation of their existing cultures and beliefs So there's some arrogance involved there we have people that aren't even listening to the counter arguments I think we have to be careful

not to abandon the structures of the past in some kind of a race to move to the future because the future it hasn't been tested by thousands and thousands of years of human evolution and I understand that we I'm not saying we don't progress and I'm not saying we don't evolve but I'm saying you don't bow down and you don't submit you got to think about the direction that we're heading and as soon as soon as as people we have to have the courage to stand up before we reach the event horizon from which there's no return so now on a smaller level lessons from this book as as a as a person in business or in the military or in any team as a subordinate and we're all subordinate to someone

we have to question our leaders and and I say that all the time if we don't agree with plan or don't agree with a tactic. You got to question your leadership and you got to raise your hand. But if we know that the intent of our leadership is malevolent or it's going to cause suffering, human suffering on a grand scale or on a minor scale, you have to. We have to say no and do what is right no matter the consequence, no matter the consequence. And, you know, finally, for us as individuals, we got to remember that we are in charge of our own lives. We are leading our own lives and where are you leading yourself?

What are you doing that you know you shouldn't be doing? Why are you doing that? What catastrophe are you heading toward? You don't have to be heading towards that catastrophe. You have the opportunity to prevent catastrophe in your own life. But in order to do that, once again, you have to stand up. You have to do the right thing. You have to be uncomfortable.

You have to impose the discipline on your own life. So you don't have something else imposed, something bad imposed. so you don't have a catastrophe imposed on your own life. Because when we avoid the discomfort and when we avoid the discipline and when we avoid doing what we know is the right thing to do, that's when you end up in a personal catastrophe, in your own personal hell,

in your own personal Stalingrad. You have to do the hard thing. The thing you know is right. And you know what is right. and you know what you are supposed to do. So do it. And avoid going down a path that leads to your own personal hell. And instead, get on the path that leads to freedom.

And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So echo, speaking of doing the right thing. Sure. maybe you could give us some ideas on how we can you know continue down the right path

doing what we know we're supposed to do sure sure the part where you said you know you're less likely to raise any questions or you're more likely to turn a blind eye when you're winning

remember when you said that part yes I did say that like on the year I see boiler room am I wrong no no you're right Oh yeah, boiler room, yeah. Yeah, so the guys, there's a part where he's in the, they're waiting to go to a party or something. You know, they're selling stocks, right? And they're, they're like garbage stocks or whatever.

They're inflating them. Yeah, they're like, yeah, all this stuff. So. Pump and dump. Yeah. And so they're in the car going to some party and he's like, hey, who was it, Giovanni, whatever the actor's names are. He's like, hey, he goes, do you ever wonder how how we get these big commissions on these, you know, And he's like, that's the wrong question to ask, you know.

He's like, wait, what do you mean? He's like, just don't ask that question. He's like, don't ask that question. He goes, don't you like the way things are going? He's like, yeah, but I do, I do. But don't you ever wonder? He's like, no, I like being a millionaire. Same exact thing.

When you're winning, it's easy to turn the blind eye, you know? Good point. Yeah, man. So, I mean, I guess that can apply to a lot of stuff. It's interesting that you point that out. And I think that, like, on a personal level, Right? Let's say you're doing really good.

Yeah. Then it can be tricky for people to do the right thing, too. Because that's why we see like these celebrity, like movie stars or celebrity athletes or whatever. Man, they do some dumb stuff, right? They do some dumb stuff because they're winning. They're thinking they're good. They can do whatever they want. Yeah.

They make the wrong choice. Yeah. And then they're on the evening news doing dumb stuff. That ruins them. Yeah. puts them in their own personal Stalingrad. Put them in hell. Yeah.

Don't yeah even yeah with money too you know you know like and celebrity types and you know athletes who even just people people yeah yeah get a good job or their business blows up or whatever yeah well I guess yeah I guess any any type of winning we could look at yeah it doesn't mean you're necessarily doing the right thing yeah harder my point is and I think you're saying the same thing yes it can be harder yeah to do the right thing when you're winning because you just think you're yeah good to go you get arrogant yeah yeah let's not let's not put breaks on this train here. Just let it all fly kind of thing. And then when the train kind of loses momentum, meanwhile, all those those things that you've been ignoring, they're still there. Hey,

you know, look at your empty bank account. You spent all that money. You were supposed to keep, before you made budget, you were money, you were budgeting, right? You're budgeting. You're budgeting. You're doing good. You started making all this money. You started spending all this money when the money stopped coming in. Your budget is gone. Just saying that's what happens. Sometimes it can't happen. Yeah. Also, pay now or pay later i remember that one that was a good one that you said yeah did i say that yeah pay now or later we're i think we're talking about like working out or something oh yeah i didn't say it today though no no no no today yeah yeah so yeah stuck with me nonetheless support yeah

for sure 100% good way to avoid going down your personal i don't know maybe does maybe doesn't nonetheless if you're in the mood to support you don't end up in your own personal stallingrod yeah right But I don't know why supporting would like prevent that, you know. Well, you're. Yeah, no, no, we'd be reaching pretty deep for, but no, no, I say you don't, normally you don't have any aversions to reaching deep. You were reaching deep today. This one is too much.

Stalingrad, training day. No, no, those are, conceptually, they were the same thing. They were. I know the compare, it's, you know, most of these, most of these, like, lessons, I think, I feel like they're kind of everywhere. Yeah, of course. And, you know, you talk about these heavy wars and heavy, like, events. And then, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking, training.

Yeah. You know, but the, you know, the idea is still, it's the same. There's, I think there's people out there in various states of mind. Sure. And I think that, you know, your perspective helps them maybe get, maybe see someone I'm saying because maybe I'm hitting them from the wrong angle. So, you know, you're coming in from training day and moving. movies and yeah yeah actually and come to think about it these concepts right here today

when you're saying you know you know when it's going for example when it's going good it's easy to turn a blind eye isn't that kind of a lot of movies how it is it's like the guy does real good and he's just kind of going and it he he messes up in one way or another yeah i think there's a talk by kurt vonnegut and i've seen it on youtube i think it's kurt vonnegut he's like teaching a class you know curvanigate is yeah he's teaching some class Like he's just guest teaching in some class Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's talking about like there's four Plot lines and they're all pretty much the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, I think but that's one of you're you're you have nothing and then you get everything

Yeah, then you kind of abuse it kind of thing and then there's then there's then there's nothing you get everything And then you get everything back he's just got these it's like I forget them all but yeah Yeah, yeah, make sense. They're common Um, common storylines. Yeah, and they must be kind of I mean they must be right based on real life like Like, like, terms, like scenarios that you go through in life. I think it's why there's things like comeback story. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Come back kid. I mean, those things really exist. Underdog story. Underdog. Yeah. Triumphant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how.

Nonetheless, if you're in the mood to support. And, you know, between your movie watching escapades. Is that the correct word, escapades? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't recommend it.

I recommend you read. Yeah. But whatever. Training Day, maybe I'll get you there. Sure. That's a good one I thought. Anyway, nonetheless. Origin Maine.

Isn't it weird that like, Training Day is this movie that, how much it cost to make Training Day? I don't know. $50 million? And like you can go to the library and get Stalingrad the book. Yeah.

For nothing. Literally nothing. Yeah. Or you can buy it. You can buy it on Amazon for, I think this book costs like a dollar. Yeah. Because it's used.

A dollar. But it's just kind of a strange dichotomy there. It's interesting. Interesting for sure and you know obviously we can go into why which one is better for you I'm gonna go ahead and say that Stalingroud's better for you than training day Well, it depends on what you get out of it, you know you know how like I mean asking you actually people would ask me how do you read to get the most out of it Out of a book how do you well I read it while I'm reading it highlighted oh yeah Jordan B Peterson I was watching something the other said don't highlight anything

Yeah this is this I have a major disagreement with Jordan B Peterson I'm not highlighting I'm highlighting but anyway so I go through I highlight what hits me and then I go back and reread it and then I have the red pen to circle the important really important things that's what I do too on the Kindle it you can choose your your color of highlighter so the yellow is general highlighting and then the orange yeah it's the good one nonetheless all right well how about this we'll talk about some jiu jitsu geese because people ask me yeah

What geese should I get? You get origin geese. That's it. Made in America. From the threads, from the content. That's what we say. As we all know. Made in America.

Dirt to the shirt. Dirt to the shirt. Have you said that before? Field to finish. No, I just was up there. I was just up at the factory with Pete. Oh, yeah. I caught the Facebook live.

I got it on my head on my mind. Dirt to the shirt. Is that Pete? Dirt to shirt? I think it might be just like, yeah, maybe Pete. Dirt to shirt. Might be.

Field to finish. Hands in daylight. Hands and daylight. Yeah. But yeah, make some good stuff, especially geese in America, like I said. Good. In jujitsu, you know, I have a few geese. I have a few geese.

I don't use any of them except the origin ones. Go to origin main.com. That's where you can get your ghee for jiu-jitsu. They also have rash cards, compression gear, right? And that's for jiu-jitsu, I think primarily. But you can use it for other stuff, of course. Yeah. Indeed.

big time. Also, jaco has some supplements. Good supplements. Crill oil, I was talking to kids' name is Josh from Virginia Tech at training.

He's him a couple times there. And I think he was here for a few weeks or whatever training. And so we talk about something he's young, he's 21. And he's like, oh yeah, I take fish oil. I was like, dang, that's good. And crude oil is better than fish oil.

I know this because my, I told you why I already. My boy's dad told me all the benefits, blah, blah, blah. Nonetheless, but he's taking joint supplements at 21. He said, no, I don't have problems with my joints, but I just want to maintain this joint situation as I get older. I was like, bro, you're way ahead of me, son. So I give him some of your joint warfare.

Yeah, that's good. Pete, Pete from origin, he needs joint warfare. He can feel it dissipate in the day and like when I was with with what's with him He'd be you know at five o'clock me after he took him back I hold on I'll be right back in here Takes some joint warfare So he's at like he's at the threshold. Yeah, he's at the threshold He's like that guy needs it. Yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah and that's actually it's interesting because you know you can see What's selling and what's cool is you can see joint warfare

Crill Oil like what's awesome about is it the repeat customers of people that order it Then they ordered again and then they ordered again Yeah. Because you don't order it if you're not feeling it. Yeah, that's how I am with the crude oil. Yeah. 100%. Like if you like, I'll forget and I'll be like, you know, like, oh, I'll take it later.

I don't forget. Yeah, I know. You know, you're disciplined. Don't you have a morning routine or whatever? See, and that's the thing. That's the thing. It doesn't include just wake up, boom, boom, boom. For me, medicine cabinet open.

All my stuff is right there. No. And not to go too deep into my routine. But during the week, it's, you know, you know, wake up and then there's like, my daughter's four and a half, she has school. So there's that situation going on. This does not. With my.

This does not interfere with you getting up and taking some pills before you brush your teeth. Kind of not. See, that's the thing. The routine doesn't allow for me to take them before I brush my teeth. It's part. It's the routine, it's the routine. Put it in the routine. Because for me, you got to take the pills before you brush your teeth.

Because when you brush your teeth, you got the strong mint in there and it makes the water like too cold in your teeth. Yeah. See? And I like that. I think it's more refreshing. Oh, see. Maybe I need to harden up a little bit. Maybe.

Check. Probably. Nonetheless, sometimes I forget three, four. And if you forget for like four days and you're still working out of whatever, you'll feel it. I will feel it. So same thing. Crill oil. I need it.

Yeah. I had Lief. Actually, Jenna. Jenna brought me krill oil in New York. Because I forgot. I was like, bro. That's okay. And I don't want to ask for it.

Level seven panic mode. I forgot my krill oil. bring me some. Yeah. You know, I don't want to do that, but probably it was important. Yeah.

Level seven panic mode. Yeah. Nonetheless, krill oil, back to krill oil, jocryl oil, super cruel oil. It's a super, it's super,

it's not normal krill. It's not normal krill. It's super. And there's many reasons for that. You can find out on the website or jameen.com if you want to know those exact reasons. Also joint warfare,

that's for your joints. Maintain your body structure while you're working out. Good call. Because it does, um, dissipate. I didn't want to use the word dissipate, but what do you call?

Degenerate, degenerate. Sure. After time. When you go hard in the paint, it does. Unless, like I said, they got compression gear, geese, rash guards, other stuff, hoodies, which may or may not be the most comfortable hoodies and pants. By the way, the sweatpants. Joggers, yeah.

So the other day I'm like, okay, I'm exporting some special effect that I did. So I'm like, shoot, when you export, it's like, you can't really use that program, you know? You can explain me. It's a long story. But so I'm like, okay, I'm off my computer for, you know, it's going to take like 10 minutes, a big effect. So I lay on the couch and have the whole origin outfit on for whatever reason, just kind of happened to. I lay on the couch and I'm like, dang, I don't think I felt this comfortable in a long time. But it was everything.

And this is come. That's pretty bold statement because you are a very experienced level of comfort. I mean, comfort seeker. Yeah. And I evaluate. You evaluate various comfort levels. Levels, yes. This was high.

It could have very well been one of the highest. I get it. It was everything. It was the couch. It was the time of day. It was the fact that I usually don't lay around. When I lived with one of my seal buddies for many years, we were kind of just young, dumb, frogmen. We had this yellow couch that was like 14 feet long.

And it was not, it was like maybe five feet deep. Dang. It was like a bed. No, realistically, it was like five feet deep. When you threw the back cushions off, it was five feet deep, and it was probably 12, 12 feet long. And where was this? In our apartment. In your apartment?

It was gold. It was gold felt. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, we got it from some shop. Yeah, that's the kind you have in like a lounge or something. We paid $8 for it. We had one like that at U.H in the football lounge. Yeah.

It was like, it was the most comfortable couch. You know, you know that couch you were looking at tonight in my house? You're like, oh, that's a nice couch. This thing, that couch out there, all nice, doesn't even come close to the comfort of the old gold couch. Yeah, it's weird. That thing was the deal. Yeah, it's weird how, like, ugly, like, couches will be the most functionally comfortable. We had this one, my wife forced us to give away.

And because it was outside. It got phased out slowly. You know how you get a new couch and you're like, okay, what do we do that? Well, I'm not going to give it away. No. Because it's too comfortable. And we've had it for so long and it's like in good shape. Oh, and then we get another couch for the, you know,

for the side there. Oh, when we do this one, so it ends up outside. You know, and you can't have a couch outside. It's like, it's kind of, you know, doesn't, doesn't look good,

blah, blah, blah. Give it away. But it was the most comfortable couch. I think we actually know the new one's more comfortable. I don't know what I'm talking about. Nonetheless. Back to origin.

Go to origin, main.com. That's it. That's where you get it. And you can get the discipline there too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The discipline. Big time. The pre-workout. The pre-mission. The pre-mission. The pre-mission, yeah. To me, I take it before I work out. See, I don't.

I take it before I do jit-sue. Or I take it before I have to do a podcast. Or I take it before I have to do like a speaking event where I need to do. My brain has to be firing. Yeah. Yeah. Could you take it before bed? I mean, I know it has a little bit of caffeine, but like.

I have. And I think you can't. I don't think I'd strongly recommend it, especially if you're caffeine-sensitive like I am. I'm caffeine sensitive. If you drink nine monster energy drinks a day, you can drink whatever you want from jocco white tea because there's a lot less caffeine. Well, you figure the discipline has cognitive.

A lot of people, you know, a lot of people hit me have used jocco white tea to wean off of full strength coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Because they don't want to be on that coffee, but there's enough caffeine. They need a little something to wean off. It's like methadone, getting off heroin.

So you might want to try that. You don't have coffee breath anymore. Yeah. Because no one likes that. Yeah, it's probably not like methadone. But since the pre-workout, pre-mission has cognitive enhancers, you figure, you know, when you sleep, that's like the best part of your brain recover or best time for your brain to recover. Maybe that's a little something. I don't recommend it because, like I said, but you never know.

Could be. Could be something. I wouldn't drink it before I go to bed. Maybe when you wake up. Yeah, but I don't drink when I wake up. I'll drink, because I don't drink it for, I don't drink any kind of pre-workout. for before I work out before I lift weights before I do a Metcon. I don't.

Maybe I should. I don't know. And you're not into caffeine. One of the reasons is because I don't like have anything in my stomach when I'm working out. Yeah, but those pre-workouts is like. Yeah, I know. It's not really anything, right? It's just like water.

Like water, yeah. Yeah. Maybe I'll try it. Yeah, yeah. Tell me, report back, please. Okay. We'll do. Yes, sir.

Also, speaking and working out. I get my kettlebells from Onet. Onet.com slash joccoco. This is where you get them. kettlebells the designer one you don't have to get the designer ones I know always say the designer ones get the designer ones and I'm still saying it

oh big time so you don't have to like I want to get the normal ones get to no ones but nonetheless on it they have other cool workout stuff you want your workout to be creative I'm telling you like you know the you know the mace right you have one of those I have I do yeah you ever done like a workout with a mace yeah

I incorporate them my name for I've got two mace exercises. One of them is called, like, can I have notes in my notebook on what my workout? Sure. And I have like barbarian smash. That's the workout. No,

no, no, that's the movement. Okay, I thought you made up that way. And then one's like a battle axe swing. Sure. So,

yeah. Yeah, it's like you can do those with the mace. Yeah. And the mace is heavy though. Well, like my mace is 20 pounds. Yeah,

that's heavy for, it's heavy. It's heavy. It's heavy. Oh, yeah. And you think it's heavy 20 pounds. That's, how much the baseball bat way?

I don't know. I don't know couple pounds yeah and then you can put I saw a 16 ounce weight the other day for the end of your bat

when you're getting warmed up a mace is 20 pounds yeah it's really heavy and the to me you gotta be careful actually yeah big time

yeah you gotta be careful you don't expect that much weight on a mace with that weird because a 20 pound dumbbell you think out that's a joke but that's not even part of the workout

I don't even warm up with 20 pounds in any exercise kind of attitude and then you're like so 20 pounds so light then you pick up that mace

and you're like This is like the heaviest stick I've ever held for sure in stick for. Nonetheless, that's where you get them as other stuff too. It's really cool. So go onit.com slash jocco and check it out. Get something. Also, subscribe to the podcast, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher. Anywhere there, where they broadcast podcasts.

Broadcast, podcast. Yeah. Spotify too confirmed. Boom. Do it. Also, YouTube. If you want the video version. of this podcast

if you want to see what Jocko looks like you know you're into that kind of stuff look on YouTube also have excerpts on there actually someone emailed me and said just for the excerpts

said hey thanks for putting excerpts on there that's pretty cool that is pretty cool to be like yeah just hey this is cool so obviously it's a good thing there are excerpts on there that's a good thing

because sometimes the podcast goes a little long yeah especially this section no I think you're two hours of reading you know that's reading some random world war on two book nonetheless YouTube some value there I think if you

know you watch certain people they put it up in there you're live at some point yeah on our on our YouTube channel yeah there you go boom even more value send you an alert right I think yeah yeah if you're subscribed yeah if you allow the alert and you're subscribed yeah you can yeah it's good unless you do good way to support also jaco has a store it's called jaco store store.com. That's where you can get all the cool shirts. They're cool.

I think they're cool. All the shirts, discipline equals freedom. Get after it. There's even the shirt that Jocco wears every single day in his life. The victim image shirt.

It's available. You can get it. You can get it. Also, rash cards on there. Some cool stuff. Women's stuff on there. Hoodies, patches, hats. You know what?

I'm going to make this. commitment right now. I'm going to put something new every single. I don't know. What? You're not more committed. I'm like quasi committed. I don't know. Every month I'll put something new. Can people email you to tell you what they want? No. Actually, yes. Actually, I like that. Or maybe that email. Yeah, email through the store or Twitter or whatever. Yeah, we do. Everyone does for sure. A lot of stuff is suggestions. Actually, a lot of stuff that's already on there. Yeah, exactly right. heavier duty sweatshirts, hats. Beanie?

Beanie? You know, they're on the way. Yes. But yeah, they're in the pipe for sure, 100%. Yeah. That's a suggestion. Yeah. These are all people, suggestions from the field.

Yeah. You'll say that. Yeah. So yeah, it takes suggestions big time. I kind of, I pull the trigger on the ones that have the most suggestions. So sometimes I understand, you know, if you're like, hey, I made a suggestion and I still haven't seen it. What if I made the suggestion? You know, you're in the field too.

and I dig it, but if you're the only one, sorry, bro. Sorry. I got no pull over here. Yeah, you got a little pull. Not that much, though. Nonetheless, anyway, jococco store.com. That's the place. Also, psychological warfare.

If you don't know what that is, here's what it is. It's an album that you can buy in iTunes, Amazon music, Google Play, anywhere where you can buy MP3 downloads. It's an album that you can buy with tracks. Jocococ tracts. And this is what it's for. It's not music. It's not jococococon. was singing or playing guitar.

What else do you play? Eucolalee now. Yeah, ukulele. Yeah, the yuc. Yeah, the yuk. So Jocx's not playing that. He's speaking to you, pragmatic. He's giving us, us, pragmatic advice on why or how. I would say how to overcome certain points of weakness in our campaigns against weakness. That's what it is.

So you know, you want to skip the workout. You want to cheat on the diet or isn't you're compelled to one day because you're you're feeling, I don't know, tired. If you run into little speed bumps, your campaign, listen to this, the track for everything. Trust me. Just look at it. What if instead of somebody wanting to watch Training Day,

they want to read one of these books, where could they get them, and what's the best way to shop for them while supporting this podcast? Glad you asked. I got the solution right now. This is what I did. If you didn't know already, here's what I did. Go to jocococopodcast.com. Joccopodcast.com, not the store.

It's the podcast website. I organized all the books by episode in a section called books from the podcast. Click through there. Actually, that's a good way to support too. Takes it Amazon Prime. Get the booking like two days, boom. And it supports the podcast. Big time.

Good way to support. Whatever you like, man. Lawn mowers, duct tape. What else? Rubber duckies if you have kids. You know what else you can get on Amazon.com is you can get jocco white tea. That's true. When you get it, also order yourself some new weights because upon drinking jocco white tea, you will be able to deadlift 8,000 pounds.

Sure. Certified. Oh, you got some new weights, didn't you? Yeah, I did. All right, we'll leave it at that. It's all good. It's all good. It happens. You can also get some books, some books from, you know, that I've kind of put together.

One of them is called Way of the Warrior Kid. That book teaches kids to do the right things in their lives. Study, read, work out, eat, clean, help, others work hard. Get tons of feedback on that book because it helps kids. They relate to it. Speaking of related to it, there's a little warrior kid out there, 12 years old. The name is Aidan. He reached out to me.

Wanted he makes soap from goat milk Do you hear this story? Yes Makes soap and hear the whole story Okay, he makes soap from goat milk You know why he makes soap from goat milk? You can't do anything with goat milk in California You can't sell it to someone

Because it's not edible or whatever they have laws Laws are in place right? The regs are in place What do you do with goat milk then? He didn't know what to do with it And then he figured out I'll make soap And then he wanted to make good soap And so he said hey can I make some jocke

Caco soap and I was like yeah dude you're 12 years old get after it and he did Irish oaks ranch.com You can order yourself you can order your oh it's on the link on the website yeah from page so you can support a young or your kid 12 years old business owner So legit way I hit him Dyslin equals freedom field manual that's also about getting stronger smarter faster healthier and better The audio version of that is not on audible

It's on iTunes, Amazon, music, Google Play. It's an album with tracks, by the way. Actually, it's two albums with tracks. On top of that, we got Extreme Ownership, the book written by myself and my brother Laif Babin. It's about combat leadership. That's what it's about. And if you want to learn how to lead,

you can check out that book. Also, if your business team or your organization needs a little extra help, you can utilize our leadership consulting company called echelon front. You hear a lot of talk tonight about the rear echelon. That's why we named echelon front, front. The rear echelon are the people in the rear. The front echelon, the front echelon is the people in the front line. So that's why we named the organization echelon front.

Because there's a lot of people that talk about leadership, but they're talking about it from the rear echelon, from the back. We're talking about it from the front. Our experiences on the front lines. We solve problems, whatever problems through leadership. So that's our company. Eschalonfront's me, Laifabin, J.P. Denele, Dave Burke. You can email info at echelonfront.com or the website.

You can check it out if you want to. And finally, if you haven't heard yet the muster, Washington, D.C., May 17th and 18th, San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. We've had four of them in the past two years, actually like the last year and a half. They all sold out. This one's going to sell out too. It is a leadership conference where we drill down on how to lead. We give leadership tools, tactics, strategies that will allow you to lead and win.

Eschelon Front. That's our event. You can register for it. Extreme Ownership.com. and if you want to continue to talking with us or you have questions or if you have answers if you want to tell me a mistake that I made in the podcast tonight which I'm sure I did

or you have comments you want to make as to what we do here you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter on Instagram and on the facie bowl ha Echo is Echo Charles and I am at Joko Willink and finally,

thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for spreading the word. Thanks to those of you that make this podcast possible. The men and women of our armed services that protect our freedom and especially in this case, our right to free speech to the police,

firefighters, paramedics, and other first responders that are out there every day keeping us safe thank you and everyone else said is listening thank you for standing up and leading yourself leading yourself away from weakness and toward strength away from laziness and toward action away from comfort and towards the discipline away from catastrophe and toward victory, getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.