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
For nearly six years, Colonel Tom Norris was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, now he’s sharing his story.
This extraordinary film about American POWs is one of a series of “Air Force Now” magazine type movies made for the U.S. Air Force in the 1970s and 1980s. This particular episode focuses on the return of Prisoners of War (POWs) from Vietnam after the war. It was apparently made in either late 1973 or early 1974, after Operation Homecoming took place. Operation Homecoming took place from February 14, 1973 to April of that year,
May 24, 1973: John Wayne thanks the President for his services to his country and warmly welcomes America’s POWs home at a historic White House dinner.
On September 9, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk jet was shot down in Vietnam. He was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese and spent the next seven years being tortured and subjected to unimaginable loneliness and terror. Fortunately, three years earlier, he was recommended a book. That book, he says, saved his life. After twenty years in the navy, Stockdale decided to go back to school. He enrolled in a two-year graduate program at
