In the first elimination round, each player has five votes to cast as he or she sees fit, but cannot cast more than two for a single nominee. The first round will run through Weds. Nov. 17 at noon EST. No vote trading, please - vote on the merits of each nominee. You need not have participated in the setup thread to vote, nor need you vote in the first round to vote in subsequent rounds.
Our list of stinkeroo nominees:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Benedict Arnold: Top Continental general turned traitor
Oreste Baratieri: Routed by Ethiopians at Adowa
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Duke of Buckingham: Useless sycophant, incompetent military leader
Ambrose E. Burnside: Defeat from jaws of victory
Benjamin Franklin Butler: “Beast” hated in New Orleans
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
William Calley: Ordered, led My Lai Massacre
Earl of Cardigan: Charge of the Light Brigade
Christian de Castries: Dien Bien Phu loser
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
Lord Chelmsford: Zulu dawn at Isandlwana
Crassus: Army pincushioned by Parthians
George Armstrong Custer: Cavalryman lost at Little Big Horn
Carlo di Persano: Loser of Lissa
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Maurice Gamelin: Relied on the Maginot Line
Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
Gaius Claudius Glaber: Why fortify against slaves?
Hermann Goering: Prancing figurehead misused Luftwaffe
Ulysses S. Grant: Botched Cold Harbor, Crater attacks
Rodolfo Graziani: Trounced in North Africa
Douglas Haig: Incompetent British WWI general
Bill Halsey: Leyte Gulf errors; two typhoons
Paul D. Harkins: Ignorant, overoptimistic in Vietnam
Heinrich Himmler: Nazi botched every field command
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
William Hull: Surrendered peacefully to inferior forces
James II of England: Surrendered throne without a fight
Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick: Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
Ernest J. King: Anglophobe disastrously opposed Atlantic convoys
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Curtis LeMay: Reckless, nuke-happy SAC chief
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
Douglas MacArthur: Dismissed from Korea by Truman
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
John A. McClernand: Useless political hack hurt Union
Ratko Mladić: Ordered Srebenica massacre; since indicted
Napoleon III: Clobbered, captured at Sedan
Nicias: Commanded ill-fated Syracuse expedition
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Philip VI of France: Crushed own army at Crécy
Maximilian von Prittwitz: Peed his pants in Prussia
Pyrrhus of Epirus: Invented new way of losing
Romanus IV of Byzantium: Lost Battle of Manzikert
Zinovy Rozhestvensky: Led Russian Navy to annihilation
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
William Tecumseh Sherman: Led March to the Sea
Cloudesley Shovell: Wrecked his fleet on the Scilly Isles
Daniel Sickles: Almost lost Gettysburg single-handedly
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre: Lost badly in Spanish Morocco
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson: Naval commander undone in Africa
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
George Tryon: Sunk his flagship on maneouvres
Gaius Terentius Varro: Blamed for defeat at Cannae
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Xerxes I of Persia: Epic blunders in Greece
Zhao Kuo: Became Chinese idiom for “bad general”
Just to clarify - we’re voting for the ones who aren’t really that bad, to be eliminated from the list, leaving the worst military leader of all time, right?
If so, my first 2 votes go for Cloudesley Shovell. While he suffered a disasterous shipwreck, I don’t think that qualifies him as an incompetent - allegedly, otherwise he was a pretty successful leader.
Similarly, I’ll give another 2 to George Tryon - one screwed-up signal isn’t really the same as a sustained history of incompetence.
Correct. It’s an elimination game, and since we’re trying to determine the worst military leader ever, your votes should be for those whom you don’t think were all that bad.
Two votes for William Tecumseh Sherman - scourging Georgia probably hastened the end of the war, thus saving Confederate and Union lives alike. Besides which, one assumes that many of the larger civilian properties destroyed were built or paid for with slave labor. I’ve no sympathy at all for ruin suffered by slavers.
I could go on to defend the honor of the other Union generals on this list, but I prefer a bit of variety. So:
2 votes for Curtis LeMay. Sure, he was a wildly irresponsible SAC commander - but he wasn’t (thank Ford) a battlefield commander in that capacity. And he was competent as a commander of the European air war in WW2. Bloody, of course - but that’s a criticism one can just as well level at any WW2 air commander, as I understand it.
And, just to provoke a fight, a vote for Oreste Baratiera. The Ethiopians fielded a fine army - not usually equipped to European standards, but highly disciplined and capably led. Absent something more, I can’t see getting routed by that force as something that qualifies you for a place on Valhalla’s Banned for (After)Life List. But if anyone wants to argue for the man, I’d love to hear it.
He had his successes. I think it helps if you think of him as less of a conqueror and statesman, and more of a warlord, gathering an army to go plunder southern Italy. It’s not like he got his butt kicked by the Romans, and it’s not like he had all of Greece behind him. His campaign just didn’t pan out.
William Tecumseh Sherman 2 *Already covered above. *
James II of England 1 *as I don’t really understand why he is on this list. He was outnumbered in Ireland and lost. He fought well in Europe before he was King. *
Sherman- 2 votes. He did the job and in my opinion let people off light
Grant - 2 votes. No genius but he knew how to win.
Earl of Cardigan - 1 Vote. He was a dick, but the Light Bridage wasn’t his fault. He was misled.
Pyrrhus of Epirus - 2. A candidate for best general in our previous thread ( one of several crossover candidates here, including the next two below ), Hannibal considered him the second greatest general of all time after Alexander the Great. Granted Hannibal died an awful long time ago and valued aggression above all, but I still wouldn’t be the one to sniff at his opinions. Pyrrhus’ failings included a complete lack of political sense and a tendency to ADD-like adventurism. He was always unfailingly easy to distract into yet another grand project.
But the only one who ever really got the best of him in a military campaign was the wily old Diadochus, Lysimachus, who played him like a fiddle and almost certainly was in an overwhelmingly strong position relative to Pyrrhus when he drove him out of Macedonia and Thessaly in 285. Otherwise objectively Pyrrhus’ record looks pretty good.
He actually mauled the Romans, more than once, always inflicting heavier casualties than he took. No other Greek general would ever claim the same. The fact that that was insufficient is down to the paucity of Pyrrhus’ resources ( and his inability to consolidate and stick with a project ) and the overabundance of the Roman’s. As a pure tactician Pyrrhus was a much feared badass. It wasn’t enough for him to go down in history as the best, but it should be more than enough to dismiss him from a list of the worst.
William Tecumseh “The-Apparently-Not-Much-Beloved-in-Certain-Circles” Sherman - 2. Apparently he was not much beloved in certain circles :D. But he was a quite good general, tactically capable and strategically more than sound. Shouldn’t be within sniffing distance of this list.
Ulysses S. “The-Also-Not-Universally-Praised” Grant - 1. Gets one point only because Pyrrhus and Sherman both sucked up two. I prefer Sherman of the two CW guys and I feel for poor Pyrrhus, slightly unfairly maligned by history. But IMHO he really shouldn’t be on this list either.
Honestly, a lot of these are people that are disliked for political or moral decisions that don’t really have anything to do with their abilities as military commanders. I don’t think theres much reason to have them on the list with are associated with actual, serious, military fark-ups:
Benedict Arnold -2 : Not exactly the most loyal guy to have on your side, but still, was a good military commander, in that he won battles in difficult situations. Were it not for his actions in New York we’d all be speaking British now.
McArthur -1 : Again, has a justifibly bad rap for being disloyal (and kinda nutty), but that doesn’t really subtract from his military acomplishments.
Sherman -1 : Someday, Oakminster is going to have to let the Civil War go.
Grant -1 : Dudes on money. They don’t let you on money unless your good at what you do.
And on MacArthur, I’ll make the same point I did in the “greatest general” thread: a crucial part of MacArthur’s job as a general serving this Republic was to honor the principle of civilian control of the military, without hesitation or question unless given an unlawful order. He sucked at that. I don’t think he deserves to “win” this thread - but we can let him hang out here for a while.
Eh, for as long as he was on their side, he was winning battles for the Colonists. And, he was arguably a traitor when he joined the Colonist side, and was merely returning to his original loyalties when he turned back to the British.
Plus, the 'Greatest General" thread had such pillars of loyalty as Robert Lee, Julius Cesar, George Washington, the Duke of Marlbourough and E. Rommel all of whom betrayed their respective gov’ts to far more devastating effect then Arnold (well, OK, Rommel didn’t really get that far treason-wise either, but the rest seriously farked-up their respective countries). I don’t think loyalty is really a particularly good indicator of who will be remembered as a great military leader.
MacArthur had arguably ( some disagree how much was his fault ) one really egregious military failure, which oddly enough came immediately after what was probably his greatest success ( Inchon ) - the advance to the Yalu River during the Korean War. Again it seems to have been an compound failure, but MacArthur certainly seems to have been rather incautious in his advance, pushing/allowing the tired 8th army in particular to spread itself thin. The subsequent debacle after the Chinese entry into the war is possibly the worst single defeat the U.S. army has ever suffered overseas.
