See hed.
Related, or same question (which is relevant in many other professions): how well does the commander have to “know” the skills of the rank and file?
I have worked for many high tech companies and never knew a CEO or VP (except the VP of Development) that could write a line of code. Why would they need to know that? They have underlings who know all about development and testing code. I would think the same thing would apply to Generals. The don’t need to know how to fire a mortar, they just need need to know what different units can and can’t do.
Oh yes, in this sense I absolutely agree, in almost any complex social endeavor I can think of.
I should have made that clear.
What I meant was: can/were/are there good generals who were piss-poor soldiers when they were soldiers–that’s the “skill” I meant. Just experiencing the military as an effective functioning participant at field level. Or, if not in the field, as a lousy recruit in basic training.
[which brings up:
Are there generals, let alone good ones, who have not been in combat?
But that’s another thread, I think.]
Remember that the vast majority of generals start out as lieutenants. They are always officers, leading troops, and by definition never part of the rank-and-file. A tiny handful do start as common soldiers, but those that do never get to be generals because they were lousy privates.
Wars require many times more generals than peacetime. Those generals move up quickly through the ranks as their ability (for various definitions of ability) is noted, and existing generals who may have been competent administrators during peace are forced out. Eisenhower was never in combat, but he had useful skills.
It may be that some lousy lower-ranked officers stay in the army after a war and make it up to general, where they may turn out to have skills in that new time and place. That would be rare, both for it being an unusual change and because the pool to investigate would be tiny.
Mostly, though, I don’t believe you’re thought your question through. Can you revise it to make some sense?
Many excellent soccer coaches were, once, mediocre soccer players.
A lot of generals, good and bad, never were rank-and-file soldiers. Currently, many of our military officers graduate from the military academies, and enter service as junior lieutenants. Historically, there have usually been systems in place which put men in command of armies without having been common soldiers. For officers who DO start out as enlisted, and are eventually commissioned as officers, I would guess that very few who perform poorly as soldiers obtain the chance to do so. You may be able to find someone who was a crappy enlisted soldier, left the army, later obtained a commission through one of those “from the outside” mechanisms and became a good general.
This question is too broad to be answerable in any meaningful way. Are we talking about a general who started off in a combat unit? What do you mean by “skills” of the rank and file?
An officer generally starts off as a second lieutenant, leading platoon sized units, so there is some amount of “soldiering” skills involved. And of course, if the lieutenant is no good at doing this, he’ll find it hard to get promoted beyond the rank of captain.
There’s a chapter in Fred Kaplan’s The Insurgents that discusses former general David Petreaus’s time at West Point and it really drives home the level of competetiveness (both academic and physical) that all cadets experience. The book also discusses Petreaus’s time in ranger school and his continuous desire to be viewed as physically tough. Ultimately they are still being trained to be soldiers and promotion is based combat experience.
I’ve heard this about other sports. The best coaches were generally mediocre players. One explanation I’ve heard is that great players just use their natural skills while mediocre players have to figure out ways to play it without those natural skills.
The answer would also depend upon the definition of “lousy soldier”: If lousy means timid, lacking leadership qualities or no grasp of basic soldiering skills, then I think it would be very doubtful that this individual will have a stellar officer career or even make it to officer in the first place.
There are cases in which a soldier is deemed undisciplined and rebellious by his superiors (i. e. a lousy soldier), but turns out to be a born leader of men in battle.
A good platoon leader does everything his soldiers do, and does them first.
Interesting question, and I can see how it could easily vary from field to field.
As mentioned above, militaries typically have an officer-track program (some have more than one) where people can move into leadership more or less immediately. They have to be able to do the “grunt” stuff in a basic way, but they don’t have to be anywhere close to a top performer. They just have to be able to e.g. pick up that gun, clean it, load it, and make a few shots hit. Typically, the programs have more stringent higher-order requirements to qualify, but there are lots of ways to qualify with things other than military experience. E.g. it used to be that nearly anyone with a bachelor’s degree in anything (even a BFA in Flute Performance) could become a Lt. in the US Army in a few months through their OCS program.
One of the things that I’ve heard is that many people with a light to moderate amount of autism or ADD can do well in corporate management positions because of their natural ability to think differently and creatively, latch on to a big picture nobody else can see, etc. However, few of them actually reach such a position because it is hard for them to put in 5-10 years of the keep-your-head-down-and-get-today’s-action-items-done thing for 8 hours a day that is commonly required to get hired into a management position.
What other leadership-track programs exist (other than the military)? Are there programs where someone with a lot of education and/or skills (but no police experience) can go straight into Police Academy (Leadership Track) and come out as a Detective, supervisory Sergeant, or something like that? Can someone with an MBA and no retail experience go straight into managing the night shift at Burger King (with a likely promotion to General Manager within 2-5 years) without having to flip burgers for a few years for minimum wage? Sure, he probably would have to learn to flip them at some point, but he would do it as part of managerial training or whatnot.
Somewhat related might be, for various US Generals, comparing their class rank on graduating from West Point to their eventual military career.
George Custer graduated dead last, 34th out of 34 in his class. Which may match to his later career, which ended needlessly tragically, for him and his soldiers.
Many well-known Generals of the Civil War, WWI and WWII seemed to rank somewhere in the middle of their graduating class:
- Ulysses Grant – 21st out of 39
- William Sherman – an exception at 6th out of 42
- John Pershing – 30th out of 77
- Dwight Eisenhower – 61st out of 164
- Omar Bradley – 44th out of 164
- George Patton – 46th out of 103
Not included in this list is Robert E Lee, who graduated 2nd in his class of 45, but turned traitor to his country.
George Marshall, perhaps the greatest military asset of WWII, never went to West Point at all.
This summer Klaus Zapf, the founder and former CEO of one of Germany’s largest moving companies died. He started his business from scratch and actually once was employed as a mover (among a number of other odd jobs he worked), yet he never learned to drive. (This man, BTW, was quite a character).
I assume that senior airline executives usually can’t fly airplanes. Likewise, CEOs of industrial companies often aren’t trained engineers which means that they wouldn’t be able to function even in entry-level technical management positions in one of their factories.
As far as I know, Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, never wrote a line of code in his life.
Adolf Hitler never rose above the rank of private in 4 years in WWII despite the fact that the German army was in dire need of NCOs. Hitler, of course, subsequently never became a “good general”. However, needless to say, he went on to become a very influential figure in the German military.
… rank of private in 4 years in WWI …
:smack:
Not counting political generals (like General Butler of US Civil War fame), there are some officers who did better in handling larger units/formations than smaller ones.
Sherman:
Lousy division commander
Ok Corps Commander
Excellent Army Commander
Possibly the best Theatre commander of the US Civil War
In the British Army all officers start off at Sandhurst Military Academy and they certainly learn there what it is to be a soldier at the bottom of the heap. They’re trained by officers and NCOs who pile on the pressure just as if they were the rank and file. They first learn, in other words, how to obey orders as a soldier before they can begin to learn to command men.
Also, corporal.
Hitler’s rank would be an OR-3 in NATO code. That’s called a corporal in many member countries, but a PFC in the US army.
Hitler was always belittled as the “little corporal” during WWII by Americans. If they thought him a private, they would have used that.
Even historians call him a corporal, e.g. Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918: The List Regiment by John Frank Williams.
I don’t know of any book that states he stayed as a private. Donnerwetter, can you provide one?
The German name of the rank Hitler held is Gefreiter. In the old German army, there weren’t that many ranks and there (basically) were only two enlisted ranks. There were several alternative names for the lowest rank (for instance Grenadier, grenadier or Kanonier, gunner), depending on the branch of service.
Every soldier was, sooner or later, promoted to the next enlisted rank: Gefreiter, provided he didn’t screw up badly. It was just a recognition of loyal service and had some minor perks.
But Hitler stayed Gefreiter for the rest of the war and obviously was never considered NCO material, even though the army was in desperate need of qualified soldiers who could replace fallen NCOs.
It certainly wouldn’t be wrong to translate Gefreiter with corporal, but it’s not a precise equivalent.