#224 Charles de Gaulle

What I learned from reading Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [6:45] The Winston Churchill episode is #196 based on the book The Splendid and The Vile [7:07] Don’t turn your back on he who will not accept defeat. [7:54] The greatest founders in history have identified a series of ideas that are extremely important to them and they repeat these ideas over and over again. Repetition is persuasive. [12:24] De Gaulle was a voice before he was a face. [16:45] Whatever happens the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished, and it will not be extinguished. [19:15] De Gaulle spoke about the army the way Enzo Ferrari spoke of his cars. Founders #97 Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans [23:30] Nothing dented his belief in victory. [23:38] The victor is the one that wants victory most energetically. [32:17] “Henry Singleton always tries to work out the best moves and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is.” —Claude Shannon [32:51] A country (or a person, or a company) is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight. [36:19] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. [42:13] To be passive is to be defeated. [48:18] Leadership is a solitary exersize of the will. [53:23] “I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass. We are going to kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing.” —General Patton [53:45] That central is completely opposite of what the French* generals thought. [54:34] Founders #208 In The Company of Giants [59:15] The history of entrepreneurship is extremely clear about the need to be able to concentrate. [1:00:38] All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. [1:04:55] He pushed himself to the limits and he expected the same from his men. [1:05:53] All those who have done something valuable and durable have done so alone and in silence. [1:07:07] Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime by Nims Purja [1:14:31] What everyone seems to ignore is the incredible mixture of patience, of obstinate creativity, the dizzying succession of calculations, negotiations, conflicts, that we had to undertake in order to accomplish our enterprise. [1:15:19] He really believed that giving up was treason. That you deserved death for giving up. [1:20:12] Fortune cannot always be favorable to us. [1:23:01] It was from this moment in his memoirs that DeGaulle starts to talk of himself in the third person. De Gaulle appears as a figure whom the narrator of the memoir watches. [1:27:55] No question or discussion, we must go forward. Whoever stands still, falls behind. [1:30:05] I have only one aim: to deliver France. [1:41:10] The effective formula De Gaulle used was 1. Ruthlessness. 2. Brilliance. 3. Total clarity about what he wanted to achieve. [1:45:36] Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France! ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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

• 0:00David Senra?

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

• 0:45David Senra?

  in bookshops. At the most recent count, over 3,600 localities had a public space, a street, an avenue, a square, a roundabout, named after him. When an opinion poll in 2010 asked the French to rank the most important figures in their history, 44% placed De Gaulle at the top, far ahead of Napoleon in second place with 14%. Throughout his career, he was a brutally divisive figure. He was reviled and idealized, loathed and adored, in equal measure. Hatred went beyond words. De Gaulle was the target of about 30 serious assassination attempts. If the lives of the French were so passionately caught up in their relationship with De Gaulle,

• 1:27David Senra?

  it was because he was the central actor in France’s two 20th-century civil wars. The first civil war resulted from France’s defeat by Germany in 1940, when the government of Marshal Patten signed an armistice with Hitler. Refusing to accept this decision, De Gaulle departed for London to continue the battle. His act of defiance transformed him into a rebel. Over the next four years, De Gaulle claimed that he, not Patten, represented the true France. He returned to France in 1944, acclaimed as a national hero. De Gaulle challenged the way that the French thought about their history and politics. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today,

• 2:10David Senra?

  which is "De Gaulle," and it was written by Julian Jackson. And before I jump back into the book, I want to tell you why I spent so much time studying and learning about Charles de Gaulle. So this might be, outside of the episode I did where I read all of Warren Buffett's shareholder letters, this is probably the episode that took the most amount of time in preparation. So I listened to the audiobook before I read this book. Previously, I told you I listened to the audiobook. I said it was 60 hours. It's not 60 hours, it's 35 hours long. And then I read the book. The book is 800 pages long. It might be the most detailed biography I've ever read. And then I also watched, there's a movie that just came out, it's in French with English subtitles. It's called "De Gaulle," came out, I think, like, two years ago. And so I watched that movie as well. And the reason that I thought spending all this time studying Charles de Gaulle was valuable

• 2:55David Senra?

  came from just a simple quote that I read in a book about two years ago. All the way back on Founders #110, I read this book called "Distant Force." It's the closest thing we have to a biography of Henry Singleton. And the quote comes from this guy named Arthur Rock. Arthur Rock is one of the first venture capitalists. He funded companies like Intel, Apple, and Teledyne. Teledyne was the company that Henry Singleton founded. And this is what he worked, Arthur worked with some of the most gifted entrepreneurs in history, one of those being Henry Singleton. And this is what he said about Singleton. And he says, "Henry reminds me of de Gaulle. He has a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he's going to do.

• 3:40David Senra?

  Yes, he is rather aloof, operating more or less by himself and dreaming up ideas in his corner office. Let me tell you this, that corner office produced a cornucopia of ideas." And Arthur Rock's not the only famous person in the history of entrepreneurship that sang the praises of Henry Singleton. Actually, discovered who Henry Singleton was through Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Warren Buffett, not only in shareholder letters, but also in speeches, he talked about that he thought Henry Singleton, he says, "Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business. If you took the top, the 100 top business school graduates and made a composite of their triumphs, their record would not be as good as Singleton."

• 4:25David Senra?

  He went on to say that the fact that business schools didn't study Henry Singleton, he said that was a crime. And then Charlie Munger, this is a quote from Poor Charlie's Almanack. It says, "Sharing Buffett's admiration for Henry Singleton, Charlie wonders, 'Given the man's talent and record, have we learned enough from him?'" And so when you have three people that have studied entrepreneurs for multiple decades, people have dedicated their life to this, like Arthur Rock, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger, and they're telling you, "Hey, this is the guy, this is the guy you should study, you need to learn from him." And then one of those people say, "Hey, he's very similar to this other historical figure." I took that as a challenge to, "Okay, let me go and study de Gaulle, and I really want to know what Arthur Rock meant by 'he is like de Gaulle,' that Singleton is like de Gaulle." And so that is why I decided to spend all this time, why I read an 800-page biography

• 5:10David Senra?

  and did all these other things, because I think it's important. It's another reminder that I don't look at these as separate episodes. I look at founders as just one giant discussion on the history of entrepreneurship, a discussion that is already hundreds of hours long, and hopefully a discussion that will continue decades into the future. So with that, let's jump into the book. There's just a few things in the introduction I want to pull out before I get into his early life, and then from there, the book flows in a chronological order, so it's easier to follow. And so the very first thing is the fact that de Gaulle built his myth. So it says, "One of de Gaulle's greatest achievements was the myth that he constructed around himself." And that myth was launched by the radio. So just like podcasts are, I consider miraculous today, radio before it was a miracle because

• 5:54David Senra?

  it allowed you to speak directly to a gigantic audience all around the world. And in de Gaulle's case, he was broadcasting to people mainly in Europe. And so it says, "The deed that launched him in 1940," so this is after Germany defeats France, and so the singleness of purpose that Arthur Rock was describing with Henry Singleton, de Gaulle's version of that is continue fighting. He absolutely refused to accept defeat. And this absolute refusal, no matter what happens, to accept defeat is what makes him a national hero, because he looked at the government that signed an arms, the French government that had signed an arm assist with Hitler, that gave up as treasonous. And so he flees to London.

• 6:40David Senra?

  He's the only ally that really left fighting Hitler at this point is Churchill in England. I covered that back on the podcast, The Splendid and the Vile. It was a few months ago, if you want to listen to that if you haven't already. So at this point, he's in London, he has fled, and he's saying, "I am the French government because I am the only one that's not giving up." And he's got a great quote, De Gaulle's got a great quote in that movie that I watched of his. And it's describing himself, and he says, "Don't turn your back on he who will not accept defeat." So it says, "The deed that launched him in 1940 was a speech, a speech almost no one actually heard. But subsequent speeches fared better, and for millions of French people, between 1940 and 1944,

• 7:23David Senra?

  De Gaulle existed as a voice heard on the radio." And so he used the radio as a tool to build up support. It's, in fact, it was so remarkable, by the time he comes back to France after the liberation, a lot of people running up, they see this congregation of generals, and they run up to other generals, thinking, "Okay, this is who, this must be who De Gaulle is." So many of his followers didn't even know what he looked like. So this is a little bit about, something I observe over and over again in these biographies, is the fact that the greatest founders in history have identified a series of things that are extremely important to them, and then they repeat them over and over again, because they all understood that repetition is persuasive. And so this is De Gaulle talking many years into the future about this.

• 8:07David Senra?

  It says, "De Gaulle commented, 'The things that I want to be known, that I consider to be important, I think about them for a long time, I write them down, I learn them by heart. This cost me the most terrible effort. They are the only things which count in my eyes.'" And these things remained remarkably consistent throughout his whole life, this is a little bit about that. It says, "There seems to be a granite-like consistency to his personality and beliefs."

• 8:35David Senra?

  The most famous sentence he ever wrote is, "All of my life, I've had a certain idea of France." And that's another thing I need to pause. It's extremely important. It's the same thing. If you go back and look at the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, all of, a lot of these founders, they, they repeat things so much that they become, in Jeff's case, they're called Jeffisms. And they're very consistent. Their philosophy about how to build a company, what's important, what they're trying to teach everybody around them that's engaged in the same mission as they are, they repeat that over and over again, and it stays relatively consistent. De Gaulle's the same thing. And the reason, and I left that stuff on this page, is, in fact, the paperback version of the book that I'm holding in my hand, and I'm struggling to hold in my hand because it's so large,

• 9:18David Senra?

  it was reprinted as, with a completely different title. So this one just says, "De Gaulle by Julian Jackson." They, I don't know if they did this because it was more descriptive or it could sell better. You can find the same book in paperback version called "A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle." So that, that comes from his memoir. It's the very first sentence in his autobiography. It says, "All my life, I've had a certain idea of France." And this is where I want to draw another comparison to Henry Singleton, to the Steve Jobs, to these people. It's the fact that, in De Gaulle's case, he has a certain idea of France, right? We take the ideas that are in this book and we say, "I have a certain idea for my business." They are, they spend an enormous amount of

• 9:59David Senra?

  time figuring out, "What do I want my company to be?" Another way to apply this idea is to have a very certain idea of my life. What do I want my business to be? What do I want my life to be? De Gaulle thought for decades, a certain idea of France. And to him, there's nothing more important than country. I would say, he even put his country above his family or anything else. Like, he did, Arthur Rugg was dead on. He had a singleness of purpose. And that was, "France is going to survive. We are not going to accept defeat." So I think that, applying that idea to, "This is exactly what I want my business to be like, right? This is exactly what I want my life to be." And it's more important than the business

• 10:39David Senra?

  part is, what do you want your life to be? To have a certain idea of your life and to never give up on that idea. I think that's an extremely powerful idea that you learn by studying the life of Charles de Gaulle. Okay, so I want to move on. There is just, there's so many good de Gaulle quotes. This guy's unapologetically extreme. This is one that's coming from after the liberation of France, when he's, when he's actually in power. So he's saying, and this is how crazy it is. He says, "There is no moment of my life when I was not certain that one day I would be at the head of France, but things worked out in a way that I could not predict." And so the crazy thing about this is he was obsessed with this idea since he was a little boy.

• 11:23David Senra?

  His father was, was, served in the French Army. He would take him to like the battle, when he was a young kid, take him to the battlefield or the cemetery where all the soldiers that died in battles in like the Prussian War and things like that, where he'd make them read the headstones and then they would like recite passages and stuff. So almost like he was brainwashed. By the time de Gaulle's 10 years old, he decided he was going to pursue a life in the military. At the age of 15, de Gaulle writes an essay, which he projects himself forward to the year 1930. And in this vision that he's writing in the essay as a 15-year-old boy, he is a general of the French Army and he has just defeated Germany. Okay, so then the book begins, now after the introduction, talks about, hey, he's a voice before he was a face.

• 12:07David Senra?

  And really, more important than he's a voice, he's an idea. He was an idea that France was not doomed. So let's go into his, his first speech and the one he's most well-known for, even though not that many people heard it. So it became almost like a legend, like a meme, I guess is the way to think about it in today's terms, right? "De Gaulle was a voice before he was a face. He entered history through a short BBC broadcast from London on the evening of 18 June 1940. Six weeks earlier, the German army had launched its assault on France. The French were overwhelmed with extraordinary rapidity. And on 17th of June, the head of the French government, Marcel, Marcel Patten." Okay, another thing. So, highly recommend the audiobook, if you do want to be reading the book, because they

• 12:49David Senra?

  have this great, the, the voice on the audiobook has just these great pronunciations. I have no idea, like I can't even, I can't even pronounce English words, much less, I'm not going to, I have no idea if I'm butchering, I know I'm butchering these names, so just bear with me, these, these French names. But the reason I recommend the audiobook so much is because it's just, it's, I think French is like a beautiful language, even though I don't understand it, it just sounds beautiful to me. And the, the narrator on the audiobook just did a fantastic job. So it says, "Patten," that's who I'm going to call him. And he's actually a really important person. This was actually the crazy thing is this was de Gaulle's mentor. De Gaulle ghost wrote books for him. They wind up being enemies.

• 13:32David Senra?

  In fact, this guy sentences de Gaulle to death when he, when he leaves France to for England. And then, once the Allies overtake the Germans and they, they, they take back control of Paris, Platon is then sentenced to death. And then when, uh, um, when, and he's like 89 years old. He might be 90 years old at the time. It's, it's remarkable. And then de Gaulle commutes his sentence, but they wind up having a very close relationship. And then they have this fracture and this, they become bitter enemies. So it says, uh, Platon announced on French radio that he would be suing for an armistice with Germany. De Gaulle's speech the next day was a challenge to Platon's defeatism. Remember, this is, this, I just love the idea of what, what de Gaulle said. Don't turn your back on he who will not accept defeat.

• 14:17David Senra?

  So this is what de Gaulle said. I'm just going to pull out some highlights from his speech here. This government alleging that our armies are defeated had made contact with the enemy to end the fighting. Certainly, we have been overwhelmed by the mechanized forces of the enemy on the ground and in the air. Infinitely more than their number, it was the tanks, the airplanes and the tactics of the Germans who forced us into retreat. It was the tanks, the airplanes, the tactics of the Germans that took our leaders by surprise to the point of bringing them to where they are today. I want to pause here. That sentence is extremely important because for 10 years before the war, de Gaulle is writing, he's giving speeches, he's, he's building relationships with different people in France. He's talking about, we need to mechanize our forces.

• 14:58David Senra?

  He wrote a book and they wind up finding Hitler had de Gaulle's book and had notations and notes. And so he almost used it like a blueprint. De Gaulle, what's so remarkable, I mean, there's a million things that's remarkable about this guy, but so remarkable is he has receipts. For a decade before this happened, he was warning you, if you do not update your army, if you don't start, start embracing the strength needed for a military, we are going to get run over by Germany. He called this shot a decade before. So this is what he's talking about. The tanks, he talks about, he was a, uh, he saw, he, he serves, he went from getting injured. He went from getting shot twice in World War I, actually. But he's like, hey, war has changed and we have not updated our strategies. We're still fighting the last war.

• 15:42David Senra?

  And if we don't update our ideals, we're going to lose the next war. And the next war was inevitable in his, in his view. And he wound up being right about that. So it says, "But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is the defeat definitive? No. I tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that conquered us can one day bring us victory." He goes on. "Despite all of our mistakes, all of our failures to catch up, all of our sufferings, there are in the world all the means necessary one day to overcome our enemies. The destiny of the world is at stake." He always talks like this, like he was on a mission. He is, you go back to that, that, um, that, that, that mental model that Jeff Bezos taught us a long time ago. He's like, "Listen, when you're recruiting people to your company, you don't, you want

• 16:27David Senra?

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

• 17:00David Senra?

  Okay, so we're going to jump into its early life way before World War II. This is, um, one of the most, I would say probably the most influential person on the life of Charles de Gaulle was his father. Uh, so this is what he wrote about his father in his autobiography. "My father was a man of thought, culture, tradition. He was imbued with a sense of the dignity of France. He made me discover its history. Later in life, when asked to name the person who most influenced him, he would always mention his father." And now he's talking about, uh, his early life. "In this family, intellectual work was all that counted. Henri passed on to his son a reverence for writers and the life of the mind."

• 17:40David Senra?

  Okay, so at this point in the story, de Gaulle's about 18 years old. I already said by the time he was 10, "Hey, I'm gonna dedicate my life to the military." He says his only fascination was with war, the last war and the next one. So he goes to this military academy, it's called like Saint-Sir, I'm most likely pronouncing it incorrectly, so it says he graduated from there in the summer of 1912. "We have no evidence that he stood out in any way except for his height." So that's another thing that he's well-known for, and if you look at pictures of him on like Google Images, he's like a foot taller than everybody else, so he was 6'5". At the time, the average height in France for a man was 5'3", so they call him like a giant. They called him the giant asparagus or something was his nickname, something to do with asparagus and that relates to his height.

• 18:24David Senra?

  "There was many other odd features." Okay, so this talks about his physical appearance being odd. He's a very odd person in general, just like Singleton. "There were many other features of his physical, odd features of his physical appearance. His small head, his heavily hooded eyes, his long neck, and his lack of chin. Although de Gaulle was not prone to intimate self-revelations, he made occasional comments which hint that the icy reserve he projected was rooted in a certain physical awkwardness about his appearance. 'I did not have a physique that pleases,' he wrote." So he graduates, he elects to join the infantry, and this is what he writes about that. "When I joined the army, it was one of the greatest things in the world. Under the criticisms and insults that had been hurled at it, it waited with serenity

• 19:09David Senra?

  and even muted hope for the days when everything would depend on it." So the note I left myself on this page is, "De Gaulle talks about the army the way Enzo Ferrari spoke of his cars." So there's a great quote from that book, Go Like Hell, I think it's like founders number 97, something like that. And it says, "Enzo Ferrari spoke of automobiles as if they were animate. Cars possess unique behaviors. They breathe through their carburetors. They were skinned with metal. When Ferrari was asked which of his cars was his favorite, he answered, 'The car which I have not yet created, and which of his victories meant the most, the one which I have not yet achieved.'" So it's like, almost like this poetic, like, they speak of these things as if they're, they're speaking to like a lover. So de Gaulle finds himself at the right place for him, at the right time and the right

• 19:51David Senra?

  place in history, because he was obsessed with war, he was obsessed with defending the glory of France and maintaining its empire. And so World War I breaks out, he's a young man, he's already in the military, and he gets shot for the first time. A war between France and Germany broke out in, on August 1914. He was a platoon commander and a lieutenant at this point, and he had about 65 men under his control. And so now he's going to describe this, he's writing about this later in the hospital after he gets shot. And so it says, "De Gaulle wrote up his impressions on that first morning while they were still fresh in his mind." And I'm pretty sure he got shot the very first day. "The first shots of the campaign, what impression did this make on me? Why not admit it? Two seconds of physical emotion, a knotted throat, and that was all.

• 20:35David Senra?

  I could even say that a feeling of satisfaction..." Now, think about how crazy this is. You were getting, literally putting your life on the line, you, you could die in a few minutes, people around you were dying. And this is what he says, "I could even say that a feeling of satisfaction came over me. At last, we're going to get them." So he thought of Germany as France's historical enemy. And that's why when he's 15, he's writing this, this, this dream essay where I'm, you know, fast forward in 15, 20 years in my future, and I'm a general in France and I've just defeated Germany. And now he's getting a shot as a young man to, to actually fight German, to actually fight the Germans. And so, yeah, I was right. He winds up getting injured in the first 20 seconds. This is what he says about that. "I screamed out, first section forward with me." Remember, he's leading 65 people into battle.

• 21:19David Senra?

  "I rushed forward, realizing that our only chance of success was to move very fast before the enemy." It's funny that he says that now, because that, he's default aggressive, and that's one of his biggest criticisms about the French generals in World War II, is they just sat around and waited for Germany to attack, instead of taking the, the fight to them. "I was hardly covered, I hardly covered 20 meters when I felt a kind of whiplash on my knee." That's when he gets shot in the knee, "which caused me to stumble. Four other men with me were also mown down in the same instant." This other, his friend was killed outright, right next to him. "For the next half a minute, there was a terrible hail, hail of bullets around me. I could hear the bullets entering with a dull thud into the bodies of the dead. With my leg completely numb and paralyzed, I extracted myself from the bodies around me and crawled along the street underneath the same ceaseless hail of bullets.

• 22:03David Senra?

  How I was not pierced like a sieve will forever remain one of the great questions of my life." In his 20 seconds of combat, De Gaulle made two discoveries. One about himself, the other about modern warfare. And this is also going to be something that he warns people that decade before World War II begins. The first was that he was indifferent to physical danger. He was like this his entire life. He's an insane person. This was the first that he was indifferent to physical danger. Throughout his life, he would display the same bravado he had shown at this river crossing to the despair of those in charge of his security. The second lesson was summarized in one sentence where he writes, winds up writing this book.

• 22:45David Senra?

  "In the twinkling of an eye, it became clear that all the virtue in the world is powerless against firepower." And so he winds up being sent to the hospital. He was so desperate to take part in the fighting that he left the hospital before his wound was fully healed. So he heals up, goes back into war, and he's shot again. De Gaulle was wounded in this time by a hand, in the hand by a bullet. The injury became severely infected, and he was hospitalized for a second time. And then it says right after this, and this is, I think, the most important thing to know about De Gaulle, and I underline the sentence, it's said a million different ways in the book. "Nothing dented his belief in victory. Nothing dented his belief in victory. There's just no quit. There's no other option. I have a single purpose.

• 23:30David Senra?

  I'm going to win. France is going to be glorious, or I'm going to die trying." We must, and he writes about this, "We must conquer." He italicized that. "The victor is the one that wants victory most energetically. His view remained that the French could accept nothing less than the absolute and definitive victory of our forces. The peace must be dictated by us. We must harden our hearts and concentrate our energies to repel the multiple temptations that a cunning enemy is starting to offer us." And so that's, again, when I read stuff like that, I think about not just what De Gaulle's doing in this battle again in World War I, but really, it's like, let's come up with a, he came up with a certain idea of France.

• 24:12David Senra?

  Let's come up with a certain idea of our life and never give up on that. "The absolute and definitive victory of our forces. The peace must be dictated by us. We must harden our hearts and concentrate our energies. Concentrate our energies on our certain idea of our life, our business, or whatever we want out of this experience that we call life." And really, that's what I'm taking away from spending, you know, who knows, 60 hours studying De Gaulle. It's unbelievable. He heals up. He goes back into battle, okay?

• 24:40David Senra?

  Oh my goodness. Okay, then he goes back into battle. By the end of, and then the Germans are just destroying them because, and that's if you ever studied World War I, all military historians talk about, and people that actually served and fought in combat, they're like, "Listen, you put me in, like, I'll fight in any war, I don't want to fight in World War I." Because they did not update the fact that, they essentially just sent a bunch of young people to die against machine guns, which did not exist before, on this scale before that war. And so they all talk about, "That's the absolute worst, because there's no tactics, there's no strategy, it's just, okay, go over that hill, we lost 90%, let's do it again, wave after wave." And it's talked about in the book, obviously I'm gonna skip over it, but I want to bring up this point, this is when he's gonna become a prisoner of war, and this is extremely important in his life story.

• 25:23David Senra?

  "By the end of the day, his company had been almost entirely wiped out. He was believed to have been killed, and Patahn," remember, this is the guy that's gonna sign the armistice with Hitler, and before he does that, he's a mentor to de Gaulle, "Patahn signed a citation commending him for his bravery in the field, thinking he's dead. A few days later, it became known that he had been taken prisoner." And so de Gaulle tells us what happened, "I set off crawling along the trench. I had barely gone 10 meters, went down a trench perpendicular to mine, I caught sight of some Germans crouched down to avoid bullets. They spotted me at the same moment. One of them gave me a bayonet thrust that wounded me in the thigh. Another killed my," it's a French word for like, kind of like an assistant, "at point-blank range. Seconds later, a grenade

• 26:07David Senra?

  exploded literally under my nose and I lost consciousness." It's astonishing that he survived the explosion, so I want to pause here. So far in battle, right, this is the first year of battle, I think the first like six months if I'm not mistaken, he's been shot twice, bayoneted, and hit by a grenade. So, he's gonna spend the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp, he's gonna try to escape five times. But this is also the first incidence. He has this melancholic nature throughout his life, so he's in a deep, deep depression. Endlessly, he returned to inexpressible sadness caused by the humiliation of being a prisoner. "At this moment, I am gripped by a grief so bitter and so deep that I do not think

• 26:47David Senra?

  I will ever again experience anything like it, and it will only end when my life ends." So that is, if I'm not mistaken, he is 24 years old when he's saying that. So eventually, World War I ends. He's released. This is November 1918, so that would put him at, what, 28? And now it says, as he wrote on returning to France, "The great joy I share with you is mixed for me, more better than ever, with the indescribable regret at not having played a greater role." Remember, he dedicated his entire life to this, and he's like, "I'll never get another chance." "I think that for the rest of my life, whether it will be a long or short life, that regret will not leave me. Let it at least serve as a spur to think and act better."

• 27:32David Senra?

  And so now the book goes, and it covers a large part of his life rather quickly. So from, let's see, he'd be, from time he's like 29 to 42. This is all before the war's gonna break out in Europe. He's still back in the army. He's getting a lot of experience. But this goes more on the fact that he suffered depressive states intermittently throughout his entire life. Says, "When de Gaulle became famous, his aides would despair at his temperament, his volatile and unpredictable mood swings, his sudden descent into the blackest pessimism." This is something, they're gonna draw an analogy that Winston Churchill also had to deal with. Churchill called these periods of his life "the black dog."

• 28:16David Senra?

  "Like Churchill's black dog, these moments of despair became incorporated into his myth, the man of destiny surmounting the temptation to give up." This temperament is already at evidence at the end of the war. So when he's, he's writing to his mother, "I am one of the living dead. You offer to send me books. To work for what? To work, one must have an aim. What aim can I have? My career? But if I cannot return to fight before the end of the war, will I stay in the army? And what mediocre future would await me?" And really, the, the point of pulling that out is because everybody's gonna go through that experience. If you're trying to do something difficult, building a company, being one of those things, it's inevitable that you're gonna go through these periods of, you know, depression, darkness, whatever you wanna call it.

• 29:01David Senra?

  It's just you're not thinking, like, think about what he's writing there. He's gonna, he's got a, I mean, he doesn't know at this point, but he's got, you know, five decades of public life in front of him. He's gonna become one of the most important, play, play one of the most important roles in, in human history. And it's just like when you're in, I guess, reading these stories and seeing other people experience it, the benefit being, and why I think all the smartest, most productive people, smartest, most productive people to ever live, all read biographies and all continue to read biographies, is because you see this play out in other people's lives and you just realize, okay, I can take a step back and realize, I'm just not thinking clearly here. And I just need to wait for this, this feeling to pass, this, this dark period of my life

• 29:43David Senra?

  that I'm currently experiencing to pass, and then I'll be able to, to have a clearer perspective on what, like, my life is going to be and what my future's gonna be. Right now, De Gaulle does not have that. So as we, we go through this, like, next decade and a half of his life, I just wanna pull a few things here. And I'm doing a lot of this selfishly because Singleton, Henry Singleton, has, there's a lot of ideas that, that I learned from him that I'm going to apply to my work. And I think I'm gonna wind up doing another podcast on him. There's not a lot of, I've read the two books, The Outsiders and then Distant Force, that actually talk about him, but there's also material online. So it's like, maybe reread those two books, read a bunch of things that you can find online, and then combine that into a podcast. And then maybe I can tell you then, like, how the ideas I stole from him and, like,

• 30:27David Senra?

  my application of them, because again, like, I think ideas scale up and down. Like, he used it to build this giant conglomerate called Teledyne. Like, I can use some of those ideas just for founders, right? So, I, I really, a lot of my highlights is like, okay, I look at it through the viewpoint of what Arthur Rock said, like, Singleton is like, "De Gaulle, well..." This is very interesting. De Gaulle keeps himself apart from his peers. And if you listen to those two podcasts on Singleton, or if you read the two books, you realize he did the same thing. He was not like, he purposely kept himself apart from his peers because, I don't know, he never explicitly said this, but we're all, you know, we're prone to copy or to be influenced by the people around us and what we let in our mind.

• 31:10David Senra?

  And I think for Singleton, like, why he sat in his corner office alone with just his Apple II computer, like, because he wanted to come up with unique, interesting ideas, usually from like first principle thinking. And that's why Singleton's ideas were so different than most of the ideas of famous CEOs or founders at that time in history. And I think that's what gave him the difference in his thinking, gave him, you know, the, what Warren said, what Warren Buffett said, is the greatest record in American business history. So we see a little bit about this here. De Gaulle kept aloof from other French officers, so he's a French officer as well, and did not join their social outings. They found it hard to understand why he never came to the mess, meaning he ate with them, never joked.

• 31:54David Senra?

  He would speak little and ruminate, and he would be ruminating on thoughts one could only guess at. And so this idea of keeping to yourself, keeping your ideas to yourself, this was very interesting because there's a quote by Claude Shannon, the legendary creator of Information Theory, right? In that book, Disinforce, and I'm going to read it to you, I just grabbed it real quick. And he's talking about Singleton. He says, "He always tries to work out the best moves," Shannon said, "and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much, because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is." Another idea from this period in De Gaulle's life, and this is really, he's saying this 20 years before De Gaulle becomes De Gaulle, right?

• 32:39David Senra?

  He is Charles De Gaulle now, the person. He's not Charles De Gaulle, the idea, the revolutionary, the hero. But he's seeing this war that's happening between, with Poland, and he says, "The lesson he drew from Poland's victory was that a country is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight." This was a lesson which influenced his view of Francis' plight in 1940. That is happening 20 years. So that's what I always like about when you're reading these biographies, you realize that they spent an enormous amount of time having these experiences, learning from experiences, reading books, learning as much as possible because they know that these ideas are useful, they just don't know when.

• 33:23David Senra?

  And so they're exposing themselves to as many ideas as possible, and then they use an idea that they may have learned a decade or two decades previously to an opportunity they couldn't have possibly predicted. So that idea, this like, okay, I'm seeing what's happening here. A country is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight. De Gaulle winds up being the only person in the French government that never lost the will to fight. And so now he goes back and analyzes Germany's defeat in World War I. And another thing I want to pull out to you that I think De Gaulle shares with a lot of people, like some of the greatest minds in history, is he's obsessed with the importance of self-belief and morale. If you remember that book I did on Ernest Shackleton, it's called Endurance.

• 34:07David Senra?

  And he's this legendary polar explorer, and he realizes, like, as one of the greatest leaders, I think, that I've come across the least, and he says something in that book that was fascinating. He says, like, he was more, like, obviously, you could freeze to death, you're in the Arctic, for God's sake, but he says, "I fear the loss of morale, like, a low morale more than I fear the cold." And this is somebody that led multiple expeditions, life and death expeditions, and that's the takeaway he has. I think De Gaulle would agree with him. And so this is what De Gaulle's identifying. And I don't know if I've made this point clear enough, but like, De Gaulle has this like insane, extensive knowledge of history.

• 34:49David Senra?

  He's one of the most well-read people you can come across, and so he took everything he'd learned from history and would apply it to present day, which, again, I think the smartest, most productive people in the world that have ever lived do the exact same thing. So he's like, Admonishing like the the the the president of France and right before Germany overtakes. He's like, you need to be like this guy. And I look up the guy, I was like, who is he talking about? I look up and it's like, the guy had lived in like 1600s. And de Gaulle said, well, in his situation, this is what he did. And so we should copy this. And I was just like, wow, this guy's no joke. So here's de Gaulle, many years after the fact, looking back at the defeat in Germany and identifying important factors. Okay. So it says, "De Gaulle's argument centered around the importance of self-belief and morale in warfare.

• 35:33David Senra?

  He was fascinated by the fact that although the Germans still had massive military resources, their will to fight had suddenly snapped." So this is what he says, "As if by the fatal strike of a magic wand, a sort of moral stupor annihilated the warlike qualities of the German people. German troops were still in enemy territory. German factories remained intact and her fields fertile. However, she surrendered. She refused to make further sacrifices, hoping to end her suffering." And that line really hit me at the end. "She refused to make further sacrifices, hoping to end her suffering." And I think one of the greatest quotes I've come across from any of the books that I've read comes from the founder of Four Seasons, Izzy Sharp. And he's got one of the best maxims.

• 36:18David Senra?

  And he says, "Excellence is the capacity to take pain." Most people don't do that. They run, that's why everybody quits, right? Steve Jobs tells us, "Half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the unsuccessful ones is just not giving up." That's a crazy statement from the person that created the most successful consumer product of all time. Half. What separates success from failure is just not quitting. Izzy Sharp. Excellence is the capacity to take pain. If you want to end your suffering, you're not willing to take that pain anymore. And so you quit. I want to give you a little bit more insight into his personality. He's extremely disagreeable, extremely arrogant. So he's attending a military academy that trains senior army officials.

• 37:02David Senra?

  And he doesn't hide his disgust because he feels like what they're teaching is how to win a war that no longer exists. And if you think about it, he was completely correct. This is very similar to if you read Warren shareholder letters, or you hear Charlie Munger speak. They are relentless. And they're like, listen, you business school professors are destroying generations of entrepreneurs and investors because you're teaching them bumpkins. And so you could think about that, that this kind of analogy of what he's saying. He's like, I'm going to military academy. You're supposed to be training senior army officers, and what you're teaching us is BS. So it says, "What singled de Gaulle out was less of his contempt that he felt for his teachers than his refusal to disguise it." So one of these colonels that he's teaching him said, commented that de Gaulle was intelligent,

• 37:47David Senra?

  cultivated and serious, with brilliance and facility. But he spoils incontestable qualities by his excessive self-assurance and his harshness towards other people's opinions. He has an attitude of a king in exile. This remarkable sense of self-belief from the 34-year-old captain shows why de Gaulle's attitude must have seemed quite insufferable to his superiors. And what is he doing? He's systematically refuting the dogmatism of official teaching. And so his point, this is where it's also going to, okay, so I just said Munger and Buffett definitely do that over and over again, right? If you've read their words and you listen to them, you know that.

• 38:28David Senra?

  But he's also, this is where he's going to, he's going to parallel Singleton again, Henry Singleton again. And so in this case, de Gaulle is like schooling his teachers. He's like, listen, you're not even deriving the right lessons from Napoleon. So it says, there was never, he's talking about Napoleon. He has some, he definitely criticizes Napoleon quite a bit, too. But this is something that he thought Napoleon did right. There was never a single corpus or doctrine in the army of the first empire, that's Napoleon. Seizing the circumstances, adapting to them, exploiting them, that was the basis of Napoleon's conduct. So seize the circumstance, adapt to them, exploit them. That's the basis of Napoleon's contact, conduct.

• 39:11David Senra?

  This is something that de Gaulle believes his entire life. That you have to adapt to ever changing circumstances. Herb Keller, founder of Southwest Airlines, talks about this over and over again. He's like, listen, planning is orderly and logical. Reality is chaotic. Planning does not square well with realities. Herb Keller's advice to future entrepreneurs, right? And part of the reason he was able to build the only airline that was profitable for 40 straight years. That's insane. So what did Henry Singleton teach us? Often criticized for not having a business plan, just like Herb Keller was, okay? Henry replied that he knew that a lot of people running companies—remember, this is the person that had the most successful record in American business history. This is what he's telling us. And this is why he was so different from his peers at this point.

• 39:56David Senra?

  This is like, I think, the 1960s is when he sang this. Henry replied that he knew that a lot of people running companies had very definitive plans. They followed assiduously. But we are subject to a great number of outside influences on our businesses, and most of them cannot be predicted. This is still Singleton talking to us, okay? So my plan is to stay flexible, he told a Business Week reporter who was interviewing him. My only plan is to keep coming to work every day. I like to steer the boat each day rather than plan way ahead into the future. And that book I just did with Charlie Munger on Damn Right, what did he tell us? There's no master plan at Berkshire Hathaway, and there's no master planner. It's the same idea. The same idea expressed by Charles de Gaulle, by Herb Keller, by Henry Singleton, by Warren

• 40:41David Senra?

  Buffett, by Charlie Munger. That is the stuff that makes me excited. These people did not know each other in real life. They worked in different industries, different time in history, different parts of the world. And yet, some of the gifted—most gifted people that have ever lived arrived at the same conclusion. There's a bunch of quotes on leadership in this book, but I want to continue with his theme. Action—this is what, he's 34? 34 when he's writing this, if I'm not mistaken. Action must be constructed on contingency. So at this point in his life—this is 1925—this is when he's the protege of Patain, who I'm most likely mispronouncing the name, the guy I told you about over and over again. What de Gaulle ruminated later on in the career of Patain, he would invariably comment

• 41:24David Senra?

  that Marshall—I think that's his first name—was a great man who had died in 1925. What makes this remark curious is that 1925 was the year that de Gaulle started working directly for him. And so it talks about, there's two main military legends in France at this time, Patahn being one of them, this other guy named Foch, F-O-C-H, maybe, is how you pronounce that, and they each represented a different approach to war. And so Foch was the exponent of the offense, okay, and the believer in the importance of will as a key to victory. That is very much de Gaulle, okay? Patahn was known for his emphasis on the need for meticulous preparation, and he, and

• 42:06David Senra?

  de Gaulle really believed that his caution bordered on defeatism. And so de Gaulle has these great quotes, this is from this, that movie I watched, "To be passive is to be defeated." And then he, he's talking about, this is a quote, when Germany's just, in Second World War, just destroying France with great rapidity, I think is the word. He says, "The old generals never attack." He's talking about Patahn and people like this. I think one theme that, that comes up over and over again in these books is the fact that belief comes before ability. People would think it's the opposite, like you achieve something, then you, no, no, you believed you could do it way before you had the ability to do it. De Gaulle's, the way he's taught, listen to how he talks. So he's, he's writing, he's ghostwriting a book for Patahn.

• 42:50David Senra?

  He's accomplished, he's been in battle for what, 20 seconds? Not 20 seconds, but he, you know, not very long, maybe a few hours. He's been shot, shot twice, bayoneted, grenade, he spent most, the vast majority of the world, the war, in World War I, as a prisoner, right? Patahn is the most decorated French military leader that you have at this point. And listen how he talks to him. Again, this goes, he's got this unbelievable self-belief. And I think founder, the reason it's important, because founders need that, like, why is this, we keep comparing de Gaulle and Henry Singleton? Like, he had, so, he trusted, Singleton was able to trust his own judgment. He knew that he could think things through independently and come up with the best plan of action, right?

• 43:33David Senra?

  And you have to have a large degree of self-belief to do that. And just the fact that Singleton had this large degree of self-belief. Led him to take actions that resulted in this miraculous record that he had. So I think this is extremely important thing to like remind ourselves of. So it says, um, they're just like fighting over this, this book that, that they're ghostwriting. And so it says, "De Gaulle's outrage response displays a remarkable degree of self-belief." And this is what he says to the legend, the, the, the main legend of the French military at this point. "A book is a man. That man up to me, uh, up to now was me. If anyone else becomes involved in this, only two things can ensure. Either he will write another book, or he will demolish mine.

• 44:16David Senra?

  If you want to do another book, I have no objections. I will simply take my book back. But it, but if it is a matter of mauling my philosophy and my style, I oppose it." A few days later, De Gaulle compounded his insolence by writing another letter in a tone quite extraordinary for a mere captain, addressing the most venerated military figure in France. He warned Patan against changing anything in their agreement. He would not allow others to be involved in the writing of the book. So De Gaulle was very hard for people even around him that were around him for a long time to feel like they knew who he was. He did, he spoke very little, would not tell you what he was thinking. I've told you over and over again that, uh, you know, one of the great things about reading biography is like, when you get to the end, you feel like you know the person.

• 45:00David Senra?

  I don't feel like I know who De Gaulle is. I have, I know his ideas and I think his ideas are extremely intelligent and inspiring. Um, and I'm just shocked that no matter what you throw in front of this guy, he's just refusing to quit. I think that's very admirable, but I have no idea who, like, he, he was not forthcoming in who he was. There's one area of his life where it, that's different. So his third child, uh, little Anne, unfortunately was, was, uh, born with Down Syndrome. And at the time, it was very common in history, like if a child, they call it like Mongolism at this time in history, you would send the child off to, you know, some kind of like facility, hospital, you know, place that they, somebody else takes care of them. De Gaulle and his wife said, no, no, she's staying with us. In fact, she was with him

• 45:42David Senra?

  the whole time. She winds up dying when she's 20 years old in their arms. But you see the human side of De Gaulle that he hid from other people. So he talks about, "Her birth was a trial for my wife and myself, but believe me, Anne is my joy and my strength. She is the grace of God in my life." Bless his heart for saying that. After Anne's premature death, he wrote to his sister. Her soul had been liberated. The tenderness of the relationship between De Gaulle and his little daughter, the one person perhaps who was not in awe of him, shines out in a photograph of De Gaulle, sitting in a deck chair on the beach with his little girl on his knees, her fingers entwined in his. This strangely austere man, who found it so hard to express affection, would spend

• 46:27David Senra?

  hours playing with his child. Bless his heart. There's another great story in the book where, I think, like, they just had a meeting. One of the military leaders that's serving under him came back unannounced a few minutes later because they forgot his briefcase, and he walks in, and again, De Gaulle's super serious, never betrays, like, he has the greatest poker face in history, never betrays what he's thinking to anybody, and does that intentionally. And he finds, he stumbled upon De Gaulle, like, with his daughter in his arms, dancing with her and singing her a song. That was just, you just couldn't believe that side of De Gaulle ever even existed because De Gaulle refused to show that side. But this just idea I found extremely touching, like, his love and affection for his daughter.

• 47:10David Senra?

  Okay, so now we're in the 1930s, before war. He writes this book, actually, I think it was published in 19, no, it was published in 1932. It's called The Edge of the Sword. And it's amazing, because this is what I meant earlier when I said De Gaulle has receipts. And I wanted to find this book. I cannot find it. I want to say it was like 1,500 bucks. And it says, "The book is a tract on leadership." De Gaulle returns to his obsession about the perils of a priori thinking. So let's define that. That's relating to or denoting reason of our knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation of experience. Come on. That's again, Warren and Charlie right there, right? So says, it returns to his obsession about the perils of a priori thinking.

• 47:53David Senra?

  In his view, the successful leader has to combine, quote from De Gaulle, "a creative spark with a capacity for abstraction and critical intelligence. The leader also has to cultivate mystery and keep his distance while exercising a large dose of egoism, pride, and hardness." Leadership, this is a crazy quote and one of my favorite lines in the book, and he's a very, the way this guy communicates, he writes really, the way he writes is, he's got some great lines. It says, "Leadership is a solitary exercise of the will." This book is a timeless meditation on leadership and it also serves a contemporary purpose, which at this point, he was articulating De Gaulle's disillusionment with the trend

• 48:38David Senra?

  of French politics and diplomacy since the mid 1920s. So again, he's got a certain idea of France, just like Singleton had a certain idea of his business and anything that went against that. One of the last interviews Singleton gave right before he died, he was famous because he bought a lot of his stock back and he did this like 10, 15 years before other CEOs were doing it, but he says, right, maybe even longer, maybe like 20 years before that. But at the end, a lot of CEOs are doing that. And so he said, like, he was asked, like, what do you think of the fact that all of them are doing that? He's like, if everybody's doing it, it must be wrong. There's a bit of that in De Gaulle's thinking. And so he says, "The French embarked on a policy of reconciliation with Germany.

• 49:20David Senra?

  The backdrop to this policy was a public mood of pacifism." This is where they, they're not building up their army, they're not being strong. This is, De Gaulle was calling, he's like, you think this war is over? This isn't, it was, Dan Carlin, my favorite podcaster in history, he has this great series on World War II called The Ghosts of the Ostfront. And he talks about, he's like, listen, the gap between, he quotes somebody, I don't remember who it was, but you know, that 20-year gap between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II. He's like, that wasn't the end of the war, it was an intermission. And de Gaulle picked up on that too. And he says, de Gaulle believed, talking about Francis and France's policy of reconciliation, trying to placate Germany in between the two world wars.

• 50:05David Senra?

  He says, "It believed to be a fantasy contrary to the laws of history." And he says, "This war is not the last. Whatever the horrors, sacrifices, grief, tears that it was brought, that had brought it in its wake, men have not been changed by it." So what he's just saying, history doesn't repeat, human nature does. Human nature is constant. And he's going to describe, he's writing this in 1917. How crazy is this? And he's describing exactly what's going to happen. "For some years, there will be a sense of shame and fear. Then the smell of blood will fade, and everyone will sing its glories. The century-old hatreds between these two countries will revive in more extreme form, and one day peoples will hurl themselves at each other again, determined to destroy

• 50:49David Senra?

  each other, but swearing before God and mankind that they had been attacked by the other." "The edge of the sword was written to remind the French that war has always been a motor of history." This is what he says. "The war was, that war was as integral to human existence as birth and death, and part of the endless cycle of decline and renewal. De Gaulle viewed this not as a glorification of war, but as a statement of fact." And so now, this is right before, or a few years before, he's going to be proven correct. He winds up getting promoted to a battalion commander, and this is what he said about this.

• 51:29David Senra?

  "It is indeed a pleasant advance up the ranks, but the real issue is to make a mark." That's de Gaulle at 37 years old, saying, "I want to make a mark on the world." So he writes another book called Towards a Professional Army. This is the one that Hitler takes notes from. And de Gaulle, this is, he's just, de Gaulle was correct about conventional French military thinking, about what that conventional French military thinking got wrong. And he did this years before Hitler's going to exploit the weakness in their thinking, right? So the book had two central arguments. The first was that mechanization, so technology applied to modern warfare is the way to think about that, okay? Especially the invention of tanks had revolutionized warfare and rendered obsolete the central lesson that the French

• 52:14David Senra?

  High Command had taken from the experience of World War I, that firepower gave supremacy to the defender over the attacker. So that's what he talks about. He's like, the old generals never attack. They're following a playbook that no longer works. But de Gaulle argued that if tanks were deployed autonomously, their combination of speed and firepower would make it possible to wage offensive warfare without risking the terrible massacres of World War I. This is very similar to Patton's thinking. If you ever look at Patton, he's like, listen, I'm not holding anything. I don't want to hear any of my soldiers saying that I'm holding anything. Let me, I'm going to read some quotes. Patton's got, General Patton's got famous speeches, a speech given to the Third Army. It's even appeared in that, there's a movie, I think the one on Oscar, like in the 70s that he gives a speech

• 52:55David Senra?

  in. But I'm going to read you Patton's thinking on this, because he was also in favor of tanks, you know, when he was a tanker, maybe the most famous. And this is really the way that de Gaulle acts. And I think there's a lot of parallels between some early, like, some examples in entrepreneurial history. Like if you look at how Bill Gates approached Microsoft, I would say how Mark Zuckerberg approached early days of Facebook, because it's very, very similar. So this is what Patton says. "I don't want to get any messages saying I'm holding my positions. We're not holding a goddamn thing. We're advancing constantly, and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going

• 53:37David Senra?

  to kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing." And so that central idea is completely...

• 53:48David Senra?

  Opposite of what the Germans generals thought, the lessons they took from World War I, that no longer is going to apply when Germany and when World War II breaks out. It's this idea, it's like, we're not holding anything, we are advancing constantly. It's like, we're not digging trenches, we're not sitting here waiting for the enemy, we're taking the fight to them. And this super default aggressiveness that Patton and de Gaulle are advocates for, you also see in people building businesses. This hardcore, I'm going to go out and find as many customers as possible, sign up as many people as I possibly can, I'm not sitting there waiting, every day I'm on the attack. It's a very similar idea that's central to this criticism that de Gaulle is now making in this book. And this is the book that Hitler winds up taking notes on.

• 54:32David Senra?

  And I just read this book a few months ago called In the Company of Giants. And it talks about, it references Bill Gates, there's like 16 founders in that book, you can find it in archive. And 16, two MBA students in the 90s wind up interviewing 16 technology company founders. And so that's what the book's about. And one of those is Bill Gates, and the title of Bill Gates' chapter is something like, The Leader of the Panzer Division of Microsoft. And so what they're referencing there is the fact that Germany had this Panzer tank strategy, this like default aggressive, constantly movement, attack, attack, attack strategy in World War II.

• 55:12David Senra?

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

• 55:55David Senra?

  Okay, so this is what I referenced earlier where he's like, "Hey, we need more people like this guy." And I don't know how to pronounce it, it's like Louis V or something like that. And this is the guy that was alive in the 1600s. And he's like, "We need people like this now." And so, we hear, we see de Gaulle describing, basically, what I'm, like, we have to look at the traits that de Gaulle admires. And this is who, like, these are the traits that this person he studied, that was alive a couple hundred years before the events that are happening in this book. This is the traits that this guy possessed. "Disdaining theories, he was careful not to disrupt or destroy, but as a realist, he never ceased in his efforts to reform and improve." They really, you can think about the way he's describing this guy is the way he views himself.

• 56:37David Senra?

  "Though obstinate in pursuing his ends, he was capable of being flexible." There's that idea again. "An enthusiastic planner, he also knew how to bide his time. Unencumbered by scruples, he used whatever means seemed simplest and most expedient. He was severe in his judgments of men while not despising them. Clear-sighted without being skeptical. Devoid of illusions while not lacking faith. He was implacable regarding incompetence. He was distant but also approachable, ready to read reports while in the end making his own judgments. Welcoming advice but jealously keeping the final decision for himself." This is de Gaulle through and through.

• 57:21David Senra?

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

• 58:03David Senra?

  "The leader was a master towards whom people's faith and dreams are directed."

• 58:10David Senra?

  And so now we're in 1936. Hitler is already making, this is right before World War, World War II, right? And, well, let me just read this to you. Hitler's bold action in occupying the Rhineland had been a bluff since he was not yet ready to fight. But this was a bluff that the French government had been unable to call because its army was not organized in a way that would allow it to take rapid offensive action. So England at this time, just like France at this time, is being led by these weak people. This is not the Churchill and this is not the de Gaulle, okay? And I was thinking to myself on this is if only there was someone who had previously warned about the need to have an army capable of taking rapid offensive action. This is ridiculous. And then, so he's, he's meeting with this guy Blum and says, "De Gaulle's account of

• 58:55David Senra?

  the meeting would make a point about the workings of a parliamentary government." And he's really, so what he's about to describe is how distracted, there's no long periods where they can actually think and, and plan and strategize. And I, I'm gonna read this to you, but I'm gonna tell you my note before I read it to you. "The history of entrepreneurship is extremely clear about the need to be able to concentrate. And if you have a schedule like this, you can never do that." During our, this is de Gaulle talking about the meeting. "During our conversation, the telephone rang 10 times, diverting Blum's attention to minor, or minor parliamentary or administrative questions.

• 59:35David Senra?

  As I was taking my leave and the phone rang again, he made a weary gesture." You see, if, you see, if it is easy for a head of government to keep his mind on the plan, you have, you have outlined, "when he cannot remain five minutes thinking about the same idea." So that's a weird sentence, but he's basically saying, "How can I even plan in the future? I cannot remain five minutes thinking about the same idea." This is also a weird thought I had, it's like the destruction of our, like, there's a depressing stat, for me at least. It's like 98% of all books sell less than 5,000 copies. And I think I greatly overestimate how much people read.

• 1:00:18David Senra?

  Based on my own experiences and it's just like if we keep truncating or reducing our attention spans to something that could be read in like tweet size, our 15 second video, like we're doomed. We can't like, we cannot have shriveled attention spans. Like we have got to have the need to think about the same thing for an extremely long period of time. And then in this section, de Gaulle has one of the greatest quotes, "All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words." More on this, these machinations, these early machinations by Hitler and myself on this page. This guy is so on point. He just, he saw things so much more clearly than anybody else did. Hitler's demand took

• 1:01:02David Senra?

  France and Britain to the brink of war with Germany. This was averted at the last minute by the Munich Agreement, which gave Hitler most of what he wanted. De Gaulle was plunged into despair and indignation. This is what he says. "The French, like startled chickens, utter cries of joy while German troops enter triumphantly into the territory of a state that we ourselves helped to construct, whose frontiers we guaranteed and which was our ally. Step by step, we accept the habit of humiliation and retreat so that it becomes second nature." So now the war has begun with Germany and he's writing to the prime minister, the president

• 1:01:44David Senra?

  of France. He's going to wind up being in his cabinet for like 11 days before Germany overtakes France. But he just, again, more, another, they call it a prophetic letter. And so de Gaulle, right now, is just pointing out like, this is the problem with your stupid strategy where you're just waiting around. What are we doing? So actually, I'm wrong. This is after Germany invaded Poland, but before they start fighting in France.

• 1:02:13David Senra?

  And really, the way you think about this is the same thing I've repeated. Default aggressive is the path that de Gaulle wants to take here. "Our military system has been exclusively built around defense. If the enemy attacks us tomorrow, I am sure we will hold out. But if he does not attack, we are reduced to almost complete impotence. Then, when he judges that we are wary with waiting, disoriented and unhappy about our own inertia, he will launch an offensive with, from a psychological and material point of view, much better cards than he holds today." So he's like, "Go attack him now while he's weak and you can actually take him. In my humble opinion, there is nothing more urgent and necessary than to galvanize the French people instead of comforting them with absurd illusions of defensive security." And he was dead on because I think it takes Germany six weeks to take over France.

• 1:02:58David Senra?

  He's like, "You're comforting them." He, again, prophetic. "Galvanize the people now instead of comforting them with absurd illusions of defensive security." But nobody is listening to him. So he goes again. De Gaulle took the bold step in January 1940 of sending a long memo, sending out his ideas to 80 important political military figures. I'm just going to pull out a couple of highlights here for you. "The striking successes that the enemy has achieved in Poland thanks to motorized warfare will only encourage him to go further down this new road. To break this mechanical force, only mechanical force is certain to be effective," which is exactly what he wanted you to build up five years before you found yourself in this position. "The creation of an instrument of shock and speed is absolutely imperative to us.

• 1:03:41David Senra?

  The conflict which has just begun could well be the most widespread, complex and violent ever." Again, he was right about that. "And it is high time that the French drew the necessary conclusions. In sending this document, de Gaulle was appealing again to the political class above the heads of the military. As in the past, this extraordinary step got him nowhere." So he's still serving in the army at this point. And so now he gets to fight the Nazis. And so this is a description of de Gaulle fighting the Nazis. He has three battles with them. All witnesses were unanimous about his resource. Remember I said earlier that he's unapologetically extreme and a crazy person? Says, "All witnesses were unanimous about his resourcefulness, energy, and complete indifference to physical danger. Between May 15th and June 2nd, he slept only three nights." Does he take time to eat?

• 1:04:26David Senra?

  Does he, this is, uh, uh, somebody that's in his division describing this period with de Gaulle. Does he take time to eat? No one knows. Does he sleep? The cigar butts one finds in his room in the morning allow one to calculate the extremely short time, or cigarette butts, I'm sorry. Short time between the last and first cigarette. A map, a map properly set up and properly lit, a map constantly and exactly updated. That is the essence of his command post. So he's just, he doesn't sleep. He pushes, oh, I guess I'm gonna run over my own thought here. He pushed himself to the limits and he expected the same from his men. This is more of a description of this time. De Gaulle, and remember, remember what, what we know about Henry Singleton, what other people have said about him, what Claude Shannon just told us. De Gaulle is very often alone.

• 1:05:10David Senra?

  Alone when he eats, alone when he has his coffee, alone when he takes a stroll around the command post, alone when he visits the front. He heads off with a complete indifference to any danger. To study with his binoculars the position of the enemy and possibilities of an offensive. I ask, why are you always alone? And again, the way this guy communicates is just, he's, it's, it's, he almost speaks like he, like he wrote it down beforehand, right? And this is what he says. Why, his, his answer to why are you always alone? One does not speak in an operating theater or while piloting a ship. What I have to say as a leader, putting my men and my tanks into battle, requires calm and reflection.

• 1:05:52David Senra?

  All those who have done something valuable and durable have done so alone and in silence.

• 1:06:03David Senra?

  Here's another person describing his impression of de Gaulle as a commander. De Gaulle exercised a command that was independent, exclusive, authoritarian, and egocentric, based on the conviction of that his judgment was, in every case, the best. He has a lot in common with a lot of history's greatest founders. They had the conviction that their judgment was the best. He received a report without saying a word. His constant pressure, or excuse me, his constant presence on the battlefield among his men created and propagated a feeling of confidence. And so, he comes to the realization, he's like, "The Battle of France is clearly lost." Okay?

• 1:06:47David Senra?

  But his point is just like, "We're an empire. Fine, we're not giving up. This is a world war." So, since the Battle of France was clearly lost, the issue was essentially political. Would the government sign an armistice, ending hostilities, or would it leave French soil and continue the struggle from North Africa, from one of its colonies, or elsewhere? And so, for de Gaulle, there's this great documentary on Netflix. I recommend, if you haven't seen it yet. It's called 14 Peaks. I actually just ordered the autobiography. It's this guy, never climbed a mountain in his life up until 2012, decides to have this idea, it's like, "I'm gonna climb the 14 highest peaks in the world, and I'm gonna do it in like, a year," or something like that. And he's from Nepal, his name's like, Nims or something like that, but he's just got

• 1:07:31David Senra?

  fantastic energy and outlook that I absolutely found. Watching the documentary fired me up, and he's got one of the greatest quotes in that documentary. He's like, "Giving up is not in the blood, sir. It's not in the blood." For de Gaulle, giving up is not in the blood. There is no issue, "Or are we gonna sign an armistice? Are we gonna keep the fight? We're gonna keep fighting. This dude's gonna have to kill me. I'm not giving up." And so, at this point, he writes, the letter he writes to the President of France is remarkable. I'm gonna pull out a couple of things from here. "We are on the edge of abyss, and you bear France on your shoulders. I ask you to meditate on this. Our initial defeat comes from the application by the enemy of ideas that are mine, and

• 1:08:14David Senra?

  from the refusal of our commanders to apply those same conceptions. After this terrible lesson, you were alone in supporting me." So, this guy, actually, Renard, is actually, at this point in his life... Later on, they have some kind of issues, but at this point, he agrees with de Gaulle. "You were alone in supporting me, and you were in charge, in part because you supported me and the people knew it. You have achieved power, but having achieved power, you have abandoned us to the men of the past. I do not deny their past glory, nor their merits they once had, but I tell you that the men of the past, if left to themselves, will lose this new war. These men fear me because they know I have the necessary dynamism to force their hand.

• 1:09:00David Senra?

  The country senses the need for renewal and a matter of urgency. It would salute with hope and appearance... The country would salute with hope the appearance of a new man, a man of the new war. Shake off conformism... I pronounced that incorrectly, you know what I mean. Shake it off conforming, establish positions, and the influences vested interests are... we will perish."

• 1:09:28David Senra?

  So it says on June 5th, he was appointed under Secretary of State of Defense for the next 11 days until the resignation of Renard on June 16th.

• 1:09:38David Senra?

  And so, other people are talking about de Gaulle at this week in history. And he says, "His ideas and his manner of expressing them seem to be incompatible with democracy." And to that, I wrote, "He would have made a good founder." This is before, he meets Churchill for the first time before he flees there. The war is still going on, this is before France gives up. And real recognize real, we see it here, "Although the meeting solved nothing, de Gaulle made an excellent impression on Churchill, who was only too aware of the defeatism affecting many of France's leaders."

• 1:10:12David Senra?

  So Churchill's like, "I'm not gonna quit. This guy's not gonna quit either. Alright, we can work together." They wind up, maybe hating each other, because you have two people that are similarly stubborn and bullheaded. De Gaulle's just obviously completely cantankerous and disagreeable, so I can understand that. But FDR and Churchill wind up just not knowing what to do with this guy. Let's just put it that way. And so, this is when they give up, Renard's going to step down, Patahn's gonna get in his place, and he's gonna give up. So really, the North of myself on this page are, "People make all the difference. Renard's will broke. De Gaulle's is still intact."

• 1:10:55David Senra?

  So it says, "Rinald resigned. De Gaulle rushed to see Rinald, who seemed to him like a man relieved of an unbearable burden, but also someone who had come to the end of any hope. De Gaulle planned to return to London in the British plane in which he had just arrived." So this happened. He's trying to make a, like, have Churchill come in and support them, flies back. By the time he flies from London back to Paris, they've already given up. And this sets us up for the, the turning point of De Gaulle's life, which is an act of rebellion. De Gaulle writes of this moment in his life, "I appeared to myself, alone and deprived of everything, like a man on the edge of an ocean that he was hoping to swim across. I felt that a life was ending, a life that I had lived

• 1:11:39David Senra?

  in the framework of a solid France and an indivisible army. At the age of 49, I was entering into an adventure." It is indeed, now, this is the author giving a great summary of this point for us. "It is indeed, hard to exaggerate the extraordinary nature of the step that De Gaulle was taking. Equipped with two suitcases, a small stock of francs, their currency, he was heading for a country in which he had set foot for the first time 10 days earlier, whose language he spoke badly and where he knew almost no one. He was going into exile." And this is where, like, his prophetic nature was almost spooky, because in The Edge of

• 1:12:21David Senra?

  the Sword, the book that he wrote in the early, what, 1932, I think, he's going to describe himself here, what's going to happen in his life. "The intervention of human will in the chain of events has something irrevocable about it. Responsibility presses down with such weight that few men are capable of bearing it alone. That is why the greatest qualities of intelligence do not suffice. Undoubtedly, intelligence helps, and instinct pushes one, but in the last resort, a decision has a moral element. De Gaulle, who had spent most of the interwar years reflecting on the nature of leadership, had written the script. Now

• 1:13:03David Senra?

  he was ready to act it out, even if this meant disobeying France's most revered military leader and his former mentor, right?"

• 1:13:14David Senra?

  This was the moment for which de Gaulle had been living in his mind for many years. As he wrote in the 1920s, "When events become grave, the peril pressing, a sort of tidal wave, pushes men of character," so think about that's his view of himself, right? "Pushes men of character into the front rank." And then the, I almost called him Jeremy. Julian Jackson, the author, does a great, I just love this paragraph where he says, "Without the fall of France, de Gaulle would undoubtedly have become a leading general in the French Army, probably a minister of defense, perhaps even head of the government. But he would not have become de Gaulle." And so this is when he's in exile, this is when de Gaulle becomes de Gaulle.

• 1:13:58David Senra?

  These are the four most important years of his life. "It is unbelievable that he goes from exile with almost no resources to triumphant and beloved leader in four years." And so this is a description of this, there's a quote at the beginning, because now we've entered a new part of the book. And there's a great quote, because I think what they're describing here describes the path for every founder, right? Anybody trying to do any difficult in life, for purposes of this podcast, we normally focus on, you know, running, being as good as possible at your work and running a company. "What everyone seems to ignore is the incredible mixture of patience, of obstinate creativity, the dizzying succession of calculations,

• 1:14:41David Senra?

  negotiations, conflicts, that we had to undertake in order to accomplish our enterprise." So the parallel, they're saving France, they're saving a country. But that is a great description of the circuitous, unclear path that lays in front of every single founder. So they sign this armistice with Germany, and they go back and forth, and then he finally, he's on the radio, I've already read the part of the first speech. But then this is where he just, he attacks his former mentor. Because he, the really, the way to think about de Gaulle's, he really believed that

• 1:15:23David Senra?

  Giving up was treason, that you deserved death for giving up. And so I'm just gonna pull out a couple of these things where he just goes right after Patten. And it says, "Reiterating that the armistice would reduce France to a state of servitude, he plunged the knife in. To accept such an act of enslavement, we did not need you, Marshal. Anyone would have done." This was the first time that de Gaulle had directly addressed Patten. "For the most junior ex-general," because they stripped him of his general when he fled to London, "for the most junior ex-general in the French Army to address as an equal, France's most revered soldier, was blasphemy." Now, think about that, how things are gonna change.

• 1:16:07David Senra?

  At this point, he's like, "Oh, this is blasphemy, you can't do that." He is sure, in his certain idea of France, his trusting of his own judgment, he knows he's doing the right thing even though the outside world is telling him to be crazy. And here's the punchline, "He was preparing to assume the role of Savior himself." And so, this is really the important part. There's one sentence here, but there's so much more to think about here. And this is why he was put in the front, because at this point, he's the only one taking the position that Churchill agrees with, because he's in London. And at this point, England's almost like the last one standing in the way of Germany taking over all of Europe, right?

• 1:16:51David Senra?

  "De Gaulle's strength during these ten days was that he was the only political figure in London who knew exactly what he wanted to do." So remember, de Gaulle has one purpose, he has singular mind, "Continue fighting." And so, this idea of, it makes it so much easier for people to work with you if you know exactly what you want to do. I did a bonus episode on this book called Creative Selection. Anybody building a product, I think, should read that book, because it's written from a programmer that worked at Apple when Steve Jobs was alive. And he helped design the keyboard on the first iPhone, and I think...

• 1:17:34David Senra?

  I forgot what our Safari and a couple of other projects, I can't remember off the top of my head. But he has a story in that book where, you know, Steve did everything through demos. So you have to show him your work and then he'd give you feedback. But he says that everything at that point was like, Steve was like the oracle of Delphi in the Apple ecosystem. Like every single important product decision went through him. But he's, but his name's Ken Costienda, if I'm not mistaken, but the author. Ken made the point. He's like, but the oracle of Delphi, you know, spoke in riddles and was like, what the hell? Like, I don't, gives you an answer to a question, it just leads to more questions. And he's like, Steve wasn't like that. His communication was crystal clear and you always knew exactly what he wanted you to do next.

• 1:18:17David Senra?

  And again, that comes from having a clarity of purpose, understanding exactly. Think about this, he's the goal, the only, the goal's strength was that he was the only one who knew exactly what he wanted to do. And the important part there though, is it's, you know, he knows, he knows exactly what he wants to do, but you don't know how you're gonna do it yet. And so I think that's really important. It's like, okay, I know exactly, I'm, I'm very strict in what I want to happen, but I'm very flexible in how I accomplish that. I think is a good, like the combination of those two ideas is extremely powerful. Now, there is unbelievable amount of detail in this book. There's, this is why it took me so long to read this book, why it took me so long to make this podcast. To read multiple pages over and over again, because I'm like, what the hell's going on here?

• 1:19:00David Senra?

  They'd mention these people and I have to go and research who they are and what happens to them. So I'm gonna skip over a lot of this stuff, just know that he's having all kinds of trouble recruiting people and gathering supplies. Like I said, it's a miracle that he went from exile to triumphant hero in four years. I don't, it's, it's unbelievable. But his response to these difficulties is perfect. So, you know, they, they wind up losing out. I didn't even know, like, the French, so he considers him, he is the true France, right? So he refers to the people that quit and that, that are working with Hitler now. As the Vichy, Vichy government. Vichy, I've heard it pronounced a bunch of different ways. Who knows how to say it. Vichy government.

• 1:19:44David Senra?

  So they wind up having fights. It's like French, wind up killing French people. So it's like de Gaulle's French and then the Vichy French, which is so crazy to me. And so at this point, the Vichy government gets to the spot before de Gaulle can get there. And so they get the resources, they get the soldiers and supplies. And his response here is perfect. He says, "We had a reason to hope that our friends would have been able to assist our operation. Unfortunately, Vichy was there before us. These things happen in war." Most important sentence of this entire page. "Fortune cannot always be favorable to us." And then one of his soldiers says, "The soberness in his expression and the calmness of his tone worked on us." And it's important, he's projecting a sense of, hey, we're in control, we're going to be okay.

• 1:20:28David Senra?

  "Underneath the service column, though, which reassured his followers, de Gaulle was badly shaken." Another setback. After another setback, he writes this, he writes a letter to his wife. "However intense de Gaulle's despair, it was brief. The letter he wrote to his wife is not that of a man about to give up. 'For the moment, the entire roof has fallen on my head,' he said. 'Yet I am hopeful for the next stage. Let us hold firm; no storm lasts indefinitely.'" And so one other strategy that de Gaulle had is he liked to pick fights. He thought there was an advantage in there in being on the offense. He thought it would use it as a negotiating tactic. So he, he's going to pick fights unfortunately with allies, but he also constantly picks fights with his enemies.

• 1:21:12David Senra?

  And he feels that people that gave up on the, his idea of France are his sworn enemies. So he's going to say something to Patahn again. And this is because Patahn meets with Hitler. And then after the meeting announces to the French people that he's ready to go down the road of collaboration with Hitler. De Gaulle's apoplectic. He just cannot believe this is happening. He's still doing these radio addresses, which some, which people in France are hearing secretly. And so this is where he starts, like de Gaulle is really born. It's not de Gaulle the person, it's de Gaulle the idea and the minds of his followers. Okay? So it says, "De Gaulle raised the stakes even further by issuing a manifesto announcing that there was no longer any proper French government because that organism situated at Vichy was unconstitutional and subject to the control of the enemy," which is his

• 1:21:57David Senra?

  interpretation of saying you're going to collaborate with Hitler, right? "Consequently, he had a sacred duty to take on the French effort in war." And so this is when he starts, he realizes he has an epiphany that he's not a person anymore. He's an idea and he'll start to speak in the third person. De Gaulle had an epiphany. There were thousand, this is him writing. There were thousands of people, there were thousands of people and they began to shout, "De Gaulle, De Gaulle." I was taken aback. Until then, in London, my contacts had all been personal and individual. But here was the people, the voice of the crowds. And suddenly I realized for the first time what a heavy burden I bore. What a responsibility I had to all these people who were counting upon a man named De Gaulle to liberate them.

• 1:22:41David Senra?

  There was a person named De Gaulle who existed in other people's minds and was really a separate personality from myself. From that day on, I would have to reckon with this man, this General De Gaulle. I became almost his prisoner. And so he would, from this point, he says, now, this is the author of this book. It was from this moment in his memoirs that De Gaulle starts to talk of himself in the third person. De Gaulle appears as a figure whom the narrator of the memoir watches. And so now they're realizing, oh, my God, the radio broadcasts are working. The people are hearing and they're rallying around this person that just, think about

• 1:23:22David Senra?

  it, like, I remember when I read Arnold Schwarzenegger's biography, he talks about, he was in Austria right after World War II. And he was, he's like, I have to get out of here because the Austrians, along with the Germans, had just lost. And he says, "I was surrounded by people that felt like losers." And so imagine being in France at this point, your country's overtaken, you have Hitler, who's, you know, the, one of the most evil people to ever exist. And your government collapsed with almost no resistance, I guess is a way to put that. And yet, that's not changed, like, you don't want to be under the subjugation of a foreign entity. Like, no one, like, of cour-, I guess, looking back in hindsight, now you realize, like,

• 1:24:05David Senra?

  of course, he's going to have this silent, hidden majority. These people that are not going to be able to speak out because of fear of, you know, being killed. Germany's literally, like, occupying the streets of Paris at this point. And yet, on the radio, they hear this guy is like, "No, we're not defeated. This is a war war. We have allies. We have access to Britain. America, America's gonna jump in the war. They have this huge industrial might. We have an empire. We're gonna fight. We're gonna fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. And they're, they're gonna have to kill us to the last person." And so, here's what happens. At first, no one in London had any idea if anyone in France was listening. These broadcasts were a bottle thrown desperately into the sea. But gradually, letters started to reach London from France.

• 1:24:47David Senra?

  One letter stated, "At 8:15," because that's when the broadcast would come on, "our entire family falls silent and drinks in the voice of the English radio of R Free French. An invisible thread ties us to you." In August 1940, de Gaulle was condemned to death for desertation. In December, he was stripped of his nationality. So again, that's a government that he just feels illegitimate, saying, "Okay, we catch you, we're gonna kill you. And guess what? You're no longer a French citizen." But here's the thing, and there's a weird parallel I draw here, and maybe that's not, it might be obvious, I'm not sure. But it doesn't matter what that government's saying.

• 1:25:31David Senra?

  If the people are with you, that's all you need. And the weird parallel I would describe here is that that's also the same thing in, in business. If you have customers that love you, and you're constantly focused on serving their needs, not, "Don't look above the competition. Don't focus on anything but building the best solution for that person, that, that group of people, these customers that love you. That's, that's the most important thing in business. It's the thing you never want to take your eye off of." This was a, that's a, there's a quote by the founder of AOL, Steve Case, that made me think of this. He's like, "Everything is," I forgot the exact quote, it's like something like, "Everything else is subservient to the fact of building something that your customers love so much that they will tell other people about." And if you just do that and focus on that, that is the most important thing to do.

• 1:26:16David Senra?

  And so, you really think at this point, de Gaulle is saying, "I'm not worried about the Vichy government. I'm not worried about Britain. I'm not worried about Germany. I'm worried on one thing, the continuation of the French country as an idea, as a place, as a people. We are not subservient to the Nazis. If you are with me, spread this message, listen to these radio broadcasts, and tell more and more people." So that's how he goes from celebrating, you know, at one point... There's all these battles that happen and these ex-French soldiers that wind up sneaking into London and they all report to de Gaulle. And at this point, he's just happy, like, there's like 152, I think, is the number that that happens at one time, right? And you have a, think about that, how crazy this is. In World War II, you had tens of millions of people fighting, right?

• 1:27:00David Senra?

  And this guy's just like, okay, I got 150 people. This is a great day. 152 great people. This is a fantastic day. Eventually, that goes to 152 people, to thousands, to I'm walking down the streets of Paris and people are going crazy because this guy did not give up. This voice is here in the flesh. This idea of de Gaulle never folded in the face of the Axis, of the face of the Nazis. And not only did he tell you, like, he said he wasn't going to fold, and he gave you the strength to not fold. Just want to pull out one sentence for you here, the note I left myself, is de Gaulle has a certain idea of France and is willing to be disagreeable to accomplish that. So it talks about, like, he's having all these negotiations with Churchill.

• 1:27:42David Senra?

  It says, "The British found him so different from the more pliable Frenchmen that they had known in the past." Again, same idea, spread throughout his, the pages of the book, spread throughout the years of his life. Here's de Gaulle, "No question or discussion. We must go forward. Whoever stands still falls behind." I mentioned the fact that he's disagreeable with everybody, including his allies. You know, he's got this, he's going to have this strained relationship with Churchill. I want to give you an update. This is 1941, and this is Churchill's view of de Gaulle in 1941. They've been working together for about a year. Churchill was appalled by the reports of de Gaulle's behavior. "His initial decision to support de Gaulle had been slightly impulsive gamble, which

• 1:28:26David Senra?

  had not entirely paid off, since de Gaulle failed to attract as many supporters as either of them had hoped. But Churchill had stuck with him because the romantic and sentimental side of his nature was seduced by the nobility of the general's solitary struggle. And he never imagined that, from a position of complete dependence," which is where de Gaulle's at this point, "de Gaulle would cause him any serious problems. What he had not understood was that de Gaulle's ambition was much more than just to lead a group of Frenchmen to fight for the interests of the Allied cause. Given the treason," that's what he saw, "of the Vichy government..." De Gaulle believed that it was his mission to embody and represent the interests of the French nation.

• 1:29:08David Senra?

  It meant showing vigilance wherever France's interests seemed to be threatened, even by her allies, and to show that France still had teeth. He was ready to bite the hand that fed him. Churchill's attitude to De Gaulle never fully recovered from the shock caused by general's behavior in the summer of 1941. And so in the British government at this time, they're like, is this guy crazy? Are we going to find out that we backed an insane man? Moving forward in the timeline a little bit, again, I think the main theme here, and the one I just hammer home and take away from if you read the book or this podcast, is I only have one aim. I am single-minded. I have a single purpose.

• 1:29:51David Senra?

  When asked about his political views by a journalist, De Gaulle declared, "I am a free Frenchman. I believe in God and the future of my homeland. I declare solemnly that I am attached to no political party, nor linked to any politician of any kind." Here's his punchline. "I have only one aim: to deliver France." What he prioritizes is not the same thing as other people, right? So, a lot of people are hearing about him, they're hearing his message, they're resonating, they're coming to join his mission, right? And a lot of these people are Jewish people, because they just happen to be Jewish Frenchmen that want to fight against Hitler's Germany. And yet, there's a huge anti-Semitic wave in France at the time. And De Gaulle's like, "I don't care about that." And listen to what he says here.

• 1:30:35David Senra?

  So, it says, "De Gaulle excluded no one. He was unusual in his seemingly immunity to the anti-Semitism that was such a feature of French society at the time." So, this Jewish guy comes to try to, he's like, "I'm signing up. I want to fight with you." And I love what De Gaulle says. Says, "The officer in duty made it clear to Boris that he was not welcome. As soon as this came to De Gaulle's attention, he overruled the decision." This is what he said. "Whether he is a Jew, a partisan, or all manner of other things, I only see one thing: that he is a Frenchman who, at the age of 52, has enrolled to fight." And this is his punchline. "I know only two kinds of Frenchmen: those who do their duty, and those who do not." So again, that same idea is like when you're crystal clear about what you want to do,

• 1:31:20David Senra?

  it makes your decisions easier. I don't think, are you going to do your duty and fight for a free France or you're not? And it doesn't matter what other attributes you have. The people that are willing to fight, those are my people. The people that are willing to not, get them away from me. So now he's reflecting on the fact that the British are, you know, saying, hey, this guy's really hard to deal with. Really to think about this, or the way I would think about this is de Gaulle's intransigence and disagreeableness, they're features, they're not bugs. And so he illustrates this point in a very simple, just one sentence, very simply. "The British think perhaps I'm not someone easy to work with, but if I were, I would today be in Patahn's general's staff." So he's got diplomats from other countries coming to visit him.

• 1:32:04David Senra?

  This is somebody from the United States that observed de Gaulle, and this is what they thought. "We're getting further deeper into the war, we're in 1942. Observe with amazement the monastic austerity of his surroundings. There's no gadgets, no exterior signs of anything, no showcase of cabinets with objects. This is more than simplicity." Remember, they're talking about him. Really think about de Gaulle, he belongs to his job, okay, his mission. "This is more than simplicity. There's no caricature of him, no souvenir, no object, nothing. And no one would guess, visiting him, whose house one was in. I have never seen that before with any man in a prominent position. He belongs to the job with a noble tranquility." De Gaulle's style were made authoritarian.

• 1:32:48David Senra?

  Meetings were brief, and important decisions were taken by him alone. "The general lives alone in Olympian solitude. He thinks alone, he decides alone. He does think, and he, I'm sorry, but, he does think and he does decide." And then the book starts out with, you know, his contradiction, the fact that he was a massive contradiction, it's like almost any historical figure, right? And so says, "The truth was more complicated. De Gaulle could be a good listener, and one observer noted how he would fix his cobra-like gaze on the person he's talking to. De Gaulle's default reaction to advice was to reject it. But those with strong enough nerves to hold their ground were often surprised to find subsequently that he adopted their ideas.

• 1:33:28David Senra?

  It was, however, almost physically impossible for de Gaulle to admit that he was wrong." And this is such a crazy statement by him. "I only esteem those who stand up to me, but unfortunately, I cannot stand them." So this is more observations of de Gaulle's relationship with other people. De Gaulle never ceased to emanate a chilly reserve which repelled intimacy. He found it impossible to express affection or gratitude and was incapable of apologizing. When this other guy remarked that he wished de Gaulle might occasionally show a more human face, another guy that knew him, the reply was that "it's impossible to make someone who is tone deaf appreciate music any more than it's possible to ask de Gaulle to suddenly develop human contact."

• 1:34:12David Senra?

  Another person that knew him intimately, or as intimately as one can know him, described him like this: "He felt the dishonor of his country as few men can feel anything, as Christ, according to the Christian faith, took on himself the sins of the world." So that's he's saying he took on the sins of France on himself. "I think he was like a man during these days who had been skinned alive, and that the slightest contact with friendly, well-meaning people got him on the raw to such an extent that he wanted to bite." This just goes back to just how difficult he is to deal with and how he just won't budge. Another description of de Gaulle here: "The arrogance that makes him from time to time almost impossible to deal with is the reverse side of an extreme sensibility.

• 1:34:55David Senra?

  I have never known a man at once so ungracious and so sentimental." But he's sentimental for France, that's what people are surprised by. "He belongs to the race of the unhappy and tortured souls, to whom life will never be a pleasure to be enjoyed, but an arid desert through which the pilgrim must struggle." And then another one, this comes from somebody that served under him: "A Frenchman who had joined de Gaulle in July 1940 with considerable reservations was, two years later, reassured that his necessary act of faith had been vindicated." And so this is what he says: "In my eyes, the crucial fact of these last two years is that, in the general," meaning de Gaulle, "France has a genuinely great man.

• 1:35:37David Senra?

  I have seen him operate in the most difficult circumstances, and each time he comes out, he comes out of it bigger in my eyes. He has learnt a lot from his responsibilities over the last two years. He continues to see what is essential. He needs around him men who administer, who look after the details, who sometimes need to soothe wounds," because he's so abrupt, right? "But he is in the great line of heroes who have saved France from the perils that have faced her." Another portrait of de Gaulle, and really the idea of de Gaulle. Really think about what he inspired in others, the belief that he inspired in other people. And again, this is why he could not bend, he could not break, he could not quit. When I learnt the news of the armistice, de Gaulle gave me back my honour.

• 1:36:22David Senra?

  The possibility of being able to look people in the face against. Again, my sense of being a Frenchman. He has the most profound, far-reaching, and often prophetic views on events. There is no doubt that he has a very high sense of his duties and his mission. In my view, he would be a great man, even a very great man, if his understanding of men equaled his understanding of events and ideas, and if he could more easily make contact with people. Undoubtedly, it is because he despises them that he does not understand them. To a large degree, his unwillingness to bend, his intransigence or willed.

• 1:37:01David Senra?

  He likes to say, being as weak as he is, intransigence is his only weapon. And then he wraps up this section, the same guy saying, it has been said, and this is true, that he does not incline naturally to democratic ideas. And again, there was a statement in that previous book, or previously in the book, and I said, hey, that made me think this guy's gonna be a good company founder. I don't know the reason why, I don't even think the reason why matters, but if you go through the history of entrepreneurship, it's always one. Like, you might start a company, there might be co-founders, whatever the case is, but inevitably, there's always, the greatest companies are led by a formidable individual, and it's always going to be one person. They could have partners, they could have co-founders, they could have people that help them, but it's always one.

• 1:37:45David Senra?

  This is, the greatest companies are not run as a democracy. So, FDR and Churchill are extremely loyal to each other, and they tell de Gaulle over and over again, if you ask us to choose between each other, like, we're gonna choose the other person over you. So, like, stop, like, you have no resources, like, what are you doing? You're crazy. And so, but they're surprised at how effective de Gaulle is at gaining support and just operating from a relatively weak position compared to the position that Britain is and at the time, and the United States is at the time. And so, they have this idea of like, okay, we gotta get rid of this guy. So, what do they do to like, try to diminish his influence? They make a committee, right? This is kind of the opposite point that I was just trying to make to you a minute ago.

• 1:38:30David Senra?

  And... Within a couple of days, he takes over the committee. So there's a lot, like way more detail than I'm giving you, but I just want to point out a couple of things like the complexities that de Gaulle had to deal with are really unbelievable. But I think he's, besides the fact that he just, he was, he just said, my only weapon is the fact that I don't give up, I'm intransigent, like I'm, that's what I have to lean on. It goes back to what I was just saying, like as long as you have the support of the people and you don't take your eye off serving those people, you're going to be fine no matter what. So it says Roosevelt suddenly realized that after only 10 days, de Gaulle was close to assuming full control of the committee. In what one diplomat described as a historical diatribe, Roosevelt wrote to Churchill, suggesting

• 1:39:14David Senra?

  again that the time had come to break with de Gaulle entirely. They, they go back and forth on this over and over again. Eisenhower, he's not the president this time, he's the general, okay? General Eisenhower was instructed to tell de Gaulle that the French, that French North Africa was occupied territory and the Americans would permit no weakening of Girard's authority. Girard is this other French general that the, that the Americans were trying to see if, okay, let's put Girard in, in charge of the French, not de Gaulle. But they couldn't do that because, and the reason they can't do that, and this is how it ties to the fact that all you need is customers to love you and never take your eye off that. He has, all he needed was the French to love him. So the, the French did not get behind Girard like they did de Gaulle.

• 1:39:59David Senra?

  So it says the Americans would not permit no weakening of Girard's authority. Yeah, good luck going against, that's exactly what he does. He winds up having a fight with this other general and he, de Gaulle becomes the victor. This was the exactly wrong tactic. Not for the first time, de Gaulle had goaded his adversaries into such an extreme reaction that even those who deplored his methods felt obliged to rally around him. Overt foreign intervention in a French colony was guaranteed to cement French unity. And where do you think that unity is cementing around? It is not cementing around the person the Americans wanted. It's not cementing around Girard, it's cementing around de Gaulle.

• 1:40:40David Senra?

  And so this is a great summary of this event that's taking place in the book. And really, an effective formula to anything. It says Gerard's only asset was the support of the American government. But this was ultimately a liability. Faced with de Gaulle's political ruthlessness, brilliance as a popular tribune and total clarity about what he wanted to achieve. There's that statement again, total clarity about what he wanted to achieve. Gerard never stood a chance. So his, de Gaulle's formula, the effective formula that de Gaulle used in this circumstance was one ruthlessness, two brilliance, and three total clarity about what he wanted to achieve.

• 1:41:22David Senra?

  And then this, this interaction between Churchill and de Gaulle, it winds up giving us the perfect description of de Gaulle. So this is right before they're about to do, they're about to, the Allies are about, Germany. I was listening to the podcast that I mentioned, The Ghost of Osfran, the Dan Carlin Hardcore History one. And I think Dan says in that, like by 1943, it was pretty obvious that Germany wasn't going to win the war. And so it's just a matter of time. So now we're pushing into 1944, they're about to land on Normandy, they're gonna, the Allies are gonna take over France. This is gonna lead to de Gaulle being instated and basically liberating, helping liberate Paris and the rest of France as well. But before that, they're like going back and forth and, you know, the, the relationship

• 1:42:05David Senra?

  with Roosevelt and Churchill just not good at this point. And it says, de Gaulle had less success with Churchill, who arrived in Marrakech and invited, this is a French colony at this point though, and invited de Gaulle to meet him. Remember, the, the section is a perfect description of de Gaulle, okay? De Gaulle was insulted that Churchill would presume to issue an invitation to a French leader on French soil. Churchill was insulted that de Gaulle did not leap at the chance to see him. Think about everything Churchill had done for him at this point. The meeting solved nothing. On the British side, they reported that de Gaulle had been very difficult and unhelpful, behaving as if he were Stalin and Roosevelt combined. The French side said that there had been a good atmosphere. A good atmosphere meant that the two men had not actually screamed at each other.

• 1:42:50David Senra?

  Churchill reported what he had said to de Gaulle, and this is so fantastic. Here's Churchill to us, right? "Look here, I am the leader of a strong and unbeaten nation. Yet every morning when I wake, my first thought is how I can please President Roosevelt. And my second is how I can conciliate Stalin. Your situation is very different. Why then should your first waking thought be how you can snap your fingers at the British and the Americans?" And so, once again, I think this is the main, main point of the book. Once again, they try to rout around de Gaulle. And de Gaulle is saved by the loyalty of the French people. And so Eisenhower and Roosevelt are trying to organize the French Resistance.

• 1:43:34David Senra?

  These are the people that have been in France the whole time, fighting the government, fighting Germans, fighting anybody else that's not for free France, right? And so, like, "Okay, we're gonna organize these people." And they won't organize because they all want to fall behind de Gaulle. So Eisenhower is saying, he's like, "We have our own direct means of communications with the Resistance, with the resistant groups in France, but all of our information leads us to believe that the only authority that these resistant groups desire is to recognize, desire to recognize, is that of de Gaulle. De Gaulle is now controlling the only French military force that can take part in this operation. Consequently, we must deal with him alone." So, once again, the business equivalent is the loyalty and love of customers, right? Put a premium on that above everything else.

• 1:44:18David Senra?

  Once again, de Gaulle is saved by the loyalty and the love of the French people. This made his position extremely strong. Again, de Gaulle is just a crazy person. So, this is the day, I think this might be the speech right before the Allied invasion of France. And it says, it was one of de Gaulle's great rhetorical performances, and this is just insane that he says this. He says, "The supreme battle has begun. It is, of course, the battle of France, and the battle for France, for the sons of France, wherever they may be, whoever they may be. The simple and sacred duty is to fight the enemy by all the means available. The directives given by the French government must be followed to the letter. Behind the heavy clouds of our blood and our tears, the sunshine of our grandeur is reemerging."

• 1:45:05David Senra?

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

• 1:45:49David Senra?

  There are moments which go beyond each of our poor lives. Paris, Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated, liberated by itself, liberated by its people, with the help of the armies of France, with the help and assistance of the whole of France, of that France which fights, of the only France, of the true France, of eternal France." After the speech, De Gaulle was asked if he would now declare that the republic was restored. De Gaulle's curt reply expressed the thought behind every action he had taken.

• 1:46:32David Senra?

  "The republic has never ceased to exist. Vichy was always and remains null and void. I am the president of the republic. Why should I proclaim it?" De Gaulle had instructed that on the next day, he would stage a procession down the Champs-Elysees. His plan was not for a military parade, but to walk slowly and show himself to the population, to his people. There was no precedent for a walkabout of this kind, risky in a city swarming with snipers. But the idea was a supreme example of De Gaulle's instinctive showmanship.

• 1:47:14David Senra?

  Even so, no one could have predicted the extraordinary success of the parade. The size of the crowd is impossible to estimate. It was probably the largest gathering of its kind in the history of France. The extraordinary intensity of those strained faces who were seeing him for the first time. It was indeed de Gaulle towering over everyone else whom the crowds had turned out to see and to cheer. The voice from London was made flesh at last. And that is where I'll leave it. He lives for another 25 years, but that, his singleness of purpose, was completed with the liberation of France.

• 1:47:59David Senra?

  And it goes back to tie this all together with spawn this idea that quote from Arthur Rock on Henry Singleton, "He reminds me of de Gaulle. He has a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he's going to do." And if you think about that statement and the reaction of the French people, de Gaulle gave them absolute confidence in their ability, being led by him, to accomplish whatever they said they were going to do. If you want the full story, recommend reading the book. In my opinion, I enjoyed, I think the audiobook is the way to go for this one, especially for something this long. It's 35 hours. It's an unbelievable story. But if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.

• 1:48:44David Senra?

  I want to thank all the people in December that bought gift prescriptions. I was blown away that so many people value founders that they would be willing to spend more money to give it to friends, to coworkers, to family members. Motivates me, I'm working on founders every single day. I do not take a day off. I'm reading and studying now more than I have in my entire life. And so I hope we can continue this momentum. I know it's not the holidays anymore, but if you want to buy gift prescriptions, I really, really appreciate if you do that. There's a link below. You can do that rather easily. I have the next three or four books already picked out that I'm going to do. I'm going to be inspired by de Gaulle. I'm going to be default aggressive, so I'm going to be attacking them as fast and as thorough as possible. I'm never going to obviously, you know, cut corners, but I am going to be completely

• 1:49:27David Senra?

  obsessed with building up founders even better this year and spreading it to as many people as possible. So please, if you have the ability to tell friends about it, share it on social media, buy a gift subscription, whatever you can do to help, I really appreciate it. Just know I'm working every day to make sure that it's valuable to you. That is 224 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.