Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling
speaker
460 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 7 Jul
Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah, you know, I was able to go to Russia on four different occasions, and the first time was an exchange. I had the Russian chief of the ground forces, a three-star, visit me first.
This was in, oh gosh, 2011, I think. This wasn't the first time I was in Russia, but it was the first time we had this exchange. And when I went over to see his forces... Everything I saw was a demonstration. Everything that he was telling me was a training event was just a rote exercise that people had practiced multiple times over and over for show.
When I talked to the generals, they were almost always drunk. When I talked to the lieutenants and captains. They were obviously just obeying orders of the drunk generals. They had no sergeant's corps. They didn't have a very good doctrine. You could tell where most of their senior leaders were corrupt and stealing things from the government. They treated their soldiers like crap.
I mean, I was in a training barracks one time where I literally saw one of the young officers beating up a soldier with a baton. I mean, just corporal punishment. So there's no trust between the military and the government, and there's no trust between the soldiers and their military leaders.
Yeah, I guess I can't comment on that because I'm one of the world generals. You know that. But you build trust and you build the capability to fight by treating people well and by building teams and understanding the complexities of modern war. Russia doesn't do that. You know, it was interesting that I tell the story that the general, Streicher was his name, came to visit me in Germany.
And after I showed him whatever he wanted to see and opened up every closet for him, as he was leaving, he said to me, hey, you know, you've got a good military here. How can I make mine more like yours? It was a really telling moment. And I said, General, you can't because you don't have professional values. You don't have an NCO Corps and all your generals are high bound and crooked.
And until you fix those issues, you can't you can't defeat anybody on the battlefield.
Well, I mean, first of all, before the Russian invasion occurred, I saw the same kind of memes. It was portraying Russian soldiers as these big, strong guys that were bare-chested and running through the cold and diving into lakes and all that other stuff.
Yeah. And it was just ridiculous because that's not how modern militaries train or act. They're a professional force. And it was interesting to me that almost in every case— the people who were posting those memes or talking that way, like you mentioned Ted Cruz a minute ago, have never served. So they don't know what the military is like.
Even Tommy Tuberville, when he was making the hold on all the generals, saying he really knew what a military is like because his dad was a sergeant in World War II. And you just go, okay, yeah, whatever you say there, Tommy, coach. But the thing is, it takes a lot to train a modern military on complex equipment in very difficult operations. The Ukrainians have it right.
You know, they've got women on the battlefield. They're looking to train, and they're not portraying themselves as, you know, as woke or... They're a diverse organization, and they're doing pretty good against the fourth largest army in the world, I think the Russians are. So, yeah, it just doesn't hold up. There's no research behind any of those statements. It's just...
feel for what they think is supposed to be. It's just ridiculous.
Well, first of all, I don't know who the 120 guys are that are signing up. I'd like to see the list. I haven't seen that list.
No, I don't want to comment on it, but I would almost venture to say that most of them haven't served lately and haven't been in some of the tough fights over the last couple of years. The second thing I'd say in terms of DEI, I happen to teach an MBA course in my spare time.
And if you look at every single research study that's conducted on diversity, equity, and inclusion, it tells you that it does nothing but make organizations better because it generates good ideas and new ideas. So, I mean, I don't want groupthink in any military organization I'm with. You know, I want people contributing.
And the wokeness, you know, I keep going back to that because I find it interesting. No one has defined it for me yet. And if woke means caring for your soldiers, if woke means knowing the values, as I talked about in that article the other day, about integrity and respect and trust in one another and giving everybody the potential to serve when they want to serve, then color me woke.
I'm good with that. What do you think just generally about...
Yeah, well, what I do first and what I did before the election or right after the election and right after Mr. Trump was the president-elect was, I posted something that said, what will be interesting is to see who he appoints to the key national security positions of DOD, state, CIA, Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence.
Because those five cabinet posts, those five posts are the ones that keep us out of danger. And each one of them has to be pretty savvy in what they do. And especially the defense secretary, because I'd love to be in on the questioning of any nominee to say, what do you think the defense department does? Just outline the list of what the defense department, the secretary of defense does.
Because as a young brigadier general, it was my one and only time on the joint staff, and I had to see the defense secretary every Friday along with one of the combatant commanders to go through contingency plans, what we call war plans. And you got to have a little bit more of a strategic view
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