Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…It has the size. But one of the problems that France has is that it’s very, very top-heavy. It’s very cumbersome in the way it operates. There’s no question that it’s got some brilliant young commanders, but at the top, the commanders are very old. Most of them are first World War veterans, whether, I mean, Weygand, Gamelin, General Georges, these people, they’re all well into their 60s. General Georges is the youngest army commander and he’s 60. It’s too old to be an army commander. You need to be in your late 40s, early 50s. And they’re too just consumed by conservatism and the old ways. And what they assume is that any future war will be much like the first World War. It’ll be attritional, long and drawn out, but static. But actually they’re right on two parts of it. As it turns out, it is going to be long, and drawn out, and attritional, but it’s going to be mobile rather than static. And that’s a big miscalculation. Here’s my question. I think you’re being too nice on France, here. So when Germany invaded Poland, correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like France could have just went straight to Berlin. Yeah, they absolutely could have.…

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