What Hacker News says

lscNov 2018

To be clear, I am claiming that germans in world war one had better equipment (relative to the time) and training than Germans in World War Two. I'm not saying that the allied equipment was in general superior to the German equipment in the second world war. My understanding is that the German army of 1914 is generally considered one of the best fighting organizations ever fielded; they lost due to the dual problems of taking on the UK while depending on food imports via sea and that they were the aggressor in a war where the tech vastly favored the defender, a problem they didn't have in the second war. (as I was saying, an attacker's breakthroughs moved at foot-speed; the defender moved reinforcements at rail speed. Tanks restored the balance between the movement of the attack and the movement of reinforcements.) - that, and taking on the whole rest of the industrialized world in a war of production, especially without a credible navy is usually going to end badly.

The only specific claim I'll stand behind about german vs. allied equipment in ww2 is that at the outset of the battle of France, the Germans had worse tanks than the French, and that the French had a larger army. the Char, for example, was more than a match for anything the Germans had. (In skilled hands, a fair number of anything the Germans had.) It was way more expensive, (as one would expect for a heavier, better-protected tank with a bigger gun) and harder to support and keep in the field (sort of the opposite of the later situation with the Panzer4 and the Sherman, much later in the same war, where you needed several Shermans to take on one Panzer.) but it was very well protected, and had a very large gun for it's day. It was cast, rather than made from wielded plates, further increasing it's cost and it's protection (and further complicating repair)

I mean, "Better tank" is a funny thing to say; the allies later won the war with tanks that were inferior even to the panzer of the time, if we are using that standard. It was totally fine you needed several Shermans to reliably take out one panther, because the allies had such an advantage in material and logistics that they could reliably get numerical advantage after D-day.

But one on one, the Char, as I understand it, could be expected to beat the Panzer of it's day with ease. It was built for those one on one fights, and excelled at them... when it had the chance. My understanding is that the Char was an 'infantry tank' - it was built to sit and slug it out, essentially. It seemed that the idea of a heavy 'infantry tank' went out of style pretty fast after world war two started up; it looked like lighter tanks for exploiting breakthroughs (and simply being on the battlefield in quantity) which were called 'calvary tanks' at the beginning of the war seemed to be the tank design that proved most useful. I mean, turns out, these "medium tanks" were simply more useful than either giant or tiny tanks, and this wasn't known at the outset of world war two, as there weren't a lot of large scale tank battles in the Polish campaign or in the spanish civil war to learn from.

Look up Pierre Billotte in the Battle of Stonne for one particularly dramatic example of the Char in skilled hands in action against Panzers. (and if you find a good book about him in English, report back)

But, my point here is that France did not lose through inferiority of numbers nor through inferiority of equipment.[4] It was something else. Perhaps they just weren't prepared for the German army sending their tanks out faster than their supply lines in ways that the French were utterly unprepared for? But really, I think it might just be Tactics. The French were fighting world war one, perhaps fighting it acceptably well. Germany had been through a number of smaller wars meanwhile, and could see how the new technologies upended the old rules of war, and those technologies made decisive the time it took France to figure out that the rules had changed. (There's a view, in fact, that the same thing happened in the first world war; The French started out in bright red trousers and white gloves, that they were dramatically less prepared for the sort of war that the new technology created than the German aggressors were. But the technology of the first world war meant that they were not overrun before they figured out the new rules, and in the end, a willingness to fight, short supply lines, and a large population carried the day.)

(as another aside, I consider the idea that the French are somehow less willing to fight under unpleasant conditions or more likely to surrender than other countries, that "the last brave frenchman died during Napoleon's retreat from Russia" to be... ahistoric. )

May's "Strange Victory" isn't as good as Bloch's "Strange Defeat" - but as I recall (it has been some time) May seemed to suggest that much of this seemed like chance on the German side, too. That you had ridiculously overconfident people in charge, that a lot of the Germans who should have been listened to thought the plan to invade France was way too risky, way too likely to fail. but that somehow, perhaps because the technology of the day allowed for fast and deep breakthroughs and the French leaders were still thinking in world war one terms, that confidence worked out better than could have been reasonably expected. Or maybe it was a low probability event; a fluke. Low-probablility events do occasionally happen.

[4] Unless that inferiority was in airpower; The Germans had decisive air superiority on the continent at that time. And it could have been what made the difference; You could easily argue that air superiority made the decisive difference. - I mean, having arial surveillance could have gone a long way towards mitigating the French confusion at the command level, if nothing else. But air superiority alone doesn't seem like it was decisive in other theatres, so you have to come up with some reason why it made the difference here and not, say, against Russia.

(also I want to point out that while I am of the opinion that the Germans can be considered the aggressors in world war one, and you can reasonably make that case, it's not a universally accepted opinion as their culpability for world war two is.)

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wazooxJul 2018

Here is a quick list of the last great books I've read which are available in English (some 'Ive read in other languages):

- History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell : This is a wonderful book. Read it.

- Why the West rules -- for now, Ian Morris : How geography drives history. really deep and thought-provoking.

- the Strange Defeat, Marc Bloch : A gripping, living narration of the French armies collapse in 1940, from the inside (Marc Bloch was an officer). With a very deep analysis of the long maturing reasons for this defeat.

- Histories of Alexander the Great, Quintus Curtius Rufus : The title says it all. Very elegant Latin prose.

- The Golden Ass, Apuleius : A funny story and an immortal classic.

- The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West, Karl-Heinz Frieser : For true military history geeks :)

I notice that these are either classics, or history. Well, so be it :)

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thrillgoreJan 2017

If there's another book that people need to read, its "Strange Defeat" by Marc Bloch, as its a commentary/oral history on the fall of France to the Nazis and Vichy regime. The comparisons are eerily similar to what many of us are seeing now.

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crdbSep 2016

The first scene in Tolstoy's War and Peace should be required reading for engineering graduates, particularly the hyper-rational Sheldon types. I'm referring specifically to the impact Pierre has on the people at the party, the importance of manners, why small talk, etc. War and Peace is generally a great book because of how much it captures about human nature and power plays and it is still relevant today. It has a reputation for length but I found it much more readable than, say, Lord of the Rings.

Delta Force by Col. Charlie Beckwith. Think your company has red tape? Try the US Army post-Vietnam. It's a great example of someone moving through bureaucracy to achieve great things and taught me to stop making excuses based on organisational behaviour. The Phantom Major by Virginia Cowles is in the same vein with some phenomenal hustling lessons. I still think of both men whenever I think whatever I'm doing is hard.

Dynamic Hedging by Taleb was written whilst he was a pit trader and is the most intuitive introduction to thinking about options I've read. It informs my thinking about decision making in terms of probability, path dependency and higher order greeks, and helps me take risks in a smart manner. I recommend it to a lot of people but nobody takes it up because (I'm guessing) it's only available as a second hand paper copy, and people think trading options has nothing to do with their life.

Legionnaire by Simon Murray was recommended to me by my thesis supervisor shortly before graduation. I respected his opinion so I read the thing and it blew my mind in what people were capable of doing when pushed to the edge. Murray went on to have multiple interesting careers and set records as a helicopter pilot.

There are two books that were lessons in what they did not teach me.

Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma/Solution presents a very enticing idea but I think the core explanation for what it covers is much better set forward in Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat. There are regular sub-threads on the book on HN so I won't go into it further.

I also read a couple of Jack Welch books and thought, wow, this guy knows what he is talking about. This was before 2007. After 2007, I heard from a few people - including very smart investors - who basically put GE's success down to the 30 year bull market and to the growth of GE Capital which became something like 60% of the company and indeed did almost take down GE with it after Lehman. It introduced the possibility that some famous leaders and gurus might not be as competent as they are branded to be and it's important to check for confounding variables.

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crdbOct 2014

Hard data on decision making, and a better understanding of the way people think. The historical insights (including snapshots of how people lived and thought three or more generations ago) is a welcome bonus. So is gaining a better understanding of just what kind of people populate the border between civilization and hell. I'm young and I'd rather learn these lessons from third parties, life is, after all, rather short.

It's much harder to fudge the results of war than "management" - at the end of most large ones, the territory belongs to someone, and this is recognized by most authorities. So the data quality is better, provided you are careful about collecting it. If you are a manager, you can learn about leadership and how to do extraordinary things with ordinary people, or how to attract extraordinary people; if you are an employee, about which organisations and people to work for or avoid.

Is Jack Welch an extraordinary CEO, or was he, as is claimed in Thorndike's "The Outsiders", lucky to start his career with one of the largest economic booms known to man and retire right at the end of it? This impacts whether you'd like to adopt his methods: is stack ranking a great way to maintain high employee quality and engagement, or does it destroy corporate culture and lead to zombie companies with intense political in-fighting and little output?

On the other hand, nobody disputes today that a team of around 150 Selous Scouts and Rhodesian SAS, with no air support, wearing the enemy's uniforms and using the same weapons, literally walked into an enemy military base, killed thousands, and walked away without a SINGLE casualty (cf Operation Dingo); and when you dig, you realize this tiny group of men caused 3/4 of the enemy casualties in the entire war, many times in similarly one-sided operations, despite not existing before its start and not having any particular technological (the country was under embargo!), numerical or even political advantage. Such a group is worth studying no matter the politics.

It's also much easier to get several sides to the story: contrast Dick Marcinko's own controversial account of creating SEAL Team Six (which by the way has great insights on how to get things done in "big org") vs Robert Gormley who followed him at the helm of the group and had a more "official" view of the "Rogue Warrior". Or contrast Col. Charlie Beckwith's exceptional account of creating Delta Force, with a first hand, "from the ground" view by Eric Haney, and modern lessons on how it has evolved from Pete Blaber's excellent book about "helicopter" management (in this case literally).

You can learn about how a large organisation has managed to maintain efficiency and quality through centuries by picking up any of the numerous books on the US Marine Corps - Krulak's "First to Fight" and Chesty Puller's biographies were my starting point. Did you know Puller read 7 books about Korea on the ship that took him there? He is better known today for simply charging at the enemy in a straight line but like Patton who literally visualized great battles of the classical era to such details he could point at disappeared buildings, he was well read and thoughtful about how to best wage war.

What is it like to be "disrupted"? Read it first hand from Bloch's "Strange Defeat", describing just what it was like to face the new, fresh, efficient Wehrmacht when you are led by the last war's winners. Sir David Stirling's biography reads like a long list of impossible things - from breaking into an Army base to pitch his idea to a few generals, to being responsible for more aircraft losses with his handful of desert-dwelling infantrymen than the entire RAF in the sector. He failed a fair amount, too, including losing most of his men (!) on their first paradrop. And yet he got more budget and more men. Why?

You can learn a lot about human nature. Phoenix Program officers say that only 5-20% of a population holds firm views and will act on them; the rest will swing support to whoever controls the territory. How do you tell which is which, and can you turn the 5%? I've found this translates particularly well to analyzing which people you can count on (the famous "who'd be there when you're down"). It is interesting that most veterans will say you don't know who will keep a cool head and fire back until the bullets fly; there is little way of telling before then and no discernable pattern, so what does it imply about your interview process?

Finally, you can learn the limits of hindsight and analysis. Was COIN (the counterinsurgency doctrine advanced by the Pentagon since Vietnam) a success, as claimed by Chris Martin's analysis of open source documents about Delta Force in the 2000s? Or was it the reason American wars are so long and their results so controversial, as claimed by Col. Gian Gentile, because of a misinterpretation of previous successful COIN campaigns? (such as failing to notice that the British won in Malaya by displacing thousands of civilians from the affected areas, thus starving the guerilla)

I look at results that exceed expectations, try to draw some names out of it and then look up those names, preferably a first hand account, to understand how they thought and abstract the common traits. It is just amazing the extent to which the military can be a concentrated, more intense version of everyday life, perhaps because the stakes are so much higher.

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lscApr 2017

here, hangon, I had a Bloch quote that was kinda awesome:

"What, probably, more than anything else marks the true leader is the power to clench his teeth and hang on, the ability to impart to others a confidence that he feels himself. This he can do only if he does feel it. Never, until the very last moment, must he despair of his own genius. Above all, he must be willing to accept for the men under him, no less than for himself, sacrifices which may be productive of good, rather than a shameful yielding which must remain for ever useless" - Marc Bloch "Strange Defeat"

This quote really hit me because I have been thinking about my own failures as a leader and as a businessperson; I approached leadership as you would approach a technician job. Honesty is important. Openness to new ideas is important. Humility is pleasant. Confidence is irrelevant.

It is great for a technician to say "I'm happy to do everything I can to make the project at hand succeed. I see it as my responsibility, though, to tell you that it will probably fail anyhow, for these reasons."

That makes you a good technician; But a bad leader. It's interesting, because I think that you are a bad technician if you act like a leader and show confidence when the chances don't warrant that confidence. You are, then, lying, and while people will follow a lying leader to the end of the earth, if s/he is good enough at it, a lying technician is nothing but a liability. A lying technician is worth less than nothing. A lot less.

Leaders, of course, have been selected for and trained for leadership, so they are attuned to those qualities. They end up picking confidence and other leadership qualities over honesty, humility an other technician qualities, even when they pick technicians. This is one of the big reasons why I thought I could be a leader, and one of the reasons I was able to pay my rent in that role, even though I couldn't approach opportunity cost profitability... I really am way better at selecting technicians than someone who thinks like a manager usually is, mostly because I don't give points for confidence. Unfortunately, that is only one aspect of management, one that is not particularly profitable on it's own.

I personally think that as a technician, the best way to handle this, the best way to project confidence to the boss while still maintaining the honesty and humility required is to always act confident around the boss, because otherwise they won't listen to you, but then to give percentages "I'm 65% certain that solution Z will solve the problem at hand" - that way you maintain the actual honesty, while still projecting the confidence that some bosses require.

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