Test Question

[Alfred]

Oh come on...based on the hint given in post #15, it could only be the General in charge of the Manhattan Project (name currently eludes me)[:D]

Alfred

[Montbrun]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Oh come on...based on the hint given in post #15, it could only be the General in charge of the Manhattan Project (name currently eludes me)[:D]

Alfred

Gen. Leslie Groves.

[paullus99]

I would agree - Marshall. Novices study tactics, experts study logistics.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: PyleDriver

Ok guys, who was the best general in WWII. I would love to here your responces. You will be shocked with my answer. But I think I'm correct, bring it on...

Gotthard Heinrici


Leo "Apollo11"

[karonagames]

I thought it would be a toss up between Gerneral "Mud" and General "Winter", as these two had , by far, the biggest influence on all military operations during world war 2.

[Flaviusx]

It is interesting to speculate how things would've played out if Marshall had gotten the D-Day appointment instead of Ike. I think FDR made the right call here though and got the correct person in each spot. (Marshall, for all his virtues, didn't have the same touch for coalition politics that Ike did. And Ike didn't have the enormous authority that Marshall had at home in dealing with congress and the president.)
 
Also, while Marshall was astonishingly good at his job in the realm of grand strategy I really wonder if he could've, say, handled 3rd army in breaking out of Normandy with the same dash and conviction that Patton did.
 
This also works the other way around: the mind boggles at the idea of Patton as Chief of Staff. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[ComradeP]

Marshall is a rather odd choice.

For starters, he missed half the war to begin with, a problem shared by other American generals. As such, any comparison between them and British, Soviet or German generals is at least partially flawed.

We also don't know how Marshall would perform in battle or even in theater, as he spend most of the war in Washington, far away from any actual battle.

The army he created was also fairly small for a country with over 130 million inhabitants, with only 91 divisions, and he couldn't keep that army adequately up to strength to begin with.

There's also a problem with the term "general" if "the best general" is to be taken literally, as by the standards of other countries, he was a Field Marshal at the end of the war, although he was still a general in the US.

[Flaviusx]

Marshall is a good choice at his pay scale. It's all about what sort of generalship we're talking about here. There's a need for organizers of victory and grand strategists. That's why I made such a big fuss about defining best uptopic. 
 
As for the 90 division gamble, it did work. It wouldn't have worked for a different country, but that's not the point. The United States was never going to make war in the same fashion that the Soviet Union or even Germany did. It could also rely on machines to an extent nobody else could -- and supply everyone else with them at the same time. I give Marshall high marks here, he made a brave and not obvious to choice to emphasize a very American way of war. The replacement system was kind of a mess, though.
 
 
 
 

[ComradeP]

Whether a plan "worked" is not the only criteria for it being a good plan. The Allies had a manpower shortage in Europe in 1944, and the blame for that rests to a large extent on the US for not mobilising more forces. Had the German defensive strategy been even slightly different (or, say, the response to Bagration been more capable) it is questionable whether Marshall's system would've worked. The replacement "system" would've meant the overall experience in US units dropped substantially with every setback.

I also feel that Marshall's replacement system would've been inadequate for an invasion of Japan, which would've required numerous Army divisions.

[Flaviusx]

Raising more divisions wasn't the issue, but keeping them up to strength was a problem, I'll agree. I really do not think the US needed to sport some kind of 200+ division monster to accomplish its goals, let alone something the size of the Red Army. (We had the Red Army to be the Red Army, heh. They did the lion's share of the work here. No point in duplicating their effort.)
 
Such a force would have involved compromises elsewhere in shipping and airpower and industrial output and lend lease.
 
The idea was always to shift divisions from Europe to Japan for the main event there...which in any case proved to be unnecessary. The atomic bomb being a direct expression of a very peculiarly American choice in political war economy. Nobody else had the capacity or industry to spare on such a longshot project. We did.

[ComradeP]

When Marshall agreed with the ~90 division Army concept, it was not clear whether the Allies would win the war and if so: when. A 90 division army was an army for a few years of war, as otherwise its manpower would run out. The first problems were already noticeable a year after the plans were finalised.

Marshall could not have foreseen that the German army would more or less implode on the Eastern Front in that same year, or that Japan would be defeated to such an extent that, due to the strategic bombing campaign and the use of nukes, an invasion of Japan would not be necessary. Given the uncertain future, Marshall's plan was, as you said, a gamble, the success of which doesn't make it a good plan or Marshall a good general.

[PyleDriver]

ComradeP...You said the two key words about Marshall, gamble and success...Patton is my main man, he played that same dice roll...

[Zorch]

My $0.02:

Marshall was a great strategist and diplomat, and would have been a good operational commander. I think he would have been more inclined to take risks then Ike was in the fall of '44. He would not have lost focus like Ike did, in letting Monty postpone clearing the approaches to Antwerp and take the lion's share of supplies for his Arnhem fiasco.

It's interesting to compare the WWI records of Marshall, Ike, and Patton...

Some historian said that Monty was 'the best WWI general in WWII'. Too bad for the Brits that he was fighting the wrong war.

[Flaviusx]

Ike was committed to making the alliance work in a way that I'm not sure Marshall would've been. In seeking a more optimal strategy from the operational standpoint, Marshall could've committed a political and diplomatic blunder with the British. If he had fired Monty, for example, as Ike was very tempted to do at several points but refrained from doing, I don't think this would've been such a wonderful thing in terms of the alliance. The British, for their part, have long criticized Ike from the strategic standpoint for not concentrating all resources up north in Monty's area and in effect shutting down the 2/3 of the front held by the US, which again was hardly feasible from a political standpoint and would've been quite unacceptable to the American public. (And Ike went pretty close to doing this as it was for Market Garden.)
 
Ike had to keep everybody on board. He did that, probably better than anybody else could have. In doing so, he proved his own greatness in his particular job. Once again, a different type of generalship.

[Rasputitsa]

Monty nearly got fired, so did Patton and so finally did Guderian, Manstein was relieved, as was Rommel, is that one of the measures of a good General, maybe ? [:)]

Brooke held his postion throughout the war, he had frontline and staff experience, in good and bad times, and had a significant part in amphibious operations (both ways - out at Dunkirk, in at Normandy). The toughest enemy is always your own political leadership, which he seems to have handled well. [:)]

[Capt Cliff]

Ok, how about another question to pass the time? Who was the best Corp comander or Army Co if we want to work our way down from Marshall. We probalbly need to say east or west front and leave the pacific out of it.

[PyleDriver]

Not sure about corps commanders... But I think the boldest move in modern history goes to MacArthur. He pulled off Incheon Bay, what a gutsy move...

[Neal_MLC]

ORIGINAL: PyleDriver

Not sure about corps commanders... But I think the boldest move in modern history goes to MacArthur. He pulled off Incheon Bay, what a gutsy move...

The problem with Dugout Doug was his ego, He believed himself to be much smarter than everyone else. This was also the guy that said Peleleiu (sp) was essential for the invasion of the Phillipines, did not transfer supplies to Bataan when he was able and had no respect for the office of the president. Lets not forget that he advocated nuclear war with China. Sorry I just can't go with MacArthur.

[PyleDriver]

I dont like Doug either, I just said it was the boldest move...I like to go on the edge when playing and that was the edge... I'm sure people in S.Korea like him...

[Neal_MLC]

I can go along with boldest move that was successful, Monty's Market-Garden was pretty bold too.