This episode examines a chilling leadership failure that helped ignite World War II: the Gleiwitz Incident, a staged border attack designed to make it appear that Poland had struck Germany first.

On the night of August 31, 1939, a small group of SS men seized a German radio station near the Polish border, broadcast a brief message in broken Polish, and left behind a murdered civilian dressed as a Polish soldier. The operation was part of Operation Himmler, overseen by Adolf Hitler and executed through Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich—not to discover truth, but to manufacture consent.

We break down how bad leadership, decision-making failure, and institutional obedience turned a crude lie into a justification for invasion. This was not panic or miscalculation. It was planning. A deliberate choice to replace accountability with narrative, and responsibility with theater.

This episode explores how management failure at scale happens when leaders treat truth as a tool rather than a constraint—and how organizations collapse when no one is empowered to challenge a story that makes violence feel inevitable.

If you’re interested in leadership mistakes, leadership failure, organizational ethics, and how false narratives enable catastrophic decisions, this story shows why the most dangerous leadership failures are often procedural, quiet, and ruthlessly efficient.

Learn why leaders fail—not because they don’t know the truth, but because they decide it no longer matters.