Best Generals of ww2 and their role in this game

[Vanguard44]

So not strategic that the Treaty of Versailles explicitly banned Germany from having a general staff.

Organization. Is. Strategy.

Take a look at Genghis Khan and his success.

Were his Mongol hordes in the 12th century any more advanced technologically than they had been 100,200, or 500 years before?

Not really.

Was he personally a brilliant general?

Yes.

Did he find other brilliant generals?

Yes.

Did he have a weird string of brilliant generals that lasted consistently for 100 years?

Yes... this suggests something other than luck.

Genghis Khan became an amazing conqueror because he completely reorganized the way Mongol armies fought.

Genghis Khan had observed that inter tribal fights were inconclusive because the victorious side would always stop to loot the camp and let the enemy escape. Genghis Khan fixed this by appointing special officers who's job it was to inventory the goods of a defeated enemy and make sure they were shared out equally, allowing the army to worry about chasing the enemy instead of protecting loot.

Genghis Khan had observed that men were often fearful to fight because they might leave their families behind. So Genghis Khan made it so a warrior's dependents were entitled to his share of the spoils (something only possible because of the previous innovation above.)

Genghis Khan had observed that only princes and nobility were allowed to command troops. He changed it so that soldiers elected their own officers regardless of birth. The commander of the European invasion, Subodei, was not noble, but had gained command on merit.

Genghis Khan knew that his empire was huge and scattered, so he set up a pony express system to keep every part in communication.

Genghis Khan encountered advanced technology like siege weapons and gunpowder in China, and henceforth attached Chinese engineer detachments to all of his armies.

When a merchant entered the Mongol empire, they would be questioned about the roads they travelled, the realms they visited, where the bridges and castles were, who the rulers were and troop strength. This gave the Mongol armies an immense intelligence advantage over their foes. They sent out armies with an actual plan of attack and good intelligence on their enemies.

To see an example, look at this

That's a copy of the extreme west end of a map made in 1402 in Korea. This is before the age of sail and reflects the information that the Mongols had brought back about European geography. (Where they never went further than Poland) They knew about Spain and Africa and Italy.

Anyway, after Genghis Khan died, his heirs were able to use the army that Genghis Khan had organized to go on conquering for decades.

The Mongol empire was successful because Genghis had taken something that already existed for hundreds of years, (fierce steppe horse archers) and organized them into an effective military machine.

That's the point of this digression. Organization is fundamental to being able to have a good strategy. Genghis Khan is just one example. Look at the amazing run of success Rome had after Gaius Marius reorganized the army. Rome's continent spanning empire was built because one guy knew a better way to organize.

Organizational approach is how you win before or without fighting.

Organisation and strategy are not at all the same thing. Only one has to observe the dictionary to notice that, but if I have to be more serious (and I do not think this is contentious, at all) - organisation, for example - the Prussian staff system compared to the British staff system are two separate systems of organisation; Britain had an independent air force answerable to the politicians, America did not; two alternate forms of organisation. Another useful example - British staff officers do not outrank the commanders of the subunits under their own commander's contorl, whereas in the US Army they do. Organisation is just a set of systems or guidelines as to how something should be done.

A strategy, on the other hand, is a conscious decision to do a particular thing to achieve a particular end. It may also be called a policy. The Germans intended to starve Britain out of the war, so they used submarines to attack commercial shipping. Later they developed tactics to do so more effectively (and so did the convoys.) Here's another example - the German leadership attacked Belgium to enact the Schlieffen plan, thus bringing Britain into the war. The German leadership gambled that Czechoslovakia wouldn't fight, so they pushed it out of existence. The German leadership gambled on a second Schlieffen plan to strike deeply into France. The German leadership refused to withdraw the Sixth Army from Stalingrad. The result was its destruction. The German leadership... did something... with the intent of bringing about a favourable situation. That is not organisation; that is strategy.

Man for man the Germans were very good at fighting. In their tactical, divisional domain, I think they were probably unrivalled until 1945. But their higher command made many, many poor strategic decisions. In both wars they downplayed the significance of the US with the eventual result leading to the entrance of the mightiest industrial power on earth into the war against Germany, held the erroneous belief that the democracies wouldn't fight (in both WWI and WWII), completely over-estimated the abilities of their larger allies (such as AH and Italy) and under-estimated the power of smaller nations (both on their side and against them). In hindsight, I can see very few of their strategic decisions as rational.

To add on to what was said about the bravado-inspired Aufstragtaktik, it seems that - on analysis of historical materials - the Germans made themselves believe that they really were the warrior race, in both wars. They possessed a military arrogance that the British, supposed to be the most haughty European peoples, could only dream of. Their generals from both WWI and WWII have perpetuated this. Oh, we were winning, but we were stabbed in the back! Oh, we lost, but we did kill fifty Russians for every German!

To go back on topic - yeah, organisation is important. I can't say here if I think the Germans were good at it or not, but if it is as linked intrinsically to strategy as you suggest, one can only infer that, considering the outcome of their two gambits at world domination, they were not particularly adept at either.

 

[phantomrider]

I'm pretty sure we were all talking about generalship in the context of actually fighting battles - after all the German memoirs are focused on them primarily save Guderian's - in which regard the Germans were not particularly better and are overhyped.

And in any case on the strategic level German generals are among the worst violators of Sun Tzu's most overriding precept - which is that war is of virtal importance to the state - leading to its life or death - and must be a last resort. The utter ruin of Germany in 1945 shows how dramatically the German military failed to grasp this concept and allowed itself to be led to an entirely avoidable war.
Sun Tzu, were he alive, would thus praise the German generals for their preparedness for war, but would be utterly horrified by how they kept resorting to it.

To be fair to the German generals I think you can blame them for a major contribution to WWI (launching it) since the general staff's war plans about what to do "if there was a war" seemed to take over and drive national strategy in the month before the war and seemingly made the war "inevitable". In WWII, the strategic direction of Germany toward war was driven by Hitler's vision in spite of many of the senior general's reluctance and belief that Germany was not ready for war and preliminary plans for coups against the regime "if only" the allies would resist in 1938. (Although one can never be sure if the post war memoirs by some of these German officers were anything more than historical revisionism to save their own hides or if they could actually have pulled off a coup)

 

[phantomrider]

I absolutely agree. Educational systems have for years identified different types of people with different ways of thinking. Bold, methodical, feeling, thinking, decisive, reflective....we have all seen the tables. Yet Corporate and Military systems completely disregard this. Convergent systems stress one way of doing things, one path to the top. I can't tell you how many times I saw flight instructors who could not instruct, but had to have that billet to further their careers. How many times have people seen excellent technicians promoted to be poor supervisors, simply because they had maxed out as a technician and could not get a pay raise any other way.

What many people forget about the German staff system, is that it was meant to create a system that allowed any type of General to succeed. Clausewitz and his contemporaries understood that you can never count on having a "brilliant" General when you need him for a war. Heck, even the Romans relied more on a system of war than on individual commanders. There are two examples that I like to point to: Hannibal vs Scipio, and Rommel vs Montgomery. Hannibal and Rommel are seen as daring, decisive and creative. Both have been praised for their amazing successes. Scipio and Montgomery are somewhat downplayed, but both fought their opponents in the same way: Systematically. Both Scipio and Montgomery studied their opponents, carefully prepared their forces and planned how to engage the enemy. Both fought to deny their enemies the openings they needed to be "brilliant". They forced their opponents to fight on their terms. Montgomery only truly failed as Napoleon did- when he tried to be the type of General that he was not (Operation Market Garden).

Monty also "failed" in Europe when he didn't clear the port of Antwerp promptly so he could get enough supplies into Europe that would allow him (and the rest of the allied armies) to fight from a position of overwhelming superiority instead of arguing over which 1/2 army of the 7 or 8 the allies had in Europe could use the supplies available to pursue the Germans and if necessary continue a real offensive.

 

[misterbean]

You can't really blame Montgomery for the fact that it took over 2 months to clear the Schelde of mines. Back then, a lot of the terrain north of Antwerp, towards the estuary, was swampy terrain. Prime defensive terrain. Of course it takes a while to clear it.
Add to that the fact that there was a dispute between Bradley and him about who should get priority. Both men had a job to do, so both men needed those supplies. IIRC, in the end, Ike chose to prioritise Bradley because, as Patton put it, "My men can eat their belts, but my tanks gotta have oil."

Of course it slowed things down. Can't blame the man for being overruled.

 

[Klausewitz]

You can't really blame Montgomery for the fact that it took over 2 months to clear the Schelde of mines. Back then, a lot of the terrain north of Antwerp, towards the estuary, was swampy terrain. Prime defensive terrain. Of course it takes a while to clear it.
Add to that the fact that there was a dispute between Bradley and him about who should get priority. Both men had a job to do, so both men needed those supplies. IIRC, in the end, Ike chose to prioritise Bradley because, as Patton put it, "My men can eat their belts, but my tanks gotta have oil."

Of course it slowed things down. Can't blame the man for being overruled.

Yeah, yeah.
Excuses are always cheap.

 

[Liquid Sky]

There are not a lot of generals who can claim they stopped a full head-on blitzkrieg. Monty is one.

 

[Klausewitz]

There are not a lot of generals who can claim they stopped a full head-on blitzkrieg. Monty is one.

When he stole the work of another general or after he lost himself some paratroopers and stopped the 'full head-on' battle of the bulge blitz?
Newsflash:
Just because it is Germans does not mean it is a Blitz and beating them a year before the war is over does not get nearly as much points as doing it earlier.

 

[misterbean]

When he stole the work of another general or after he lost himself some paratroopers and stopped the 'full head-on' battle of the bulge blitz?
Newsflash:
Just because it is Germans does not mean it is a Blitz and beating them a year before the war is over does not get nearly as much points as doing it earlier.

I'm fairly certain he was referring to Alam Halfa. And yes, that was the work of Sir Claude Aunchinleck to give them El Alamein. But Monty was the one who put the spring back into the British soldiers. El Alamein (2nd battle) was completely his brainchild. He predicted it would last 12 days. It lasted about 12 days.

 

[phantomrider]

I'm fairly certain he was referring to Alam Halfa. And yes, that was the work of Sir Claude Aunchinleck to give them El Alamein. But Monty was the one who put the spring back into the British soldiers. El Alamein (2nd battle) was completely his brainchild. He predicted it would last 12 days. It lasted about 12 days.

If it is Alam Halfa it was a clear victory at a time when the Commonwealth really needed one particularly if you regard the consequences of a loss. Montgomery was in command but his lines and tactical situation was set up for him by the prior commander and his superiors in the theater. In addition, it is hard to describe it as a "full blitz". Rommel's army was at the end of a long and inadequate supply chain, was outnumbered significantly, had significant mobility limitations because much of his infantry were foot Italian divisions and room for manuever was limited so some degree of frontal attack against well prepared position was necessary if the Commonwealth forces were to be ejected from El Alamein (unlike most of the fights in the Western desert where if you went far enough south you could get around enemy positions). Alam Haifa/El Alamein was comparable to Kursk and had basically the same outcome. The idea behind the "blitz" was to use mobile combine arms forces included air support to avoid "hard entrenched positions" and to turn set piece attacks which generate high casualties into a war of maneuver. Thus the Germans didn't try to"blitz" the Maginot line-- they went around. That said Montgomery really did seem to transform his forces into effective fighting units in both the retreat of the BEF in France and in the western desert.

 

[SergeantPunch]

There are not a lot of generals who can claim they stopped a full head-on blitzkrieg. Monty is one.

A blitzkreig is not an out of supply army with 50 running tanks launching an offensive operation against a strongly prepared position with your every move known thanks to the cracking of the german code. Monty may have been a good general, but he wasn't tested to know how good exactly was he.

 

[Klausewitz]

I always find it funny when Allied Generals are brilliant based on "They didn't fuck up a sure thing" (Monty, Patton, Eisenhower, etc.) while German Generals are 'hyped' and 'overrated' for not taking North Africa with 5 tanks and a camel or Russia with 10 Landers, one Tiger and a company of Russian Hiwis.
It somehow seems... dishonest.

 

[phantomrider]

Being too brash is in fact not exactly a great quality in a tactical commander, because that's also how you eventually get yourself into a Little Big Horn. Moving Guderian off field command was in fact not a bad move and probably saved him in the long run from a spell of bad luck in the field and getting an entire Panzer Army surrounded and wiped out.

Field commanders from the platoon level up to the national command authority have to make decisions based on inadequate and often contradictory information. The "fog of war" is real and the term military intelligence is an oxymoron particularly when knowledge is paid for with people's lives and the enemy is doing everything they can to mess with your head and decieve you. Making tactical decisions involves risk and "best guesses" of the situation which may not be accurate. There are consequences to being aggressive or "brash" and also for not being aggressive (an opportunity missed to end the war with a swift advance that would destroy the enemy). Also in war these decision can put both the decision maker and his troops directly at risk (i.e. they end up dead) so the pressure is to be passive and safe. Aggressive does not necessarily mean serial frontal attacks (advanced stupidity) but showing iniative at the appropriate times. Even if the aggressive commander "loses" a few times (provided he survives) in the long run the mission accomplishments of the forces are better overall.

Brash aggressive individuals tend not to do well in large bureaucracies (particularly in peacetime military where in theory you always win every battle/war) where politics and "getting" along tend to be valued and risk taking minimized. While there may be debate about whether initiative and aggressiveness can be taught in corporate or military leadership it is clear that you can eliminate it from your culture by punishing people who take risks and using a one failure and you are out promotion system.

 

[Admiral Piett]

I always find it funny when Allied Generals are brilliant based on "They didn't fuck up a sure thing" (Monty, Patton, Eisenhower, etc.) while German Generals are 'hyped' and 'overrated' for not taking North Africa with 5 tanks and a camel or Russia with 10 Landers, one Tiger and a company of Russian Hiwis.
It somehow seems... dishonest.

I generally don't engage or address people on the internet, but I will make one reply to this sentiment.

The invasion of Northern France was not a sure thing. All modern accounts and journal articles that I have read have concluded that the Germans had sufficient force to shove the invasion back into the sea in the first few days if they had been given the opportunity. Thankfully this did not occur do to a combination of capable Allied leadership, planning and tactical prowess which largely preempted such a counter-attack and incompetence on the part of the Germans, in this case largely coming from the top (the famous "Hitler not releasing the Panzer reserves earlier thing"). D-Day was not a cake walk by any stretch of the imagination.

Now I typically shy away from inevitability in history, but Operation Barbarossa was as close as it could get to being doomed to fail from the start. Again, if you had read any modern historical journal articles and books that have been published in the last 10 or so years (including those written by German historians by the way) you would have figured this out by now. To take Barbarossa itself, the plan was an absolute disaster from a logistical and strategic perspective where it was either entirely convoluted and non-nonsensical or simply brushed-over or flat-out ignored inconvenient things like "how are we going to supply these beautiful, planned kesselschlachts that we have drawn on this operational map?" The Wehrmacht suffered from a lot of problems with their tactical organization as well (see anything written by Citino or Stahel) which placed a disproportionate amount of work on the Panzer forces while the infantry struggled to keep up. Once Barbarossa started it quickly became clear that despite horrific incompetence at the very top of the Soviet system, the average Red Army soldier was going to fight, and fight hard. German casualties during the operation, particularly among the Panzer forces, were horrific. The beautiful encirclements drawn on operational maps were actually full of holes that at times tens of thousands of Red Army troops slipped through. Entire Soviet divisions were bypassed and allowed to pillage Germany's already strained supply lines before finally being dealt with after the damage had been done. Here is a brief quote from David Stahel, one of the most important new historians of the Wehrmacht, you know, not 50 year old memoirs or books based almost entirely on said memoirs:

"Operation Barbarossa's much lauded success began as just another episode of Nazi propaganda, yet this has been given amazing longevity, and even a guise of historical truth, by continual acceptance in stoutly uncritical military histories. In spite of some severe early blows to the Red Army, the German army never really came close to their definitive goal of conquering the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was these early 'successes' which led to the Wehrmacht's own rapid exhaustion and insurmountable difficulties. By mid-August 1941, it was already abundantly clear that Barbarossa would fall well short of achieving its operational objectives, while the ongoing scale of attrition would paradoxically transform its legacy from the annihilation of the Red Army to the ceaseless destruction of the German Wehrmacht. While the precise path to an Allied victory was by no means clear in late August 1941, Germany's inability to win the war was at least assured. Accordingly, if on 22 June 1941 Hitler was right and the world did indeed collectively hold its breath - the course of operations ensured that, by the middle of August, the world could breathe again." - David Stahel (Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East)

In short, the Wehrmacht at its absolute, relative peak in quality went up against a Red Army that would never be in worse shape again and the Wehrmacht still couldn't defeat them. Had the Red Army actually been in fighting shape in 1941, I wouldn't doubt that Operation Barbarossa would have flopped far harder than it already did historically. Also, no. It was not due to "General Winter" or the all too common "it was all Hitler's fault." Those two myths, and that is what they are, have long been dispelled by historians as nothing more than excuse making on the part of, you guessed it, the German generals.

In other words, many German generals were very capable at the operational and tactical levels, but they lacked the understanding of sound strategy or the importance of "mundane and unsexy" things like logistics. That is not the mark of a balanced and capable officer corps. This isn't my lone opinion, it is the opinion of almost all modern scholars of the Wehrmacht (look up Robert Citino for one excellent English-language historian on this matter). Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the Wehrmacht sucked or that every German general was incompetent. They had plenty of highly capable officers and, as I have mentioned numerous times above, some truly exceptional operational and tactical commanders. What I'm pointing out is that the Wehrmacht and its generals were far from infallible. Same goes for the Allies. Monty made plenty of mistakes during the war and he was a real narcissist who refused to admit them, but that doesn't make him horribly incompetent either. When viewed on its own, without the cloud of post-war controversy, his command was quite good and dare I say better balanced than many of his German counterparts.

As a fun fact, the German general staff of the time period did not study Clausewitz. In fact, they bragged about not listening to "that old Prussian fool." That doesn't come from me. One of my favourite professors, Dr. Holger Herwig, shared that with our graduate level seminar on the classics of strategy a year ago. The Americans didn't look at On War until after the crap-show that was the Vietnam War. Incidentally, the Vietnam War was also what gave birth to the requirement of having at least a Master's degree to climb past a certain rank in the US military. I can't remember exactly what rank you could get to before it was required, but I want to say Major. That is why my history department has a constant stream of USAF officers coming through to work under our resident military historians. The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies up one floor excepts a batch of Bundeswehr officers every year as well. The new batch this year seems like a real cool bunch.

Anyway, this isn't some personal attack on you or your beloved country's honour, so don't take it personally. I just wanted to address this sentiment as a whole.

 

[Klausewitz]

@Admiral Piatt:
Well, you did more to acknowledge and support my statement than refute it.

 

[D Inqu]

Guderian wasn't removed in 1942, it was late 1941, and that decision had little to do with his performance as a general either. In fact, it was Guderian who requested his own removal from position after multiple disagreements with both Hitler and von Kluge. It was the strained relationship between Guderian and von Kluge, including fundamental differences about strategic issues, that led to Guderian's removal. Guderian never got along with much of the higher staff, as he was way too brash for their liking.

Guderian was officially removed following the disaster at Moscow, where his lemming rush without any regards for his flanks resulted in a heavy loss for the panzer group. While these aggressive tactics worked in Poland and France, by December, it was fairly obvious this is not a good idea against the Soviets. While he nominally "asked himself" to be removed, this was a dismissal. Guderian did well in a planing/organisation role, so his position there was much more suited.

You amuse me.
According to you basically every German general is hyped while, in reality, they were more or less tribal warriors galopping to counting coup.
It certainly is a nice picture but as a hypothesis it suffers from its inability to explain the German successes from 1939 to 45.

I'm not going to repeat what Zinegata already said, so I'll make it short:

The successes of Germany from 1939-1942 have been explained many times. You don't need to invent "super-genius generals" to explain how and why Germany won their early battles.

Note, I never said, every German general is overhyped.

 

[DocMorningstar]

Custer had a brilliant career before he pissed it all away. Sheridan gave him the table where Lee signed his surrender, as a reward for his general awesomeness.

Custer screwed it up by not taking the Indians seriously.

 

[keynes2.0]

I always find it funny when Allied Generals are brilliant based on "They didn't fuck up a sure thing" (Monty, Patton, Eisenhower, etc.) while German Generals are 'hyped' and 'overrated' for not taking North Africa with 5 tanks and a camel or Russia with 10 Landers, one Tiger and a company of Russian Hiwis.
It somehow seems... dishonest.

Who's job is it to pick battles if not the general in charge?

I dont recall anyone saying that Rommel for instance was bad at tactics, just that his abysmally bad choice of objectives was a bigger liability.

 

[Dalwin]

Custer had a brilliant career before he pissed it all away. Sheridan gave him the table where Lee signed his surrender, as a reward for his general awesomeness.

Custer screwed it up by not taking the Indians seriously.

But isn't underestimating the opposition the same basic mistake that led to the demise of the Germans and Japanese?

 

[Zinegata]

Yeah, yeah.
Excuses are always cheap.

If excuses are cheap then German Generals are champions at this with their whole "It's all Hitler's fault" narrative.

The simple reality is that there is very much a jilted Internet meme wherein Allied generals who make mistakes are not allowed to have reasons for failing, only excuses (e.g. Monty failing to clear Antwerp quickly because the terrain was awful). Meanwhile, German generals who keep resorting to excuses like "Hitler made me do it" are given a free pass.

As many posters have already noted, German Generals were noted for their tactical skill, but to me even this was overblown and again by 1944 your average US Armored battalion commander was better than his Wermacht counterpart. And they never really figured out how to win on the strategic level; which is again why I brought up the controversial "Red Army" where NATO thought it was winning all along because it won one or two tactical battles but completely lost the war because their stategic position was irretrievable while they tunnel-visioned themselves into trying to win tactically.

The Soviets and the Americans during the Second World War simply understood a war is not simply a series of battles (when the Americans forgot this in Vietnam, they ended up winning all the battles and yet lost the war; all thanks to their stupid adoption of supposedly superior German wartime practices).

The Germans deluded themselves into thinking that winning a lot of battles equals winning a war. Sun Tzu's maxim on how skill is not about winning a hundred battles, but on winning without fighting, holds true to this day far more than the "German way of war".

 

[Zinegata]

Brash aggressive individuals tend not to do well in large bureaucracies (particularly in peacetime military where in theory you always win every battle/war) where politics and "getting" along tend to be valued and risk taking minimized. While there may be debate about whether initiative and aggressiveness can be taught in corporate or military leadership it is clear that you can eliminate it from your culture by punishing people who take risks and using a one failure and you are out promotion system.

Except that winning a war is in fact very often about not taking risks and making sure your force is preserved. For every "brillant" move you can find a risk-taker who was punished for his overstretch which then resulted in calamity. This applies in business too - and contrary to popular belief the companies that collapse aren't the ones with rigid bureacracies. The ones that collapse are actually ones where "brillant" risk-takers were allowed to run rampant which results in the company losing all of its cash on one new "brillant" venture after another that inevitably fails to pan out. The mortgage crisis for instance was not triggered by a bureacracy - it was triggered by risk-takers who reduced credit requirements to ridiculously low levels (thus ingesting far more risk) for the sake of more revenue and profit.

This is most especially pronounced at the highest levels of command, where you can't really engage in any more "brillance" shenanigans and your job is almost entirely busy-work and direction-setting.

Which is really the problem with how the public perceives leadership (and why democracies are so problematic). Most young men are simply attracted to "alpha male, risk-taker" personalities without realizing this is in fact one of the most absolutely bad qualities to have for high command.

The real measure of suitability for high command, consistently, is in fact discipline - Discipline to pick a plan based on data and not gut feelings. Discipline to follow through on a plan without letting anything distract you from it. Discipline to pick the right people regardless of personal friendships and connections. Discipline to confront the worst-case scenarios and facts contradicting your own position without shying away from them or trying to dismiss it by wishful thinking (a failing that the entire German General Staff was addicted to by 1942).

This is precisely why the German way of war has been compared to tribalism, because while alpha male risk-taking may impress a tribe it is simply not an effective way of managing large organizations and nations.