English Generals

[Paper Tiger]

Greene - Who?
Washington decent general up against incompitants and political appointees who totally failed to come to terms with the conditions.
Lee - Excellent general, but Picketts charge really lets him down.
Longstreet - Excellent general but 2iC so how do you rate him properly.
Grant - Excellent general, understood all he had to do to win was wear the other fella down.
Sherman - Decent above average, but would have needed to fight more major battles to warrant great.
Pershing - what was he up against?
Shepperd/Geiger - Never had enough to do to give them a proper rating certainly can't be rated as "Great" generals on the limited histories they had.
Patton - Tank boy headstrong and about as good as Monty.
Macarthur - YOU MUST BE JOKING!!! The idiot nearly started world war 3 after a seriously bad misjudgement and got his a55 handed to him in the Phillipines.
 

[megalomania2003]

ORIGINAL: Paper Tiger

Wellington, retired undefeated, even his campaigns in reverse were emphatic victories.

But one or two points on leaders.
Julius Ceaser
Attilla the Hun
Zhukov the man who stopped the third reich, great leader.

And if you want a British leader Leigh Mallory, and just because he fought in Asia don't forget General Slim.
Then again don't forget the far east many Chinese generals could be included even The emperor Chin, or Mao Tse Tung, or indeed Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Oh and how do you forget George Washington?[8|]

Mao was an incompetent general. His victories were won because the communists had agents in the Nationalist high command (even some of the commanding generals)

Washington was average the British were below average

[morvwilson]

ORIGINAL: Paper Tiger

Greene - Who?
Washington decent general up against incompitants and political appointees who totally failed to come to terms with the conditions.
Lee - Excellent general, but Picketts charge really lets him down.
Longstreet - Excellent general but 2iC so how do you rate him properly.
Grant - Excellent general, understood all he had to do to win was wear the other fella down.
Sherman - Decent above average, but would have needed to fight more major battles to warrant great.
Pershing - what was he up against?
Shepperd/Geiger - Never had enough to do to give them a proper rating certainly can't be rated as "Great" generals on the limited histories they had.
Patton - Tank boy headstrong and about as good as Monty.
Macarthur - YOU MUST BE JOKING!!! The idiot nearly started world war 3 after a seriously bad misjudgement and got his a55 handed to him in the Phillipines.

If I remember right, Green was the guy who rarely held the field after a battle but tended to inflict 40 - 50% casualties on the British troops he faced and set up the battle of Cowpens.

Shepperd/Geiger - Both men served in both world wars. Shepperd in the trenches and Geiger flying DH-4 bombers. Shepperd finished his carreer as the commandant of the Marine Corps. That position does not usually go to underperforming officers!

Patton, headstrong definitely, but I would also add eccentric! (thought he was the reicarnation of a Napoleonic Marshal of France, along with many others he thought he was reicarnated from)I also think he did a much better job than Monty, lets not forget his performance during the Battle of the Bulge.

MacArthur - Firstly, he did give the Army the M1 Garand in the 30's, giving our troops more firepower than any other army in the world at that time. Second, his performance in WWII was outstanding! In Korea (maybe you mistyped here?) he was getting a little long in the tooth and miscalculated the reaction of the Chinese, over extended his advance, setting up the Chosin resevoir episode where a Marine was quoted "Retreat? Hell! We are just attacking in another direction!"

[HussarGames]

Mac Arthur as outstanding. [X(]
Unfortunately there is no ROFL emoticon here.

He was an outstanding politician, to stay in command after all the blunders.

Due to his influence, the US committed to a 2 prong assault against Japan in WW2, lengthening the war considerably. Enough said.

[morvwilson]

One of the first things in warfare is secure your base!

Australia needed securing, thus the island hopping up the Solomons and the destruction of Rabaul was required.

By this same token, Hawaii and Midway also needed securing, thus the thrust through the central pacific.

The basic division of resources for the US for that war was 70% to Europe and 30% to the pacific. But even with only 30% of the resources we could afford a two pronged attack where the Japanese could not defend against both. What caused the length of the war was distance and priorities. Germany was a a bigger threat than Japan.

[Grand_Armee]

ORIGINAL: malcolm_mccallum

Sir Sydney Smith.

If we're using all of history then I do think Montgomery gets consideration. Had Market Garden worked (and it might have) he'd have been a hero for the ages.

Market Garden would never have worked. Monty was out of touch with the terrain...not to mention not knowing of 2 SS Panzer Divisions refitting in the area. At the end stages, the Allies were trying to advance up a single elevated road which was easily sniped by SP anti-tank guns. Not the brightest of plans.

[Ursa MAior]

Can someone define what is a great general? Because I see famous ones here (Monty, MacArthur), infamous ones (Attila) along with "inventors" (that marine guy with sea/air/land units under him), etc. They have fame but have they done enough to get in the hall of fame? If so why? Cuz Monty beat Rommel? Or Attila was the Scourge of God?

IMHO Wellington is rated as a great general cuz he
1. understood the mechanism of the early 19th cent battles well. Some historians say he did have some sort of "databank" in his head about whith the help of which he was able to see battles as a sort of chess
2. He did beat Nappy didnt he?

Oddly enough no one mentioned Ulysses Grant. I'd say along with Moltke and Lee he is one of the great gens of the late 19th cent.

[Andy_PZ]

Wellington was not a good general... nonsense.

[shunwick]

Since the topic is English generals, I would like to add my vote to the Slim faction.
 
Best Wishes,
 
 

[mgarnett]

I have read this discussion and get the impression that some people believe you have to be American before you can be a great general, and if you are Brittish, you cannot be a great general (no offence intended, just my impression).  Comparing Generals across ages is fruitless, comparing generals even in different wars is almost impossible and comparing generals in different countries and armies is even just as hard.
 
Consider WWII.  There is absolutely no doubt that German generals, like Guderian and Manstien were excellent generals.  But how can you compare Generals in other countries to these?  I mean you have to take into consideration a whole range of different factors, how well trained were their troops, did they have superior equipment and what political environment were they operating in including how much freedom they had to make decisions.  History has many examples of wonderful battle plans going awry becuase troops got lost, 2IC's misunderstood orders or performed poorly.  Would generals in these circumstance now be considered great if they had won?
 
Take Monty for instance (that general that some people just love to hate despite his accomlishments).  Did he fight when he had 3:1 odds, yes he did, why did he do that...was it becuase he was a poor general.  I would say not.  He waited until he though he was in a position from which he could win, a sound strategy I would think from a common sense perspective.  Why fight at 1:1 when you can fight at 3:1, or is a god general only somebody who can win against the odds?  Some would argue he was fighting with inferior equipment, not that I necessarily would but I can see the point when you see the Lee/Grant tank compared to German designs in the same theatre.  Would Patton have won at El Alemain, I don't know....or would Monty have performed as well as Patton in the Battle of the Bulge, I don't know.  All that we do know is that Monty won at El Alemain and Patton won at the Bulge.
 
 
 

[Rooster]

Wolfe was pretty good.  Snookered the French quite well at Montreal.

[SemperAugustus]

Tokugawa Ieyasu a great general [&:]? Don't think so, neither was Genghis really (given all the times he lost battles), both had help from others...

Contenders from Asia
Khalid ibn al-Walid - undefeated Arab General in early wars against Byzantium etc.
Alp Arslan - Victor at Manzikert
Saladin
Subotai - Genghis's and Ogodei's main strategist and general
Baybars - Mameluke leader that saved Islam from the Mongols
Timurlenk - scourge of Asia
Selim the Grim
Babur - father of the Mughals
Suleiman the Magnificent
Hideyoshi Toyotomi - reunifier of Japan (Tokugawas usurped his realm after he had done all the hard work)
Nadir Shah - reunifier of Iran (defeated the Ottomans, Mughals and Russians)

[spence]

I think U.S. Grant was a great general. He saw the tactical of what war had become in 1864 but in that there were no continuous lines (a la WWI) he saw the strategic possibities of manuever. That R.E.Lee was every bit as good as him in manuever was why he does not go down in history as one remembered for manuevering. He also sensed the ultimate strategic vulnerability of the South to a war of attrition and lacking an easy way he took the hard decision to do it the hard way.

Back to the topic of English Generals I think that Wavell deserves a lot more credit for generalship than what history has doled out. With extremely slender resources he fought on 4 fronts simultaneously at times managing a stalemate against the Afrika Korps while defeating the Italians in Ethiopia, the Vichy French in the Levant and the pro-Axis Iraqis in Iraq. The defeats he oversaw ("Battleaxe" and the ABDA/Singapore debacle) were hardly the fault of his poorly leadership but were really the inevitable result of having next to nothing to work with.

[morvwilson]

Just to try to interject a little sense here into this jumbled mess. The original discussion was on English war leaders on land over the last thousand years or so. Here is the list I see developing.
 
Edward the Elder (Uniter of England according to Anglo Saxon Cronicles)
Edward IV (Black Prince of Wales for Crecy)
Henry V (Agincourt)
Cromwell
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (started as a Marine, may not qualify for this list, what do you think?)
Wellington
Moore
Beresford
Clive
Cornwallis
Wavell
Montgomery (Personally I still think Monty was overrated, too cautious, but since we seem to have a shortage of names...)
Slim
Winston Churchill (do you think this decendant of John Churchill qualifies?)
 
When I put up my first answer, I gave twelve names off the top of my head from a two hundred year history of the US. By contrast there should be at least sixty names here for 1000 years of English history. What am I missing?
 

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: morvwilson

Just to try to interject a little sense here into this jumbled mess. The original discussion was on English war leaders on land over the last thousand years or so. Here is the list I see developing.

Edward the Elder (Uniter of England according to Anglo Saxon Cronicles)
Edward IV (Black Prince of Wales for Crecy)
Henry V (Agincourt)
Cromwell
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (started as a Marine, may not qualify for this list, what do you think?)
Wellington
Moore
Beresford
Clive
Cornwallis
Wavell
Montgomery (Personally I still think Monty was overrated, too cautious, but since we seem to have a shortage of names...)
Slim
Winston Churchill (do you think this decendant of John Churchill qualifies?)

When I put up my first answer, I gave twelve names off the top of my head from a two hundred year history of the US. By contrast there should be at least sixty names here for 1000 years of English history. What am I missing?

A sense of perspective and reality on the American names? [;)]

From the american point of view, many of the names so far listed strike me as strange.

Pershing? Arrived in France and promptly set about making the same mistakes everyone else had made, refusing to believe his allies (who had moved on theior techniques) had anything to teach him.

Patton? A man who was dynamite with an open road and a map in his hand, but who was somewhat less dangerous when asked to fight. His drive on the Bulge was not that impressive given it took him five days, he failed to really concentrate and his push was through a collection of Volks outfits if memory serves. He then arrives at Bastogne and has to fight for a further fortnight to clear the area. His campaign in Lorraine is a poor one, his raid on Hammelburg borderline criminal. Too many have been seduced by the pearl handled pistols and the soundbites. He was a Divisional or Corp Commander promoted one step too far.

Many of the American names were also subordinates. Longstreet and Jackson were at the sort of level that O'Connor or Dempsey were for the British and I think a lack of familiarity with that level of British command may be costing the British some names.

Of American Land Commanders, only Lee springs to mind as an operational Napoleonite, but a man who ultimately blundered. Grant reminds me of Montgomery in that he understood his limitations, those of his men, and knew what he had to do to win. That in many ways is the key question. Napoleon ultimately lost and by 1809-10 was perhaps largely shot (see his performances at Waterloo and Borodino). Grant ultimately won. Great Generals do not necessarily have to win, but one might argue that a Great Commander takes what he has, what he thinks he can do, and applies it to best effect. In which case, Monty and Grant have few peers.

I'm not familiar with the revolution (or First Civil War, however you want to phrase it [;)]) but my British list would entail the undefeated Wellington, who beat a succession of French Marshals before facing the great one himself and prevailing. I'd include Montgomery, because for all his personal faults, his strategy was probably the correct one, and it was a strategy he was ideally suited for. Slim would have to be included, and from the earlier period Marlborough and Wolfe.

I'd be tempted to include Cromwell because he understood the basic principles of war, not least that hard training and Command and control are exceptionally important. He also led from the front.

Of the English Kings, Henry V stands out, Edward I, Edward III who beat both the scots at Halidon Hill and the French at Crecy and Alfred the Great.

Part of the issue of finding more was that Britain has always been a sea power who generally paid others to take the risks on land. Our land fighting between 1815 and 1914, for example, was generally against natives of one description or another with the exception of the Crimea. This was a period of heavy fighting in America and Europe but we just don't get involved as much. After 1588, we generally produce excellent Admirals with just a few land Commanders where required.

For the US, I think Lee. He was the the closest thing to Napoleon (a frenchman who on his day was arguably the World's greatest Captain, only Hannibal I think could rank alongside). You produce a good crop of Corp and Divisional Commanders (Longstreet, Hancock, Jackson, Collins and others) but the American style of fighting has generally been very direct. I think this will produce fighters at Division and Corp level who will stand out, but fewer great operational minds in the Manstein or Napoleonic sense. Patton stands out because he liked to maneuver (whether he was good or not is a separate issue), not because he was typical of the American style of war. In this sense (and the British have been the same in the 20th century) you need less a man who is an inspired General and more an attentive Manager with an eye for detail.

Regards,
IronDuke

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: morvwilson

Just to try to interject a little sense here into this jumbled mess. The original discussion was on English war leaders on land over the last thousand years or so. Here is the list I see developing.

Edward the Elder (Uniter of England according to Anglo Saxon Cronicles)
Edward IV (Black Prince of Wales for Crecy)
Henry V (Agincourt)
Cromwell
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (started as a Marine, may not qualify for this list, what do you think?)
Wellington
Moore
Beresford
Clive
Cornwallis
Wavell
Montgomery (Personally I still think Monty was overrated, too cautious, but since we seem to have a shortage of names...)
Slim
Winston Churchill (do you think this decendant of John Churchill qualifies?)

When I put up my first answer, I gave twelve names off the top of my head from a two hundred year history of the US. By contrast there should be at least sixty names here for 1000 years of English history. What am I missing?

One last thing, Edward IV was not the Black Prince. The Black Prince was the son of Edward III. His great vctory was at Poitiers not Crecy, Crecy was Edward III's victory. The Black Prince never became King as he died a year or two before his Father (Edward III) did.

Edward IV was a General during England's civil war of the 16th century, popularly titled the War of the Roses. He ruled for a number of years. His son is generally recognised as Edward V, but never took power. He was a minor when Edward IV died and he disappeared (along with his brother), the belief being they were murdered by Edward IV's brother (Richard III) who took the throne after Edward IV.

regards,
IronDuke

[Sarge]

Now how the hell did this turn into "How crappy American Generals are" [8|]

[IronDuke_slith]

Have you read the thread, Sarge?

It started here

Using all of history as a pool for British leaders and you only come up with three?
GB was made by navy not army. Their leadership on the ground is greatly overrated!
Try these names, Greene, Washington, RE Lee, Longstreet, Grant, Sherman, Pershing, Lem Sheperd, Roy Gieger, Patton, MacCarthur, Eisenhower. There are many other names I know I have missed and this is only the US army and Marine Corps. over a span of about 200 years.

More here:

Meh? Greene was amazing. Corwallis would not have even been at Yorktown if it wasn't for Greene. Little battle called Cowpens was his too. Washington you admitted. Lee had 1 bad battle in his career, and yes I am including Mexico. Longstreet is iffy (and I really like Longstreet). He served under Lee who took the laurels for the ANV and Longstreet's contribution is hard to separate from Lee's. His only independent field command was iffy and he seemed to be affected by the same bug that got Jackson during Seven Days (who, oddly, is not listed and also only had 1 bad battle in the War of Northern Aggression). Grant was excellent in the west, adequate in the East - hard to give him a lot of credit for basically deciding on a war of attrition that required him to only keep moving south and allow to pick the battlefields. But I still think outside of the US there were none better at the time. Sherman basically has the same situation as Grant - war of attrition, some excellent battles, but no real innovation (OK I do not really like Sherman, he burned too much including areas with no combatants, including the home of his childrens' nanny, which was demonic behavior in a time before the total warfare concept, and he followed that up with indian massacres). Pershing was mediocre, Pancho Villa and the Kaiser were really not good opponents so maybe he never really got a chance to shine. Shepherd got vaulted for 1 good idea? Not really meritorious. Gieger on the other hand was very innovative and is underappreciated. Admittedly small command but excellent leadership in small command allowed us the ranger/special forces concept of warfare which has proven highly effective, especially for the US. Patton was brilliantly reckless. His lucky star prevented him from being majorly embarrassed but the posibility was always there as he overran his supply lines constantly yet managed to get the wins. MacArthur did not deserve his WWII CMOH. Yet he really did great things after 1942 and he had the right plan in Korea but let his ego get in the way and usurped chain of command. Eisenhower got a hard knock lesson from Rommel but learned quickly and well. The Normandy Invasion was a master stroke and well executed in spite of numerous setbacks from the plan. I like Ike, he kept us moving in North Africa and France. Candidly, since our creation I think only Germany has been blessed with a greater abundance of brilliant leadership both on land and at sea.

Continued here...

Greene - Who?
Washington decent general up against incompitants and political appointees who totally failed to come to terms with the conditions.
Lee - Excellent general, but Picketts charge really lets him down.
Longstreet - Excellent general but 2iC so how do you rate him properly.
Grant - Excellent general, understood all he had to do to win was wear the other fella down.
Sherman - Decent above average, but would have needed to fight more major battles to warrant great.
Pershing - what was he up against?
Shepperd/Geiger - Never had enough to do to give them a proper rating certainly can't be rated as "Great" generals on the limited histories they had.
Patton - Tank boy headstrong and about as good as Monty.
Macarthur - YOU MUST BE JOKING!!! The idiot nearly started world war 3 after a seriously bad misjudgement and got his a55 handed to him in the Phillipines.

etc etc. Nothing wrong with the above, the thread starter occasionally clarifies things and gets it back on track.

Lets save our issues for the other place, this isn't the time or place for standard MO.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke

Lets save our issues for the other place, this isn't the time or place for standard MO.

No need to worry ID,

I am well aware of the unwritten rules not to pick on the left .[:-]

Have fun

[IronDuke_slith]

ORIGINAL: Sarge

ORIGINAL: IronDuke

Lets save our issues for the other place, this isn't the time or place for standard MO.

No need to worry ID,

I am well aware of the unwritten rules not to pick on the left .[:-]

Have fun

I didn't realise there was such a rule when discussing the Great Captains of History.

"Left" is also relative, is it not?

I always have fun when discussing military history.