WORST Generals of the 20th Century

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Hmmm...

Monty? Sure, he could win with overwhelming force superiority, but as soon as he tried to do something fancy, he shoots himself in the foot with a Market Garden-style cockup.

How about Haig before about late 1917, when he realized that sending troops charging into machine guns is silly?

 

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The thing with Haig is that even when he was crap, he wasn't noticably worse than the senior French or German commanders so it's probably not right to single him out.

 

[peo]

I would say that most generals on the western front in ww1 was the worst ever....
Noone had any ideas at all.
Just send in more troops and all will be fine...
At least on the eastern front they managed to move...

 

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No offence, but that's a fairly ridiculous and inaccurate generalisation. Also, the Eastern Front produced a completely different set of fighting conditions and military problems to those experienced on the Western Front. The Western Front was in a league of its own in terms of the difficulty of planning a successful offensive. You can'r make blanket comparisons between the two fronts. What was good for one would often have been disastrous if attempted on the other.

 

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Originally posted by Malthus
The Egyptian field marshal, Nassir's crony, in command of the Egyptian forces in '67 must be on the list.

The Egyptians seriously outnumbered the Israelis, and although the Israeli first strike against Egypt's air force was devestating and may have assured eventual Israeli victory, such a victory would have been extremely difficult and costly (and indeed may not have been possible) against Egypt's prepared defensive positions ... had this fine fellow (Aziz?) not ordered a precipitate retreat.

Caught in the open desert, outside their prepared positions, the Egyptians were devistated by airpower and harried by armour. "Retreat" became a rout, and then a one-sided slaughter.

There was no excuse for this. Jordan's much smaller army put up a much tougher fight, winning the respect of the Israelis for their bravery and tenacity, even in defeat.

The Egyptian infantryman, though badly lead, was capable of the same level of bravery, but they were denied the chance - because the field marshal lost his nerve.

I thought it was Nassir himself who panicked and ordered the army to retreat just when they started to recover from the initial shock.

 

[peo]

Originally posted by Top Cat
No offence, but that's a fairly ridiculous and inaccurate generalisation. Also, the Eastern Front produced a completely different set of fighting conditions and military problems to those experienced on the Western Front. The Western Front was in a league of its own in terms of the difficulty of planning a successful offensive. You can'r make blanket comparisons between the two fronts. What was good for one would often have been disastrous if attempted on the other.

I know.
What i meant was that digging in and sending millions of young men to their deaths for nothing can't be classified as innovative.
Since noone came up with any brighter ideas than lets make them run towards the waiting machineguns i classify them as bad.
I only pointed out that the easter front was more fluid. Mostly becouse of fewer troops and larger area. But it was at least moving.

But if you want a rather bad general it has to be Moltke, who managed to get his own army to withdraw when they didn't have to.

 

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Except for the fact that lots of people came up with ideas other than "let's have them all run towards the waiting machine guns". So I still don't get your point. The Western front saw far more tactical and technological innovation than the Eastern Front did.

 

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Actually... there was probably just as much, if not more, running towards machine guns and slaughter on the Eastern Front than the Western Front.... the Russians weren't exactly 'innovative' here, which is why I listed one as my pick for one of the worst 20th century generals...

 

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Originally posted by peo

But if you want a rather bad general it has to be Moltke, who managed to get his own army to withdraw when they didn't have to.

The Younger Moltke certainly deserves to be on the list. Here we have a man who led the lobbying of the German government by the German general staff for an aggressive war, years before the war actually broke out (and deliberately held back military assessments suggesting that the British would enter the war if German troops went through Belgium from the government) and who then proceeded to have a nervous breakdown as soon as the war actually happened. Hardly a glittering end to his career.

 

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Originally posted by peo
But if you want a rather bad general it has to be Moltke, who managed to get his own army to withdraw when they didn't have to.

Must be Moltke the Younger, who ran the Germans into WWI, because the elder Moltke, from the Franco-Prussian War, was pretty much the epitome of the General Staff Man. In terms of military cartography and use of terrain, about the only person who comes to mind as an equal is Bonaparte.

edit: What Top Cat said.

 

[Aetius]

The Egyptian guy was Field Marshall Amir. Still it must be difficult to beat the Chinese Nationalist Generals incompetence. I don't know the names of them unfortunately.

 

[w_mullender]

How about the russian admiral (his name escapes me at the moment) from the 1904-5 war against Japan? He should rank quite high (attacking fishing ships and stuff like that), although the japanese were probably superior anyway.

 

[Dakar]

I think ALL the WWI generals should be included in this list. In fact it would be more interesting to list GOOD WWI generals:
I only can think of Brusilov and the british general in Palestine (Allenby?)

 

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On all WW1 generals being incompetant, I think I will have to agree with Terraine:

"What a generation of naval and military leaders, no longer young, brough up in Victorian society and accustomed to a leisurely process of technical and social change, had to face was this:

the first war of aviation, with all the implications of tha;
the first real under-dea war, entirely altering the nature of nval power;
the first war of the internal combustion engine, therefore also the frist war of the mechanics, a new breed of men in uniform;
the first war of wireless telegraphy;
the first of the two great artillery wars, with all their destructive implications;
the first chemical war, using (amoung other things) poison gas and napalm (flame-throwers, petroleum-based);
the first war of modern mass production, mass logistics and mass administration (by 1916 British G.H.Q. in France was administrating a population bigger than any single unit of control in England, except Greater London);
and much else besides.

All in all, the 'custom-bound clique' had a good deal to think about; its experience was in fact unique; never before or since has so much innovation been packed into such a short space of time. The imagination of that generation (in every country) had no option but to work overtime; those who were short of imagination had to develop it rather fast. The truth is that those ruddy-cheeked, bristling-moustached, heavy-jawed, frequently inarticulate gnerals rose to challenge after challenge, absorbed weapon after weapon into their battle systems, adapted themselves to constant change with astonishing address. But no one cared to make a legend out of that."

The Smoke and the Fire, John Terraine

 

[Malthus]

Originally posted by madner
I thought it was Nassir himself who panicked and ordered the army to retreat just when they started to recover from the initial shock.

According to the authour of "Six days of War", Nassir did indeed lose his nerve - and control over the military.

His Field Marshal (Amir) apparently gave the order. Nassir concurred with it, after it had been given. By that time, it was probably too late to rescind, as the units were already pulling back.

When Nassir first heard of it, he was apparently furious - he and Amir had a one-on-one "chat", the result of which came to be known (in the West at least) as "the Big Lie". The "Big Lie" was that the Egyptian pull-back was the result of the fact that the US was intervening in the war, on the side of the Israelis, and that the army had to pull back to defend Egypt from US invasion. The "first strike" was reputed, according to the Big Lie, to be the work of US warplanes.

It is interesting to note that the Big Lie is still widely believed in the Middle East today.

The upshot is, Amir can go down in history as one of the very worst generals of the 20th century.

 

[Malthus]

Originally posted by Aetius
The Egyptian guy was Field Marshall Amir. Still it must be difficult to beat the Chinese Nationalist Generals incompetence. I don't know the names of them unfortunately.

That may be true, but I don't know if any of them really deserve to be called "generals" at all. "Parasites" or "warlords" may be closer to the mark - by-products of the decay of centralized government.

 

[Malthus]

As to WW1 generals, what is so very irritating about them is not their incompetence - they may very well have been competent.

It is two things:

(1) In spite of all the technical innovations, they could not bring decisive victory. Perhaps they were simply too evenly matched, and the necessary technologies (such as armour) had not developed to create fluidity to the battlefield. The generals may not have been responsible for that - but the public has never forgiven them for it, either.

(2) The generals, by and large, did not suffer the horrors that faced their men. They led from behind - well behind - the lines. The necessity to coordinate things certainly was the major reason - of what use was a general up at the front lines, who could not communicate to anyone because the lines had been cut by artillery? [One may ask 'of what use is a general *behind* the troops, who cannot communicate with them' - but that is another story].

Nevertheless, the sight of generals sleeping in chateaux and dining off of silver - while their men slept in muddy trenches and were gnawed by rats - created a resentment that can still be felt, almost a century later. I remember seeing a picture of a general, well behind the lines, peering through a powerful tellescope - at his own men. I can imagine what these men felt about him, who did not even have the balls to visit the front lines.

 

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Originally posted by Dakar
I think ALL the WWI generals should be included in this list. In fact it would be more interesting to list GOOD WWI generals:
I only can think of Brusilov and the british general in Palestine (Allenby?)

Good Ww1 Generals:


Smith-Dorrien
Plumer
Rawlinson
Horne
Byng
Allenby (in Palestine - mediocre on the Western Front)
Currie
Monash
Birdwood
Liman von Sanders
Mackenson
Lettow Vorbeck
Groener
Hoffman


And that's without the French and without getting into the more obscure Corps commanders and military innovators on both sides (Harper, Maxe, Uniacke, Tudor, Bruchmuller [actually a colonel, but hey] etc etc)

 

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Originally posted by Malthus
As to WW1 generals, what is so very irritating about them is not their incompetence - they may very well have been competent.

It is two things:

(1) In spite of all the technical innovations, they could not bring decisive victory. Perhaps they were simply too evenly matched, and the necessary technologies (such as armour) had not developed to create fluidity to the battlefield. The generals may not have been responsible for that - but the public has never forgiven them for it, either.

(2) The generals, by and large, did not suffer the horrors that faced their men. They led from behind - well behind - the lines. The necessity to coordinate things certainly was the major reason - of what use was a general up at the front lines, who could not communicate to anyone because the lines had been cut by artillery? [One may ask 'of what use is a general *behind* the troops, who cannot communicate with them' - but that is another story].

Nevertheless, the sight of generals sleeping in chateaux and dining off of silver - while their men slept in muddy trenches and were gnawed by rats - created a resentment that can still be felt, almost a century later. I remember seeing a picture of a general, well behind the lines, peering through a powerful tellescope - at his own men. I can imagine what these men felt about him, who did not even have the balls to visit the front lines.

This is all true up to a point. That said the idea that generals didn't visit the front line is a misconception. Pretty much all generals regularly visited the second line assembley areas and some frequently went round the front lines to "buck up the men". Allenby especially had a reputation for continually being in the trneches for visits, but because he had such a bad temper apparently his men hated it. He would, of course, have been guilty of gross dereliction of duty had he tried to direct a batlle as an Army Commander from the trnches. Another point is that generals were often only recognised as generals by the men the spoke to directly, as they rarely toured the trenches in staff uniform (as they would have been sniped immediately). The biggest resentment always seems to be reserved for Haig when in fact if one thinks about it it is ridiculous to expect him to be around the trenches all the time. Haig was effectively the commander of an Army Group of FIVE Armies - it's hardly surprising that only a minority of the soldiers nominally under his command got to shake his hand. Overall, the record of generals at the front line is really no worse than it was in WW2 or even in the Gulf. Most men met their divisional commander on a fairly frequent basis and they would also generally be exposed to their Corps commander. Whether or not they got to be tipped the wink by their Army commander was more a matter of luck (though some Army commanders did have large groups of the men gather round in reserve areas before major operations - eg. Plumer before Messines) and being in the right place.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

Originally posted by Top Cat
Good Ww1 Generals:

. . .
Currie
. . .

As a Canadian, thanks for including Currie! I sometimes wonder how much he is remembered outside Canada, but here he is one of the most famous military leaders (at least for those Canadians that know their history). Vimy is probably the most remembered battle of all, rivaled only by Dieppe. It's nice to see him get some credit!

As an aside, considering your knowledge, I would be curious about your views on naval leadership in the war, especially British. Any thoughts?