Worst military commanders in history

What about a commander like Wavell who appears to have not given a (*)(*)(*)(*) about anything?

 

that characteristic is more in line with the former. The latter would be more like Custer, who obviously gave a (*)(*)(*)(*), but none the less failed in his responsibilities as a commander. And comparing the fallacies of the two seem impossible to me.

 

For ACW contenders for "worst commander" it would be hard to beat Felix Zollicoffer.

He pulled a classic blunder. he advanced across a river he could not easily cross, attacked a numerically (and qualitatively) superior foe on ground of his foe's choosing in bad weather.

Result: His army was crushed and pinned against a river in flood resulting in the complete destruction of his army and his own death. After the battle, the Yankees held east Tennessee for the rest of the war.

Now, part of this could be reasonably excused. He had no way of knowing that Thomas' army was that much better than his rabble. He had no way of knowing that George C. Thomas was one of the best defensive commanders of the ACW. Zollicoffer was a newspaperman, rather than a professional military man as Thomas was.

Compare this to another similar blunder. In December 1862, Ambrose Burnside had the Army of the Potomac cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksberg, VA and assault the strongly fortified rebel positions on Marye's Heights south of the town. they were repulsed bloodily, but once Burnside cancelled the assault, he got away easily because he had left up his pontoon bridges and had covered them with the powerful Yankee artillery posted on Stafford Heights north of the river. Lee was totally prevented from pursuing a defeated enemy by the prospect of a storm of hot iron. So, although Fredericksberg was a fiasco, it could not be the decisive drubbing that Fishing Creek was.

 

Hey panzer. Long time no see. And how exactly do we rank commanders by? Their failures...stupid decisions...because I have read of commanders who did everything brilliantly, but the odds were stacked so high they couldnt win.

 

Col Trevor DuPuy of TRADOC wrote a book quantitative analyzing the Second World War.

According to DuPuy, MacArthur was very conservative of his men's lives in that war. Even better than Patton who was famed for low casualties and big victories. In the entire New Guinea Campaign and the liberation of the Philippines, MacArthur's forces killed the Japanese at a 20:1 ratio.

MacArthur's (and Eichelberger's) liberation of Luzon was a paragon of military efficiency. In five months MacArthur's forces had routed the Japanese out of the islands and had re-opened the port of Manila to support the upcoming invasion of Japan.

A few years later, MacArthur's landing at Inchon caught the NorKs in slack-jawed surprise and rolled their army up like a rug.

MacArthur was a whole lot closer to "Best" than "Worst." That's why they have a statue of him at West Point. MacArthur had a clue.

 

Not if you look at the record of MacArthur. Start with his incoherent strategy to defend all of the Philippines that ended in the disastrous surrender at Bataan in April of 1942 the largest mass surrender of American troops in U.S. history.

In terms of his statue at West Point, there is no evidence that officers produced at the academies are better than those commissioned through other avenues.
In my opinion, the academies have outlived their usefulness...in terms of value for the taxpayer...costing significantly more to produce officers than those commissoned through ROTC or OTS/OCS. Look at the scandals which have emerged from the acadamies in more recent times, from cheating to sexual harrassment.

General Petraeus graduated from West Point, and he could still very well be charged for his adulterous affair in a military court if there's sufficient evidence this occured while he was still an active General.

 

The British in WW1 definitely were the greatest morons in the history of warfare.

You need to read "To End All Wars" written by Hochschild to get a better sense of why.

They butchered thousands at the drop of a hat for nothing.

 

MacA had some brilliant successes, and also some incredible blunders.

He is controversial.

Overall I would have to say that it was a mistake by FDR calling MacA out of retirement. He should have left sleeping dogs lie.

Eventually Truman had to fire him.

 

Napoleon and Hitler were both geniuses plagued by their own egos.

They each swept across Europe like an unstoppable wildfire.

They each then went on to bite off more than they could chew.

 

Read "The Guns of August". The French in the early war were worse. They thought that espirit de corps made men invulnerable to machine guns basically.

 

No they both made the mistake of not defeating the Royal Navy.

 

No the Russians in WW1 were the worst.

 

More on Gen. MacArthur...

Between the unconditional surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945 and the arrival of Allied forces in Japan-occupied territories after September 2, 1945.
In this time frame Allied POWs were murdered and any evidence of these war crimes destroyed. MacArthur forbid any Allied forces from liberating Japanese occupied territories until the formal surrender of Japan on Septermber 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri...the deaths of these Allied POWs at the hands of the Japanese is in large measure on MacArthur's shoulders.

 

From a military stand point liberating the Philippines was nothing but MacArthur easing his ego over having lost it in the first place.

 

"... liberating the Philippines was nothing..."

Taxcutter says:
Closing the Formosa Straits to the remnant of the Japanese merchant fleet was nothing?

You ever bother to look at a map?

 

Given that MacArthur had only two reliable units on Luzon - the rest were green-as-grass and underequipped Philippino units - and that he was poorly supplied with fuel and ammunition, collapsing to the fortified Bataan peninsula and Corregidor was about the only option open to him. In the down-archipelago islands he may as well defend them. He had no way of falling back with those forces.

Until the formal surrender a state of war (under a truce) still existed and occupying land under a truce would have re-opened hostilities. MacArthur and Nimitz did manage to get Japan - tenacious people if there ever were any - to surrender. Just that was a stellar accomplishment even Kublai Khan could not manage. Losing a few style points does not diminish MacArthur at all.

 

His ill-advised decision to invade Peleliu (an island of no immediate strategic value) cost 9,000 U.S. casualties and took two months to secure. It is regarded by many as the biggest mistake in WWII. More than a thousand Marines from the First Marine Division were killed, and thousands more were wounded or missing. Not considering the 12,000 Japanese soldiers that we were forced to kill.



I haven't even started on the Korean War yet.

 

LBJ or Kennedy

 

http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/faqs/military/military.asp

LBJ, from what I can find, dispite being an officer, never was in a position to command. JFK, on the other hand, Kept his men together after getting rammed by a Japanese destroyer and instead of surrendering to the japs, lead them to an island to wait for rescue. I find no fault in those actions... and while not being worthy of making him on any list of greatest commanders, doesn't put him anywhere on the worst commanders either.

Can you cite sources that lead to your presumption?

 

do we count their positions & records as "Commander in Chief" as being military commanders?

 

If you stretch the context of the OP, sure. But I can think of a few other Presidents that have overseen worse military commands.

 

The issue of course, with these sorts of discussions is the privilege of sitting in our arm chairs and judging history. While, for example, WW2 is going on almost 70 years ago...at the time these military commanders and civilian leaders dealt with a fluid environment. It is easy to say this was brilliant strategy and that was a blunder...at the time decisions were made with less information than we have in analyzing the decisions.

There are indeed incompetent military leaders throughout history, whose blunders are simply unjustifiable regardless of the fluidity of events surrounding them...but having been involved in combat operations from the support side. Things like weather, factors beyond your control...play into the unfolding of events. Luck can even play a factor...but more often than not the best laid plans are scrapped and a certain improvisation becomes part of the command decisions. The best military leaders think on their feet and adapt as situations change.

I would never insinuate that General MacArthur, for example, should rank among the worst of history's military leaders...but he's not without his critics or detractors. I am more apt to study events from the men and women who served under these military leaders, than I would be a History professor assessing and analyzing decisions from the comfort of a fireside study.

War is not a game of stratego, it is flesh and blood....flaws and all, it is far more of a visceral event than an intellectual one. So I'll end this rambling with a quote

––Stephen Vincent Benet

 

Peleliu was Nimitz' idea. MacArthur knew the base there had been neutralized by the reduction of the Marianas.

Both MacArthur and Nimitz had been bypassing island strongholds ever since Rabaul. Palau was an odd case.

One could make the argument that closing the Formosa Straits could have been more easily done by invading Formosa and letting the PI rot. Or maybe by just liberating Luzon and letting the down-archipelago islands rot. The Aussies took Borneo (and its oil fields) in the spring/summer of 1945 so Philippines vs Formosa was moot by then.

I'll stay with my assessment that MacArthur was much more one of the best than one of the worst.

 

Maybe for the title of "worst" you need teamwork.

How about the team of Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus - the blockheads that commanded the Roman forces at Cannae?

 

As I was saying in my prior post, I'm more apt to pay attention to the opinions of the men who ACTUALLY served under MacAruther, who fought the battles...
He showed no ability as a battlefield leader, and was almost universally despised by the troops under him.
I think he was a good administrator, but it is not really possible to call him a good general if most of his troops hated serving under him. He was known as "Dugout Doug" for a reason.

There's numerous books written about him and take a look at the authors' curriculum vitae for most of them...most never even served...they dissect the static facts of events and regurgitate them...and perhaps on paper MacArthur was successful...but I would not say he should be ranked among America's best military leaders by a long shot.