You Have Failed Me / Real Life

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• Done in the Wars of the Roses by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, during the Battle of Tewkesbury 1471. He killed his subordinate commander Baron Wenlock, who had failed to support him, by smashing his head in with a warhammer in the midst of the battle.
• Admiral John Byng failed England at the Battle of Minorca (1756) by choosing not to bring his heavily damaged ships into battle against an undamaged French fleet and ended up in front of a firing squad. He was executed for the crime of "failing to do his utmost." Voltaire satirized this episode in Candide: "In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others." (You may come across the phrase from the original French, "pour encourager les autres".)
  • It can be argued that it actually worked: the Seven Years' War marked the rise of England as the major naval power in Europe, at least partly due to the freshly 'motivated' attitude of the Royal Navy. British captains became known for their almost suicidal aggressiveness, which led to other naval powers taking precautions or even retreating at the mere presence of British ships for fear they might be attacked.
  • Byng wasn't the only one, either, just the most famous example. At the time, according to British naval law, an officer "failing to do his utmost" against the enemy was a capital offense. Unlike most other capital offenses in the Articles of War, this did not include the clause, "...or such other punishment as... the court-martial shall impose." If a sailor was found guilty under this article, execution was mandatory. The Articles of War were later amended (over two decades later) to include the possibility of other punishments.
  • This policy was also the reason why Admiral Parker sent a signal for Horatio Nelson to withdraw at the Battle of Copenhagen when the Danish defense proved stronger than anticipated. Nelson famously ignored the signal by holding the telescope to his blind eye and stating, "I really do not see the signal." Admiral Parker actually bet on this, stating, "If he is in condition to continue the action, he will disregard it." The signal was merely an excuse so that if retreat did become necessary, Nelson could withdraw and not be executed for "failing to do his utmost."
• Leave it to Adolf Hitler to pull this one from the cartoonishly evil playbook. As the remnants of the Sixth Army were dying at Stalingrad, with no hope of escape or rescue, he promoted their commander, General Paulus, to Field Marshal. Because no German Field Marshal had ever surrendered, it was obvious to everyone that this was an invitation for Paulus to commit suicide. However, this was not so much punishment for his failure to win the battle, as much as Hitler's insistence that Paulus and the Sixth Army meet a suitably romantic end by fighting to the death, rather than surrender. Hitler would have seen it as giving Paulus the opportunity to become a national hero. Subverting the trope, Paulus did not kill himself, partly due to his Catholic faith and partly because, in his own words, "I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal," meaning Hitler. When Hitler found out, he was enraged, declaring that Paulus would be "the last field marshal he ever promoted." Though he would promote seven more before the end of the war.
  • Men lower down on the German army totem pole also tended to suffer this a lot, particularly as war turned against Germany. For example, when the U.S. 9th Armored Division captured an intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen, the German officers responsible for its defense were quickly court-martialed and executed. By the war's end, German soldiers had almost as much to fear from accusations of 'desertion', 'cowardice', or 'defeatism' from their own side as they did from the enemy.
  • Top generals suffered this less; it was perfectly normal in the Prussian military tradition for staff officers to question orders and engage in stand-up rows behind closed doors, something that carried on into the Third Reich where yelling at Hitler to his face was common. (Or at least, they said they did. One still ignored a direct order from the Fuhrer at one's own peril.) Gerd von Rundstedt was merely forced into retirement after Remagen.
  • Near the end, Hitler thought the entire nation of Germany had failed him. Due to this, his final orders were to destroy the country in a sort of scorched-earth tactic; a Social Darwinist to the end, he thought that if Germany's enemies won, then they were obviously the superior ones and thus that, as usual, the existence of an inferior nation like Germany was worth nothing. Fortunately, his generals finally decided he was batshit insane and surrendered instead. Armament Minister Albert Speer, who did most of the refusing, managed to avoid hanging after the war and served a 20-year sentence for his prior war crimes.
• Stalin executed many high-ranking officers who lost to significantly smaller numbers of Finnish soldiers during the Winter War. Since "failing Stalin (for the last time)" is not a charge that can be formally brought at a court-martial, one general's official offense was losing twelve battlefield kitchens to the enemy. To be sure, field kitchens were vital material for winter warfare, but in this case, it was just a pretext for killing a loyal officer for being involved in an embarrassing defeat.
  • Stalin had also executed many high-ranking officers (read: 4-5% of his officer corps, including c.90% of all officers commanding more than 1000 people) before the war started as part of an ideological cleansing, which was a great part of why the Red Army did so badly during the Winter War; c.90% of all officers commanding units of 1000+ people had been in their new jobs for less than a year. One rather egregious case was that of a Captain and Battalion Commander (500 men) who was promoted to Brigade Commander (3000 men) and arrived at his new unit (a Rifle Division of 14,000 men) only to discover that the Division Commander, Division Commisar, and all the other Brigade Commanders had been arrested - making him de facto Division Commander, a post which he was two ranks too junior and ten years too inexperienced for. Ironically, as a result of the post-WWII purges to re-politicise the army and society (after the war-time professionalisation), when Stalin had a stroke in his room one morning, no guard dared to enter and check on him, fearing he was playing a practical joke on them at best and looking for an excuse to have someone removed at worst. By the time lunchtime had gone by and they'd found Lavrenty Beria, NKVD chief, and got him to open the door, Stalin's condition had gone untreated for too long and he died in agony soon afterward.
  • Stalin was not a forgiving man during World War II, either. When production of the Il-2 attack aircraft fell behind schedule, he dashed off a telegram to Ilyushin's plant managers M.B. Shenkman and A.T. Tretyakov: "You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience and demand that you manufacture more ILs. THIS IS MY FINAL WARNING." Ilyushin went on to produce 36,000 Il-2s, making it one of the most heavily-produced aircraft in history.
  • The infamous Orders No. 270 and No. 227 can't be forgotten with them seeming like Stalin's practical attempts to be a Bad Boss to the entire Red Army. No. 270 declared that "Cowards and deserters must be destroyed", that regimental and battalion commanders who surrender or were not within eyeshot of the battlefield be dismissed, demoted or even shot and their families arrested, and every soldier facing encirclement must fight to death and attempt to break out rather than surrender with similar threats of punishment should any indication of otherwise from anyone occurred. No. 227 was infamous with its mandates that no commander was allowed to retreat without a higher order and especially blocking detachments be placed at every battle line's rear to arrest or shoot retreating troops. Many commanders did not truly abide being told to make You Have Failed Me a battlefield doctrine via the requirement of blocking detachments, resenting being ordered to waste manpower for not fighting the enemy, and the requirements of them were dropped three months later before being totally rescinded a bit over two years later.
  • Stalin is known, however, to have subverted this on one occasion. Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, who was in charge of the Soviet defense during the early days of the Nazi invasion, was hamstrung by orders from Stalin (who was attempting to micromanage the front). When this ended disastrously at the Battles of Uman and Kiev, Budyonny was made a scapegoat and removed from command. However, since Stalin considered Budyonny a loyal friend, he was not executed or imprisoned, and instead rotated to being in charge of several areas of the army that never saw combat again.
• Some more sensationalist (read: interested in inflating death-figures to make headlines and sell books) accounts have assumed some 2% of all Soviet losses in WWII were due to executions, this figure presumably being reached by including all deaths in penal battalions, reprisals against anti-Soviet partisans and collaborators, and prisoners en-route to and in the gulags. With that said, the Red Army definitely relied upon, or at least resorted too, execution as a means to keep the troops fighting the most of all the major combatants. Even the USSR's most famous and arguably most talented general, Field Marshall Georgi Zhukov^note HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION himself had hundreds of subordinates that he found too incompetent shot or thrown into penal battalions, and his punch line was Act or you'll face the firing squad!
• Cowardly Roman soldiers were punished by being divided into groups of ten and drawing lots, whereupon the unfortunate soldier in each group would be beaten to death by his comrades. And that's where we get the word "decimated".
  • This practice was abolished before the Imperial era. The reason was that brutal punishments have adverse effect: they will collapse the already shaky morale altogether. Ordinary soldiers, who face the enemy on the battlefield, consider killing one of their own as murder. A decimated unit usually had to be disbanded and its soldiers assigned to other units. Decimatio does not mean only losing one-tenth of a unit: it means losing the whole unit. Instead, punishments of shame, like having to eat only barley instead of wheat or not being allowed to eat while sitting, were introduced.
• Also from Roman law: prisons weren't usually a form of punishment in and of themselves; they were typically where an offender was held pending a trial or an execution. If a prisoner escaped, their jailor would face whatever punishment the prisoners were going to get, so for any cases of prisoners facing the death penalty, you got this trope's straight form if the prisoner escaped.
• In ancient Sparta, it was considered the height of dishonor to desert your post or flee from a battle. Any Spartan who did so was punished with the loss of citizenship, total humiliation by having half of his hair and beard shaved off and being forced to live completely outside the protection of the law, meaning that anyone else in Sparta, up to and including the Helot slaves, could inflict as much further punishment on the deserter as they wanted to, including killing them. Any such man who was physically attacked was also forbidden by Spartan law from defending themselves. It's little wonder the Spartans so frequently preferred battlefield annihilation to the prospect of going home as failures. This is a major part of the famous "with your shield or on it" quote: the aspis favored by Greek hoplites was a huge and cumbersome thing meant for formation fighting, and if you were trying to beat a retreat, dropping it was the first thing you'd do.
• During the French Revolution, and more specifically during the Revolutionary Wars, generals who failed were executed. This is explained by the fact that i. only traitors could fail considering French "élan" couldn't be beat (according to the Convention), and ii. most if not all generals were generals during the monarchy, and henceforth considered as traitors, except if they proved otherwise by actually winning.
  • The disturbing part is that this policy started to produce results, especially when the Committee of Public Safety ran France during the Reign of Terror and thoroughly reorganized the army Back from the Brink, after being plagued by betrayals, defections and setbacks, and poor military organization. To reverse this, the Committee of Public Safety exercised strict and rigid control over the military, rapidly curbing down the old Ancien Regime style of military bureaucracy, and launched on a campaign of meritocracy by which Old Regime aristocratic generals regardless of how loyal and talented they were, were scapegoated to make way for new generals.
  • In the year 1793-1794, 84 generals were executed and 352 dismissed. The presence of nobles in officer class dropped from 90% to 3%. The results, well France bounced Back from the Brink and became a modern army of Conscription and by ''aggressive'' meritocracy created a new cadre of officers. In one year, France went from total defeat to the Battle of Fleurus where the military threat was contained and as Clausewitz reflected years later, France leapt years in advance of the rest of the Continent in terms of its military organization.
• After General Zhu Tao of the Tang Dynasty rushed into battle against two of his rivals and was soundly defeated, he executed two advisers who had advocated attacking immediately instead of allowing his soldiers to rest for a few days.
  • Execution for failure was the standard in Ancient China. Part of why Cao Cao succeeded against Yuan Shao was that the latter kept executing capable generals for failures or for giving advice he didn't want to hear. Even Zhuge Liang (yeah, that one) executed one of his most brilliant generals who lost a crucial battle. According to the book at least, it was because the general failed to take important tactical advice into consideration and Zhuge Liang was reluctant to do it because he considered the other man to be like a son to him.
  • Even earlier, a Han general, Li Ling, was surrounded by the Xiongnu ("Northern Barbarians," probably Turks or Mongols or some such) while on campaign, and landed his family in hot water for not committing suicide. The furious Emperor Wu of Han had him and his family executed and had the one guy (Sima Qian) who spoke up for him thrown in prison and castrated. (The castration was supposed to be an encouragement to suicide, but Qian instead decided to write the massive and definitive history of China up to his time, the Records of the Grand Historian).
• The Records of the Grand Historian, incidentally, are also called the Shiji (史記), and also contain a variant example. Sima Qian records that Sun Tzu employed a variant of this trope to demonstrate his teachings. Before hiring Sun Tzu, the King of Wu tested Sun Tzu's skills by commanding him to train a harem of 180 concubines into soldiers. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, appointing the two concubines most favored by the king as the company commanders. When Sun Tzu first ordered the concubines to face right, they giggled. In response, Sun Tzu said that the general — in this case, himself — was responsible for ensuring that soldiers understood the commands given to them. Then, he explained and reiterated the command; again the concubines just stood and giggled. Sun Tzu then ordered the execution of the king's two favored concubines, to the king's protests. He explained that if the general's soldiers understood their commands but did not obey, it was the fault of the officers. Sun Tzu also said that, once a general was appointed, it was his duty to carry out his mission, even if the king objected. After both concubines were killed, new officers were chosen to replace them. Afterwards, both companies performed their maneuvers flawlessly and in complete silence. Sun Tzu then announced, "The troops are now well disciplined. They may be employed as the King desires, even to the extent of going through fire and water." Despite his bitterness at losing his favorite concubines, the King recognized Sun Tzu's skill and appointed him General. In the following years, Sun Tzu contributed to a number of victories that cemented the State of Wu's place as a leading power in the region.
• North Korea tells its Olympic athletes to bring back medals or it's off to the labor camps. Iraqi footballers under Uday Hussein's leadership were regularly tortured and beaten when they lost a game.
• Many Japanese officers during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II opted to kill themselves after a defeat because the fate awaiting a supposedly failed commander at home was very unpleasant, even when the officer actually did extremely well under the circumstances. For example, a reconnaissance battalion managed to delay the Soviet Encirclement forces from fully cutting off the main Japanese force dug-in at Nomonhan/Khalkin Ghol for nearly a day before they realized that nobody in the pocket was going to try to break out and retreated. But for the crime of "fleeing from the enemy's" vastly superior forces and not attempting a suicidal counter-attack to relieve the encircled forces their commander was subject to a court-martial and before the proceedings started, was "persuaded" to commit suicide. The overall commander of the Japanese forces there, who'd refused to order a break-out, was severely criticised not for his failure to salvage the situation with a break-out but instead merely for 'losing' - it's a sign of just how Ax-Crazy and Blood Knight -y the Japanese were relative to the superbly innovative Soviets that they couldn't find anything wrong with his performance in their post-mortem analysis of the battle. The commander, General Komatsubara, lived to die of cancer after the war.
• In the Battle of Crecy, the French initially sent ill-prepared Genoese crossbowmen mercenaries against the English position. Lacking their pavises and no match for the superior range and fire rate of the English longbow, the Genoese suffered heavy casualties and retreated back to the French lines. The French knights and nobles hacked down the survivors and prepared a charge against the English lines themselves. There, they suffered just as badly, if not more so.
• Pirate captain Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was said to be very fond of this, combined with liberal helpings of Bad Boss. Allegedly, he would shoot members of his crew if they failed to show him sufficient loyalty, and when he found himself in debt he found any excuse he could to kill up to half of his crew so that his share of their spoils was increased. Whether or not this was actually true or merely propaganda written about him is unclear- there was one instance where he ran some of his fleet aground on a sandbar and it was speculated that he had done so deliberately in order to reduce the amount of ways that the spoils of a raid needed to be split, but actual documentation of instances of him deliberately executing sailors who hadn't done anything to deserve it is hard to find.
• A disturbing trend with Electronic Arts. It acquires a successful studio known for producing hits, and for a while, it lets them do as they please. However, as time goes on, the executives at EA begin to demand more and more of those studios, like asking them to implement features in their games that ultimately prove to be detrimental to the games themselves. The games in question receive a large amount of negative press, which the studios behind them have to defend. Eventually, the studios get shut down by EA, with some notable examples being Visceral Games, Maxis, and Pandemic, among many others. Because of all of this, Jim Sterling has given the company the nickname "Unicronic Arts" to describe its nature of absorbing developers, draining them of life, and leaving nothing behind.
• After being defeated at the 1683 Battle of Vienna in what would turn out to be the empire's final attempt at European expansion, Kara Mustafa Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, was strangled to death with a silken cord by the command of Sultan Mehmed IV.
• In the Russo-Ukrainian War, a number of Kinzhal hypersonic missiles were launched at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv as part of a massive missile attack, but were all shot down by a Patriot missile defense system donated by the US. Only a matter of days later, several of the scientists who worked on the Kinzhal (which Russia had trumped up as a nigh-unbeatable weapon that could not be shot down) were thrown into prison on charges of treason. This was reportedly for having released confidential information and unveiled state secrets, based on things like articles and interviews—despite all the information they revealed there having been vetted by the government.

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