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

0:00:00 - Opening 0:14:55 - "Stalingrad Memories of Hell" 2:07:18 - Final Thoughts and Take-Aways 2:21:42 - Support: JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission http://originmaine.com/origin-labs/jocko/, THE MUSTER 005 in DC http://www.extremeownership.com/washington-dc-005. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi http://www.originmaine.com, withJocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com, Onnit Fitness stuff, http://www.onnit.com/jocko and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. http://amzn.to/2szgaEj 2:41:22 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 109 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  1 September 1942, the army in the field.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  Comrade fighters, commanders and political workers, heroic defenders of Stalingrad.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  The enemy must and will be smashed on the approaches to Stalingrad.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  Forward against the enemy, up into the unremitting battle comrades for Stalingrad, for our great country, death to the German invader.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  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 Fuhrer, since receipt of your radio message of evening 2211, events have come thick and

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  Unavoidable sequel 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 materiel, but the majority of the valuable combatants and at least a part of the materiel will be preserved. I retain full responsibility for this message, even if I add that commanding generals Heitz, Strecker, Hube, Jacknell, Von Seidelitz all share this evaluation of the situation. Based on the situation, I again request freedom of action. Hile, my Fuhrer. Signed, Paulus."

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  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, Kotluban, Hill 137, Hill 135, Maronovka, Zebenko, 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 Sixth Army and its commander in chief, and I am sure it will do its duty." Signed Adolf Hitler.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  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, Hermann Goring, who is the Nazi Reichs marshal of the entire German Reich, so he's the senior military man of the entire German army from 1940 until the end of the war. And even though Stalingrad had not fallen yet,

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  he gave this speech about their sacrifice of these German soldiers. And he gave it, and it was obviously heard on the radio, etc. 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."

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  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, 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.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Back to the document, every German soldier would come to pronounce the word Stalingrad with holy awe and remember that it was there that Ger- Germany set the seal of final victory, because people that fought like that must win.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  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 its stand at Stalingrad has been necessary or not. The law had ordered them to do so. So here he's saying, don't question, don't question the sacrifice of 250,000 men. Don't question it.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  In hours, when some people perhaps tried to install morbid and sly thoughts into your brains, then we must always look at the Fuhrer, 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.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  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 Nibelunges." They too stood in a hall of fire, and fire quenching their thirst with their own blood,

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  Leonides stood with 300 Spartans, from a tribe known for its bravery and boldness.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 11:00Jocko Willink?

  And then the last man fell. And in this bottleneck, there is a sentence.

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  Wanderer. If you come to Sparta, report that you had seen us lying here as the law commanded.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  And as I said, those were the words of Herman Göring, who was the senior officer of the German military at that time. And those were his words.

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  And of course, his words were lies.

• 12:18Jocko Willink?

  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 1,500 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.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  And they also served in a nation that lacked the moral high ground.

• 12:53Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 13:17Jocko Willink?

  Who, like many soldiers, were men that were fighting not for political powers or for political ideals created in an ivory tower thousands of miles away from them, but for the ideals of a soldier himself.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  And one of those men was named Joakim Wieder. He was an intelligence officer in the 8th Corps of the German 6th 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.

• 14:38Jocko Willink?

  As they were abandoned by their leaders, as they were abandoned by life, and as they were abandoned by hope itself.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  Let's go to the book.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is Joakim Weider.

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  And the book is called Stalingrad Memories of Hell.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  "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 sixth army into an iron vise.

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  Within three days, the encircling ring was closed at Kalach on the Dan and on the Don 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."

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 16:34Jocko Willink?

  "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 in Napoleon in 1812, and they're doing it again here."

• 16:59Jocko Willink?

  And he backed the book, taken as a whole, this was a masterpiece of general staff thinking. Today, I am convinced that those withdrawals of Russian forces during the summer of 1942 were an outstanding enactment of traditional war, Russian war tactics. So Hitler got lured in and they didn't pay attention. They didn't reflect on history. And as we all, well, 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 forces on your most important thing and then move on. Hitler gets an F on prioritize and execute.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  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 situation in the pocket. He refers to this area as the pocket. This is the pocket of Russian soldiers. Serious as 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 believed their own propaganda that they were the best soldiers and that they were the master race and that the, these Bolsheviks couldn't fight them. When you believe that, you think you can march right into Stalingrad and take it. The winter's not going to bother you.

• 18:32Jocko Willink?

  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 Volka 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 prophesied and demanded that Stalingrad be relentlessly attacked and taken.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  In presumptuous terms, he'd even sworn before God and history, never again to relinquish on this conquest, presenting it as already achieved.

• 19:24Jocko Willink?

  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 gonna leave.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  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 Fuhrer headquarters is 2,000 mile, 2,000 kilometers. It's like 1500 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 1500 miles away. The fate of more than a quarter million human beings was decided over such a distance. From there Hitler repeatedly addressed

• 20:26Jocko Willink?

  orders and appeals directly to Stalin, 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. 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 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

• 21:05Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  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 materiel. 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 gonna break out. They're assuming, "Look, we're gonna 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 gonna burn this fuel, we're gonna burn this food, we're not gonna leave anything for the Russians." Back to the book, according to the decision by Army Command, the retreat from Stalingrad

• 22:13Jocko Willink?

  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." "Oh, you're surrounded?"

• 22:55Jocko Willink?

  By the way, they're surrounded by a force of about a million Russian soldiers. But, but, 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 Fuhrer headquarters had come like a stroke of lightning, forbidding the planned withdrawal of our northern front, the detachment of our forces from Stalingrad, and thereby the hope 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

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  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 to 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 is, is, has a better situational awareness than I do, I'm gonna go with their

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  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 had 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 were to succeed in decisively beating the enemy attacking from the west and the south. So, it's not just one general that's saying this. Every, but, every, there's

• 25:08Jocko Willink?

  250, 300,000 Germans there. There's a lot of senior military people. All of them are saying, "We need to leave." Hitler says no.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  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."

• 25:27Jocko Willink?

  It's arrogance. I mean, it's absolutely partially arrogance that he thinks, "No, we'll hold out."

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll still, we'll just win because we're us.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we'll just, we'll just hold it out. And I think he's being stubborn. And...

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yes, the kind where like he, he made a call kind of thing.

• 25:45Jocko Willink?

  He made a call.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  And then they're like, hey, this call's no good. We're gonna do this. He's like, no, no, I made the call.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:51Jocko Willink?

  Ego. I mean, obviously Hitler has probably one of the biggest egos of any human being ever. And here you see it.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 25:59Jocko Willink?

  In full effect.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  Even though he had left no doubt that in his view, the decision promising salvation, laying an immediate breakout. In the end, he too, this is talking about policy, in the end, he too submitted and obeyed. For him, an order 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 gonna 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, no 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.

• 26:48Jocko Willink?

  And he said, look, we can resupply these guys. Don't worry about it. Don't worry. And I, he probably said that at a time when it didn't look like they were gonna get completely surrounded. You know, oh yeah, we'll resupply them. Don't worry about them. 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 them. He also had people on the ground. He's surrounded by yes men.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Gotcha, yeah.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  So no one wants to disagree with the boss man. In this case Adolf Hitler.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  By saying, 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 toward, 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 men. And you know how he ended up surrounded by yes men? His ego. I don't want, I don't like to be told, oh, you're gonna tell me no, you're fired.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  Get someone in here that's gonna tell me that they can do what I'm saying.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  And then that person's gonna get promoted. And then you get surrounded by people that wanna get promoted.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, check.

• 28:01Jocko Willink?

  Proceeding on.

• 28:04Jocko Willink?

  There was one general that really made it made a significant effort. Here we go back to the book. Initially, General von Seidelitz was dumbfounded. Stunned, he accepted the order, but in his heart, he rejected it, particularly since he was painfully aware that his own were hands were tied. Not until the following day, 25 November, 1942, did General von Seidelitz 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.

• 28:47Jocko Willink?

  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, 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 gonna, I'm gonna get all the information, I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a, a bulletproof argument. And my boss is going to agree with because you can't, 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, I'll say, okay, well, you know what? He could be right.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  So you know what? I'm gonna try and execute to my best of my ability. In this case, Seidelitz 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 emotional, that's what's beautiful about it. Not an emotional way. How 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 this echo. You're just emotional, buddy. You just need to calm down. Carry out the orders. So he didn't, he, he played the role or he, he used the strategy of just calm. This is what's going on. This is what needs to change.

• 30:18Jocko Willink?

  Or this is what we need to do. And if we don't, it's gonna be catastrophic.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, in the emergency situation intensified by the OKH and OKH is Oberkommando der Erste, which is the supreme high command of the German army. General von Seidlitz demanded from the commander in chief of the army that he act immediately against orders, in other words, against Hitler. So, so Seidlitz, when Seidlitz 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.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  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 nominally 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.

• 32:00Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 32:22Jocko Willink?

  As always, you have fought bravely and tenaciously up to the moment the enemy had you by the neck.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  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, hey, I'm gonna send help from the outside. Don't worry about it. You stay put. Finally, mention was made of the relief operation to which Hitler had personally committed himself.

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  Psychologically clever and calculating, the appeal ended with the encouraging words promising consolation and salvation. Hold on, the Führer 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.

• 33:31Jocko Willink?

  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 gonna, the way that they're gonna get saved is by someone else coming behind them to help them, going through the same hardships that they barely got there. So, their, their, 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.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  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, or as they pushed into Russia, and now they're waiting for another one. But these soldiers had been fighting for two straight years. Hard fighting.

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, naturally, the troops were not in a position to appreciate the full extent of the suffering and depravations 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 gonna bring me bullets, they're gonna bring me food. He realizes, because he sees what's actually happening, that that's gonna be a real problem. They had no inkling of the countless worries that lay so heavily and depressingly on the higher staffs. Nor, at first, were they aware that that at one stroke, the encirclement had made it impossible

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  to complete preparations for winter positions. Out there in the supply depots of the army lay tens of thousands of fur coats, warm stockings, 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 to the book, we calculated that our own army, whose total strength before the encirclement had been about 330,000 men, now numbered about 280,000.

• 35:58Jocko Willink?

  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 Sixth Army on the Volga and throw it to the wolves. So these guys are, even I said that, even though I said they weren't hopeful, they're also thinking, there's no way that Hitler's gonna 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 devilish situation. There were even starry-eyed dreamers, not however, among the older and more experienced, who maintained that the Führer would not only get us out, but had probably already conceived

• 36:42Jocko Willink?

  a plan to turn our apparent defeat into a glorious triumph by encircling all the enemy's armies that are surrounding us.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  None of these dreamers and believers in miracles who kept this, 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 Wiesma, on, in the Caucasus, in Crete, and in North Africa.

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  So again, this guy's fighting fronts all over the place.

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  And the, 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.

• 37:29Jocko Willink?

  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, 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.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Later reducing this to 500 tons per day. The JU-52 cargo aircraft had about a two-ton load. The want, the HE-111 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 did 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.

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  Purely and simply, this meant a daily deficit of 10,000 kilograms of bread and a fatal undersupply of desperately needed fuel and ammunition. So we're getting a one-fifth of what they need now. We have to be careful because that's a little statistic that we're throwing out there. Right? Like, oh, we're getting one-fifth of what we need. But now think of a human being and 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.

• 39:03Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're talking about.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  You need, and, and by the way, you're fighting and you're gonna, you're being attacked. So you need.

• 39:12Jocko Willink?

  Thousand bullets a day. Right? You need a thousand bullets a day. You're getting 120 bullets. It's, it's there. Things are not looking good.

• 39:26Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The sun set soon after lunch. And by 1400 to 1500 hours, it was already dark. So this is now we're talking Russian winter. By two or three o'clock in the afternoon, it's dark.

• 39:40Jocko Willink?

  And every day, this too reminded us to depressingly. Here in the desolation of the snow, 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 Rochaka Valley. The men of our divisions lay in desperate battle, demanding bloody sacrifice.

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  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. 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, they're being. Attacked and killed by the Russians.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  With no ammo.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  With no ammo.

• 40:52Jocko Willink?

  One day in the second week of December. The staffs first heard the news that the army group dawn under Field Marshal Van Mainstein, Von 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. Mainstein, 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 sacrifices to date had not been in vain after all. Salvation was now beckoning.

• 41:34Jocko Willink?

  What the Fuhrer had promised, he was bound to deliver. So they get word. Van Steins coming. This is, this is good. If everything went well, they thought. The hour of all relief could just coincide with Christmas.

• 41:54Jocko Willink?

  The motorized groups and strong tank units being led by Colonel General Hoff, elements of which had been brought in from France in great haste, had begun their relief offensive. Hoff's spearhead tanks were only 50 kilometers away. "Hold on, we're coming", said one of the encouraging radio messages which spread like wire fire 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 them, "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?

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  Even inside your head, you celebrate something a little bit before you should. Don't ever do that. Am I superstitious because I believe that way?

• 42:45Speaker 01

  If you think that that's how it truly works, but...

• 42:50Jocko Willink?

  I think I'm, I think it's superstitious, but I also think there's some psychology behind it.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think so too. Yeah, where especially if you realize, if you just realize, oh, I just celebrated early right there. So it's kind of makes you uneasy or something like that.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  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. "Don't worry, we're coming." It's a glorious thing to be able to say.

• 43:19Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 43:28Jocko Willink?

  Fight harder when you go fast. Don't worry about where we are.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, finish strong, right?

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Kind of thing. It's like the guy who's running the touchdown, right? He's right, he's the thirty yard line, right? The twenty five, he puts the hand up. Who was that? There's like a classic one. And the guy creeps up behind him. Boom. You know what? This guy was named Leon Lett. He played for the, I want to say Dallas Cowboys. He was like a, like a deep defensive.

• 43:54Jocko Willink?

  Around what year?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Uh, I want to say nineties, maybe.

• 43:56Jocko Willink?

  How many other Dallas Cowboy players can you remember the name of from the nineties?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Um.

• 44:02Jocko Willink?

  Can you remember a lot of them?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Like a handful.

• 44:04Jocko Willink?

  Just let.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  The quarter, Leon, one. He's infamous, that's why for this. I mean, poor guy, you know, he, he's a defensive like line man or something. Recovers a fumble, runs it in for the touchdown and he's, he's doing, he's not even putting it above his head. He's putting it on the side, kind of like celebrating. It's home and I think they stripped him and recovered it, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it was bad.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  Psychologically, you can't stop.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  You gotta finish strong.

• 44:30Jocko Willink?

  Easy money.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  You gotta finish, sprint through the finish line, or that like races like a hundred meter dash, you know, the guy's like, or the two hundred meter and he's like, yeah, I want it. Then the guy, you know, the guy, the real hungry guy gets it, you know, right at the end.

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  So that's Hoff. Hoff takes the easy money.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Dang, can't be doing it, Hoff.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. In the sure knowledge that before us was the last chance for our salvation, we feverishly awaited the decisive hour with a feeling of confidence. The orders we expected could not be delayed much longer.

• 44:59Jocko Willink?

  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 Don to a serious crisis for the entire army group.

• 45:22Jocko Willink?

  One of the attacks hit Colonel General Hoff, who was 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. Hoff'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

• 46:06Jocko Willink?

  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 and the Volga. That for the second time, and after the dramatic conflicts, and the conflicts that he's talking about is between him, between Hitler and the people, his 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.

• 46:50Jocko Willink?

  The German front had withdrawn a great distance away, and for the time being, there would be no new thought, 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.

• 47:24Jocko Willink?

  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 Stalingrad were to be given up, what then would happen to the growing army of wounded, sick, and exhausted men? Did the OKH intend to give up the Volga 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.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 48:49Jocko Willink?

  The well-loved Christmas carols sounded in low melancholy sadness.

• 48:58Jocko Willink?

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

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  I mean, of course, every soldier that dies is, is an epic event. In that soldier's life, obviously, in their family and everything else.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  But when you start talking about leaving 300,000 people to die for nothing, it's, it's, 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.

• 50:13Jocko Willink?

  Jangling frost lay over Stalin Grod, over the Stalin Grod 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.

• 50:39Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:46Jocko Willink?

  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 ammunition. It'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.

• 51:22Jocko Willink?

  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 possibility grew even clearer on the dark horizon, the fate of our destruction by a shattering offensive breaking over our heads.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  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, et cetera, still 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 in 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 corps, which the commander

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  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 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.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  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 to the last man and the last bullet. So there you go. Everyone's gonna fight.

• 53:56Jocko Willink?

  Cooks, supply people, you're all gonna become infantrymen now. And this clearly indicates to Weider that that means they're not going anywhere and they're gonna stay there and they're gonna fight to the last man.

• 54:10Jocko Willink?

  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 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 Fuhrer and Supreme Warlord had sent at the turn of the year. Sixth 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.

• 54:49Jocko Willink?

  They used to just doubt him. Now, now they think he's deceiving him. And again, this is not, this is no small group of people.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:58Jocko Willink?

  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. Dysentery and typhoid fever had appeared as uncanny guests and the plague of lice increased from day to day.

• 55:22Jocko Willink?

  Death danced as murderous 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 of days ago.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Common cold.

• 55:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And you think about what being sick does to you. And now this is your being sick and it doesn't matter. Like there's no mercy.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're, there's no mercy. Back to the back during, back to 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?

• 56:33Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 56:47Jocko Willink?

  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 in Stalingrad. It was signed by Colonel General of the Artillery Voronov.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  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,

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  They still got 200,000 people.

• 58:24Jocko Willink?

  And you get an offer. You get 24 hours to respond.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Basically surrender everybody.

• 58:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, everybody's gonna surrender.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:37Jocko Willink?

  And, and they weren't sure how they were gonna get treated. I mean, they were fairly confident it wasn't gonna be treated good.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  I don't know though, man. It's all the dysentery. It's not treated very good either.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  That's not treating you very good at all.

• 58:55Jocko Willink?

  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 on to the Fuhrer headquarters and asked for freedom of action for all eventualities. In immediate reply, Hitler had personally forbidden surrender, and Polis 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 truth, of truce appearing near the front lines. This instruction from army, which we received by radio, was especially revealing as to the

• 59:39Jocko Willink?

  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 irreconcilable, must be irreconcilable with the prestige of the supreme warlord." He puts that in quotes every time. 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

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  before our encirclement, he had, had he not solemnly sworn, "You may rest assured, I repeat this with full responsibility before God and history, that we shall never again leave Stalingrad, never again. For life or death, we were committed to the cheerless donstep. 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,

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  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 cat, 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, 2,000 kilometers away, and he puts in parentheses, an exclamation point.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  The OKH, together with the constantly interfering Fuhrer, Fuhrer headquarters forbade any independent withdrawal from endangered, from endangered sectors of the perimeter. An army which had to meticulously justify itself for any change in the front line caused by the pressure of 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 is 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 hole and we're going to have people behind us.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like full on kind of what you were talking about last week, maybe the week before last week. It's like, do it because I said so kind of thing. Like there's no reason, you're going to die, there's no reason to do it, no strategic reason, no tactical reason, obviously. Just do it because I said so, die, whatever.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The Army Corps, divisions and regiments obeyed, often with bitter criticism, 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.

• 1:03:18Jocko Willink?

  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 help, 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, of a prestige that a military supreme command, thousands

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  of kilometers removed, mercilessly wished to maintain, then 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

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  And this desperate withdrawal was being carried out in icy cold weather and pitiless snowstorms at 30 degrees centigrade below zero. That's negative 22.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  At thirty degrees below zero, the remnant of the regiments that had shrunk to combat groups and the suffering hordes of their shat- of other shattered units moved over the empty white steps, staggering crowds, dragging, dragging crowds of lost, lightly wounded and frost-bitten soldiers with them. How many of those that so far had been spared enemy fire succumbed there to exhaustion and overexertion, to the strains of hunger and to the cold? Innumerable men fell by the wayside and were soon mercifully covered over by the snow.

• 1:06:25Jocko Willink?

  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. They finally said, you know what? Survival. This is about survival and we're not staying here anymore. We're gonna try and get back.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Fall back.

• 1:06:53Jocko Willink?

  The psycho- the psychological ability of the troops to resist had now also been eroded.

• 1:06:59Jocko Willink?

  There could no longer be any doubt about our fate.

• 1:07:04Jocko Willink?

  After the enemy had begun his decisive attack bent on destruction and our dissolution was in full pro- 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 incred- indescribable strains of daily retreats, the situation had deteriorated catastrophically. We were lacking in food, weapons, rest, warmth, hope.

• 1:07:44Jocko Willink?

  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, Potomnyk 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,

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  Potomnyk 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.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:09:02Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  For some time already, the Russians had dictated the course of events. The date of our final end depended on their will alone.

• 1:09:53Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  Whole convoys of mostly open trucks, overloaded with their pitiable freight of freezing wounded, groaning, sick, and dying moved deeper into the pocket.

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  From the second half of January until the bitter end, the harsh suffering of the fighting soldiers continued by day and night.

• 1:11:01Jocko Willink?

  After eight evil weeks of indescribable torture and depravations, 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.

• 1:11:46Jocko Willink?

  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 hasty withdrawal that's going against orders, there's still our direction coming out. There's still people being disciplined.

• 1:12:08Jocko Willink?

  In the midst of the general suffering and dying, we helplessly watched the catastrophe and of destruction approaching us mercilessly and inexorably.

• 1:12:18Jocko Willink?

  The terrible human tragedy that was nearing its climax was finally commented commented upon by the war news broadcast at 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."

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:13:00Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  The letter was hard to write. In my ears once more rang rang the last goodbye my wife had 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.

• 1:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Now all would soon be over.

• 1:13:40Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  The general of this division had a nervous breakdown and 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.

• 1:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Then did his questions not reveal the same fear that secretly tormented all of us?

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:14:59Jocko Willink?

  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?

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  So, these guys are realizing what's coming around. What's coming around? He's realizing that the path that they went down as a country was wrong.

• 1:15:38Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. By means of destructive battle against the universal educational and cultural powers of classic antiquity, humanism, and Christianity, an 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.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Is that, is that his conclusion like during this events or?

• 1:16:18Jocko Willink?

  Yes, during these events, he's realizing what, what's happening. 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 you're talking 10 years.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  What the rise of the Nazis?

• 1:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Rise of the Nazis.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Or they're, they're, they're influencing that.

• 1:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the rise of the Nazis straight up 1933. They started now 1943. So we're 10 years and you have completely different viewpoint of the world.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  That's crazy. I mean,

• 1:16:52Jocko Willink?

  And it starts, 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. They're going against them.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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?

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  During the, during, in the time being?

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  Or are you saying right now, how much of this denial?

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. During, during.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Sure. Well, if you remember raping N. King, you remember that there was one of the nicest guys, one of the guys who made the biggest sacrifice was a, was a straight up actual Nazi. And he made massive sacrifice and took huge risks to save as many people as he could. By the way, not white people, not Aryans, but, but Chinese.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Jocko Willink?

  And here we go. And so, and these guys, war situation because they're soldiers. So now they're fighting for that evil force.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Jocko Willink?

  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 in that. And they were in a very depressed economy. So those things all kind of came to head. They'd been in their minds screwed over in World War One 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.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:18:33Jocko Willink?

  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 the deal was that Hitler's mustache, if you wanted to have a mustache during World War One, 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 si- symbol that he remembered. He remember because he was in World War One and he was wounded in World War One. And through 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

• 1:19:17Jocko Willink?

  built up and Hitler came along and was ready to let them focus on something else. And and now what what Weider is realizing here is like, yeah, he had us focus on something else. All right. And what he had us focus on wasn't good. It was evil.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  This is a crude analogy.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  You watch Training Day?

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  I have watched Training Day.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  But it's kind of the same thing when you watch because

• 1:19:47Jocko Willink?

  In what way?

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Because the new he's the trainee.

• 1:19:49Jocko Willink?

  By the way, when I see a movie, I see it like one time in an airplane and I don't pay attention to it. So I'm not 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.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Well, and this is total speculation is just what we're talking about as far as like, you know, people they're signed on, hey, I'm German, you know, it's cool. And, you know, we're all German, we're, you know, solidarity, we're German. 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.

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  So you can't you can't turn back. That's what happens in Training Day, right?

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, like he he's signed on, he's signed on and he's like, dang, he's like, I don't know about all this, but all right. Hey, I'm signed on 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.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  You start to slip. You start to slip when you don't hold the line on the little things. That's what happens.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:55Jocko Willink?

  And that's what makes leadership hard. That's what makes life hard. Is it's really easy to get tempted to go down these trails, these paths that are not what you should be doing.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Right. And you gotta kind of admit, man, it's hard because in the, in the beginning, like, you know, you're, 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 gonna do? Like make this big stink about this teeny tiny violation?

• 1:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  And then you're like, alright, then you keep going and then you'd already made that exception. And time goes on and what are you gonna do? Bring that little thing up again?

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Psychologically, what, uh, Denzel Washington? He's, he's, he doesn't introduce, he doesn't go straight to level eight violation, right? He just gives, he just gives little, little violations to move you down the path.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit of abuse there, but hey, we're fighting bad guys though. That's all good. And then like a little like, what? Well, you know, yeah, exactly right.

• 1:21:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's what, that's what Hitler did.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what Hitler started with. Like, hey, you know, we don't want to have this happening. We gotta, we gotta keep these things in check.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:02Jocko Willink?

  Look, we're gonna at least, we're gonna, we're gonna 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, you know? And it's okay. You know what? We're actually not gonna, we're gonna move them somewhere else. We're putting them in a work camp. Okay? And then you just, right, you're slowly escalating. Before you're murdering two, six million people.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:22:30Jocko Willink?

  And now you're trapped. And that's where he is right now. And he's trapped facing his death. And recognizing, 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, success, successively. It's just a little bit at a time.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Let's not make any excuses.

• 1:23:11Jocko Willink?

  But we see how it kinda 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 deepened the tragedy of cruel events in which we now would have to atone for much that we had never wanted.

• 1:23:44Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  That's, um, you know, I've heard that argument sometimes. If you, well, you're gonna kill, there's a bad regime and you're gonna go and you're gonna 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 got somebody, for them to rebel could mean death. And so they don't get, they don't rebel. And so then they end up in a bad situation. That's a tough one. Yeah, fully. But somebody asked me the other day.

• 1:24:23Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, it's along those lines. You know, some long-winded question on Twitter about what would you do if you were in a, you know, in, inside of a state that was blah, blah, you know, repressive and et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, go one word answer, rebellion. Now, would I have the mentality that I have right now? If I'd grown up in one of those repressive states? Probably not. I'd probably just wanna survive and get some more bread. Yeah. Right? I might not just be thinking, hey, there's, 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 grams of bread. No, bro, dang.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  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 Weider, that's a very accurate statement.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  "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-Observations. 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.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  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."

• 1:27:02Jocko Willink?

  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 to the cast of mind of a Langschnäck.

• 1:27:42Jocko Willink?

  Which is like, these guys were these old school 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, their secret fear by acting tough. They were ready to die for the Führer.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  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, to us but to drink the cup of suffering to the last bitter dregs. Yeah. In the meantime, something unbelievable had happened and made, quickly made the rounds. Our quartermaster, a still young general staff officer, had suddenly disappeared. His driver, who had taken him to the Gomrak airbase, had waited in vain for his return. The lieutenant colonel was missing.

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  He had silently left Stalingrad, left the Stalingrad pocket, the zone of death and destruction on his own initiative. Probably it was a mixture of nerves, fear, cowardice, and 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 they've flown out on 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.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Our quartermaster was shot outside the pocket on the spot where in his fatal weakness, he had hoped to find a door to freedom and 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.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  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 devilish 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.

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  So clearly, he's obviously not taking any ownership of this, but okay, so let me ask you this.

• 1:30:40Jocko Willink?

  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, could, if he was to say, hey, look, this is my fault, this is why this happened? Would that help him right now?

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:30:54Jocko Willink?

  You're right, it wouldn't help him. 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?

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  You're damn right it would have. He said, you know what? Hitler might not, might be telling us not to break out, guess what? Hitler's not here, we're gonna break out, I'll go get shot for defying his orders. That's fine, I'll save all of you. That's, that's where ownership would have come in. But what he said was like, we're, we're, 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.

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  So he, 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.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Is a kind of a different circumstance. Why? Because they're past the point of no return. Cause they're doomed already.

• 1:31:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Cause they don't have any, uh, you know, take responsibility and then take responsibility for the, um, fixing the mistakes. There is no fixing the mistakes anymore. That's why.

• 1:32:03Jocko Willink?

  If I was him, I would've said, hey, guys, it's not your fault that you're here. This is my fault. I should've made a maneuver. I should've stood up to the boss. I didn't. Here's what we're gonna do now to defend ourselves to the best of our ability.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Jocko Willink?

  They fought hard. They did their best. It's my fault. I should've, I should've held you guys do something different and I didn't.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  Here's what we're gonna do now. The fact that he, that these, that he wasn't taking ownership earlier.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:35Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, but he left no doubt that together we still had a task to perform, namely to, namely to fulfill our soldierly duty, 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.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  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 fury 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 arising 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

• 1:34:08Jocko Willink?

  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 fro- on frozen feet,

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  wrapped in wisps of straw and strips of blankets. Drifting along through the snowstorm, this was the wreck of the Sixth 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 and pitiful drove, 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.

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  There's a 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, uh, talking about what happened to Napoleon. And he got kinda told like, "Hey, that's not gonna 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.

• 1:36:13Jocko Willink?

  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."

• 1:36:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, repeat.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Isn't that another one of those classic lines? That's not gonna happen to us.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  I mean, it feels like, you know.

• 1:36:44Jocko Willink?

  That's a classic mistake. It's called ego. It's called lack of humility. Don't worry, that won't happen to us. It happened to Napoleon, one of the greatest, you know, military leaders of all time, but it won't happen to us because we have some cars. We got some tanks or whatever. But by the way, tanks tank fuel. Where's that fuel gonna come from?

• 1:37:04Jocko Willink?

  I mean, at least a horse can eat a piece of hay, right?

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:37:08Jocko Willink?

  You know? There, there's no Exxon station out there on the steps.

• 1:37:17Jocko Willink?

  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 in some of my limbs warned me.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  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 rubber, rubble. This was to be the end of our flight and our last quarters.

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  The army had once again addressed itself to OKH and pointing adamantly to the catastrophic situation had asked for immediate permission to surrender.

• 1:38:24Jocko Willink?

  Which might possibly prevent still complete dissolution. 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.

• 1:38:49Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine being that freezing, hungry, tortured by the enemy at your back? And you got some guy in a nice...

• 1:39:02Jocko Willink?

  Ridiculous.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  And it's one thing to be like, "Yeah, we're going to the last man, 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 gonna fight till 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.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, especially because they, they all kind of know that there's no strategic advantage to what they're doing.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  It makes it even worse.

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  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 uncomroderly conduct, theft of provisions, refusal to obey orders and open mutiny mounted.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a little late.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  "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, the rear echelon were being erased, so were the differences in rank and position."

• 1:41:02Jocko Willink?

  "In the final days' 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."

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  "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."

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  Not the picture that gets painted very often. Now, at this point, at this point, right now, in this battle, is 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 him to Leonides and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. It's just...

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  And here's what these guys thought.

• 1:42:20Jocko Willink?

  "With over-exaggerated, feverish pathos, 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 Thermopylae, 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 in 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."

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  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 hoped for reunion, the warriors of Stalingrad had finally been written off. We felt that we had heard our own funeral oration before its time.

• 1:43:33Jocko Willink?

  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 indignation 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 thrown into the most anxious fears 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

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  irresponsible mass dying ordered from on high. The pathetic propaganda of glorification was obviously intended to distract from the catastrophic consequences of a criminally amateurish leadership of war and to prevent the question of blame from even arising.

• 1:44:44Jocko Willink?

  So you pretty much see how these guys felt at the end.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  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 that we are, we are superior.

• 1:45:07Jocko Willink?

  And that the guys on 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'll give you a little indication that, that that's the wrong thought. On the 1st of 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.

• 1:45:37Jocko Willink?

  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 gonna die. Well, he didn't.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Paulus surrendered. But the unhappy Field Marshal did not set the example of heroism expected of him from the top. The German papers broadcast later, broadcast 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.

• 1:46:29Jocko Willink?

  But the truth of the matter was something quite else. We calculated that more than 15 generals and their staffs had gone into captivity from the southern and central pockets. Soon Moscow, 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 private citizen.

• 1:47:09Jocko Willink?

  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 marshalship. He was driven away in a closed car and no longer needed to see the appalling misery of his sacrificed army.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  So there's no disconnect. The troops on the ground were right. These leaders were liars, weak.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  And they had no problem

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  pursuing glory with someone else's ass, but they weren't ready to do with their own.

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:48:12Jocko Willink?

  Was this only the, so this is, this is, 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, see, Americans are rebellious by nature. Like, we don't, we don't, you know, if you, 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.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  He's, you know, here going, well, they've done all this and only now am I starting to question these things. And 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?

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  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 Stalingrad? In our and 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 suffering and dying? Was this immeasurable sacrifice really decisive for the outcome of the war? And could it serve our country and our people?

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  This is what this is, you want to know why we talk about the why all the time? There it is.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:05Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  They were winning. It's easy. Don't really need to know why. We're all going to go out there, you know? Beat this country, beat that country, roll through that country. It's pretty easy. Not getting tested.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  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

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  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 were 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.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  They were inexorably coming home to roost. The step on the Don 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 Führer headquarters and being passed on by army command.

• 1:53:16Jocko Willink?

  By this, 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.

• 1:53:39Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna say that one more time. This idea that unconditional obedience 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 orders, 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, you 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. We weren't getting those orders. You know what I mean?

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  But if we got told to do things that we didn't think we should do, we would've said, no, not doing it.

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  This was open mutiny. So they've gotten to the point now finally. Since there were no more orders from the center towards the end, many responsible commanders and unit leaders on the line acted on their own initiative and 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 who extremes, 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,

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  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

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  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

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  memory, I discovered to be logically connected links of this fatal chain. What had formerly always caused me to have nasty premonitions and apprehensions, what had 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 not thought possible.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, 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,

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  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 recognizing that his whole life had been doing something evil.

• 1:59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  In the, it's, it's pretty anticlimactic, 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 relief. In the end, the insecurity of our situation between life and death had weighed down on all of us like lead.

• 2:00:05Jocko Willink?

  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, sun, submachine 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,

• 2:00:49Jocko Willink?

  consisting of all kinds of furs, blankets, scarves, 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."

• 2:01:11Jocko Willink?

  And the Soviets kinda, the Russians kinda have their shots at them, "Fritzi, 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."

• 2:01:39Jocko Willink?

  So now they're captured and the Russians start to kinda sing and dance and, and singing old folk songs.

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  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, piteously, piteously thrown to the mercy of an unknown powers. To be dependent on the whim of the victor, constantly watched menacingly surrounded

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  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

• 2:03:15Jocko Willink?

  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...

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:04:30Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:05:20Jocko Willink?

  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."

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  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

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  that lie at rest in the distant Russian steppe, and try, today and in the future, to understand their unforgettable sacrifice.

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  The Inubrumbel, 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 grey crosses.

• 2:07:00Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:07:27Jocko Willink?

  And that

• 2:07:30Jocko Willink?

  closes out this book with

• 2:07:37Jocko Willink?

  with some

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  penetrating and admonishing words for us, because there's a lot of warnings

• 2:07:49Jocko Willink?

  in this book, warnings that

• 2:07:53Jocko Willink?

  we must pay attention to.

• 2:07:59Jocko Willink?

  And if we don't pay attention to them, then who will? The warnings, the lessons here. First of all, as a nation,

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  as a culture, we have to look at the way things fell apart in Germany.

• 2:08:17Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:08:36Jocko Willink?

  They were values that were gonna make the world a better place.

• 2:08:41Jocko Willink?

  And he uses this term, this political religion.

• 2:08:47Jocko Willink?

  That's a powerful thought.

• 2:08:50Jocko Willink?

  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 got people that aren't even listening to the counter arguments.

• 2:09:10Jocko Willink?

  And I think we have to be careful

• 2:09:16Jocko Willink?

  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

• 2:09:37Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  You gotta think about the direction that we're heading and as citizens, as people, we have to have the courage to stand up before we reach the event horizon from which there's no return.

• 2:10:08Jocko Willink?

  So now, on a smaller level, lessons from this book 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 I say that all the time.

• 2:10:29Jocko Willink?

  If we don't agree with a plan or don't agree with a tactic, you gotta question your leadership and you gotta raise your hand. But if we know that the intent of our leadership is malevolent,

• 2:10:43Jocko Willink?

  or it's gonna cause suffering, human suffering on a grand scale or on a minor scale,

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  you have to, we have to say no and do what is right, no matter the consequence.

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  No matter the consequence.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, finally, for us as individuals,

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  we gotta remember that we are in charge of our own lives.

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  We are leading our own lives. And where are you leading yourself?

• 2:11:32Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing that you know you shouldn't be doing? Why are you doing that?

• 2:11:40Jocko Willink?

  What catastrophe are you heading toward?

• 2:11:47Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:12:03Jocko Willink?

  You have to be uncomfortable.

• 2:12:08Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:12:28Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:13:04Jocko Willink?

  So do it.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  And avoid going down a path

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  that leads

• 2:13:17Jocko Willink?

  to your own personal hell.

• 2:13:21Jocko Willink?

  And instead, get on the path that leads

• 2:13:28Jocko Willink?

  to freedom.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  And I think

• 2:13:35Jocko Willink?

  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

• 2:13:48Jocko Willink?

  we can, you know, continue down the right path, doing what we know we're supposed to do. Sure, sure.

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  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?

• 2:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I did say that.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  Like on the, you see Boiler Room?

• 2:14:10Jocko Willink?

  Am I wrong?

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  No, no, you're right.

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  You've seen that?

• 2:14:13Jocko Willink?

  Boiler Room, yeah.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the guys, there's a part where he's in the, they're waiting to go to a party. Something, you know, they're, they're selling stocks, right? And they're, they're like garbage stocks or whatever.

• 2:14:23Jocko Willink?

  They're inflating them.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, yeah, all this stuff. So.

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Pumping them.

• 2:14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so they're in the car going to some party and he's like, hey, who was it? Giovanni, whatever the actors' names are. They, he's like, hey, do you ever wonder how, how we get these big commissions on these, you know, side? And he's like, that's the wrong question to ask, you know? And he's like, wait, what do you mean? He's like, he's like, just, just don't ask that question. Basics, he said, don't ask that question. He goes, don't you like the way things are going? He goes, 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?

• 2:15:02Jocko Willink?

  Good point.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. So, I mean, I guess that can apply to a lot of stuff.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's interesting that you point that out. And I think that, um, like on a personal level, right? Let's say you're doing really good. It's, then it can be tricky for people to do the right thing, too. Cause that's why we see like these, uh, 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. They make the wrong choice. And then they're on the, uh, evening news doing dumb stuff.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:15:36Jocko Willink?

  That ruins them.

• 2:15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:37Jocko Willink?

  Puts them in their own personal stall and grog, puts them in hell.

• 2:15:40Speaker 01

  You know? Yeah, even, yeah, with money too, you know? You know, like, and celebrity types and, you know, athletes who even just people, people who like get a good job or their business blows up or whatever.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I guess, yeah, I guess any, any type of winning we could look at.

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:56Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't mean you're necessarily doing the right thing.

• 2:15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:59Jocko Willink?

  Harder. My point is, and I think you're saying the same thing.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  It can be harder.

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:04Jocko Willink?

  To do the right thing when you're winning because you just think you're.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:07Jocko Willink?

  Good to go. You get arrogant.

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Let's not, let's not put brakes on this train here. Just let it all fly kind of thing.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  And then when the train kind of loses momentum, meanwhile, all those, those things that you've been ignoring, they're still there. You know, look at your empty bank account. You spent all that money. You're supposed to keep, before you made budget, or money, you were budgeting, right? You're budgeting, you're surviving, 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. Saying that's what happens sometimes. It can't happen.

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  Also pay now or pay later. I remember that one. That was a good one that you said.

• 2:16:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:45Speaker 01

  Did I say that? Yeah. Pay now or pay later. We're, I think we're talking about like working out or something.

• 2:16:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I didn't say today, though.

• 2:16:52Speaker 01

  No, no, not today.

• 2:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Pay now or pay later, for sure.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  Stuck with me. Nonetheless, support, yeah, for sure. Hundred percent. 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.

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to end up in your own personal Stalingrad.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:08Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  But I don't know why supporting would like prevent that, you know?

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, we'd be reaching pretty deep for, but nonetheless.

• 2:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Normally you don't have any aversions to reach deep. You were reaching deep today.

• 2:17:23Speaker 01

  This one is too much.

• 2:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Stalingrad, training day.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  No, those are, conceptually, they were the same thing. They were. I know the compare, it's, you know, most of these.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  World.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  Most of these like lessons, I think, I feel like they're kind of everywhere.

• 2:17:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  And, you know, you talk about these heavy wars and heavy like events. And then, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Training.

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  You know, but the, you know, the idea is still, it's the same.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  There's, I think there's people out there in various states of mind.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:17:57Jocko Willink?

  And I think that, you know, your perspective helps them maybe get, maybe see some of what I'm saying. Cause maybe I'm, I'm hitting them from the wrong angle. So.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, you're coming in from training day and movies and.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Hey, man.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, and, and come to think about it, these concepts right here today, when you're saying, you know, uh, you know, when it's going to, we'll take it 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.

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  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 Kurt Vonnegut is.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Jocko Willink?

  He's teaching some class, like he's just guest teaching in some class, which is pretty awesome. But he's talking about like there's four plot lines and they're all pretty much the same.

• 2:18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:46Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty cool.

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there were seven.

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  You're, you, you have nothing and then you get everything.

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you kind of abuse it.

• 2:18:52Jocko Willink?

  And then there's, then there's, you have nothing, you get everything, you lose everything and then you get everything back. He's just got these, it's like, I forget them all, but.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense.

• 2:19:01Jocko Willink?

  They're common, um, common storylines.

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they must be kind of, I mean, they must be right. Based on real life, like, like term, like scenarios that you go through in life.

• 2:19:11Jocko Willink?

  I think it's why there's things like comeback story, Cinderella story, comeback kid. I mean, those things really exist.

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  Underdog story.

• 2:19:18Jocko Willink?

  Underdog, yeah.

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  Triumphed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how. Nonetheless, if you're in the mood to support.

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, between your movie watching escapades, is that the correct word escapades?

• 2:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:34Jocko Willink?

  I don't recommend it. I recommend you read.

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:37Jocko Willink?

  But whatever. Training day, maybe it'll get you there.

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  Sure. That was a good one, I thought. Anyway, nonetheless. Origin made.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it weird that like Training Day is this movie that, how much does it cost to make Training Day?

• 2:19:48Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 2:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Fifty million dollars? And like you can go to the library and get Stalingrad the book.

• 2:19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  For nothing, literally nothing.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Or you can buy it, you can buy it on Amazon for, I think this book costs like a dollar.

• 2:20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's used.

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  A dollar.

• 2:20:04Jocko Willink?

  But it's just kind of a strange dichotomy there.

• 2:20:07Speaker 01

  It's interesting for sure. And you know, obviously we can go into why.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  Which one is better for you? I'm gonna go ahead and say that Stalingrad's better for you than Training Day.

• 2:20:15Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on what you get out of it, you know, you know how like.

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  People are asking me, actually, people have been asking me, how do you read to get the most out of it? Out of a book?

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  How do you?

• 2:20:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, I read it. While I'm reading it, I highlight it. Oh yeah, Jordan B Peterson. I was watching something the other day. Don't highlight anything.

• 2:20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:32Jocko Willink?

  This is the, this, I have a major disagreement with Jordan B Peterson on not highlighting. I'm a highlight and fool. But, uh, 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.

• 2:20:48Speaker 01

  That's what I do too. On the Kindle, you can choose your, um, your color of highlighter. So the yellow is general highlighting. And then the orange.

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  That's the good one. That's the good one. Nonetheless, all right. Well, how about this? We'll talk about some Jujitsu geese. Cause people ask me.

• 2:21:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  What geese should I get? You get Origin geese. That's it. Made in America, from the threads, from the cotton. That's what we say, as we all know. Made in America.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Dirt to the shirt.

• 2:21:18Speaker 01

  Dirt to the shirt. Have you said that before?

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  Field to finish. No, I just was up there. I was just up at the factory with Pete.

• 2:21:23Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I caught the Facebook live.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  I got it on my head, on my mind.

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  Dirt to the shirt. Is that Pete's line? Dirt to shirt?

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  I think it might be just like, yeah, it might be Pete. Dirt to shirt.

• 2:21:32Speaker 01

  Might be.

• 2:21:33Jocko Willink?

  Field to finish.

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Hands in daylight.

• 2:21:35Jocko Willink?

  Hands in daylight.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. But yeah, make some good stuff, especially geese. Made in America, like I said, um, good.

• 2:21:45Speaker 01

  In Jiu Jitsu, you know, I have a few gees. I have a few gees. I don't use any of them except the Origin ones. Go to originmaine.com. That's where you can get your gi 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.

• 2:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, indeed.

• 2:22:07Speaker 01

  Big 10. Also, Jocko has some supplements. Good supplements. Krill oil, I was talking to, kid's name is Josh, from Virginia Tech at training. Seen him a couple of times there. And I think he was here for, you know, a few weeks or whatever training. And, you know, 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 krill oil is better than fish oil. I know this because my, I told you why already. My wife'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.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  I was like, bro, you're way ahead of me, son. So I give him some of your joint warfare.

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's good. Pete, Pete from Origin, he, he, he needs joint warfare. He can feel it dissipate in the day. And like when I was, was, was, was with him, he'd be, you know, at five o'clock in the afternoon. He's like, hold on, I'll be right back. I'm gonna go take some joint warfare.

• 2:23:17Speaker 01

  So he's at like, he's at the threshold.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's at the threshold. He's like, that guy needs it.

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  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, krill oil, like what's awesome about it is the repeat customers of people that order it. Then they order it again, and then they order it again.

• 2:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause you don't order it if you're not feeling it.

• 2:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm, that's how I am with the krill oil. Yeah. A hundred percent. Like if you, like, I'll forget and I'll be like, you know, like, oh, I'll take it later.

• 2:23:46Jocko Willink?

  I don't forget.

• 2:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. You know, you're, you're disciplined.

• 2:23:49Jocko Willink?

  Don't you have, don't you have a morning routine or whatever?

• 2:23:52Speaker 01

  See, and that's the thing. That's the thing.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't include just wake up, boom, boom, boom. For me, medicine cabinet open. My, all my stuff is right there.

• 2:23:59Speaker 01

  No, and not to go too, too deep into my routine, but during the week, it's, 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.

• 2:24:10Jocko Willink?

  This does not, this does not. Interfere with you getting up and taking some pills for before you brush your teeth.

• 2:24:17Speaker 01

  Kind of not see, that's the thing. The routine doesn't allow for me to take them before I brush.

• 2:24:22Jocko Willink?

  Why not?

• 2:24:22Speaker 01

  It's part, it's the routine, man. It's the routine.

• 2:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Put it in the routine because for me, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta take the pills before you brush your teeth. Cause when you brush your teeth, you got the strong mint in there and it makes the water like too cold in your teeth.

• 2:24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, and I like that. I think it's more refreshing.

• 2:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, see, maybe I need to harden up a little bit.

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:24:40Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 2:24:41Speaker 01

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

• 2:24:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  I had Leif, actually, actually Jenna, Jenna brought me krill oil in New York. Cause I forgot my, and I was like, bro, that's okay. And I wanted to ask for it.

• 2:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Level seven panic mode.

• 2:25:04Speaker 01

  Forgot my krill oil, bring me some. Like, you know, I don't want to do that, but probably it was important.

• 2:25:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Level seven panic mode.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  Yep. Nonetheless, krill oil, back to krill oil, Jacquez krill oil, super krill oil. It's a super, it's super krill. It's not normal krill, it's super. And there's many reasons for that. You can find out on the website or jamain.com if you want to know those exact reasons. Also joint warfare, that's for your joints. Maintain your, your body structure while you're working out.

• 2:25:30Jocko Willink?

  Good call.

• 2:25:32Speaker 01

  Cause it does, um, dissipate. I didn't want to use the word dissipate, but what do you call it? Degenerate, degenerate.

• 2:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Sure.

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  After time, when you, when you go hard in the paint.

• 2:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:25:43Speaker 01

  It does. Nonetheless, like I said, they got compression gear, gi's, rash guards, all this stuff, hoodies, which may or may not be the most comfortable hoodies and pants, by the way, the sweatpants.

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Joggers apparently.

• 2:25:55Speaker 01

  Joggers, yeah. So the, the other day I'm like, okay, I'm exporting some special effect that I did. So I'm like, shoot, when, when you export, it's like.

• 2:26:04Speaker 01

  You can't really use that program, you know, you can't explain me. It's a long story, but so I'm like, okay, I'm off my computer for, you know, it's gonna 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 you. I lay on the couch and I'm like, dang, I don't think I've felt this comfortable in a long time, but it was everything.

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  And this is come, that's, that's pretty bold statement because you are a very experienced level of comfort.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  I mean, comfort seeker, a hundred percent. And I evaluate.

• 2:26:34Jocko Willink?

  You evaluate various comfort levels.

• 2:26:35Speaker 01

  Levels, yes.

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  This was high.

• 2:26:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:26:46Jocko Willink?

  With one of my SEAL buddies for many years, we were kind of just, just young, dumb frogmen. We had this yellow couch that was like 14 feet long and it was, it was like maybe five feet deep.

• 2:27:04Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 2:27:05Jocko Willink?

  It was like a bed. Realistically, it was like five feet deep. Was when you threw the back cushions off, it was five feet deep and it was probably 12, 12 feet long.

• 2:27:15Speaker 01

  And where was this?

• 2:27:16Jocko Willink?

  In our apartment.

• 2:27:17Speaker 01

  In your apartment?

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  It was gold. It was gold felt. We got it from some shop.

• 2:27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the kind you have in like a lounge or something.

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  We had one like that at U H in the, in the football lounge. It was like, it wasn't that awesome.

• 2:27:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, that couch you were looking at tonight in my house? You're like, 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.

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:42Jocko Willink?

  That thing was the deal.

• 2:27:44Speaker 01

  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 cause 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 there? Well, I'm not going to give it away. Cause 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, we know we do this. So, and 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. Gave it away, but it was the most comfortable couch. I think we actually now the new one's more comfortable. I don't know what I'm talking about. Nonetheless, back to origin, go to originmaine.com. That's it. That's where you get it.

• 2:28:27Jocko Willink?

  And you can get the discipline there too.

• 2:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, the discipline.

• 2:28:32Speaker 01

  Big time. The pre-workout, the pre-mission.

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  The pre-mission.

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  The pre-mission, yeah. It, it, to me, I take it before I work out.

• 2:28:40Jocko Willink?

  See, I don't. I take it before I jujitsu.

• 2:28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  Or I take it before I have to do a podcast, or I take it before I have to do, um, like a, like a speaking event, where I need to, my brain has to be firing.

• 2:28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:53Speaker 01

  Could you take it before bed? I mean, I know it has a little bit of caffeine, but like.

• 2:28:57Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  But you figure.

• 2:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Nine Monster Energy Drinks a day, you can drink whatever you want from Jocka White Tea, because there's a lot less caffeine.

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  Well, you figure the.

• 2:29:16Jocko Willink?

  Actually, a lot of people, you know, a lot of people hit me have used Jocka White Tea to wean off of full strength coffee.

• 2:29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 2:29:23Jocko Willink?

  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 know, the Jocka White Tea, you don't have coffee breath anymore.

• 2:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:36Jocko Willink?

  Because no one likes that.

• 2:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, it's really not like methadone, but since the, uh, the pre-workout, pre-mission has, uh, cognitive enhancers, you figure, you know, when you sleep, that's like the best part of your brain 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.

• 2:29:57Jocko Willink?

  I wouldn't drink it before I go to bed.

• 2:29:59Speaker 01

  Maybe when you wake up.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but I don't drink it when I wake up. I'll drink it 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.

• 2:30:12Speaker 01

  And you're not eating caffeine.

• 2:30:14Jocko Willink?

  One of the reasons is because I don't like have anything in my stomach when I'm working out.

• 2:30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but those pre-workouts is like.

• 2:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. There's not really anything, right? It's just like, it's like water.

• 2:30:21Speaker 01

  Like water, yeah.

• 2:30:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I'll, maybe I'll try it.

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Tell me, report back, please.

• 2:30:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, will do. Yes, sir.

• 2:30:28Speaker 01

  Also, speaking of working out.

• 2:30:31Speaker 01

  I get my kettlebells from Onnit, Onnit.com slash Jocko, that's where you get them. Kettlebells, the designer one, you don't have to get the designer ones. I know, I 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, you want to get the normal ones, get the normal ones. But nonetheless, Onnit, they have other cool workout stuff. You want your workout to be creative.

• 2:30:54Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, like, you know, the, you know, the mace, right?

• 2:30:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:57Speaker 01

  You have one of those?

• 2:30:58Jocko Willink?

  I have, I do.

• 2:30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. You ever done like a workout with a mace?

• 2:31:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:02Jocko Willink?

  I incorporate them. My name for, I've got two mace exercises, but one of them's called like, can I have notes in my notebook on what my workout?

• 2:31:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:31:09Jocko Willink?

  And I have like barbarian smash.

• 2:31:12Speaker 01

  That's the workout?

• 2:31:13Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, that's the movement.

• 2:31:15Speaker 01

  Oh, the movement, okay, I thought you made up that.

• 2:31:16Jocko Willink?

  And then one's like a battle axe swing.

• 2:31:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:31:19Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah.

• 2:31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  You can do those with the mace.

• 2:31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  The mace is heavy, though.

• 2:31:24Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Like, my mace is 20 pounds.

• 2:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's heavy for.

• 2:31:27Jocko Willink?

  It's heavy. Oh, yeah.

• 2:31:29Speaker 01

  And you think it's heavy, 20 pounds, that's.

• 2:31:31Jocko Willink?

  How much a baseball bat weigh?

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 2:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Couple pounds.

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:31:36Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:43Jocko Willink?

  It's really heavy.

• 2:31:44Speaker 01

  And the, to me.

• 2:31:45Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be careful, actually.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gotta be careful.

• 2:31:49Speaker 01

  Because you don't expect that much weight on a, on a mace with that weird, because a 20 pound dumbbell, you think, ah, 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 is so light. Then you pick up that mace and you're like, this is like the heaviest stick I've ever held, for sure. And stick for, nonetheless, that's where you get them. There's a lot of stuff too. It's really cool. So go Onnit.com slash Jocko and check it out. Get something. Also, subscribe to the podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher. Anywhere there, where they broadcast, uh, podcasts. Broadcast podcasts? Yeah. Spotify too, confirmed. Boom. Do it. Also YouTube, if you want the video version of this podcast.

• 2:32:35Speaker 01

  If you want to see what Jocko looks like, you know, if 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.

• 2:32:46Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty cool.

• 2:32:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Because sometimes the podcast goes a little long.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  Especially this section.

• 2:33:00Speaker 01

  No, I think your two hours of reading, you know, that's

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Reading some random world wide book.

• 2:33:06Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, YouTube, some value there, I think, if you, you know, you watch, certain people, they, they put it up in there.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna do YouTube Live at some point.

• 2:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, on our, on the YouTube.

• 2:33:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, on our YouTube channel.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. Boom. Even more value.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  Send you an alert, right?

• 2:33:21Speaker 01

  I think so. Yeah, yeah. If you're subscribed. Yeah. If you allow the alert and you're subscribed, yeah, you can.

• 2:33:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Speaker 01

  It's good. Nonetheless, YouTube, good way to support. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. jockostore.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.

• 2:33:44Speaker 01

  Get after it. There's even the shirt that Jocko wears every single day in his life, the Victory MMA 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.

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  You know what? I'm gonna make this commitment right now. I'm gonna put something new every single.

• 2:34:08Speaker 01

  I don't know. What?

• 2:34:09Jocko Willink?

  You're not more committed.

• 2:34:12Speaker 01

  I'm like quasi committed. I don't know. Every month I'll put something new.

• 2:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Can people email you to tell you what they want?

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  No. Actually, yes. Actually, I like that.

• 2:34:21Jocko Willink?

  Or hit you up on social media.

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  Email. Yeah. Email through the store or Twitter or whatever. Yeah, we do. Everyone does, for sure.

• 2:34:27Jocko Willink?

  A lot of stuff is suggestions.

• 2:34:29Speaker 01

  Actually, a lot of stuff that's already on there. Yeah, exactly. Right.

• 2:34:32Jocko Willink?

  Heavier duty sweatshirts, hats.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Beanies?

• 2:34:36Speaker 01

  Beanies, you know, they're on the way. But yeah, they're in the pipe for sure. Hundred percent.

• 2:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a suggestion.

• 2:34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is all people, suggestions from the field. They'll say that. So, yeah, it takes suggestions big time. I kind of, I, 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.

• 2:34:59Jocko Willink?

  What if I made a suggestion?

• 2:35:00Speaker 01

  You're the, you know, you're in the field too, and I dig it, but if you're the only one, sorry, bro. Sorry.

• 2:35:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got no pull over here.

• 2:35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got a little pull. Not that much, though. Nonetheless, anyway, jockostore.com, that's the place. Also, psychological warfare.

• 2:35:15Speaker 01

  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, Jocko tracks. And this is what it's for. It's not music, it's not Jocko singing or playing guitar. What else do you play?

• 2:35:36Jocko Willink?

  Ukulele now?

• 2:35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, ukulele.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  You got that uke.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, the uke. Okay. So Jocko's not playing that. He's, 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 you're compelled to one day because you're, you're feeling, I don't know, tired. If you run into little speed bumps in your campaign, listen to this, to the track for everything. Trust me. Just look at it.

• 2:36:12Jocko Willink?

  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?

• 2:36:23Speaker 01

  Glad you asked. I got the solution right now. This is what I did. If you don't know already, here's what I did. Go to JacoPodcast.com. JacoPodcast.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 to Amazon, Amazon Prime. Get the book in like two days, boom.

• 2:36:45Jocko Willink?

  And it supports the podcast.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 2:36:47Jocko Willink?

  What if you buy other things?

• 2:36:49Speaker 01

  Whatever you like, man. Lawn mowers, duct tape. What else? Rubber duckies if you have kids?

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  You know what else you can get on, uh, Amazon.com is you can get Jocko White Tea.

• 2:37:02Jocko Willink?

  When you get it, also order yourself some new weights because upon drinking Jocko White Tea, you will be able to deadlift 8,000 pounds. Certified.

• 2:37:14Speaker 01

  Oh, you got some new weights, didn't you?

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I did.

• 2:37:18Speaker 01

  All right, we'll leave it at that. It's all good. It's all good.

• 2:37:22Jocko Willink?

  It happens. You can also get some books, some books from, you know, that 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. His name is Aiden. He reached out to me, wanted, he makes soap from goat milk. Did you hear this story?

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  Makes soap.

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  I didn't hear the whole story.

• 2:38:09Jocko Willink?

  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 Jocko soap? And I was like, yeah, dude, you're 12 years old. Get after it. And he did. Irishoaksranch.com. You can order yourself, you can order yours. Oh, it's on the link on the website.

• 2:38:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:38:45Jocko Willink?

  So you can support a young warrior kid, 12 years old, business owner. So legit.

• 2:38:52Speaker 01

  Way I hit him.

• 2:38:53Jocko Willink?

  Discipline 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 Leif Babbin. 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.

• 2:39:37Jocko Willink?

  You hear a lot of talk tonight about the rear echelon? That's why we named Echelon Front, Echelon Front. The rear echelon are the people in the rear. Echelon, the front echelon is the people in the front lines. 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.

• 2:40:03Jocko Willink?

  We solve problems, whatever problems, through leadership. So that's our company, Echelon Front. It's me, Leif Babbin, JP Donnell, Dave Burke. You can email [email protected] or the website, you can check it out if you want to. And finally, if you haven't heard yet, the muster. Washington DC, 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.

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:40:50Jocko Willink?

  That will allow you to lead and win. Echelon Front, that's our event. You can register for it. Extremeownership.com. And if you want to continue to talking with us, or you have questions, or if you have answers.

• 2:41:09Jocko Willink?

  If you want to tell me a mistake that I made in the podcast tonight, which I'm sure I did.

• 2:41:15Jocko Willink?

  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 Facebook. Echo is Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And finally, thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for spreading the word.

• 2:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to those of you that make this podcast possible.

• 2:41:46Jocko Willink?

  The men and women of our armed services that protect

• 2:41:52Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else that is listening.

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for standing up and leading yourself. Leading yourself away from weakness and toward strength. Away from laziness and toward action.

• 2:42:29Jocko Willink?

  Away from comfort and towards the discipline.

• 2:42:35Jocko Willink?

  Away from catastrophe.

• 2:42:41Jocko Willink?

  And toward victory.

• 2:42:45Jocko Willink?

  Keep leading. And keep getting after it.

• 2:42:53Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Out.