Word: commandism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Unable to command enthusiasm, the Communist compel obedience. The hapless Chinese cannot speak his resentment publicly or before his child, who has been taught to spy on him, or in front of a friend, who may be an informer. He can display his disapproval only by sullen compliance or by loafing on the job. The opposition is real but unorganized: a silent resistance that shows up not in guerrilla successes but in production failures...
...commander in chief of the army, once the brilliant strategist of the guerrilla days, now,pretty much a figurehead, but a useful one. One version of his life makes him of the landed gentry; another says he was one of a large family of poor peasants who pooled resources to educate one-Chu Teh. First a gym teacher, then a war lord's lieutenant, he learned to command troops, eventually fought himself to high fortune, a houseful of concubines and opium. About 1922 he suddenly abandoned the high life, went to Berlin to study, met Chou...
...dozen grenades, a rifle or pistol, and a long-bladed knife. This time there was no screaming. After midnight the Reds stormed three outposts, and General de Castries' tired men could not get them back. The Reds dug in less than 600 yards from the French command post. Successively in French, Vietnamese, Arabic and German, Red loudspeakers blared: "Surrender...
Letdown in Command. At 1600 that afternoon, Dienbienphu fell strangely quiet. What was Giap up to? Was he regrouping? Was he digging his assault trenches closer to the battered French center? Was he heeding Mao Tse-tung's doctrine: "Fight only when victory is certain"? Or, more likely, was he synchronizing his next assault with Molotov's next offensive at Geneva...
...Lord Raglan, commander in chief in the Crimea at the age of 65, had never led troops into battle in his life. Lord Raglan's personal courage was first class. "After his right arm was amputated without an anesthetic on the field of Water loo, he called out. 'Here, don't take that arm away until I have taken the ring off the finger!' " Unfortunately, he "covered his [Crimean] staff with confusion by forgetting that the French were ... his allies and invariably talking of 'the French' when he meant 'the enemy...