Brian Gubernick recounts a true World War II story from Christmas Eve 1944: Elisabeth Wicken, a German woman, shelters three wounded American soldiers in her cabin in the Hürtgen Forest. When German soldiers arrive, she refuses to let them harm the Americans, insists on a truce, and they share a meal together. Gubernick uses the story to argue that real leadership means never compromising your values, even in the darkest moments.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to a very special edition of the No Days Off podcast. We are, we are broadcasting here today on, on Christmas Day, and you might be thinking, given that we always talk about discipline and the grind and the The concept that every day brings a new opportunity to get better. You might be thinking, hey, it's Christmas. Surely, this is the one day we could actually take off. I want to remind everybody though, No Days Off isn't about just the work or the hustle or the grind. It's not always about the sales call or the gym session or whatever it may be. It's about intentionality. It's about never taking a day off from your values and from your character. From your capacity to lead and for humanity. Now, last year or the year before, I'd shared the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, which was when thousands of soldiers put their guns down to play soccer and sing carols and honor Christmas, but take a break from battling with one another. And it was a pretty amazing story. Today, though, I want to tell you a different story. It's a little bit smaller, a story not as well known. It didn't happen on a battlefield with, with thousands of soldiers. It did happen, though, in a tiny cottage in the middle of a war zone. I think this story teaches us that sometimes the hardest work we do isn't conquering an enemy. It's conquering ourselves, conquering our own instincts. So the year is, is 1944. It happens to be Christmas Eve. We are in the Hürtgen Forest, which is on the German-Belgian border. This is the setting of the Battle of the Bulge. You probably learned about that back in high school or elementary school. We— this is the setting of the Battle of the Bulge, which was Hitler's desperate last-ditch offensive to try to turn around World War II. It is chaos. The American lines are— have broken. Units are all over the place and scattered. And on top of the violence, it's one of the absolute coldest winters on record. The snow is knee-deep, waist-deep in some scenarios. In the middle of these dark woods, sits this small hunting cabin. And inside this cabin is a German woman named Elisabeth Wicken. And she has a 12-year-old son named Fritz. I'm sorry, Fritz. Now they had fled their home to escape the bombing runs, and they thought the woods would be a safer spot. They are alone. Their father is away baking bread for the army. Elizabeth and Fritz are waiting out the war, and they're just hoping to survive the night. They're actually preparing this small, meager Christmas dinner, which was a, of all things, a rooster that they had named Hermann. And alongside that rooster, they're going to have some potatoes. Wasn't much food, but it was warm. And then there's this knock at the door. Elizabeth blows out the candle and she opens the door. Standing in the doorway are 3 soldiers. These soldiers are Americans. They're armed. They're freezing. One of them is pretty badly wounded. They're lost. They aren't there to fight. They're just trying not to die of the exposure to the cold. Now remember, this is a German woman, so the troops at her door are the enemy. However, humanity wins out a bit here. She looks at them, she sees they're young boys— or not, but young boys in terms of military age— and she waves them inside. She sits the wounded man down. She starts tearing up sheets to, to bandage him. She tells her son Fritz to go set the table, and for a moment there is, there is peace. The warmth of, of the fire starts to thaw the soldiers out, and then guess what? Another knock. Fritz runs to the door thinking, hey, it might be his father. He opens up the door and standing there are 4 more soldiers. But these soldiers are not Americans. They're actually German soldiers. Fritz freezes. His mother steps up behind him and she knows the penalty for, for sheltering the enemy is, is death. I mean, immediate execution if you're helping Americans. The German corporal barks that they're lost and they need a place to rest. Now, Elizabeth steps outside into the freezing cold to speak to them. She looks the corporal in the eye. Now, this small woman standing up to these armed men. And she says, you are welcome here. You can warm yourselves. We have some soup. But then she adds, we have 3 other guests inside. And I will not have in my house, I will not have any shooting here. The German corporal asks, well, who is inside? And she says, Americans. The soldiers, the soldiers tense up, their hands immediately grab their rifles. It's a, it's a standoff in the snow. And this is the moment where, where, where fear usually wins out. This is the moment where training for these soldiers takes over and violence is, is what happens. But Elizabeth held her ground. She yells, "Hey, listen to me. It is the Holy Night. There will be no shooting here." And she looked at them, as the story goes, with such authority and such absolute certainty that these soldiers lowered their guns. She made them leave their weapons outside. Then she went back inside, told the Americans to surrender their weapons, and she stacked them all together. And then the craziest, most incredible thing happened. The German soldiers and the American soldiers squeezed into this tiny cabin on Christmas Eve. The tension was pretty thick, as you can imagine, but the smell of the roasting rooster filled the room. One of the German soldiers who had medical training saw the wounded American. He didn't see an enemy. He saw a patient. And so he goes over there, he inspects the wound and realized the dressing was wrong. So he rebandaged the American. He gave him some medicine and he told him in broken English that he would survive. They sat down to eat. Elizabeth said grace. Fritz, the 12-year-old boy, watched as tears ran down the faces of these soldiers. Because for one night the war did not exist. They weren't the Axis or the Allies. They were just cold and tired men missing their families and sharing a meal. When morning came, the truce ended, but the violence didn't return immediately. The German corporal looked at the Americans' map and told them their current route would lead them straight into a a German battalion, and he gave them a compass and pointed them toward the American lines. They shook hands, they picked up their weapons, and they walked in opposite directions. So why do I tell you this story? I tell it because Elizabeth demonstrated the ultimate no days off mentality. See, it's easy to be a leader when things are going well. It's easy to be kind when you are safe. It's easy to stick to your values when you're not being tested. But on that night, in the middle of the deadliest battle of the war, she refused to take a day off from, from her humanity. She refused to take off, take a day off from courage. She set the standard for everyone in that room and she led. She certainly did not have rank. She didn't have a weapon. She just had conviction. And because of her, these 7 men, 3 Americans, 4 Germans, lived to see another Christmas. So for you today, as you spend time with your families, or maybe, maybe your friends, or maybe you're working, maybe you're facing your own kind of battle, remember this. You control the temperature of the room. You control the standards of your life. Even in the darkest woods, even against the greatest odds, you have the choice to lead with grace and to lead with strength. Don't take a day off from being the person you want to be. On that note, thank you all for being here today. Merry Christmas to everyone. Be safe. Spend great time with your families, and as always, let's get after it. Thank you.
