Management lessons learnt from WW II

World War II was the biggest catastrophe that mankind has witnessed, where 40 million people lost their lives and many thousands were displaced. It started off as border skirmishes which slowly engulfed Europe, Americas, Australia, Asia, Africa and hundreds of tiny islands in the pacific region. A bloody six years that ended in dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and left the world with an ice-cold war between two giant economies. Of all the wars in the last 200 years this was the mother of all wars, where 30 nations were involved and roughly 18,000 people died every day for 6 years.

I am sure many people would have picked up the historical facts, researched the war outcome and written articles on courseware on crises management and leadership styles.

I intend to bring various stories of the war and try and relate some of those incidents for a few personal or professional learnings, that may be useful at the place of work or our lives.

To start with let us review the foundations on which the two great wars were fought in the early 1900s.

World war I was an expansionary war, where imperialists looked at expanding their region. It was a war where France, Britain, Italy, Americas, Japan and Russia were allies while they fought the central powers in Germany, Turkey and Austria. World war II was an ideological war, fought over imperialism, fascism, Nazism, communism, and democracy, where Germany, Japan and Italy were the axis powers while France, Britain, Russia and Americas on the other side called Allied powers. If Hitler or Mussolini had kept “war strategy” at the top of their agenda rather than the story of a higher rate of human beings the world would have been ruled by the fascists. Thank God for that!

Planning well in advance wins half the war:

Germany entered Poland in the autumn of 1939, with its swift Panzer brigade and completely overpowered a strong 1 million Polish army, who with their reliance on horse driven cavalry was outmoded by a mechanized blitzkrieg of the Germans. While a lesser-known story of a Russian invasion on Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and finally Finland. Finland fought as fiercely as they could but were outnumbered by the Russians before a peace treaty was signed in lieu of a large swathe of land. Poland had an agreement with British and French governments that if they are ever attacked, these two military nations will come to the rescue. As it so happened, Britain and France announced war against Germany. Thus far, history is a simple story of greed and supremacy of one nation over another, but you will have to give it to the Germans for their strategic planning before they launched into Poland. Germans have been building their air power since 1933, from a meagre 300 they grew to 7500 in numbers within the next six years. This and the motorized light weight tank division gave them superior power to invade and quickly take over a hapless Poland. In the meantime, the only opposition that could have bothered Germany were the Russians, but a shrewd Hitler had already signed up a non-aggression pact with them in Moscow. As a sinister protocol these two nations decided to divide Poland up between themselves. Therefore, it was left to Britain and France who announced war on Germany leading to the start the World War II. ?This was of course the end of a grand strategy for the Germans, Hitler was driven continually by ideas of being a higher race and hatred for the under-race. While the initial victories were astonishing, what happened next was a serial refusal to acknowledge that there were strategists from other countries who could put a spear right through the heart of the supermen of Germany. Hitler ascended the supreme position by 1933 and had been planning for a war since then. He had been building up his fighter bombers, army and tank units. He always wanted to take back what was taken away from Germany post the first world war according to the Versailles treaty. He was very clear that he would not end up paying world war I reparations to Britain, France and America which was drying up his own nation. So, he started work on his sinister plans. The only person who saw through this sinister plan was Winston Churchill who in 1933 asked everyone to stop Hitler or face the consequences of a massive genocide.

If I were to draw parallels from the story above, we see examples from automobile industries where a new car design is secretly worked upon over a period of five to six years, pacts drawn up with OEMs, secret production and test sites drawn up before a “blitzkrieg” marketing and launch action takes place at the auto shows completely taking the competitors off-guard.

Fallacy of resourcing:

I call it a fallacy of resourcing, since the allied powers of Britain, France, Russia and USA far outnumbered the axis powers by a count of at least 2. ?General perception of a war is that the one who controls largest number of resources in terms of men, artillery, planes or navy would come out of as victors. While this may be true on a high level, it could never explain why Germany was nearly winning the war till the fateful decision to attack Russia in 1941 winters. Between 1939 and 1941 the European map had largely changed to a German swastika. On the other hand, Japan one of the axis powers had romped across China, Korea, Burma, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Italy had conquered North Africa, Greece, Yugoslavia and parts of France.?

Now if I tell you about the enormity in resourcing of the allied powers you will wonder why they failed to grind the axis powers to dust. The allied powers had 180 million soldiers compared to axis powers who only had 30 million overall. Allied powers had 4 million tanks; military vehicles compared to a meagre 670K of the Axis power. Allied powers had 6.7 million artillery, guns and mortars while the axis had 1.3 million. On aircrafts allied had 630K while the axis had half of it. Even naval power of the allied stood at 54K while axis had only 2K. Out of the total 130 million soldiers at war allied powers held 70% of it while axis powers only had 30%. Axis powers deployed 40% of their male population into the war while the allied had on an average around 27%. The combined GDP of allied powers during 1939 to 1945 period was 1.7 trillion dollars while the allied powers were only 300 billion dollars. The spend percentage of national income for military purchases for allied powers were on an average close to 60% while Axis powers barring Germany who spent 70%, spent only 30%.

So, what went wrong? Why was Germany or Japan winning the war till the end of 1941? With so many resources at allied power disposal why were they losing to Germany?

Simply put the Germans, Japanese and Italians were better prepared. They used rarely used techniques of swarming in from all sides very quickly and taking the opposition by surprise. Thereby, subjecting them to abject surrender in a quick time.

But by the summers of 1942, Germany had started to lose ground considerably. Japan was desperately running out of oil and iron ore to keep its conquests going. Italy had started to lose its naval forces and people. By 1943 it was amply clear to the axis powers that their GDP had started falling way below expectations, they were left with very little workforce to produce food, weapons or other supplies and with 40% of male being deployed at the front they practically started running out of steam. On the other hand, USA saw a growth in economy and Britain increased their production of weapons, brought in new technologies in bomber planes, launched the best destroyer ships and came back hard at the Axis powers.

If I were to draw parallels No matter how many people or monies a business may throw in, it is important to create winning strategies if they intend to expand their market. One of my bosses used to say frequently, a botched execution can eat strategy for breakfast. Be it corporate or our individual life there is no substitute for good strategic work, if the intent is to lead from the front. If Japan had not bombed Pearl Harbor and taken out a handful of naval destroyers USA would never have entered the war. This would have left the allied powers weak, bereft of new age fighter planes and absolutely zero access to the pacific region where Japan was in full flight. Similarly, if Germany had not romped into Russia and stayed on during the winters, they would not have lost half their force which demoralized the Reich completely. ?All it tells us is that a thoughtful execution of a well drafted strategy is of utmost importance than just a strategy on paper. You need resources to pull off mega projects. It is important that you are well resourced, you have the monies, and you have a fallback plan for all exigencies that may come your way. You cannot go in for a snap victory overlooking the long road ahead.

?Each member needs to know their role in the grand plan.

The leaders of axis power from Germany, Italy and Japan were eccentric leaders and each one of them wanted to go their own way to win the war. There was hardly any collaboration between them.

December 7, 1941, while Pearl Harbor had woken up to a bright day, found themselves bombed and ground by the Japanese admiral Yamamoto. Japan had run out of oil and America had sanctioned embargo on them for taking over Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Infuriated Japan bombed America. Hitler had never heard of Pearl Harbor before that. Japan never bothered to inform Hitler about this impending attack. ?Hitler himself announced war on America same day without bothering to check the distance between Germany and USA. How would he reach America if the distance is 8000 kilometers? Where does he have the air power to reach and bomb America? His assumption of naval power was mostly based on superior Japanese navy, so how will be inspire Japanese navy destroyers and bombers to proceed towards the Americas? Italy on the other hand landed in North Africa with a great ambition to expand its African territory. He was completely upturned by the allied forces and Hitler had to rush his best general to rescue Italy. By the turn of 1943 Mussolini had surrendered to the allies, weakening the position of the axis power further.

On the contrary, allied powers by 1942 had a few meetings and divided their responsibilities. America will fight the Japanese in the Pacific and try and neutralize that threat. America would land on the north African soil and fight the German under the aegis of British General Montgomery. Russia would move from the south and encircle Germany. America and Britain were steadfastly producing bomber planes, carrier ships at the rate of 1 per day to outnumber the axis power. America provided artillery to the Russians to take on the might of Germany on their own soil and up towards Berlin. It was Russia’s job to drive out Germany from Stalingrad and re-conquer the German territories right up to Berlin. Britain had the role to bomb all production units in Germany and their airstrips so that Germany had very little to produce or use air strips to fly bombers. Britain and Americas started research on bomber planes that could carry large payloads of bombs approximately 10,000 kilos per sortie which practically annihilated German cities.

Conclusion one can draw from this is that we need to behave like fish swimming in the same direction in a coordinated way. It is a big management lesson, where fish school together and if by oddity someone stands out in the pack it is subjected to predatory action.

If I were to draw parallels for any mega plan to be successful it is important that each member of the plan knows his role and how he impacts the outcome. It is impossible to deliver the results if a few faces the opposite direction leading to friction and ultimately derailment of the plan. No member of the grand plan can run their own vested interest or agenda because then the plan is not a school anymore. If people run their own agenda within the larger agenda there is every possibility of delays or overruns or cost outages, which is exactly what happened with the axis forces when Japan bombed USA and Hitler walked straight into a Russian winter without warm clothes or supplies.

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Vanity trumps thinking

Germany had great military strategists in General Rommel, General Heinz Guderian, General Rundstedt and a few others and they were so adept at their work that they could drive right through enemy lines like a knife going through a butter.

In 1940 by which time France and Britain had declared war on Germany, with their enormous military might, France did not for a moment think that Germany would enter France and take them over in a matter of 6 weeks. France thought Germany will enter through Belgium border as that the was easiest way for an armory to enter France. There was another way to enter France and that was through the forest called Ardennes. French army believed it is impassable for the German with their heavy tanks and mechanized vehicles to wind through the narrow roads inside the forest. To distract the French, Germany attacked a neutral country like Netherlands to lure the French army to push down south towards Netherlands to defend their border. While France was busy sending their troops there the Germans audaciously entered the Ardennes Forest and ground their way out. The brilliance and coordination of this plan was only possible because of a brilliant General called Rundstedt. It is said Rundstedt was great with tanks second only to the great American general Patton in whose name we christened Patton tanks. Rommel on the other hand was a ferocious infantry fighter and his immortal quotes inspired the Panzer brigade. His emphasis on planning and execution is clear from what he had said “Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, but the brain saves both”. Rommel was nicknamed “desert fox” because of the way he reached Libya to bail out the Italian soldiers who were being beaten back by the British army. He was ordered to defend his position and hold his ground, however, he overlooked that order, instead attacked. He personally led from the front and would bark out instructions from the top of his tank. The British commonwealth forces were pushed back to Egypt, he had them on the run. But to advance further he needed supplies and further air cover, but Hitler gave him none. He tried hard but his offensive was finally over as the legendary British general Montgomery took charge and put the Germans on the run. Hitler called Rommel back to Berlin and put him on staff duty.

Both Rundstedt and Rommel would advice Hitler when he went overboard with his military ideas. Hitler was not good with military strategies; he was just a brilliant orator. Hitler would listen to the generals for hours but then do what he wanted to do. Hitler was so full of himself that he called back Rommel in the middle of the North African war while not providing him the ammunition to win a battle that he was winning. It is said that Hitler was unhappy with the popularity of Rommel in his home country and feared that Rommel may kill Hitler. On the other hand, when Rundstedt counselled Hitler to halt and retreat in 19 in the best interest of German army but Hitler overlooked that advise and instead removed him. Consequences that the German army did not get supplies of warm clothes, food or shoes to withstand a Russian winter of 30 degrees Celsius below zero. German army of 220,000 were encircled by the Russians in Stalingrad with no or little food and clothes and started to die. Hitler in his own head knew that a proud German race cannot retreat and therefore ordered them to stay put and die for honor. In the end only handful of 20,000 soldiers remained and were promptly captured by the Russians during the winter of 1943.

The conclusion one can draw from this is that Hitler, Mussolini or Yamamoto were too vain to accept any suggestions from anyone else and perhaps considered that they knew the best.

If I were to draw parallels When it comes to corporations, there are a lot of leaders who start to assume they are above all, both in terms of capability and intellect. They lose touch with the ground, rarely visit their place of business and unilaterally call the shots without heeding any advice from his number two. Enron CEO Kenneth Lay is a classic example who skirted financial reporting requirements by hiding Enron’s massive debt load from his investors. Another example closer home would be the Satyam story and its infamous CEO Ramalingam Raju.