Each Labor Day, American politicians offer lip-service tribute to those millions of American workers who make corportate profits a reality.
But no one ever says anything about those over-pampered, over-paid CEOs who all too often take credit for the work done by those millions of American workers.
Too many CEOs have–consciously or not–patterened themselves after the ultimate CEO: Adolf Hitler.
Ever since he shot himself in his underground Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, historians have fiercely debated: Was der Fuehrer a military genius or an imbecile?
With literally thousands of titles to choose, the average reader may feel overwhelmed. But if you’re looking for an understandable, overall view of Hitler’s generalship, an excellent choice would be How Hitler Could Have Won World War II by Bevin Alexander.
Among “the fatal errors that led to Nazi defeat” (as proclaimed on the book jacket) were:
- Wasting hundreds of Luftwaffe pilots, fighters and bombers in a half-hearted attempt to conquer England.
- Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia–thus giving Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
- Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
- Needlessly turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
- Declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on conquering Japan.)
- Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin–thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
- Insisting on a ”not one step back” military “strategy” that led to the unnecessary surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.
As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking. He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astounding and needless losses in German soldiers.
One such incident was immortalized in the 1962 movie, The Longest Day, about the Allied invasion of France known as D-Day.
On June 6, 1944, Rommel ordered the panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct order of the Fuehrer.
As Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuehrer was asleep–and, no, he, Jodl, would not wake him.
By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.
Nor could he accept responsibility for the policies that were clearly leading Germany to certain defeat. Hitler blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.
Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German panzer corps–and thus responsible for its highly effective “blitzkrieg” campaign against France in 1940.
Heinz Guderian
Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks–something Germany couldn’t do during the four years of World War 1.
Erich von Manstein
Finally, on April 29, 1945–with the Russians only blocks from his underground bunker in Berlin–Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.” Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives:
“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.”
Hitler had launched the war with a lie–that Poland had attacked Germany, rather than vice versa. And he closed the war–and his life–with a final lie.
All of which, once again, brings us back to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political science.
In his classic book, The Discourses, he wrote at length on the best ways to maintain liberty within a republic. In Book Three, Chapter 31, Machiavelli declares: “Great Men and Powerful Republics Preserve an Equal Dignity and Courage in Prosperity and Adversity.”
It is a chapter that Adolf Hitler would have done well to read.
“…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
“The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess, and this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them.
“And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
“Thence it comes that princes of this character think more of flying in adversity than of defending themselves, like men who, having made a bad use of prosperity, are wholly unprepared for any defense against reverses.”
Stay alert to signs of such character flaws among your own business colleagues–and especially your superiors. They are the warning signs of a future catastrophe.
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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE EGO
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 29, 2013 at 12:58 pmWhy do so many CEOs hate President Barack Obama?
It isn’t because they’re being over-taxed and -regulated,d as so many on the Right would have you believe.
According to a January 16, 2013 story published in Bloomberg:
Click here: Corporate Profits Soar as Executives Attack Obama Policy – Bloomberg
So if money isn’t the issue, what is?
In a word: Ego.
Jonathan Alter, author of The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, provides some eye-opening insights into relations between the President and business leaders.
He notes, for example, that even before taking office as President in 2009, Obama pushed through Congress the second $350 billion portion of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
And he stablilized the almost-wrecked American financial system with stress tests and regulatory reforms.
So Obama believed that business CEOs would be grateful for his efforts on their behalf.
And what did the President get in return?
CEOs visiting the White House often believed the President didn’t take them seriously.
For example, many of them wanted a tax amnesty on their overseas earnings. And Obama would ask: How will the government make up for the lost Treasury revenues that would come from such a huge tax break?
Many CEOs thought he was not taking them seriously.
Obama was in fact being serious, and was hoping that his greed-obsessed visitors would help him find an answer that would satisfy both parties.
What the President apparently didn’t understand was this: Most CEOs weren’t used to being dealt with on an equal basis.
They were used to people cowering before them, or instantly agreeing with anything they said.
For Obama, who had taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004, such intellectual querys were routine. He had enjoyed the cut-and-thrust of such exchanges with his law students.
But his law students had not been billionaires with billionaire-sized egos.
One Wall Street CEO charged that Obama regarded intellectuals as a cut above political operatives–and two cuts above businessmen.
As Alter writes: “Being worth a billion dollars wasn’t going to get the President…to believe that your insights were better than anyone else’s.”
Obama was angered that many CEOs felt that nothing should change–even after the excesses of greed-fueled banks almost destroyed the nation’s economy in 2008.
Thus, bank CEOs had furiously opposed the Dodd-Frank bank re-regulations that had been imposed to prevent a recurrence of such abuses.
Obama felt that bankers were ungrateful for his pushing through the second part of the TARP program that had saved their corporations from the CEOs’ own self-destructive greed.
As Alter sums up: “The complex psychology of business confidence was only partly about their tax rates and the threat of regulation; the real problem was personal.
“They [businessmen] had an intuitive sense that Obama didn’t particularly like them, and they responded in kind.”
These are not the kinds of insights you’ll get by reading the highly sanitized bios of corporate chieftains.
As a result, during the 2012 Presidential race, Mitt Romney received nearly $150 million, or more than 15% of his total money raised, from New York. Which meant mostly from Wall Street.
“We got a lot of Barack Obama’s Wall Street money,” said Spencer Zwick, Romney’s finance director, after the campaign.
A passage from Finley Hooper’s classic Roman Realities puts an ancient-world spin on Obama’s relations with wealthy businessmen.
Assessing the reasons for why so many patricians hated Julius Caesar, Hooper writes:
“Caesar…like a teacher, seemed always to be directing affairs in a world of children–chiding one, patting another–yet too far above them all to care about hurting any.
“To less gifted men, however, his aloofness, even if mixed with kindness, was thought to be patronizing. They could not believe that in his heart he really cared about them.
“Caesar never bothered to ask for another man’s opinion. He lacked the tact by which a talented person might reasure others that they have worth, too.
“Pardons, jobs or favors did not completely satisfy the recipients’ craving for attention….
“Caesar…was a supreme egotist wrapped up in his own sense of well-being and good service to the state.
“…For all his experience and sophistication, he had never learned how ungrateful men can be–especially those who feel ignored.”
It has been President Obama’s bad luck–like that of Julius Caesar– to find himself at odds with powerful men whose profits he has greatly expanded.
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