We have to be fair here. Aircraft numbers were NOT equal, the Germans had the advantage in the air, while the Allies had more tanks. However, on paper (and only on paper) the Battle of France was probably the operation with the most equal forces during the whole war.
EDIT: Still, part of strategy is to force the enemy to fight on unequal terms and I wouldn't disregard the importance of this aspect of war.
I checked, you are right.
I think you guys respect offensive maneuver and honour too much. This is understandable in gaming forum, but the truth is wars are won with rational decision making.
Defensive generals don't get enough love, although they have probably turned the course of wars.
MacArthur gets blame for withdrawing. He should have died right there, I guess. Well, I think when we look at today's Japan and Philippines, it was strategically sound to come back like he said he would. He saved lives, island hopping to low defence sites, and just leaving heavily defended islands to starve. Very good casualties-taken score given the circumstances. This is what the best generals are made of. Rationality. Not sending your tanks everywhere prepared to die along with your men. That's what maniacs are made of.
I disagree. I put Model and Kesselring in my list, both of them are defensive generals. For me, the important thing is to perform well in one or one of the following situations :
+ Lack of manpower
+ Lack of air cover
+ Lack of naval support
+ Lack of enough tanks and trucks
+ Lack of food and supplies
When we look at German generals, almost everytime they fought with at least one of the situations above. Later in the war, with almost all of them. As for US Generals, they allmost never encountered the situations above. Patton's victory in NA is meaningless for me because Rommel was already defeated by all of the factors listed above.
Withdrawing and fleeing is a different thing. Manstein was in favor of massive withdrawals from Russia to implement a large scale elastic defence, and he was listed as top 1 WW2 general in majority of the lists. MacArthur left his troops to die in POW camps while he fled to Australia. He left Wainwright in his place to suffer for him in POW camps. If you look at the pictures of him from 1945, you could understand how hard was life for him during his captivity. MacArthur ordered his troops to fight on but he chose not to fight himself. Wainwright resisted for a couple of months bravely before surrendering. MacArthur should have done this, not Wainwright. Percival could have very well fled from Singapore, but he chose to surrender with his troops. That is called honour. Cby said that I can't blame Mac for wanting to live, but even Japanese killing a high rank general would have been extremely unlikely. In my book, if you want your men to go into hell for you, you should yourself take the risk to go into hell.
Some say that Mac' decision to flee was rational because he helped US to take back these territories. I say, come on, MacArthur was not really that bright general. He didn't invent island-hopping strategy either, it was old known strategy and there were many other US generals of Mac' calibre that could have implemented it.