The historian and journalist on what Napoleon can teach us about the art of war leadership – and why this is a golden age for history writing
Andrew Roberts is a historian and journalist. He is a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and also has positions at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Lehrman Institute at the New York Historical Society. His latest book, Leadership in War, looks at nine leaders from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher, examining how they performed in conditions of war.
What were your selection criteria for your nine subjects? They were highly subjective. I was giving a series of speeches to the New York Historical Society, so I didn’t choose FDR or Lincoln or Washington, despite there being great war leaders, simply because I didn’t think there was anything I could teach the Americans about any of those people. I’m not pretending the nine I’ve chosen are the nine top leaders in war, by any means. They’re just the people who interested me in, really, an incredibly self-indulgent act of serendipity.
History is written by the victors, but can someone lose a war and remain a great leader? Napoleon is the key exception to the rule. I think Adolf Hitler was a successful war leader up till June 1941, but then he fell off a little [laughs], so I have included him because there are lessons to be learned about the errors. But, yes, I think it’s possible. Even though it was for a bad cause, Robert E Lee can’t be considered anything other than a great war leader.
There is a tendency to see truly great leaders as men and women of destiny. Is there any value in that belief? No, I think it’s a form of psychological disorder to think you are specially destined. Napoleon did. Hitler also did. He believed his survival from the assassination plotters on 20 July 1944 was providence. But to believe you’re specially chosen – apart from Jesus – it’s pretty much a prima facie case of psychological disorder. Having said that, we’re very lucky that Winston Churchill did have that extremely egotistical disorder, because it kept him fighting, even when all seemed lost.
What does leadership in war teach us about leadership in peace? I think this is where the great leadership-studies industry, especially in America, pretty much breaks down. Because they are very different things. We see that again in Churchill’s career: he wasn’t a very good peacetime leader, frankly, but a great wartime one. Which is why when people say that Boris Johnson thinks he’s Winston Churchill, I think he’s clever enough to spot that the wartime and peacetime prime minister are entirely different things.
Napoleon from Corsica, Hitler from Austria and Stalin from Georgia. Why did they come to embody French, German and Russian nationalism with such conviction? You can go further. Wellington was from Ireland, Alexander the Great from Macedonia. You can also consider Margaret Thatcher a social outsider, coming from Grantham, yet leading a party ruled by social insiders. I think it’s a driving force in people, the sense of being outside and wanting to prove to the world that you’re just as good as anyone born inside.
Who has achieved a reputation as a great wartime leader that they don’t deserve? I think [Paul von] Hindenburg and [Erich] Ludendorff. The more we read about the Battle of Tannenberg, especially of course in Norman Stone’s wonderful book The Eastern Front, the more you realise there was a good deal of pure luck in that victory. So I think their reputation was largely undeserved.
Of the nine you’ve selected, which leader do you most admire for their actions in war? I come back to Napoleon every time really, even though he was not a great orator, and personally his morality was not the best. But when it comes to the broad appreciation of leadership as an art – even though he lost, of course – again and again, he’s the prime exemplar of war leadership.
What’s the last great book you read? I am quite lucky because I am chairman of the Lehrman Institute military history book prize, so I get to give a cheque for $50,000 to the winner. Every year, I read four or five really good military history books. I gave the cheque last week to Andrew Lambert, a don at King’s College London. He has written a book called Seapower States. It’s utterly brilliant. It goes back to the Phoenicians, the Venetians, Carthaginians and all the way up to the British and Dutch. Beautifully written, a lifetime’s research.
Which authors living today do you most admire? This is a golden age of history writing. I will read everything written by Antony Beevor, Max Hastings, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Niall Ferguson, Antonia Fraser, Flora Fraser.
Which classic novel are you most ashamed not to have read? Anna Karenina. I’m waiting until I’ve broken my leg and I’m laid up in hospital. I can have a nice time and get down to reading it.
Who is your favourite literary hero or heroine or villain? I read all the Palliser novels [by Anthony Trollope] when I was in my late 20s. I know you’re not supposed to admire him, but I wound up loving the Duke of Omnium. He put up with so much with that wife of his, and he was trying to run the country.
Which book would you give to a young person? Always My Early Life, Winston Churchill’s autobiography – his life up to the age of 25. It’s an adventure with endless amounts of good advice to young people. It’s beautifully written and it very obviously comes from the heart.
Do you have a guilty reading pleasure? Yes, Robert Goddard. He’s a thriller writer of the sort of whodunnit you buy in airports. If I go off on a summer holiday, I pretty much always kick off with the latest Goddard. I read it with a pen and write the names of all the characters who could be the murderer on the inside cover, and cross them out as they get murdered.
Which book do you feel is most overrated? Eric Hobsbawm’s book The Age of Extremes, which was glorified by everybody as being the great history of the 20th century. The more I read it, the more I thought it was just an apology from an aged extremist.
What books are on your bedside table? I don’t have a bedside table. After I’ve been working in the evening, I just go straight to bed. The only time I read for pleasure is on aeroplanes. But I’m on aeroplanes all the time. The one I’m reading at the moment is a very funny, interesting book called How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness. It’s by an American don called Russ Roberts and it’s a total delight.
(Source: Andrew Anthony, The Guardian- 10/11/2019)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/09/andrew-roberts-leadership-in-war-books-interview
