Courage, Cowardice and Leadership (Part I)

Two case studies

Our leading business and law schools use case studies to analyze actual, real-life business or legal problems or cases. The students study and learn from those prior cases to draw conclusions that hopefully will inform their future analyses when confronted with similar problems.

One quality essential for leaders today, whether in business, law, academia, the military, politics, or any other field, is courage. For the military that includes both physical and moral courage. For most other fields, the focus necessarily is on the need for moral courage in the face of adversity or danger, whether that danger is to a business or to one’s personal career and future.

Let us then look at two cases to see what they may tell us about courage (or cowardice), and leadership.

CASE STUDY NO. 1 – STALAG  IX A, 1945

In January 1945, Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds of Knoxville, Tennessee found himself in a new role in a hostile and dangerous environment. He, like hundreds of other soldiers from the green 106^th Infantry Division, had been captured after they were hit with overwhelming force on December 16, by the German surprise attack which became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Edmonds and others were force-marched into the heart of Germany where they were crammed into a prisoner of war camp known as Stalag  IX A. Officers were separated from enlisted men and M/Sgt. Edmonds found himself as the senior noncommissioned officer among the 1,275 Americans prisoners in the camp.

On their first day in Stalag  IX A, over the camp loudspeaker the Germans ordered all Jewish POW’s to fall out in a formation the next morning, separate from the other soldiers. The “final solution” was then in full swing, and the American soldiers knew that the Germans were murdering Jews. The forced separation of their Jewish comrades was an ominous sign. The best they might hope for would be to be shipped off to one of the slave labor or death camps such as Buchenwald, as had happened to the Jewish POWs at a sister camp, Stalag IX B. 

Edmonds never told his story to his family or anyone else. But after his death in 1985, Edmonds’ men recalled what he told them when the order first came out over the camp loudspeakers. Edmonds told his men that they were under the Geneva Convention and that they were not going to identify or separate their Jewish comrades from everyone else. He therefor ordered all 1,292 American soldiers in the camp to fall out into formation, not just the Jews. The camp commander, a Major Seigmann, saw through the ruse. “They cannot all be Jews!” he shouted at Edmonds. 

Edmonds, a Christian, was standing next to Paul Stern, a 19-year-old Jewish soldier, who recalled Edmonds reply to the German commander: “We are all Jews here.” In the German Army of 1945, discipline against even its own troops was ferocious and often deadly. Disobedience of any order was dealt with swiftly and harshly. Captured prisoners of war could expect no better. The German commander was not about to tolerate disobedience from a prisoner when one of his own soldiers could easily be shot or hung for less. “I’m commanding you to have your Jewish men step forward,” he snarled at Edmonds.

Edmonds’ reply was by-the-book. He reminded the German that they were all subject to the Geneva Conventions and that he and his men were only required to give their names, ranks and serial numbers. As a legal matter, Edmonds was correct, of course, but attempting to debate the Geneva Conventions with an enraged German officer likely was a swift ticket to an unmarked grave.

Infuriated at this defiance by an enlisted man – and a prisoner at that – Stern recalled that the German drew his Luger and pressed it against Edmonds’ head, again commanding, “Make your Jews step forward or I will shoot you now.”

Edmonds men recalled his unyielding courage: “If you shoot, you’ll have to kill us all and you will be tried for war crimes after we win the war.”

The German major blinked. He was furious but probably was also astute enough to recognize that Edmonds was correct, especially after the Germans’ catastrophic failure in the Battle of the Bulge. So, he stormed away and returned to his office, no doubt fuming with frustration. All the American POWs returned to their barracks.

CASE STUDY NO. 2 – WHITE HOUSE PRESS ROOM, OCTOBER 30, 2023

Within three weeks after the well-documented Hamas butchery in southern Israel on October 7, the country was witnessing numerous well-funded and coordinated demonstrations in support of the Hamas terrorists and against Israel and all Jews.

Image by Kevin Williams, New York Times

Image by Amir Hamja , New York Times

We all saw them as they waved signs and followed their leaders in anti-Semitic chants:

• “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – A call for the area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to become a free [sic] Palestine is a blatant call for the elimination of the State of Israel.

• “Globalize the Intifada” – The “Intifada” (an Arabic word that means “to get rid of”), of course, refers to the armed uprisings against Israel in 1987 – 1993 and 2002 – 2005 that resulted in thousands of deaths. This therefore is a call for Palestinian resistance terrorism worldwide.

• “End the occupation now” – Since Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005, these repeated calls refer to the end of any Jewish existence in all of the current State of Israel.

• “Resistance by all means necessary” – No calls for proportionality here. Rather, the ends justify the means. “By all means necessary” is a justification for the massacre of civilians, the torture of children, murder of families, and the other barbarisms that were commonplace on October 7. If Hamas and its U.S. supporters think that this terrorism advances their cause, then no barbarism is off limits. That is how Hamas’ predecessors justified this:

Up close murder of Jewish mother and child by Hamas’ predecessor, Einsatzgruppe

These chants and others, as well as other aspects of the rallies in support of terrorism, show that the hatred for all things Jewish, while ignorant, was unconcealed and undiluted by the slightest bit of shame.

This continued exposure of Hamas’ blood bath was the context when the White House’s daily press briefing took place on October 30. Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, “Does President Biden think the anti-Israel protestors in this country are extremists?”

Jean‑Pierre could have cemented the President’s and the administration’s commitment against the obvious hatred and anti-Semitism displayed on many of America’s leading campuses. She also could have drawn a bright line between the administration and the radical wing of the Democrat party that is supporting the terrorist butchers. But she whiffed. Her response was a classic case of evading the question with a filibuster of platitudinous evasions: “What I can say is we've been very clear about this. When it comes to anti-Semitism there is no place. We have to make sure that we speak against it very loud and be very clear about that. Remember what the President decided when the President decided to run for president is what he saw [sic] in Charlottesville in 2018 when he saw neo-Nazis marching down the streets of Charlottesville with vile anti-Semitic just hatred and he was very clear then and is very clear now. He's taken actions against this over the past two years, and he's continued to be clear that there is no place, no place for this kind of vile . . . this kind of rhetoric.”

Doocy followed up on this nonresponse only to be met with more evasions: You guys though talk about extremism all the time and it's usually about MAGA. So, what about these protesters who are making Jewish students feel unsafe on college campuses? Are they extremist?”

Jean-Pierre still refused to answer: “I've been very clear. We are calling out any form of hate, any form of hate. It is not acceptable. It should not be acceptable here and we are going to continue to call that out. And let me be very clear. This is a President that has continued to have, that has continued to have that fight in this office, in this administration. . . .”

Jean-Pierre never would say whether the pro-Hamas protestors were “extremists.”

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THESE TWO CASE STUDIES?

In 1945, at great personal risk, M/Sgt. Roddie Edmonds exhibited great courage, both physical and moral. He literally looked death in the eye, faced down pure evil, and did what was moral. He did this despite the risk – more than a risk, a likelihood actually – that it would result in a bullet blowing out his own brain. But despite that enormous risk, Edmonds did what was right. And he did so with confidence that, given his own example, his men would follow suit and continue to protect their Jewish comrades, even at the risk of their own lives, too. He correctly calculated that the German commander might quail before a unified front, knowing that even he could not risk killing them all. That was both courage and true leadership.

Although his actions could have (and did, in my opinion) merit a Medal of Honor, Edmonds eschewed any publicity about what he had done. Edmonds did not profit from his defiance of evil, he did not write a book or go on TV, he did not receive a medal or other recognition during his lifetime. He just took care of the men under his command. All of them. He did not even tell his family about it. Edmonds’ son only began to discover his story after his father’s 1985 death, after getting in touch with soldiers who had been in Stalag IV-A with his father.

And although he has not yet been recognized by the U.S. government, Roddie Edmonds was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” which credited him with saving the lives of up to two hundred Jewish soldiers. Edmonds was only the fifth American and the only soldier to be so honored.  

Seventy-eight years after M/Sgt. Edmonds’ display of courageous leadership, the Biden administration also looked evil in the eye (metaphorically, not actually and up close as did Edmonds), but it was the administration that blinked. Doocy served up a big slow pitch down the middle that Jean-Pierre could have knocked out of the park if she and the administration had the courage just to swing. They did not.

What could possibly explain the administration’s reluctance to use the label “extremist” to describe people who were waving flags of the Hamas terrorists (with not an American flag in sight unless it was being burned), and who were actively supporting gang rape, the butchery of families, torture of children in front of their parents and of parents in front of their children, the incineration and beheading of babies, and all the other barbaric horrors that have been documented?

Two words: Moral cowardice. Unlike Edmonds, neither Jean-Pierre nor Biden had any reason to fear that an honest answer would expose them to death or serious injury. Rather, the “injury” that they feared was political – a drop in support from the Squad and other progressives. That political calculus and fear of lost votes is what prevents them from condemning the Hamas supporters as extremists.  

But what will this craven display of moral cowardice gain for Biden? Perhaps it is too early to say, but I will venture an opinion: It will gain him nothing other than a continued hemorrhage of support among normal American voters. Even though “the best and the brightest” [sic] at out “elite” universities [sic] are blind to it, ultimately the majority of American people recognize weakness and its handmaiden cowardice when they see it. And sadly, and dangerously for the country, it is on full display in the Biden administration in its current appeasement of everyone from Iran to the mad and ill-informed students at our supposedly “elite” universities (And if you doubt my choice of the adjective “mad,” just consider this:

WHAT LEADERSHIP REQUIRES (AND A PREVIEW OF PART II)

What we are seeing today is that too many ostensible leaders in all walks of life, particularly in academia and large swaths of our political “elites,” are too cowardly to confront evil unambiguously and call it out for what it is. They attempt to camouflage their support for the butchers with a false both-sidesism, calls for a ceasefire or, as they prefer to call it, a “pause,” and paeans to free speech. But, even if predictable, their cowardice is not predestined. There are things both big and small that they can do.  More on that in Part II, to follow.