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    You are here Home » leadership

    A Leadership Lesson from D-Day: Foresight

    Last updated on Jun 5, 2018 by Dan McCarthy · This post may contain affiliate links

    Guest post by John Antal:

     

    Foresight is one of the most critical skills of
    a leader. Foresight is the capacity to accurately focus on the key factors
    of a rapidly changing and chaotic situation without losing sight of the big
    picture. The best leaders anticipate and develop an ability to see beyond
    the immediate and are able to visualize and plan several moves ahead of their
    opponent. Foresight helps leaders act in a manner that addresses problems in
    the short term and solves them in the long run. In war, foresight is as
    valuable as it is rare.

     
    In December 1940, Adolf Hitler was considered
    by many to be a leader with exceptional foresight. In 1938, he had bluffed the
    Allies at Munich and annexed portions of Czechoslovakia and eventually took the
    entire country without a fight. In 1939, Hitler’s forces attacked Poland while
    the French and British, who had pledged to fight if Poland was attacked, did
    little to help. The Poles fought and died alone and Hitler won another victory
    for the Reich. In 1940, Hitler unleashed a lightening war against Norway,
    Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. All these countries
    surrendered to Hitler’s armies. In 1941 Hitler’s legions seized Yugoslavia,
    Greece and Crete. In Africa, Rommel’s
    Deutsches
    Afrikakorps
    ,
    was nearing the Suez Canal. By late 1941, Hitler’s empire stretched from the
    shores of France to the Parthenon in Greece and from the sands of Libya to the
    gates of Moscow.

     
    On December 7, 1941, Nazi Germany’s ally, the Empire
    of Japan, executed a surprise attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor,
    Oahu, Hawaii. The Japanese attack badly damaged the US Pacific Naval Fleet,
    sinking, among others, four battleships. American naval and aircraft losses
    were heavy. All eight American battleships anchored at Pearl Harbor, the pride
    of the US Navy, were damaged, with four being sunk, along with the loss of
    three cruisers and three destroyers. Although the US Navy’s aircraft carriers
    escaped the attack, 188 Army and Navy aircraft were destroyed. Most tragically,
    2,403 Americans were killed, with another 1,178 wounded. That same day, the
    Japanese attacked US forces in the Philippines, and Guam, while simultaneously
    attacking British and Dutch forces across the Pacific.

     
    The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
    crippled America’s fighting forces in the Pacific and shocked the American
    people. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his address to
    Congress on December 8, 1941, stated: “Hostilities exist. There is no blinking
    at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave
    danger. With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination
    of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.”

     
    Those were brave words, but in 1941, the United
    States was not ready for war. The US Army was ranked 19th in the world and was
    smaller than the army of Romania. Only three divisions in the US Army were
    considered combat ready and these lacked the modern equipment—especially
    tanks—that was the key ingredient of the German Army’s (the Wehrmacht’s)
    success. The Army Air Corps (the United States Air Force did not become a
    separate service until 1947, after World War II) was struggling to train pilots
    on mostly obsolete aircraft. Only the United States Navy was truly a force to
    be reckoned with and now the Japanese had delivered a devastating blow to the
    American fleet.

     
    Hitler watched as Japan conducted its Pacific
    blitzkrieg. The Japanese seemed poised to knock the US out of the war. Hitler
    expected America to cower and beg the Japanese for terms, just as the British
    and French had done at Munich. He waited a few days after the Japanese attack,
    searching for an opportune time to maximize the propaganda effect and announce
    his support for Imperial Japan. Then, on December 11, 1941, four days after the
    Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler gave a speech at the Reichstag and, to
    the surprise of his generals, declared war on the United States.



    When Hitler’s Generals heard their Fü
    hrer declare war on the
    United States their jaws dropped. Japan had not informed Germany of its plan to
    attack Pearl Harbor. Hitler had not consulted the Wehrmacht high command that
    Germany would take on the Americans. The German Army was fully committed to the
    titanic struggle in Russia. It was true that the United States had inadequate
    military forces and was unprepared for war, but it seemed unnecessary to add
    another enemy to an ever-increasing list of enemies. Germany was not bound by
    the Axis
    Tripartite Pact to declare war on the United States.
    Nevertheless, victory for the Axis was in the air. Hitler’s forces were
    expected to take Moscow in the spring. Japan had just smashed the American
    Navy. Hitler was sure that the “
    decadent bourgeois Americans” could
    not fight.

     
    On December 11, 1941, the Führer’s
    foresight still seemed infallible and
    America’s ability to fight a
    global war against the Axis powers of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany looked
    impossible. Impossible, however, was not a word in the American dictionary and
    America rose to the challenge. Almost immediately after the Pearl Harbor
    attack, Americans shook of isolationism, rolled up their sleeves, and decided
    on courage. They decided to lead. It took tremendous effort, organizational
    skills, and sacrifice by a united America to raise the Army, Army Air Forces,
    Navy, Marines and Coast Guardsmen required to turn the tide against this
    vicious totalitarian onslaught, but that is what they were determined to do.
    Remember Pearl Harbor was their rallying cry.

     
    One thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven
    days later, on June 6, 1944, the Allies under the leadership of General Dwight
    D. Eisenhower, landed on the beached of Normandy, France, in the greatest
    amphibious operation ever attempted. The Allies cracked open Hitler’s Fortress
    Europe and started the march toward Germany. D-Day was a vital step in the
    destruction and surrender of Nazi Germany, and it started at Pearl Harbor, on
    December 7, 1941. For the ancient Greeks, the name Prometheus means
    “foresight.” Adolf Hitler’s hubris and lack of foresight on December 11, 1941,
    when he declared war on the United States, was, thankfully, one of biggest
    strategic blunders of WWII.

     
    John Antal is a Soldier,
    historian, author, leadership expert and master storyteller . He has published
    thirteen books and hundreds of magazine articles on his historical and
    leadership subjects. His latest book, 7
    Leadership Lessons of D-Day: Lessons from the Longest Day, June 6, 1944
    ,
    was published in October 2017 and is available at You can learn more about John
    Antal and his books at www.American-Leadership.com.

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