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Summary for a front-runner style campaign for an open seat, as contrasted to an insurgent campaign or one against an entrenched incumbent:Almost all of the campaigns I'm familiar with start with an 'exploratory phase.'Then, they actively launch their campaign with the opening of their central office.Office staffers are hired: finance, communications, and political directors, under a campaign manager.A skeleton field team is established and voter contact begins, in preparation for massive scaling in the last weeks of the campaign.Efforts are made to gain the official party endorsement for the primary.The candidate needs to arrange to be on every possible ballot.Additional offices and phone bank locations are opened as the metrics show existing offices approaching capacity.Between Labor and Election Days, campaign activity peaks, and if everything was done right and the initial situation was not hopeless, you may earn a win at the ballot.The Exploratory PhaseIn startup terms, this is the phase that Steve Blank would call the 'search for the product/market fit.' A candidate needs to get a good sense of his or her district and understand the political landscape. Prior even to this phase, the smart candidate-to-be will have done significant research on the district and established a strong local network of people who think favorably of the candidate, especially among local opinion leaders.In this stage, a smart candidate goes on what is known as a 'listening tour.' Here, the candidate meets with local power brokers, often being hosted at the homes of the very earliest supporters. These are low dollar dinners, to build a sense of attachment and commitment to the candidate among people who will be key sources of fundraising as the campaign scales up. Candidates without a strong local network never emerge from this phase or emerge with weak bank accounts, which is crippling in terms of signaling—think whether or not the Sequoias of the political world are paying attention to you and what that means for the viability of a startup.Various strategy decisions need to be made here:Establishing sectors of fundraising strengthHiring of a campaign manager—usually a close personal contact if the candidate is politically experienced or someone with significant political experience and party contacts if notIdentifying key base areas where the main source of votes for the candidate will come from—in small-district, primarily urban, races, this is generally the candidate's home neighborhood; in large-district races, this is more generally a purely ideological calculationDoing data-driven analysis of previous races down to the precinct level to establish turnout goals: both a minimum amount for a win and target goals to aim forAdditionally, a smart candidate either spends time here securing significant party support or at least non-opposition from key party figures. In a competitive primary, the best one can usually hope for is non-opposition, but having a pre-alienated bloc of natural base votes makes it increasingly hard to secure victory both in a primary or general election.Local party groups usually have monthly meetings. These groups are generally the source of your most dedicated early volunteers and key points of outreach to massively larger blocs of voters. They are the most politically informed and require general agreement on 'the issues' to garner their support. They are the first set of voters that any campaign must fight for. Most groups require a 2/3 supermajority to get their endorsement, but even gaining a significant fraction of support from group members means securing an important cadre of volunteers and community organizers from politically experienced individuals with important local knowledge and connections.In the last stages of this phase, the three key hires are the main silos of any professional campaign: finance, communications, and political. Finance handles all of the fundraising events, communications begins shopping you around to the press and collecting any existing coverage about you, while political puts together strategy for the field plan to accomplish wide-spread voter contact throughout the next stages of the campaign. Additionally, a professional politician will bring on a scheduler around this time to manage all of the commitments one must make in a campaign and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. The key to a successful campaign is minimizing one's mistakes—unforced errors that could have been avoided—while maximizing the opposition's mistakes—forced errors that your efforts cause the opposition to make. One final hire who is minor, but crucial, is the driver. Candidates need to either prepare for events or sleep when on the road, so the strong, silent type who doesn't piss the candidate off generally gets the nod for this role. This person can also double as the 'body man' whose job is to protect the candidate from opposition trackers, whose job it is to always be filming the candidate to look for unforced errors. Of course, these trackers put pressure on candidates, which can also lead to forced errors over time—see George Allen's 'macaca moment,' which immortalized 'the tracker' in campaign lore.Most candidates are in this phase for up to a year starting two years before Election Day, sometimes longer.The LaunchThe exploratory phase happens all-but silently to even the most connected political operatives. Whispers and rumors are flying about your potential candidacy by the end of the exploratory phase, but a smart candidate denies any interest in running unless compelled to by public interest. A candidate will launch with the opening of their first campaign office after raising a reasonable amount of money and securing commitments and pledges for a significant percentage of the total estimated budget for the race.Additionally, both pledges of support from key party members and a base of active support need to be rounded up. Finally, key staff positions need to be filled to create a sense of a well-oiled machine springing into operation on what the press will see as day one of the campaign. A top-notch campaign will have one or more interns by this point as up-and-comers with a keen nose for 'getting in at the ground floor' will come knocking around this time, though this is primarily true for a candidate who has run for office many times before. Some of the interns are used to track the opposition, as mentioned above.Oftentimes, this stage of the campaign involves a competition to get the official party endorsement for the primary, which involves both public and private campaigning directed at party regulars. Generally, in a competitive primary, the regional and county political clubs—the lowest level of the regular party machine—will make endorsements that are reflected on the primary ballot. For primary voters, these endorsements are extremely important under a party-insider or front-runner campaign.With the launch of the first campaign office, the key bit of infrastructure is the phone lines. A campaign office needs at least a dozen phone lines installed in a phone bank, and a volunteer coordinator needs to be hired. This individual will handle interns and organize volunteers to start the voter contact program.The voter contact program is the core of any campaign—the candidate can only reach a limited number of voters directly, and any congressional race involves generally up to 200k voters, well outside this potential personal contact range. Following the launch, specific voters will need to be contacted: initially, potential sources of political donations from donors to a candidate's previous campaigns or supporters of similar politicians and the low-level party officials who help to determine endorsements—high-level party officials get personal calls from the candidate or senior staff, but their time is extremely limited. Contact takes several forms: face-to-face meetings, usually through neighborhood door knocking; live phone contacts; pre-recorded, or robo, calls, usually from famous figures; and mailers. Studies show that turnout rates increase up to 30% by the seventh contact from a campaign.Following the intra-party initial positioning, which again is generally well under most people's radar, press relations are established and endorsements gained through the communications director's silo. Usually a separate press secretary is retained, who has the job of sending positive clips to members of the press, fielding questions related to the candidate, and generally putting out the candidate's message to the press. Also under the communications silo is the opposition research, or 'oppo,' squad. Increasingly an independently contracted operation, oppo is research on the opposition designed to identify flaws and problems in the opponent's campaign that can be later used to put them on the defensive. This involves: research on their quoted record, votes on unpopular policy initiatives, and financial filings, which can reveal donations from indicted individuals, creating a good story for at least one news cycle!This phase tends to start after New Years' Day, in the same calendar year as the election and lasts until March or April.The PrimaryDuring this stage of the race, the candidate is out attending public events and seeking to meet as many people in his or her party as possible. In a contested primary, the universe of potential voters is about 90% party regulars, 9% 'votes occasionally' registered party members, and 1% independents who can be convinced to register for your party to vote in the primary. Identifying the correct universe of primary—and later general—voters is a key strategy decision behind a successful race. How to do this is of course the $60k question, which is about what a campaign manager will make for a race. Consultants who focus on this analysis make much, much more /grinA major job dealt with by the staff at this point is to make sure the candidate is on the ballot in every location, as many locations have different rules, all of which need to be conformed to down to the letter of the law. Messing up here means lawsuits are required to get the candidate back on the ballot and is a sign of an unserious campaign.Much of the groundwork of a successful campaign has been laid already. In Blank-ian terms, product/market fit has been achieved, and the task is now execution and scale. The candidate with the most hustle gains ground here, based on the metrics of voters contacted, events attended, press cycles won, money raised, and so on.From the perspective of scale, using the groundwork from the previous phase in identifying supporters from local party clubs, a successful candidate will have a spokesperson or advocate in every single town in the district. These advocates need to be given a set of talking points to support the candidate, and they are added to an email list which is sent the previous day's media clips to keep them up to date on the latest campaign news. These advocates are not in the inner circle, but they need to feel like they are; they need to be given information that is not generally accessible to the public, and they have access to key campaign staffers as valued campaign contributors. Keeping these folks happy and useful is one of the most difficult parts of the campaign for even a skilled field team.One regular event that hasn't yet been addressed, though, is the debate. Candidates usually spend 1-3 days in advance exclusively prepping for debates. Analysis of strategy over the number of debates is mixed. Some argue that incumbents should minimize the amount of time directly responding to a challenger, since that argument is that debates can be lost but not won by a candidate or incumbent. Most campaigns will identify a politically savvy individual who even is prepped to look like the opposition to help the candidate be best prepared. A candidate's goal in a debate is to relate each question to one of a set of prepared talking points as quickly and smoothly as possible. General consensus seems to be that debates are stressful but not particularly meaningful. I'd argue that they're meaningful to the politically unaware, though those people are the least likely to turn out to vote.The week before the primary is when the campaign machinery is 'stress tested' for the first time. Party interest peaks around this time, so front-runners can see a large number of volunteers jumping aboard the bandwagon to sign up with a likely winner. A candidate can't afford to turn anyone away, so the campaign needs to be sure to have a system that can handle this surge of interest and put everyone to work. Money and organizational flexibility both need to be available in a successful campaign.This part of the race generally lasts from March/April until sometime in the summer, when most states have their primaries.The GeneralAfter the primary, there is generally another month of public relaxation, where the staff gives the volunteers a break after the peak in activity. Massive scaling of the campaign organization is taking place at this time, where key volunteers and interns are hired on as junior-level campaign staffers as a mid-level of the campaign's pyramid structure, with a new batch of volunteers and interns to form the base of the general campaign.A successful candidate is now the party's official nominee for the district's seat in Congress. With proven success to this point, the party's congressional campaign organization should now be giving official organizational support to your candidate. The Democrats call this 'Red to Blue' for seats currently held by a Republican, while Republicans call their program the 'Young Eagles.' These programs involve official credentialism and both fundraising and additional contacts. However, with your proven success to this point, it's like the startup situation where the VCs are knocking down your doors. Everyone wants to be associated with success, so collect the offered resources and move on.At this point, your strategy requires even more outreach as your personal involvement in the campaign reaches a new local minima percentage-wise, since more and more people are beginning to pay attention to the race, while you are still fixed in the number of people you can reach daily. High-level campaigns hire a coalitions director at this point, to organize outreach to key demographic and professional groups whose support is part of your strategy for victory. This is where 'Democrats for Republican candidate X' or 'Latinos for candidate Y' groups come from. The role of these groups is to put together identity-driven events where the candidate can give a targeted speech to attendees.Finally, after Labor Day, public attention turns to races, when all the preparation for spending massive cash flows and making use of massive volunteer interest comes to fruition. The system is under massive stress between Labor Day and Election Day, which is why such care needs to be taken in the early days.Cash expenditures as spiking through advertising campaigns both directly from the campaign itself and allied groups in uncoordinated volleys, known as Independent Expenditures, which are less regulated than campaign spending. I'm not going to touch on campaign finance regulations in this answer more than this, though. It's a huge and arcane field that people make careers in specializing in.Election DayElection Day is where everything comes together and at the end of the day, you're left with either a well-earned victory or wondering where you screwed up your planning as you stare defeat in the eye. I'll repeat that this is for a front-runner style campaign. Insurgency campaigns are always riskier, since everything needs to be timed to peak at just the right time all at once. I'll ask Surya Yalamanchili to talk about that style of campaign, which is more similar to the consumer Internet startup's goal of achieving viral growth.This is the final culmination of your field program. In the last few days before the election, you have the absolute maximum number of volunteers available, so they are out contacting as many identified supporters as possible to remind them to vote. This is known as Get-Out-The-Vote or GOTV. The goal here is not to persuade voters to vote for you, but rather to remind voters who you have tracked to have pledged support already to vote for you. Even with a 25-30% failure rate, you are turning out 70%+ margins here. Calls are much shorter in length and your daily output should spike four to five times your max call volume during the rest of the campaign.The final piece of a successful campaign is putting together the Election Day War Room. This operation has a few elements: coordinate the GOTV program and reallocate resources as frantic new information pours into campaign HQ, field legal challenges from polling places, and keep the candidate secluded to avoid cracking from pure stress. There's nothing the candidate can do at this point to change the result, so heavy midday drinking is (mostly seriously, in fact) recommended. Staffers should not expect to sleep more than 2-3 hours in the last 48 hours of the campaign. Conventional wisdom is, as Moose noted, that a good GOTV program is worth 3-5 percentage points on Election Day.After that, party! After that, Robert Redford said it best:(at the two minute mark)What do we do now?Important Extra Factors Left UnconsideredOpen Seat election vs. Incumbent running for reelection vs. Trying to unseat an incumbent—I considered an open seat electionFront-runner vs. Insurgent strategy—I considered a front-runner strategyCandidate's political background: first election vs. not—I considered a professional politicianA really great piece about the earliest days of a campaign, though in this case the almost-candidate eventually decided not to run: http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2008/09/larry-platt-for-congress-not.html

A2AYou will find diverse answers to this questions because of reasons such as (a) no PhD is the same, and there are significant deviations between PhDs (coverage/depth/breadth, intensity, focus) among different programs and even more importantly, among different advisors, (b) data science is a very broad field and may mean different things- a few involving research explorations leading to new forms of data mining/analysis that may pose PhD level research challenges, while the most involve practice, experience and skill level issues where a PhD is an overkill or even waste of time.To give one perspective, consider [1]: “"... he agrees with estimates that there are only a few thousand machine learning engineers in the world with the ability to take deep learning from concept to production, but there are millions of data scientists and tens of millions of developers."A PhD in CS focused on AI/machine learning will innovate or invent (propose and validate) new techniques/methods and may target a research scientist (or Member of Technical Staff) position at Google, FB, IBM Research, Microsoft Research. There would typically be a very few numbers of these guys per year who will get employed with a research-centric job (they may also go to academia). A somewhat more applied person who may either do a PhD with applied/interdisciplinary focus (e.g., develop a machine learning approach for processing nextgen sequencing data) examplify the machine learning engineer mentioned in the above quote— there would be an order of magnitude more of these guys compared to the previous category. Then comes the data scientists- and there may be an order of magnitude more of them than the previous category. They need to be good at cleaning and organizing data (this usually takes +/- 80% of the time [2,3]), picking the right technique and tool to analyze data, understand statistics and visualization to present the results(analysis) to decision makers. For a majority of current data scientist jobs, PhD would be not required and would likely to be a waste of time (you can do PhD and get a data scientist job), but doing a MS in a growing number of data science program (rather than a traditional CS program) would be more valuable. This is followed by an even larger number of software developers with the emphasis is on tools, technologies and skills rather than design/architect, innovation or research.[1] Google launches AI Hub in alpha and Kubeflow Pipelines, a machine learning workflow[2] What Data Scientists Really Do, According to 35 Data Scientists (see discussion on data-science drudgery in current data science job - maybe that will improve in future)[3] The 80/20 data science dilemma

It’s surprisingly interesting to a historian, that if not for the painful scope of the German defeat before the gates of Moscow, one of Germany’s finest generals could have merely went on as a man with a reputation of skilled command and faded into obscurity.As it was, fate had other plans.Model’s career in the Second World War began in the corps staff of the IV Armeekorps, in the Invasion of Poland, and then as a staff officer in the 16. Armee in France. It was in the month of November, 1940, that he got his first field command: taking over 3. Panzer-Division from Generalmajor Horst Stumpff, who was moved to the command of the newly formed 20. Panzer-Division.At first, he came across as a complete eccentric. Walter Model had exactly zero respect for protocol and niceties and utterly despised formality, and was often brash and abrasive, quickly alienating his divisional staff. On the top of that, since having commanded a company in 1917, he had been a complete staff officer instead of a field commander, and trust in him was not stellar.Further adding to the belief in his eccentrics was the training methods he implemented. A good amount of divisional training was, essentially, a complete cross-unit exercise: Model would throw pieces of completely unrelated units into the field and make them work together for the same exercise. There were recon units fighting alongside AT batteries, division’s tanks along with its engineers, and any combination one could imagine, formed into ad hoc groups and given an exercise.If that makes you nod in recognition, reader, yes. Model was performing the famous German Kampfgruppen tactics before the German Army had started doing so officially.Then came Operation Barbarossa, and his first test in fire.Model’s division, driven forward by their vigorous and aggressive commander and bolstered with the most extensive ad-hoc operation practice in the entire Wehrmacht, became the blazing spearhead of Guderian’s advance. It was Model’s 3. Panzer-Division that forced the crossing across the Dnieper, and it was his division at the very lead during the drive at Kiev, meeting with the 16. Panzer-Division at Lokhvitsa and sealing the trap that caught seven hundred thousand men.The first of those earned him a Knight’s Cross. The second, a promotion to General der Panzertruppe and command of the XXXXI Panzerkorps, whose commander Otto-Ernst Otterbacher was severely wounded when his staff plane was shot down.July 1941, Soviet Union. Model in the center, talking to Panzer officer Oberleutnant Ernst-Georg Buchterkirch(left).The hard times came when winter arrived, and just as the German forces decided to halt along the whole front, the Soviets launched their winter counteroffensive.Just as he had always been the spearhead of the advance, now Model and his corps found themselves the ones covering the retreat against overwhelming Soviet forces. The men were tired, undersupplied, freezing and worn out. Weapons and vehicles were freezing solid, men were dying of frost every night. Disaster hung above the XXXXI Panzerkorps, and with them, the entire Panzergruppe 3, whose position as the farthest of all German army-level formations made them especially susceptible to destruction.But Model was there.No matter how terrible the situation got, Model never yielded an inch. Even in starvation he was a whirlwind of energy, touring every piece of the front and extolling the troops to even greater feats, driving his officers on with the harsh, uncompromising leadership that was characteristic of him. He demanded the utmost from his troops and himself, and read the Soviet offensives like a book.The Germans retreated, and retreated, but like their uncompromising commander, starving himself on rations no better than what the Schützen at the front ate, they held: and it never became a rout.By the end of the Soviet offensives, his corps were decimated. The 6. Panzer-Division, the most depleted of his formations, measured merely a thousand men by the end. But they had held, and saved the entire Panzer Group, arguably the entire army group, from destruction.This had become truth for reasons more than sheer determination and energy, though. Model’s observations had realized that the Soviet attacks, consisting of shock blows delivered by massed troops, with poor tactical command and coordination, were most successful against strongpoint defences instead of continuous lines. Moreso, the horrendous state of Soviet logistics and that the lack of organic support chronic in their mobile units[1] meant that compared to the vigorous German exploitation of any and all openings, Soviets were notoriously sluggish in exploiting breakthroughs and thus a breakthrough did not mean an immediate crisis. Thus, Model’s defensive philosophy was founded on five fundamental ideas: centralized artillery command, up to date intelligence dependent on reconnaissance and front line sources instead of rear analysis, multiple fortified lines, a continuous front line, no matter how thinly held, and a mobile reserve, no matter how small.His skills were soon about to be tested again.The winter advances of the Red Army had left the German 9. Armee, under the command of Generaloberst Adolf Strauß, holding a perilous salient in Rzhev, a knife pointing straight towards Moscow. That realization was also found by the Soviets, who on 8 January started a massive offensive involving seventeen armies to crush Strauß and grind his army to dust and blood. Within a week, the Kalinin Front had broken through the German front, and was threatening the destruction of the entire army. The situation at Rzhev was critical: it needed a miracle to save it. Luckily for the Germans, they had exactly the right miracle.Model was flown directly west, from the headquarters of his panzer corps, and was appointed the commander of the 9. Armee in place of Strauß by the Führer himself. He had leapfrogged over fifteen more senior candidates in the Army Group Center alone. It is said that as Model, having received his assignment, left the room, Hitler turned towards Rudolf Schmundt, his personal adjutant, and confided:Did you see that eye? I trust that man to do it, but I wouldn't want to serve under him.Hitler had a point. Model would soon go on to make Rzhev a hell on earth, for himself, his staff, and his army. However, a hell was exactly what the Germans needed.Over the year, Model wrestled thrice with the Soviets over the Rzhev Salient, against utterly overwhelming forces every single time, and brutally snuffed out each assault. He broke down divisions all the way down to the company level if need be to reinforce different pieces of his complex network of defense, formed battle groups out of anything and everything to bolster his reserves and front lines. He visited regularly every part of the front and gave them exactly as much reinforcements as it was their need to keep on holding, and waged the greatest battle of attrition in recent history, exhausting a force far larger and far more heavily equipped than him.The year-long Rzhev Meat Grinder cost the Soviet Union over two million casualties, Zhukov the greatest and most humiliating defeat of his career, and got Model a promotion to Generaloberst, the Oak Leaves and Swords both to his Knight’s Cross, and a nickname: Löwe der Abwehr.Lion of Defence.Soviet tanks destroyed near Rzhev, 1942 spring.Eventually, the salient on which so much blood was shed would be evacuated during Unternehmen Büffel, part of a general shortening of the front. Model’s next feat would come in the immediate aftermath of the failed Kursk offensive: with the German attack called out, the Soviets unleashed their own. Model’s army was holding the extended Orel salient, along with the 2. Panzerarmee, against a Soviet force outnumbering them well over four to one in men and materiel. Such was the wrath of the Soviet offensive, Operation Kutuzov, that Stavka projections were in favor of entering Orel itself within 48 hours and thus splitting the German forces into three.It took three weeks of rigorous combat, close to half a million casualties, and 2500 tank losses to enter Orel. It was another three until Model enacted his orderly withdrawal from the rest of the salient, leaving behind a heap of Soviet corpses and burning tanks as his forces pulled back to the Dnieper.Such was Model’s reputation that by the end of the year he was removed from the command of his army: instead, Hitler wanted him on standby, to be sent wherever the situation became critical. He had become the Führer’s Fireman, facing the worst of infernos.On 31 January 1944 he would return to the front, replacing Georg von Küchler in his command of Army Group North, whose siege over Leningrad was broken and front had effectively dissolved. He vigorously extricated it all the way to the Panther Line in Estonia, fighting every step of the way, meeting every Soviet advance with a counterattack that threw the Red Army off-balance. His withdrawal was complete on 1 March, with all noteworthy units of the army group intact. The same day, a marshal’s baton arrived at the front destined for him.It had taken him a mere six years to rise from colonel to Generalfeldmarschall.By the end of the month, he went across the front, to Ukraine, where he was to be a replacement of another field marshal: Erich von Manstein, Germany’s finest, sacked over relieving first the Korsun Pocket, then the 1. Panzerarmee, against Hitler’s wishes. It would be a tall bargain for any man to measure up to the titan of the German military, but if there was anyone up to the task it was Model. He prosecuted the defense of right bank of Dnieper with the same vigor and tenacity Manstein used to, and together, the effort of two generals cost the Red Army another five thousand tanks and over one million men for their Ukrainian gains.German forces, in the muddy ground of the Korsun Pocket.His next assignment was Army Group Center on 28 June, which was torn apart by Operation Bagration having started one week prior. The brainchild of Konstantin Rokossovsky, launched with an overwhelming superiority of four to one in men, eleven to one in tanks and assault guns, ten to one in artillery, and eight to one in aircraft, it was also the most overwhelming Soviet victory of the war. Model’s timely intervention barely averted unprecedented disaster threatening to end the war right then and there, stabilizing the front line east of Warsaw. Hitler would heap all forms of praise on him for that, naming him ‘his best Field Marshal’.He was given the Diamonds for his Knight’s Cross, and hurried West to take over Army Group B. He would never again return to the Eastern Front.He arrived on a scope of disaster. The German front in Normandy, eroded over two months until breaking point, had collapsed, and Falaise was threatening to swallow an entire army group. Model set to work with his usual vigor: forcing the evacuation of significant forces from the closing Falaise Pocket, he led his Army Group safely eastwards, and in the lull of September formed the bleeding defense in the West into a crust.The crust would hold on well, foiling first Montgomery’s ambitious dreams of striking the heart of Germany in Operation Market Garden, and then breaking the dreams of Courtney Hodges and his First Army to break through into Germany in the Battle of Hürtgenwald. Further to the north, in the streets of Aachen, eighteen thousand Germans, one-third being Volkssturm, held off an American force five times their size for three weeks.It was Model’s last victories.Model visiting the 246. Volksgrenadier-Division in Aachen.Afterwards, he would be the person chosen to enact Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein, soon to become what was called the Battle of the Bulge. It was a plan he despised to the bone, declaring that the plan ‘did not have a damned leg to stand on’, however, as a man who earned his successes and fame by his refusal to permit defeatism, he could not let himself to fail the strict standards he held all his subordinates to.So Model fought, first at the Battle of the Bulge, then in the defensive operations afterwards, until the ruined remnants of his army group, not even an army by that point, were encircled in the Ruhr. Even then he fought, until resistance became impossible and he was faced with the ugly dilemma, between the honor of a field marshal forbidding surrender and his conscience opposing the senseless slaughter, he took a third way out. He officially dissolved his army group. Ordered the Volkssturm men and Hitlerjugend auxiliaries to return home, while giving the regular units leave to surrender, fight on, or try to break out.As he personally said to a platoon of Wehrmacht personnel asking for orders, their war was over.A handful of days later, on 20 April, Goebbels gave a speech: the last birthday Hitler would celebrate and the last speech Goebbels would give in its honor. In that speech, he declared the entire Army Group B traitors to the Reich. It is said that, Model turned towards his adjutant, Colonel Theodor Pilling who was listening to the speech from the radio along with him, and uttered the words that finalized his transformation from a determined officer to a broken man.I sincerely believe that I have served a criminal. I led my soldiers in good conscience... but for a criminal government.It left Model a broken man.The next day, the most indomitable of Germany’s field marshals, a man of a will unbreakable until that point, woke up in the earliest of the morning hours. He talked to one man, Major Winrich Behr, of his intelligence staff.Behr, I cannot imagine that I, as a Field Marshal, the one who out of conviction in victory for my country am responsible for the deaths of hundreds of my soldiers, should now emerge from these woods to approach Montgomery, or the Americans, with my hands in the air and say 'Here I am. Field Marshal Model, I Surrender.'This was what he said to Behr, when he opened the subject of what he was to do: after all, Model had solved the solution of his army group, but what about him? Well, by that point, the Field Marshal had decided already.Those were his last known words. Less than a hour later, he drove his staff car into the woods near Ratingen and shot himself[2].So, in light of everything, his performance and his life, the conditions and the struggle, how good was Walter Model?Very.Where Model is present, nothing can go wrong.Common German saying in the Eastern Front.Footnotes[1] Cem Arslan's answer to How did a US, German, and Soviet armored division compare with each other in 1944?[2] Cem Arslan's answer to Who killed German Field Marshal Walter Model near the end of WW2?