S5E6: Trenchard and the Royal Air Force: Creation, Innovation and Power with Dr Harry Raffal
Release Date: 12/17/2024
S5E19: Thucydides: A Revolution in Strategic Thinking
Talking Strategy
Thucydides set the 'gold standard' for a strategic analysis of war with his history of the Peloponnesian War: Dr Roel Konijnendijk explains how. Thucydides, who lived almost two-and-a-half millennia ago, revolutionised strategic analysis by asserting the place of human agency rather than attributing events as being shaped by Gods or fate. This is something that Machiavelli repeats centuries later in The Prince. Thucydides claimed to have identified patterns of strategic behaviour that he thought would be enacted 'as long as human nature is the same'. A fascinating question, however, is whether...
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S5E18: George C Marshall: Strategic Planning for War and Peace
Talking Strategy
General Marshall planned brilliantly for the US Army’s rapid wartime growth and a 'Just Peace' for post-war Europe. Professor Bill Johnsen explains how. General George C Marshall's (1880-1959) career as a strategist and strategic leader was impressive. As the Chief of Staff for the US Army, he oversaw a forty-fold increase in the size of the Army. Quick to spot talent and advance it out of turn, his appointments included Generals Omar Bradley, Lesley J McNair, George S Patton, and perhaps most crucially, Dwight D Eisenhower. Winston Churchill described Marshall as 'the organiser of victory'...
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S5E17: Giuseppe Garibaldi: ‘The Only Hero the World Needs’
Talking Strategy
Professor Lucy Riall explains Garibaldi's mastery of revolutionary war by harnessing military, political and populist levers of power to become a father of modern Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) was one of the world's greatest revolutionaries, leading resistance movements with irregular armies such as the Ragamuffins and the Red Shirts in Latin America and Europe. A crucial figure of 19th century liberalism and nationalism, he inspired millions. Che Guevara claimed that he was the only hero the world needs. As one of the fathers of modern Italy, Garibaldi was the Risorgimento's Sword, to...
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S5E16: Cyrus the Great: Inventing Empire and Universal Monarchy
Talking Strategy
Cyrus’ exemplary leadership forged a patchwork of ethnicities into an empire that founded Persian rule in the Middle East, Professor Lynette Mitchell explains. Cyrus the Great (or the Elder) is known to many through the Cyrus Cylinder exhibit preserved in the British Museum, which tells us that he was chosen by God for his special virtues to become ‘king of the four corners of the world’. Indeed, he created a Persian empire that extended from the Greek communities of Asia Minor to the marches of India. Ever since, virtues of a great strategic leader have been attributed to...
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S5E15: And then what? Thinking Strategy, with Baroness Ashton of Upholland
Talking Strategy
Baroness Catherine Ashton, formerly the European Union’s lead for foreign and security strategy, discusses challenges, opportunities and tips for collaborative strategy-making. As the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton was at the heart of international strategy making between 2009 and 2014 working on some of the world’s most intractable problems. She was appointed by the UN Security Council to lead the P5+1 negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran and was in post when Russia first invaded Ukraine, seizing Crimea and parts of the...
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S5E14: Abdul Haris Nasution: Insurgent Founder of the Indonesian Army
Talking Strategy
General Nasution's journey from insurgent to Army commander and strategist fighting against communist insurgents in Indonesia is described by Colonel Dr Almuchalif Suryo. Trained by the Dutch as part of the Netherlands East Indies Army, General Abdel Haris Nasution (1918-2000) fought with them against the Japanese during the Second World War and then against them for Indonesian independence. Having become an expert guerilla commander, he was then charged with creating Indonesia's state army, a force that had to unite elements trained by the Dutch and the Japanese, as well as citizen soldiers....
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S5E13: Modernising the Royal Navy: Admiral Lord Fisher RN
Talking Strategy
Admiral John (Jacky) Fisher radically transformed the Royal Navy in terms of its people, doctrine, equipment and structures. Dr Richard Dunley explains how. Few service chiefs have had such a profound effect on their service as Admiral of the Fleet, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, Chief of the British Royal Navy in 1904-1910, and again in 1914-1915, before resigning in frustration over Churchill's Gallipoli campaign. Joining a wooden-hulled, sail-powered Royal Navy at the age of 13, by the time he retired aged 74, his Service was operating steel-hulled, oil-powered and technologically advanced...
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S5E12: Toussaint Louverture and the Strategy of Dynamic Adaptation with Professor Charles Forsdick
Talking Strategy
Professor Charles Forsdick tells the story of Toussaint Louverture, who led Haiti’s successful and highly adaptive slave revolt against the 18th century’s great powers. Toussaint Loverture was a force of nature. A former slave, he led the revolt in Saint Domingue between 1791– 1802 that resulted in Haitian independence. As a self-taught military commander, he was ever present in the fight, adapting his tactics, employing psychological warfare techniques and harnessing the island’s tropical diseases to degrade the French occupying forces. A man of contradictions, he was variously...
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S5E11: Jean Monnet and the Strategy of International Defence Cooperation
Talking Strategy
Jean-Marc Lieberherr examines Jean Monnet’s vital role in securing US arms for Britain and France during the Second World War and in driving international cooperation. A committed internationalist, long before becoming one of the founding fathers of the EU, Jean Monnet played a crucial role in enabling cooperation between countries in two world wars. As a member of the Executive Committee of the Allied Maritime Transport Council during the First World War, he helped coordinate shipping between the Allied powers of France, Great Britain, Italy and, from 1918, the US, before becoming the...
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S5E10: Creating Destruction: US Industrial Mobilisation in the Second World War
Talking Strategy
Professor Mark Wilson explains how governments, industry and the military collaborated to forge the US’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ during the Second World War. The prevailing myth is that the miracle of US industrial production was achieved by individual business leaders who were freed from the dead hand of government. The truth is more nuanced. The impressive efforts of business leaders relied on their workforce, government and the military. It was also a truly international effort. French and British orders started before the European war and long before Pearl Harbor, thereby expanding US...
info_outlineThe world’s first independent air force owes its survival and shape to its ‘father’, Hugh Trenchard. We explore how with the RAF Museum’s Dr Harry Raffal.
Described as ‘the architect and patron saint of modern air power’, Marshal of the RAF Viscount Hugh Trenchard (1873–1956) was the first Chief of the Air Staff (January–April 1918 and 1919–1930).
An army officer badly wounded in the Boer War, he was among the first British military pilots and the frontline commander of the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War.
The RAF was formed on 1 April 1918, and Trenchard set firm foundations for its survival and development, often against bitter hostility from the other Services. His administrative skills, realism, tenacity and willingness to be unpopular created an organisation that saved the nation during the Battle of Britain.
His friend TE Lawrence (Season 3, Episode 7) argued that ‘The RAF is the finest individual effort in history. No other man has been given a blank sheet and told to make a Service from the ground up. It is your single work…’
Following retirement from the RAF, Trenchard was appointed as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, where he set about a substantial reform agenda with the same single-mindedness.
Dr Harry Raffal is Head of Collections and Research at the RAF Museum. His doctorate, from the University of Hull, explores RAF and Luftwaffe operations during the evacuation of Dunkirk. He is a Committee member of the RAF Historical Society and the British Commission for Military History, and Vice-Chair of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Aeronautical Heritage Group.