Original subtitles

these women have spent their entire lives in luxury.

trained from birth and the art of pleasure.

they know nothing of the world beyond the king's royal court.

but two of these women are about to die a gruesome death.

the name of their executioner is one you might have heard.

Sun Tzu.

warrior, philosopher and creator of the art of war.

this ancient text holds the keys to victory in war and life.

now the art of wars tactics and strategies are revealed

in graphic detail to help solve a military mystery.

were the outcomes of America's greatest battles

for towards and two thousand years ago.

did the art of war prophesize the Nazis ultimate doom.

predict how the north would be in the Civil War.

and predict why America would be defeated in Vietnam.

understand the art of wars lessons

and you will prevail,

ignore them

and to fight in darkness.

~Savaş Sanatı~

King Helu.

ruler of the Chinese state of Wu.

agonizes over a growing threat.

a hostile neighbor is poised to invade.

desperate to defend his kingdom.

Helu summons one of the greatest military minds in history.

Sun Tzu.

Sun Tzu was important.

because he has a cohesive holistic philosophy of how to approach strategy.

if you listen to Sun Tzu.

if you follow his principles. you will be victorious.

if you ignore him. you do so at your own peril because you will definitely lose.

Sun Tzu assures King Helu that he can train the smaller rule army to overcome

and defeat the larger invading force.

King Helu asks Sun Tzu.

challenges SunTzu.

in something of a mocking way.

he says, do you claim that you can turn anyone into a soldier

can you turn these palace women.

these spoiled soft concubines into a fighting force.

Sun Tzu answers of course I can.

he simply shows the women what the important maneuvers are.

he chooses the two most senior of these concubine to serve as platoon leaders.

and charges them with making sure discipline is observed in their units

but when Sun Tzu orders the exercise to begin.

the women's simply laugh.

Sun Tzu say well okay.

maybe my instruction will not clear to you.

now let me rephrase again my instructions to you.

in simple language he told the concubines when the drums is sounded.

the u.s. concubine must assemble as soldiers. either spears we assaults and fall in line.

Second time, what happens is still get away. Sun Tzu says, if the orders

Sun Tzu says:

if you orders are unclear.

it is the fault of the general that the troops do not obey.

but if the orders are clear and my orders have been clear.

it's the fault of the subordinate officers that the orders are not obey.

there is only one way Sun Tzu can convince the concubines.

that he is deadly serious.

To Sun Tzu, war is a matter of life and death.

this is the key principle of his teachings.

once understood everyone from the leader down to

the individual soldier will be motivated to win.

Sun Tzu appoints two new officers.

the women now follow his orders without hesitation.

and the big takeaway from this incident for King Helu is that even a state like Wu.

which is relatively weak in terms of numbers compared to its larger neighbor Chu.

can nonetheless wield a discipline effective military force.

if they take Sun Tzu's teachings to heart.

and implement them throughout their military.

while these women will never see battle.

Sun Tzu has proved his point.

king helu appoints Sun Tzu as commander of the Wu army.

Sun Tzu must now make good on his promise to train a force of 30,000.

to fight an army ten times larger.

the strategies and tactics he uses in this showdown

become the foundation of his masterwork.

the art of war.

Sun Tzu rights the art of war around 500 BC.

the book is written on vertical bamboo strips. each the length of a chopstick.

each strip contains 15 to 25 Chinese characters.

the strips are then painstakingly stitched together.

inside the 13 chapters of the art of war like the secrets to success.

basically if you understand the art of war

and the principles in it you can predict how wars or battles will turn out.

the art of war is filled with many important insights.

but there are three key principles that stand out and unify Sun Tzu philosophy.

Sun Tzu says: know your enemy

and know yourself and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

in the art of war understanding your opponent is crucial to victory.

Sun Tzu says to win 100 battles is not the height of skill

to subdue the enemy without fighting

is fighting costs lives and money.

Sun Tzu prizes the general who can outwit instead of out fight his opponent.

Sun Tzu says avoid what is strong attack what is weak.

throughout history armies fight head-to-head on the battlefield

to show their strength and courage.

But Sun Tzu doesn't care about glory.

he only wants to win.

well each of these principles is important think of them as chords in a strong rope.

individually they may be strong but when you put them together.

and use them holistically they're unbreakable.

for more than a thousand years Sun Tzu secrets are kept hidden.

made available only to Emperor's and authorised scholars.

They surfaced in the eighth century in Japan.

and since then their insights have spread throughout the world.

more recently the art of war has spawned hundreds of books

that apply its teachings to sports,

politics,

and business

today it's part of the core curriculum at many war colleges including West Point

but as we shall see.

Sun Tzu advice isn't always heated.

which often leads to disaster.

I think throughout time if generals had listened to Sun Tzu

you would probably not have seen a lot of the bloody wars of attrition.

that mankind has suffered through.

he was very focused on how do I achieve my goal.

with the minimum amount of resources used with a minimum amount of destruction.

Sun Tzu's principals are about to be put to the test.

Sun Tzu has trained the army of Wu

to defend itself against the powerful state of Chu to the west.

the outset of this war between Wu and Chu

when Sun Tzu is given command of an army of Wu.

it seems that Chu holds all the advantages.

Sun Tzu's army is only about 33,000 men.

where Chu can feel forces of hundreds of thousands of men.

leading 300,000 true warriors is a power-hungry

and corrupt prime minister named agua.

non walk cuts a swath of destruction through the Chinese countryside.

outnumbered nearly ten to one.

Sun Tzu could prepare his defenses and wait for the true onslaught.

but being Sun Tzu he does the unexpected

he invades true.

Sun Tzu doesn't attack Nawaz army head on.

he chooses soft targets like remote outposts and border crossings.

it would be unwise for Sun Tzu

to try to seek a decisive engagement early in this war

by attacking the Chu army directly.

he simply does not have the mass necessary to do that.

Sun Tzu attacks with blistering speed and brutal efficiency.

nanhua immediately launches counter-offensives.

but when the reinforcements arrive.

Sun Tzu soldiers are gone and attacking the next location.

by keeping Chu constantly shifting its forces back and forth on the frontier.

he frustrates their leaders and gains at the same time

a much better picture of the way the two armies will likely fight.

after every battle and skirmish Sun Tzu gains a better understanding of his enemy.

he downplays the value of direct attack.

and puts the emphasis on manoeuvre surprise deception.

all warfare should be based upon to intellect.

in fact the greatest battles of all time have been won by the brain

and not by brute force.

that doesn't stop nanhua from trying.

he eventually launches 100,000 soldiers to try to crush the guerrilla attacks.

this reminds me of the difference between chess and the Chinese game of go.

chess is very much attrition based.

you start the board with many many pieces.

over the game they're eliminated.

and at the end you've only got a few pieces left standing.

the object of chess is to force your opponent to surrender by eliminating his pieces.

each piece has its own rank and can only move in a specific way.

the goal of chess is to kill the king.

in contrast to that the Chinese game of Go starts with a board empty.

and you use as few pieces as possible to acquire as much territory as you can.

and in that sense it's a very resource efficient strategy.

the object of go is not the destruction of the opponent's force

but the conquest of space.

the goal of goal is to capture the most territory with the least number of stones.

using a goal like strategy Sun Tzu decides where and when he fights.

he avoids the strongest part of nawaz army.

and attacks where it is weakest.

Sun Tzu guerrilla tactics against the true forces echo throughout history.

but it's during an infamous war more than 2,000 years later

that they resonate more loudly.

and we're Sun Tzu ultimate secret becomes most evident.

it's the mid-1960s.

and the world's greatest superpower battles North Vietnamese communists.

in a country smaller than the state of Montana.

general william Westmoreland.

a hard-nosed world war two combat officer.

sees the battlefield like a chessboard.

we're on the stand and fight head-on.

but unlike chess Vietnam has no clear objective for Westmoreland to attack.

it's a classic case of a general fighting the last war.

and in the sense that the lessons he had learned they're only applied partially.

to Vietnam there were no fixed objectives to be taken.

there were no fixed units to be destroyed.

no one understands this better than North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.

who sees Vietnam like Sun Tzu would as a go boar.

instead of facing the overwhelming US military directly.

he uses insurgent forces the Vietcong

to stage hit-and-run attacks all over the country.

we see something very similar

to Sun Tzu raids into Chu.

in North Vietnamese tactics and operations in the Vietnam War.

Giap has learned Sun Tzu principle.

that it is more important to outthink your enemy than to outfight him.

and it's tactics and strategy not overwhelming firepower.

that causes the u.s. to ultimately lose the war in Vietnam.

a loss that sons who predicted thousands of years earlier.

how Sun Tzu able to do this.

as well as predict the outcome of the invasion of Normandy.

and the final harrowing day of battle at Gettysburg.

is about to be revealed?

Sun Tzu says in war numbers alone confer no advantage.

do not advance relying on sheer military power.

it's the mid-1960s in Vietnam.

US general william Westmoreland orders intense aerial bombardments.

the US will eventually drop nearly 7 million tons of bombs on Indochina during the war.

more than twice the tonnage of all the bombs dropped by the u.s. in World War two.

but the Americans are about to learn Sun Tzu's lesson the hard way.

that despite overwhelming military power and the valour of its soldiers

the u.s. cannot witness war.

between 1959 and 1975 the North Vietnamese fought a very desperate war

against the South Vietnamese government and the u.s. allies.

and even though they were heavily outgunned when you look at how the war was fought

and see that through Sun Tzu eyes.

it's obvious how they prevailed.

Westmoreland uses a chess inspired strategy.

stop the Communist spread by killing as many North Vietnamese and Viet Cong as possible.

conversely Westmoreland's adversary.

the North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.

uses more of a Sun Tzu go strategy.

Westmoreland is trying to attract the enemy trying to kill as many as possible.

Giap meanwhile is looking at it from more of a NGO perspective trying to

focus on how do I win as much territory as possible and thus defeat my enemy.

to combat the American aerial bombardment.

Giap looks to a key Sun Tzu principle.

know your enemy and know yourself.

and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

the way the Americans often operated was somewhat predictable

they would prepare a landing zone through

artillery strikes and air strikes and then they would bring the troops in.

Jap recognize this and realize that if he could have his troops hunker down and

survive the artillery attacks.

then when the troops landed they would be able to set up ambushes to take them on.

the American bombs don't destroy the enemy.

they merely telegraphed that the u.s. infantry is on its way.

Giap also orders his fighters to stay as close to American soldiers as possible.

Viet Cong captain no tactical air.

they also understand it once their positions get identified

in any given battle they're gonna get whack from the air.

so how do you compensate from that.

well general giap said you grab the enemy by the belt.

put another way what you want to do is you don't want to establish positions out there.

and when they did defensively for example

I like a hamburger hill. you know well they get hit by lots of air.

but if you're in a tactical situation you close with the enemy.

you intermingle your forces with his so they can't bring.

they can't bring air power to bear without hurting their own troops.

the free from us bombs.

Giap wants his Sun Tzu inspired guerrilla attacks against Americans on the ground.

ambushes.

Hand Grenade booby traps.

and snipers.

the Jap starts to do is close in harassing rates against the American.

and Sun Tzu likes this idea.

because by forcing the enemy to maneuver to respond to you.

he reveals strengths and weaknesses.

and the more you know about his strengths and weaknesses the more you can avoid the strengths.

and attack and exploit the weaknesses.

the major u.s. weakness in this war is not on the battlefield.

now our weakness was not in Vietnam.

we never lost anything in Vietnam.

we lost no engagements in in Vietnam.

but we did lose in the resolution of the American people to pursue the war.

Giap realized this from the very start.

and he did not try to defeat us in in Vietnam.

he tried to defeat us in the United States.

Giop knows that if he can turn the American people against the war.

he can defeat the overpowering US military.

in the beginning of the war.

nearly 80% of Americans supported the military action in Vietnam.

between 1965 and 1967

President Johnson increases troop strength dramatically

from 190,000 to almost half a million.

but more soldiers means more casualties.

between 1959 and1965 the US had suffered 2,000 battle deaths.

but then in 1966 it jumped to 6,000 and in 1967 it jumped to 11,000.

and this was because Westmoreland was enacting an attrition based strategy.

he wanted to take the battle to the North Vietnamese

and tried to kill as many of their soldiers as possible and of course this led to higher casualties among the Americans.

ignoring the rising death toll and the potential political backlash.

Westmoreland persists with his chest like strategy.

one does not win wars by winning battles.

that's a very archaic concept the Romans learned this.

they fought for 40 years in Spain.

they fought for 30 years in England and still couldn't subdue the insurgency's.

war... battle...

battles and military operations are nothing more than means to an end.

means to the achievement of strategic goals. okay.

those gold by the way often political.

what often happens to military man in his day as we used to say in the Army.

you dance with who brung you they're military guys.

they got one trick.that trick is war. okay.

and what happens and happens to us now.

is that essentially the war and the battles become an end in itself.

without any consideration of whether or not it leads to the ultimate strategic goal of breaking the will of the enemy.

but no matter how bloody the battlefield gets.

the Vietnamese will is never broken.

Giap famously claims he's willing to lose ten men for every one American.

many North Vietnamese troops were a tattoo that says

born in the north to die in the south.

and it's this difference that Giap knows will allow him to defeat the Americans.

who now have more than a half a million soldiers in Vietnam.

many of whom don't want to be there.

believe me all conscripts want to do is get the hell out of country.

you know everybody arrives everybody arrives with what we call their diro state.

they'd have expected routine and overseas.

you know scratch somewhere and across your forehead.

this is when I get to go home.

and it's very hard to train them to do.

the kinds of stuff that special operations forces have to do.

in order to fight an insurgency.

so you you put it all together and it's a failure of strategic thinking.

a failure to appreciate the cultural context in which things occurre.

and inevitably deduce from that.

our failure to develop tactics.

that are effective.

to combat Giap's guerrilla insurgency.

Westmoreland launches Search and Destroy missions throughout South Vietnam.

he believes he is successfully rooting out Giap's Vietcong insurgents.

but a pentagon report released after the war.

shows just how wrong he actually was.

what it found was.

that in more than 80% of the cases where American troops fought Vietcong troops.

that in fact it was the enemy.

that chose the time and place of the ambush.

that in point of fact we were not searching and destroying anything.

in point of fact.

if the enemy didn't want to fight they just let us stumble on through the bush.

but when they... when I wanted to fight.

it would pick the time and place.

Giap's guerrilla tactics are working.

but his Sun Tzu inspired strategy is suddenly overruled by his commanding officers.

he is ordered to plan a full-scale direct offensive against the US forces.

Giap knows this is suicide.

so instead he modifies the plan.

returning to Sun Tzu principles.

he decides to coordinate a simultaneous multi-pronged attack

in hundreds of different locations across South Vietnam.

the date for the attack January 31st 1968.

Viet Nam's Lunar New Year holiday called Tet.

Giap has less than nine months to plan his Tet Offensive.

A Sun Tzu inspired strategy.

that will prove to be a powerful turning point in the war.

Sun Tzu says let your plans be as dark as night.

then strike like a thunderbolt.

during the Vietnam War.

North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.

prepares his Tet Offensive in absolute secrecy.

and just like the master Sun Tzu Giap puts his faith in his spies.

Sun Tzu places like great importance on spies

and in fact he devotes an entire chapter to the different types of spies

and how they can be used.

Sun Tzu would have been impressed with general Giap's spy network in South Vietnam.

Giap understood that accurate knowledge of the enemy is worth 10 divisions.

and so what happened was he literally had created a spy network that was unrivaled.

I mean every bar man every taxi driver every taxi dancer

anyone who dealt with Americans was potentially a source of information for the Vietcong.

the man who ran the taxi stand outside US headquarters in Saigon.

is supposedly the chief of Vietcong intelligence.

the point was by simply overhearing what Americans.

were saying what soldiers were telling girls

the prostitutes the drug dealers all of this thing.

by collecting that information together able essentially.

to predict the movement of American units.

and as a result as the study later shows we didn't surprise anybody.

they knew where were coming on us all the time.

with up-to-the-minute information on his enemy.

Giap moves forward with his plans for the Tet Offensive.

the element of surprise is key.

but means nothing if his men aren't sufficiently armed.

Giap's next challenge is to figure out how to smuggle in and hide

thousands of weapons throughout South Vietnam.

the solution is all Sun Tzu.

deception and secrecy.

giap goes underground.

what we found is an enormous complex of tunnels.

I ran four miles and three and four levels deep.

there were field hospitals below their supply depots.

it's where the VC and NBA would go to rest and recuperation.

there was booze gals down there

and they did some of them ran underneath American base camps.

the largest of these tunnel complexes is north of Saigon in Ku-Chi.

stretching from the Cambodian border.

it has more than 75 miles of interconnecting passages.

built by the Vietnamese in the 1940s and 50s.

the tunnels were originally dug out of the hard clay by hand with simple farm tools.

over the next decade.

the tunnels are expanded and fortified with zigzags and sharp drops to resist us attack.

the Vietcong at secret entrances.

camouflaged ventilation systems and booby trap doors.

how an all heck's name do you fight in tunnels they use what we call tunnel rats.

which were often urban Irish kids.

little not I say little but you know five five five six

thin.

but brave as hell

I mean to go down through those holes into the tunnels armed only with a 45 some time and a flashlight.

I mean that's really war up close and personal.

never knowing what you were going to find on it.

Giap funnels tens of thousands of Vietcong troops through these tunnels.

as the Tet Offensive draws nearer.

with just two months until Tet

Giap plays what might be his greatest deception.

Vietnam announces it will honor the traditional Tet ceasefire.

part of the deception campaign is actually agreeing to a ceasefire over Tet.

this really lulls the Americans in the South Vietnamese

into thinking that they can relax their guard send troops home.

and there will be no conflict during those holidays.

now with Tet a little more than a week away.

Giap launches a surprise attack on the remote US base at Khe Sanh.

US Marines fight back waves of North Vietnamese soldiers that try to overrun the sprawling compound.

in the US is determined not to lose Khe Sahn.

Lyndon Johnson actually has a scale model of the battlefield built.

that he can.. so he can monitor it on a daily basis.

even goes and takes the step that

he makes the Joint Chiefs of Staff a sign of paper that says

the Americans will not lose Khe Sanh.

but Khe Sanh is not Giap's real objective.

it's a ploy to draw us attention away from the cities before tet.

sun tzu would applaud Giap's maneuver.

Sun Tzu says in battle use a direct attack to engage.

and an indirect attack to win.

in the art of war you should always try to deceive your enemy.

pick a place you want to attack.

then attack somewhere else to divert his attention.

while he's distracted. capture your real objective.

giap has done everything he can to prepare for the Tet Offensive.

he uses spies.

secrecy and deception.

the time to attack.

is now at hand.

January 31st 1968

fireworks crackle.

it's the Tet Lunar New Year.

suddenly the celebration turns deadly.

more than 80,000 Vietcong troops carry out simultaneous individual attacks.

on more than a hundred cities villages and US bases all across South Vietnam.

the Tet Offensive has begun.

the Americans and the South Vietnamese are shocked.

they were stunned.

the they had thought the enemy was on his last legs yet.

reports are coming in from everywhere every city every town every base.

that they're under attack.

u.s. commanders see the map of South Vietnam light up like a pinball machine.

we couldn't believe that.

they had moved this many troops disclosed to the cities.

and you know they very patient had

taken months to position arms there and troops and give them cover an amazing amazing logistical feat.

Giap's informants lead the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops through the streets to strategic targets.

one group captures the national radio station.

while another blows a hole in the wall of the American Embassy.

and fights its way onto the grounds.

the Tet Offensive looks like it might succeed.

but the North has ignored one very important Sun Tzu principal.

and it will cost.

Sun Tzu says there are five fundamental factors for success in war.

weather, terrain, leadership, military doctrine and most importantly moral influence.

moral influence means a leader must have the will of the people behind him.

otherwise a war will ultimately fail.

it's an important clue in solving the mystery of

whether sons who predicted America's demise and Vietnam.

as the Tet Offensive rages in 1968.

the Vietcong carry black lists and assassinate South Vietnamese sympathizers at will

one of the most brutal massacres takes place in the city of way.

they massacred 5,000 people in way many of them government functionaries.

whose only crime was that they worked in a government agency.

and also they exterminated they literally shot several hundred nuns.

who whose only crime were that they were Catholic nuns.

that brutality.

I think backfired

a lot of Vietnamese said wait a minute this is not the kind of thing we do.

it's not the kind of people we want to live under.

but it was a terrible and in my judgment ,pointless Massacre.

without the will of the people Giap's small units are left without reinforcements.

they have no idea what to do.

and no way to communicate with each other.

then US forces sweep in and devastate the fragmented North Vietnamese fighters.

10,000 died in the first few days of the attack.

while US forces suffer only 250 casualties.

Tet is a military disaster for the North Vietnamese.

but Sun Tzu's concept of moral influence cuts both ways.

when Americans see the images of the Tet Offensive on their television screens.

popular support for the war rapidly erodes.

this had the effect of just simply turning everybody feelings about the war upside down.

we had thought we were winning in Vietnam.

and we were finding that we were losing in Vietnam.

and at that moment I think everything changed in America.

despite losing the battle.

Giop is well on his way to winning the war

by defeating the US where it matters most.

at home.

after Teth, Giap returns with guerrilla tactics.

in 1975 with US military support all but gone.

Saigon finally falls to the North Vietnamese Army.

at the end of the war US Colonel Harry summers meets with

North Vietnamese leaders to negotiate the American withdraw.

Harry summons under meeting with Colonel too was Vietnamese North Vietnamese counterpart in Hanoi.

probably got a little angry at was going on

and snapped to the colonel and the Vietnamese colonel.

well the truth is you never beat us on the battlefield.

the Vietnamese Colonel looked at him and said well that's true

he said but it's also irrelevant and there you have it.

it was the political context.

that was important far more than the military.

as it always is throughout history.

one more time to remember that war is a means to an end.

and that end is almost always governed by politics not by military victory or defeat.

this is a notion that general Giap well understood as did the master Sun Tzu.

it's about 500 BC in ancient China.

Sun Tzu's hit-and-run campaign against the kingdom of truth is working.

Sun Tzu's adversary.

the true Prime Minister nanhua.

grows frustrated and loses some political allies.

Nan Hua as generals are increasingly frustrated by Sun Tzu's cross-border raids.

the constant harassment is undermining the morale of the Chu troops.

money is being drained out of the Chu treasury.

some cases the best of choose warriors are either killed or captured by Sun Tzu.

faced with this dilemma.

nan hua is forced to turn to choose allies for men money and material.

throughout the countryside there is fear of where Sun Tzu will strike next.

leaders in the royal court begin to lose faith in Non Hua.

and allies begin to defect to Sun Tzu's suicide.

but this disloyalty doesn't come without punishment.

nan-hua deploys his army to destroy a rogue ally in the north called Cai.

as the capital is about to be attacked.

the Duke of Cai calls on Sun Tzu for help.

Sun Tzu, now faces a seemingly no-win situation.

if he does nothing, his ally will be destroyed.

if he tries to save his ally non-hua will crush his army.

but for Sun-Tzu the solution is simple.

he leads a small force toward Cai to act as bait to draw non-hua away from the city.

it's a key principle of Sun Tzu's teaching.

to move your enemy entice him with something he is certain to take.

this is this whole idea of in a sense achieving kind of a maneuver dominance room

or controlling an enemy movement by your own maneuver.

non-hua immediately stops his siege on Cai.

and mobilizes his army to intercept Sun Tzu.

Sun Tzu saves his ally without drawing a sword.

but will he be able to save himself.

well Sun Tzu has succeeded in drawing non-hua a get away from his siege of sight.

it seems that he's maneuvered himself. into a trap.

he's surrounded by non-hua forces.

Sun Tzu has placed his men where there is no possibility of retreat.

he has placed them on death ground.

Sun Tzu says put the army in the face of death

where there is no escape and they will not flee or be afraid.

there is nothing they cannot achieve.

Sun Tzu studied every aspect of war.

including the psychology of men facing imminent death.

Sun Tzu says men know that they are in death ground.

they all be transformed.

they become overnight fearless fighters.

that they will fight we all have in order to end.

on death ground is exactly where Sun Tzu wants his soldiers.

and it is on death ground that another great army finds itself.

with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

June 6th 1944.

allied troops in world war 2 invade Europe.

they land on the treacherous beaches of Normandy France.

if you put troops on a beach

from which there is no retreat and there's almost no retreat from beaches.

then they will fight because they have to fight to survive.

and you can see this at Normandy.

what those men went through was almost unbelievable.

when you see those bitches

and you see what doesn't men had to face it was it's absolutely sobering to to realize.

and it makes you very proud to be an American far as I'm concerned.

how they survived and ultimately defeat the Nazis

is predicted in the pages of Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Sun Tzu says all warfare is deception.

if you can deceive your enemy before battle

you are more likely to win.

dimension I got 10,000 soldiers you've got one Midland.

right, so what I have to do to counter you?

right I had to deceive you.

into speedy area forces into more diverse group.

supreme Allied commander Dwight D. eisenhower takes this principle to heart

as he prepares to invade Europe during World War two.

his invasion strategy at Normandy is one of the most daring in history.

and it's foreshadowed in the pages of Sun Tzu's art of war.

by 1944 Nazi Germany knows the Allies are coming.

but they don't know where or when.

it's very clear at some point.

that in order to win world war two.

the Allies would have had to invade the continent.

and the buildup in England

is the only place they could build up from meant it was going to come somewhere on the coast of France.

the only question is where.

there are only three feasible locations where the Allies could land.

the pas-de-calais, the Cherbourg Peninsula or the Normandy beaches.

the reason why this was true.

is that the Allies were absolutely certain to only land

on a beach that could be protected by the air power of the other fighter planes

that could fly out of southern England.

the range of these fighters was 400 miles.

therefore any landing site had to be within 200 miles of these beaches

but even with air support

the Allies know of each invasion of Europe is nearly impossible

to succeed they must employ more of a go strategy than a chess strategy.

so instead of a direct attack.

the Allies follow Sun Tzu's principle of deception

and convinced the Germans the attack will not occur at Normandy.

one way Normandy is comparable to go is the fact that the deception is involved

as you're playing go it's a you are signalling buyer moves

which parts of the territory are going to try and conquer.

what the Allies were able to do with the clever use of deception

as well as actually clear military logic was to convince the Germans that when it came

it would come at Ponte Calais.

and when in fact they plan to come at Normandy.

it's called Operation fortitude

and it's one of the most complex deception campaigns ever attempted.

the Allies create a fake army

that appears ready to strike at Calais.

they use inflatable tanks planes and trucks to fool German photo reconnaissance.

they would move the tanks and the trucks around at night and they would have men with rollers

actually making the track so that it would there would actually be tracks in the grounds

that it would look like there was a real movement of troops during the night.

the phantom army needs to be seen and heard.

so allied army personnel broadcast endless hours of fake transmissions about troop and supply movements.

on the one hand you would think it'd be a bit of a funny job

because you're just sending bogus bogus traffic.

but on the other hand.

it's an a very important job that if they were lacks in it or they didn't do it well.

it would defeat the whole purpose of the deception plan.

Eisenhower shows the Germans his fake army.

but keeps his real fighting force an absolute secret

for weeks they are successful in their deception campaign.

but one month before the d-day invasion of Normandy is set to begin.

the Allies fear their secret is out.

British counterintelligence officers discover five crucial Normandy code names in a single newspaper crossword puzzle.

Overlord, Neptune, Utah, Omaha and Mulberry.

British agents tracked down the creator of the crossword puzzle.

a 54 year old teacher named Leonard Dawe

and they interrogate him and he gets very indignant and says you know.

am I not allowed to choose the words that I want for a crossword puzzle.

and they press him but at the end of the day they figure out that

he is actually telling the truth and that the words were actually just an accident.

with the scare behind them.

the Allies must now actively sell the Germans on the Calais invasion threat.

they turned to one of Sun Tzu's favorite methods.

Spies.

Sun Tzu says it is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to spy against you.

and bribe them to serve you.

in the art of war double agents are the most important spies

double agents begin as the spies that your adversary has sent to spy on you.

when you find them out you don't jail them or execute them, you hire them.

you give them lavish rewards

and what they start to do then.

is they continue to act as if they're spying on you.

but the information they feed back to your adversary is misinformation.

during World War two nobody uses double agents better than the British.

their program is called double-cross

and one of their key double agents is a Welsh naval contractor named Alfred Owen.

when the war breaks out, he's picked up right away.

and they offer him a deal.

either come over and become a double agent for us

or essentially you go to prison and many of them were executed.

and Heba gets the code word snow

and so when the Germans tried to infiltrate their first wave of spies in September of 1940.

the Germans Radio snow and let him know that these four agents are coming in

and of course they're met with a British reception committee right away.

double-cross is so successful.

that British intelligence is able to turn or imprison nearly every spy sent by Germany during the war.

these double agent are both Brutus and tricycle gives such convincing misinformation.

that the Germans not only believe the invasion is coming to Calais.

but it's the Normandy landing that's the diversion.

Sun Tzu says the way a wise general can achieve greatness beyond ordinary men.

is through foreknowledge

Sun Tzu teaches the importance of deception and foreknowledge

to uncover the enemy's intentions.

the allies gain foreknowledge by breaking german codes

four years the germans believe they're encoding machine called enigma is completely unbreakable.

it can scramble a message 150 million million million ways.

but with the help of a Polish mathematician

British intelligence does the impossible

they are able to decode an intercepted German message within hours

they call their code breaking system ultra.

through ultra

the Allies know what the Germans are thinking.

what their perceptions are of the battlefield.

and their view of what's happening.

thus they're able to you feed German spies information that reinforces those misconceptions.

Sun Tzu would prise ultra for its ability to read the mind of the enemy.

the other wall essentially is using the mind to fight the war.

meaning to say that it is a mind to mind battle

so in order to win against the enemy.

you must be able to read the mind of the enem.

but sometimes knowing what your enemy is thinking creates moral dilemmas.

according to a British intelligence officer on November 14th 1940.

the British decode a German message about an impending attack on the English city of Coventry.

if Churchill tries to protect Coventry he could tip off the Germans

that he's reading their messages

it must have been a very very difficult position

to be placed in and very difficult decision for him to make

and in this particular case

he was looking at the long term allied victory

and he essentially sacrificed.

the the citizens of Coventry that were lost that night.

Coventry is devastated from the air.

the destruction is so complete.

the Germans coin a new phrase.

covent rated to describe total obliteration of a town.

the story is controversial

as there is no hard evidence to support the claim that Churchill was warned about the Coventry attack.

as d-day approaches

the Allies discovered through ultra and their network of spies

that the Nazi still believed the invasion will come through Calais.

still attacking Normandy will be difficult as the Germans established defenses all along the coast.

Sun Tzu would praise the Allies preparation for the landing.

and their mastery of deception.

but he would seriously condemn what they do once they arrive.

Sun Tzu says when a falcon strike breaks the body of its prey

it is because of timing when torrential water tosses boulders

it is because of momentum.

Sun Tzu believes even the most well-executed attack can be ruined

if momentum is lost.

the Normandy invasion shows

that Sun Tzu could have predicted its outcome some 2,000 years earlier

after months of preparation and deceptio.

Eisenhower launches his attack against German occupied France.

a hundred fifty thousand ground troops

jammed onto hundreds of small landing craft

leave England and cross the English Channel.

though land at five different beaches in France.

codenamed Juno, sword, gold, Utah and Omaha.

as the landing craft approached the beaches

15,000 aircraft and 7,000 ships provide a coordinated aerial assault on the beaches.

at some of the landing sites.

the Allied soldiers meet very little resistance.

but it beaches like Omaha, it's hell on earth.

for many of the Allied soldiers inside the landing craft.

these moments before the door opens will be their last

a case of incredible courage.

in the face of overwhelming horror.

I mean as though let if you think about it.

the landing craft came up to the beach

and as they came up to the beach

the troops inside the landing craft could hear the machine guns tapping on the outside.

the anime machine gun is switched to what they call fcl.

final coordination line.

they're going to put this month's machine gun fire

on the front of that boat so when it drops.

bullets go right through it kill two or three guys at a time.

a lot of guys just died that way.

many don't make it off the boats.

so the soldier lucky enough to survive the initial machine-gun barrage.

the nightmare is just beginning

he then has to cross 200 yards of the mind title plants.

wait down, with wet, heavy gear.

then get through another hundred yards of barbed wire beaches.

it's three football fields of death and destruction as German machine guns shred fellow soldiers and friends.

if you ever get a chance to visit no maja

it will change your whole view about the world

it would change a whole view about America.

it will make you realize what incredible tourism was displayed by those guys there.

the Allies survived on death row

exactly the way Sun Tzu predicts by biting together.

and never giving up.

there was an unmitigated horror.

and still they kept coming.

and you wonder, you know why how, how do you make people do that.

and perhaps Sun Tzu is in fact instructive here.

you make them do that because there's no other alternative except death.

what do you do turn around with the equipment and swim back in

there's no plan for evacuation unless, you wounded.

there's no way you could refuse to get off the boat.

so in a sense once you put that number of guys on the beach.

you're following Sun Tzu.

in that you're putting an army in a situation of it must fight or die

and they fought and they fought well and they survived.

the Allies also benefit from another Sun Tzu principle.

the poor judgment of their enemies leader.

Sun Tzu says it is essential for victory

that generals are unconstrained by their leader.

the Allied command structure gives total authority to General Eisenhower.

as supreme commander of all forces on the western front.

beneath him are four commander's,

one for the Navy, Air Force, the US Army Group and the British Army Group.

in the business world this would be a very clean org chart with well-defined responsibilities.

great advantage that Eisenhower had that he could work with all sorts of people.

and there were huge number of prima donnas.

and on both sides.

he was able to work with these people and get them to work for the common good.

one would expect a dictator like Hitler to have an even more efficient chain of command than the Allies.

but it's just the opposite.

Hitler sets up a confusing system of overlapping Authority.

he wanted to make sure that no one person beneath him had all of the information.

and or all of the control over forces at their disposal

and so by divvying it up

it always ensured that Hitler was the one that actually made the final decision on the disposition.

and the allocation of troops.

general von Rundstedt holds the title of commander in chief for forces in the West.

but the Navy and Air fully each had separate command chains.

that aren't under his control and often don't cooperate with each other.

the waffen-ss a separate military arm that fights alongside the German army

answers to Himmler and rune stead has only indirect control of the mechanized divisions

for tank units are under his command

but the remaining six are split between army groups B and G.

it's a complete mess.

Hiller's leadership style

and the chaotic command structure

in the German army

render Hitler a very cooperative adversary

for a Sun Tzu type campaign.

he is constantly. interfering. in the decisions of his subordinates.

the generals who should be acting objectively and professionally.

in trying to defend France against the Allied invasion.

one of Hitler's greatest blunders.

is how he deployed his prized Panzer tank divisions.

some generals believe the Panzers must be close to the beaches

to knock the invading troops back into the sea

others think the tank should be held in reserve.

so they could be deployed and forced wherever the Allies choose to land.

since none of the generals have the authority to make the call

the decision Falls to Hitler.

and being Hitler he made all the wrong decisions.

he put one Panzer Division in Holland and another Panzer Division at the Bay of Biscay

both of which were entirely out of any range of a possible landing.

and he put the rest of his Panzer divisions back at some distance from the beaches

Hitler's failure is a perfect example of why Sun Tzu says

the enlightened general must be free to conduct war without interference from the leader.

when you look at the strategy for the German defense in France or in Normandy

it's very divided over how the defense should be arranged

what forces are actually available to defend the beaches

and what forces are actually available to reinforce the beaches

or reinforce the German forces at the invasion point

because no one person has control of all of the forces as Eisenhower did on the Allied side.

the Allies achieved the impossible.

through bravery and determination

the troops are able to take all five landing sites at Normandy.

despite all of the complex planning that went into the invasion of Normandy.

it was the small unit tactics and the buddies fighting side-by-side that wins the battle of the beaches

and that's consistent throughout history.

Sun Tzu would have marveled at the timing and execution of the invasion.

but soon the Allies encounter a new and completely unexpected enemy.

a labyrinth of giant impenetrable hedge rows in what is known as the Bocage country of France.

it looks like the Allies have pulled off this amazing

miraculous feat and they have they've landed an army on the beaches of Normandy.

but then they get bogged down.

in the hedgerow country.

they had not anticipated that.

despite the fact that the reconnaissance aircraft had photographed these hedgerows.

the Allied planners simply assumed that these were like the hedges in a suburban backyard.

for five feet tall maybe

but these ancient hedges dating back nearly 2,000 years.

are 20 to 30 feet tall and extremely thick.

they can't be climbed tanks can't maneuver through them safely.

and explosives would give away a unit's position.

the hedgerow country in Normandy threatens to completely undermine the momentum that the Allies need to build up.

American army is a mechanized army.

and you can't move tanks and trucks very quickly through hedgerows that are enormous we think.

the Allies momentum stops dead in its tracks.

forty days passed and they have only reached their day five objectives.

casualties amount to more than 78,000

and the entire invasion is in jeopardy.

but the solution on how to escape this enormous maze.

lies in the pages of Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Sun Tzu says make your enemy prepare on his left

and he will be weak on his right.

in Normandy France.

the Allies are getting pummeled in the hedgerows of the Bocage country.

terrain perfectly suited for German ambushes and snipers.

the Germans have a word for closer to combat.

in terrain that's very complex enclosed.

it's called a rotten Creek.

it means literally the war of the rats.

it means in essence that

warfare gets reduced to almost individual combat one or two men against one or two men.

because the terrain in this case the hedgerows won't allow you to maneuver.

won't allow you to bring your your technological advances of artillery

air power mobility to tanks to bear

so the war and the hedgerows was a terrible war was up close and personal.

but perhaps what's most deadly in the hedgerows are the German Panzer tanks prowling the maze.

the British actually had a pamphlet on how to hunt tanks.

they would send out specialized teams of individuals

with bazookas or Piet's as the British and the Canadian Army's called them

in order to actually hunt down tanks and take them out.

and the the manual actually likens it to big-game hunting where you're out stalking.

a tiger or an elephant and trying to take it down

eventually the Allies devise a Sun Tzu inspired strategy

to help free themselves from the carnage of the Bocage country.

the plan is to lure most of the German forces fighting at the Bocage to the City of Khan.

so a weakened force is left behind

primarily because Khan had airfields and it was closest to Paris

and so the Germans were fairly sure that we would attack through Khan.

the Allied plan begins with operation Goodwood.

a blistering barrage of air power against the City of Khan.

the Germans take the bait and move many of their Panzer tank divisions away from the Bocage.

leaving only one and a half divisions behind to hold back the US forces in the hedgerows.

the u.s. immediately takes advantage of the shift

and strikes with a withering air attack on the remaining German Panzer tank divisions.

it's called Operation Cobra.

Sun Tzu says,

you must behave like the snake.

why?

so that when you are attack on the front, the back will reinforce the front.

you attack in the rear the front can reinforce that point

and you attack the middle, both sides to come in.

so for Sun Tzu, right it is really the enemy attacking you

in your ear responses. you must be flexible.

with nearly all of the German tanks destroyed.

US forces are able to punch a hole in the German line with artillery tanks and infantry.

finally, after weeks of frustration.

the Allies break out of the Bocage.

the diversion of Goodwood at Khan

and the success of Cobra in the Bocage country changes the strategic equation.

the stalled allied momentum returns with a vengeance.

throughout the Normandy invasion.

Sun Tzus invisible hand guides the Allies to victory.

through their use of deception for knowledge

and a superior command structure.

that motivates the entire army to fight as one.

Sun Tzu says,

the winning army realizes the conditions for victory first, then fights.

the losing army fights first, then seeks victory.

the battle between the kingdoms of Wu and Chu rages.

Sun Tzu's small rule force is undeath ground.

they are surrounded by the army of the true Prime Minister, non hua.

but Sun Tzu, isn't worried.

Well, non hua's army attacks, Sun Tzu's main force is headed to capture the two capital of Ying.

when non-hua realizes, that Sun Tzu's main force

is bent on the attack on Ying.

he has a tough decision to make.

obviously, he wants to kill Sun Tzu.

he wants to wipe out this force under Sun Tzu's command.

but while he doesn't think the Wu force the main body is much of a threat to the Chu capital.

he's afraid that the defender of inge.

another general will win credit for defending the capital against the wolf forces.

as a result he races back to defend it.

it will be non hua most colossal mistake of the war.

like Non Hua generals throughout history have charged headlong into battle.

without having all the information they need.

thousands of years later

in the farmlands of Pennsylvania.

another general rushes into battle without knowing what lies ahead.

he is Confederate General Robert Ely.

who some consider the greatest commander in American history.

but at Gettysburg Lee fails to heed Sun-Tzu's wisdom and pays a terrible price.

Sun-Tzu says, no nation has ever benefited from prolonged war.

the American Civil War is Sun Tzu's a nightmare scenario.

a bloody stalemate that will end up costing more than 620,000 lives

by far the deadliest war in American history

by 1863 it's pretty clear, on both sides that this is not going to be the short war everyone thought it was going to be.

when at the Battle of Manassas

the ladies and gentlemen,

drove out of DC in their carriages with picnic lunches to

observe what they thought would be the first and last battle.

of the war, everybody knows now it's going to be a long war.

the war affects every American.

sometimes in unexpected ways.

the Civil War sees the creation of the first American psychiatric hospital

at st. Elizabeth's in Washington DC.

still in operation today.

the war between the north and south.

also affected how Americans receive their mail?

a Cleveland postmaster becomes so distraught by the sight of anxious wives and children lining up at his post office.

that he Institute's home delivery for the very first time.

that what many homes receive

are death notices

the turkey puzzles realize that whenever they saw an army that.

sooner or later that would be flesh to eat.

and as the armies moved along.

they often moved along with hundreds of Turkey buzzards.

overhead just waiting for the battlefield

waiting for the carnage

waiting for the open wounds. pick out their eyes.

and eat the innards as they would any other carrion.

and then almost a horrific scene.

but that's what war is pretty horrific in times.

Civil War field hospitals are human butcher shops. with arms and legs, stacked in piles.

some 40,000 amputations are performed on the Union side alone.

only 24,000 of them under anesthesia.

doctors performed dozens of surgeries without ever washing their hands.

it was seven times safer to fight through the entire Battle of Gettysburg.

than it was to be sent to an Army Hospital.

the death rate there was 30 and 40%

taking the limo off was just one.

one part of it now in public gangrene super ation, infection and the death rates were just staggeringly high.

the American Civil War is a classic example of why Sun Tzu warns against going to war in the first place.

but other principles in the art of war.

will prove instrumental in how the war eventually ends.

Sun Tzu says,

those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle

they are not brought by him

Pennsylvania, 1863.

the Civil War is a bloody stalemate.

by the end of June of that year Confederate General Robert Ely

boldly moves his army of nearly 60,000 men

into union territory.

while most of the battles of the American Civil War have been fought in the south.

Lee decides the moment is right to invade Union soil.

Lee's plan, destroy as many military posts as possible in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

while Union armies defend Washington DC.

one key target is camp Curtin outside of Harrisburg.

the largest military supply depot in the north.

the strategy of Lee's attack on the north is not primarily military.

it's primarily political.

and he's going to try to essentially to defeat Lincoln politically

what he hopes is a massive defeat of the north

will encourage people to lose faith in the war.

these bold military action to achieve a political victory.

is more of a go strategy than a chess strategy.

exactly the kind of plan Sun-Tzu would have admired.

but as Lee's main force moves north

a skirmish erupts in Gettysburg between two cavalry units

Confederate General Heath had a division at cash town

and he wanted to move over to Gettysburg.

in order to get some shoes they were in a factory there.

that was the only reason he wen.

he and in this fashion

he be moved without any understanding of what lay ahead of him.

and in the process that off the greatest war that's ever been fought in the Western Hemisphere.

Lee gets word of the skirmish.

and is told that a major union force is at Gettysburg.

instead of sending a cavalry reconnaissance force to confirm the report.

Lee orders his entire army to mobilize.

it's a colossal mistake.

Lee decides to abandon the original plan.

he gives up what we call strategic aim.

and he makes the mistake of allowing operational developments to drive strategy.

Lee orders all his forces to converge at Cashtown.

a small village seven miles from Gettysburg.

Sun Tzu would not like his choice as cash town has not been fully scouted.

had robert e. lee read Sun-Tzu, he would have known better than to proceed on what you think is happening .

and try to spend the resources to find out what really is happening.

Sun-Tzu says, move only when you see an advantage

and there is something to gain.

only fight if a position is critical.

some 60,000 Confederate troops begin to pour in from nearby cash town and Carlisle.

3,000 Union soldiers take position on McPherson Ridge.

they try to hold off the onslaught of enemy soldiers until help arrives

but reinforcements are miles away, toward Washington DC.

so the Union soldiers withdraw southeast on to Cemetery Ridge

a range of hills that forms the shape of a fishhook.

Cemetery Ridge provides an extremely strong defensive advantage.

the terrain is so obvious

in favor of the defense that my guess is almost any second lieutenant from West Point

but have chosen that ground given the opportunity to do it.

when Union general Hancock arrives.

he declares it the best natural position he's ever seen.

lead immediately sees the danger of the union's position.

but because Union troops are still straggling in

he believes they are vulnerable.

Lee then gives an order to confederate general Ewell

that many believe isn't really an order at all.

and Lee says to him, attack when you think it's practical.

didn't order him to attack

you'll new on the battlefield don't know what the hell's going on

and decides not to attack.

you all decided that it was not practical.

because his troops were tired.

and they were exhausted and he wanted to rest.

while some criticized you all for not following orders.

Sun-Tzu's own words place the blame on Lee.

if we look all the way back to this famous interview

between King Helu of Wu and Sun Tzu

in that incident with the palace concubines.

the importance of clarity in orders.

Sun-Tzu says at that point, if the orders are unclear it is the fault of the general.

at Gettysburg. we see Lee

issuing very unclear and very ambiguous orders to his subordinates.

Union reinforcements soon arrive

and strengthen their position.

Lee now faces an uphill battle.

Sun-Tzu says, when the enemy occupies high ground, do not confront him.

if he attacks downhill, do not oppose him.

as night falls on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Lee confers with another Confederate General.

James Longstreet.

a man who grasps the situation from Sun Tzu's perspective.

Longstreet wants lead to abandon the idea of attacking the Union High ground.

instead he wants to march south around Cemetery Ridge .

then east right toward Washington DC.

and this will force the Union Army to come off the Cemetery Ridge

and attack us where we are.

and if they attack us we will win.

this would have been precisely what we thought Sun Tzu would have recommended.

but Lee says no.

he points to Cemetery Ridge and says,

the enemy is there and I am going to a.ck him there.

Lee has completely given up his go strategy

and reverts back to chess.

Longstreet is stunned.

he sees the Union Army dug in and the hills

and knows that they should not be attacked.

Sun-Tzu would have advise against it he would have said,

assess the situation adjust your forces find another way to attack the enemy.

but Lee doesn't listen.

the second day of Gettysburg is hell on earth.

bucolic pastures are transformed into fields of slaughter.

places like plum run.

the peach orchard and Little Round Top.

see some of the bloodiest and to hand combat of the war.

what's terrible about hand-to-hand combat is the memories.

you know, for a lot of war, you can pull the trigger and maybe you see somebody drop.

maybe most often.

you don't but this is up close and personal this bayonets knives rifle butts

pistol shots in the head, in the face and you see it.

and it takes a piece out of you.

it and that's why you have psychiatric casualties.

God knows how many members of both sides remember that battle.

you know every night for the rest of their lives.

and it's just gory beyond belief.

on top of Little Round Top. is Union Colonel Joshua Chamberlain

and the 20th Maine regiment.

they have survived three Confederate charges.

and are nearly out of ammunition.

and here comes the fourth attack

and Chamberlain orders fixed bayonets.

stanzin every fight everybody fires the last two rounds

they got stands up in a great moment in history

stands on the wall with a saber

and gives the command which rings through the years of American infantry history.

follow me boys, bayonets forward and down they go.

Union troops, howl down the hill.

shocked at the charge the Confederate soldiers retreat.

against all odds, the union ends on to Little Round Top.

Sun Tzu's principle of never attacking an enemy on high ground holds true

but this does not seem to deter Lee

for he's going to ignore Sun zu yet again.

and order his men to attack uphill.

one more time.

Sun-Tzu says, there are some armies that should not be fought some ground that should not be contested.

the Sun rises on the third day of the Battle of Gettysbug.

despite the thousands of dead bodies strewn across the fields.

Confederate General Robert E Lee is about to order his troops to attack the high ground, yet again.

one of the things you never want to do in war.

never throw good money after bad.

follow the advice of Sun-Tzu, use an attack to exploit a victory.

never use an attack to rescue a defeat.

and Longstreet gets it.

general Longstreet once again suggests to lead that they should move around Cemetery Ridge.

and threaten Washington DC.

to draw the unit off the high ground.

Longstreet understands.

that the Confederates are in a terrible position .

they are outnumbered. they do not have the high ground.

they have suffered terrible casualties in the line' the last two days of fighting.

and that there's no real chance of pushing the Union Army off the high ground.

but Lee feels.

his men has sacrificed too much to turn back now.

Lee gives the order to attack.

the infantry charge is led by Major General George Pickett

the story is Dutch Longstreet is sitting there

and Pickett's a shall I go general

shall I go and Longstreet just drops his head

and looks away

general shall I go and Longstreet again looks away

said general, I'm going into the attack and Longstreet looked again away.

Longstreet never gave the order to attack.

he knew it was suicidal.

in the sweltering July heat. 12500 Confederate soldiers led by Pickett.

make their determined march across an open field nearly a mile long.

as they advanced in close ranks.

thousands are cut down by Union artillery and rifle fire

there was nowhere they could hide, there was almost no range between the Union forces and the Confederate forces

and the Union forces was simply able to stand behind these these reinforced positions

and fire on the Confederates and so the Confederates had no way of defending themselves.

to pickets men's bravery.

they continued all the way up.

there's one whole unit from South Carolina that much straight into the Rhode Island

a children guns it was destroyed by canister shot the whole unit died, instantaneously.

just tore through people limbs, heads, eyes, blood hair and eyeballs, everywhere.

of the more than 12,000 Confederate soldiers who made the charge only 5,000 survived.

the Battle of Gettysburg is over.

Sun Tzu would have been horrified at the tragic waste of Pickett's Charge.

Sun Tzu always believed in using the intellect rather than force

and never attacking headlong an enemy force if he could do otherwise.

at Gettysburg, lead doesn't adjust his strategy to the situations on the ground.

he refuses to retreat even when the situation is clearly hopeless.

and Lee takes off his hat.

dismount and walks into the field

and says it's all my fault boys.

it's all my fault.

yeah, damn right general, it's all your fault.

no one in his right mind would have ordered that you should have listened to Sun-Tzu.

in the end, his failure to follow Sun-Tzu's wisdom.

is one of the factors that costs the Confederates the war.

Sun-Tzu says, when troops flee, our insubordinate, collapse or a routed in battle.

it is the fault of the general.

in "the art of war", Sun-Tzu imagines the role of the supreme general a man who must be intelligent and cunning

never rash nor arrogant.

exactly the opposite of Sun Tzu's adversary in the Wu to war

Non-Hua.

Su-Tzu is deadly against impulsive behavior.

rash behavior or making the army much double-quick time in order to seize victory

for instances my, victory comes from deep thinking, from detail calculation, from long preparation.

while Non-Hua has a larger more powerful army.

Sun-Tzu shows, he is the master by outwitting his enemy.

Non-Hua rushes to his capital

believing Sun-Tzu is about to invade.

but the master never had any intention of attacking such a well-protected city.

it's a ruse to lure Non-Hua into a trap.

and it works perfectly.

without warning more than 20,000 of Sun Tzu's elite warriors ambushed Non-Hua forces

the surprise attack, throws Non-Hua men into confusion

what we have now is a series of running battles

between Non-Hua much depleted forces and Sun Tzu's may enforce.

in each battle no more gets weaker.

Sun Tzu gets stronger and that Chu capital lays exposed.

Sun-Tzu joins up with his main force and attacks the disorganized Chu army.

finally, Sun-Tzu has won the war.

through preparation, deception and indirect attacks.

Sun-Tzu pulls off one of the greatest upsets in history.

but as mysteriously as he arrived.

Sun-Tzu leaves and disappears.

there's some speculation as to why he disappears.

one theory is that, the behavior of the leaders of Wu

shocked him. discourage him.

when the king of Wu enters the Chu capital,

he's dumbstruck by its wealth.

he becomes greedy and covetous.

it would seem then that Sun-Tzu has provided.

this ambitious and potentially corrupt king.

with a dangerous instrument.

this new military, that he's honed.

he also sees infighting breaking out.

and perhaps this is the moment that Sun-Tzu retires from this life.

and goes instead to write.

what he sees as the lessons of the conflict between wu and yue.

the first line of Sun Tzu's "Art of War" is war is a matter of vital importance to the state.

it is a matter of life and death.

survival or ruin.

Sun-Tzu knows that war can lead to disaster.

sometimes the best way to win is not to fight at all.

this is perhaps Sun Tzu's ultimate secret.

nations often rush into Wars with very little concern for thinking through.

what the total cost is going to be

not just in dollars but also in terms of human suffering

not only to you, but to the civilians and children of the country in which you're fighting

it's the kind of thing that you know we find in Sun Tzu.

you know, before you go to war think this through

and then ask yourself is the reasons for which you're finding.

worth the total cost of the war or is there another way.

as Sun-Tzu says, the angry can be made happy again

but the dead cannot be brought back to life

still some historians believe the genius behind "the art of war".

wasn't actually Sun-Tzu.

but a collection of different strategists.

while his existence is debated.

his legacy isn't.

today the art of war his read by generals, CEO's and professional sports coaches

and while it offers us insights into the battles of the past.

it could prepare us for the Wars of the future.

Sun Tzu's extremely relevant to us today

because the rules that he laid down 400 BC

by the same rules that we apply to warfare today or should apply to warfare today

the recommendations for indirect warfare that we learned from Sun Tzu

are the way we need to fight wars today

because there's no way we can continue to fight direct heavy conventional Wars

because the no other army is going to attack us

and in a conventional fashion.

we're going to have to use the indirect methods of dealing with the enemy

that Sun Tzu recommended and the quicker we learned

these the more likely would it be successful in our Wars of the future

Sun-Tzu can teach us.

not merely to know ourselves to know our strength, our weaknesses

what we're capable of doing on the battlefiel?

but constantly reminds us

that is as important if not more so to cultivate a deep fundamental understanding of our adversaries.

so that we went better achieve our objectives.

that's what I think makes it a possession for all time.

throughout history. Sun-Tzu's principles have guided the outcome of war.

we must embrace his wisdom or fight in darkness.

Encoding by Atilla Sade / 2019