This speech by Jim Collins for The Drucker Institute talks about The Stockdale Paradox, which is rooted in the story of Admiral James Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. How? How does someone deal with the facts of their situation when there’s seemingly no reason to hope for a happy ending?
‘Political Basketball’: The Strange Tale Of Captured US POW’s, 1968 (Wilmoth,
Weeks after arriving in Vietnam in 1968, Korean War veteran Sergeant First Class Floyd Wilmoth- who enlisted in the US Army in 1953- stepped aboard the river vessel LCU1577 ‘Sunset Strip’. Days later, Wilmouth and his crew were unwittingly embroiled in an international incident between Cambodia and the United States.
