Victor Davis Hanson | George S. Patton: American Ajax

Victor Davis Hanson, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University. In 2007, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal, and in 2008, he received the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. He has written for numerous publications, including the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War and The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. Xenophon wrote that a successful general “must be resourceful, active, careful, hardy, and quick-witted; he must be both gentle and brutal, at once straightforward and designing, capable of both caution and surprise, lavish and rapacious, generous and mean, skillful in defense and attack.” This third CCA of the 2019-2020 academic year will consider the lives and characters of some of America’s greatest generals. Timecodes 0:00 Introduction 2:30 Generals & Politics: America's Complicated Relationship 4:03 The Tragic View: Sherman, LeMay & Ridgway 5:20 William Tecumseh Sherman: The Original Controversial General 6:35 Curtis LeMay & the B-29 Bombing Campaign in Japan 9:47 Matthew Ridgway & the Korean War Turnaround 13:09 George Patton: Genius, Flaws & the Tragic Worldview 19:07 Patton in North Africa: Kasserine Pass & El Guettar 21:05 Sicily, the Slapping Incident & Lost Commands 25:16 Patton's Third Army: Breakout, Falaise & the Fuel Crisis 33:27 The Battle of the Bulge: Patton's Finest Hour 37:02 Why Democracies Struggle to Use Men Like Patton 41:45 Q&A