Comments by "Seven Proxies" (@sevenproxies4255) on "Guderian: Father of \"Blitzkrieg\"? - Myth \u0026 Reality" video.

Aren't there some modest authors of memoirs though? Reading memoir sections of books of scientists in natural science, they've often come across as quite humble and they often make a point of stressing the contributions from colleagues, predecessors and science team members. The quote: "If I can see far it's because i'm standing on thw shoulders of giants" come to mind here. Then again, in military culture, assertiveness and pro-active dispositions seem to be favored among high ranking officers. So maybe it's difficult to find a modest officer, let alone one who wrote memoirs.
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Bo's'n Bruce: Can't say I think the military is full or contradictions. And the irrational behaviour that you point out is hardly the norm within the armed forces. They wouldn't be able to achieve their results or function effectively if they were all clowns. The contradictions rather stem from the culture shock between what men in the armed forces were taught and brought up with in civilian society and how those values completely contrast with the necessary values needed in war for soldiers to function. In civil society, men were brought up with very "soft" values. Be nice to other people. Hurting other people is wrong. Killing is absolutely verboten. In the military they have to have those values beaten out of them and be repurposed and taught that being "nice" is not good. You need to demand that your peers perform and punish them if they are found wanting, and that killing is right when you're killing the enemy. More ancient societies didn't have the same problems because they usually contained a warrior class and warfare and skirmishes between different societies was more commonplace. Being a competent fighter and a known slayer of enemies didn't earn you scorn or social stigma, it earned you praise and celebration. I think it probably helped people of that time to maintain a more balanced view between civilian life and military life. Especially among the rank and file (like with vikings for example where many men who wnt out to raid in other countries had completely civilian jobs at home, unless they were exceptionally competent raiders who could sustain their livelyhoods on raiding alone). But in modern times, soldiers are basically forced to hold two completely opposite ideals in their heads at the same time. So it undoubtedly will have some strange and unpredictable effects on their minds.
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Military History Visualized: Very true. Narrative sells. I guess that's probably why i'm a bit of a Rommel-fanboy as well. :P
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Htoo Doh: I think he means "average joes". The types of people that usually end up being soldiers: labourers, middle managers, average students and such, Scientists are usually more geeky and are handled better using logic and reasoing. But if you walk into a pub filled with low- to middle class guys, logic and reasoning will not put you in the top of that food chain. Assertiveness and dominance will. A person with ambitions of becoming a high ranking officer is not likely to reach his goal if he isn't an assertive and dominant man that can get larger groups of other men to do what he wants them to do. Some times non-assertive and submissive men end up with command, but in most cases their careers are quite lackluster because of it.
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Htoo Doh: I didn't mean to imply that theres an inverse relationship between being logical and being assertive and dominant. The two are definitely not mutually exclusive. That said, I'd still argue that you can make your way to the top of the food chain in an enviroment of average joes being assertive and dominant alone (something you couldn't in a scientific enviroment). But it is of course prefarable to be able to combine the two in order to be a competent and successful leader. The combination however, or at the very least a perfect combination is pretty rare in humans. It's either one or the other, or too little of one trait and too much of the other.
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