What about “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell? Allegedly, a first-class asshole.
Certainly, he had a difficult job, and dealing with Chiang was impossible, but some of the stuff he pulled with the Chindits & Merril’s Mauraders seems difficult to understand. It just sounded like he ended up hating, and being hated by, everyone he dealt with.
You’ve got to be kidding! :eek:
All Montgomery did at Second el Alamein was sit behind his minefields and wait until the Americans had supplied him with overwhelming amounts of materiel. I could have won that battle if I had had a fraction of the firepower available to him at the end of October. (The launching of Operation TORCH two weeks later contributed in no small measure to the Axis defeat in North Africa as well.)
Caen and MARKET-GARDEN should have ended Montgomery’s career once and for all. He had Eisenhower’s sense of diplomacy to thank for not being sacked. I’ve always liked the exchange between the two German officers in A Bridge Too Far:
GERMAN #1: MARKET-GARDEN was a stupid idea.
GERMAN #2: But it was Montgomery’s idea!
GERMAN #1: It was still a stupid idea.
I actually agree with you. My remark was primarily based on his performance in WWI. In the second war, he tended to wait way too long to make his move, which was a major failing. While his tactics were good, his execution sucked balls. He seemed to actually want to wait until the Axis knew what his plans were and to give them time to prepare a solid defense. It’s nearly incomprehensible to me not only why he was kept on, but also promoted; possibly because the other choices were poor and public opinion would have been devastating. It seems the British had an inordinate faith that Monty could save them all. Most of what I’ve read about him shows him in an unfavorable light: a vain little banty rooster who only followed the orders that suited him. Ike was far too diplomatic with him and only got real results when he threatened him.
You guys really do not know your history if that is what you think of El Alamein. Go and read Nigel Hamilton’s book on Monty for a start and then come back.
Market-Garden was not a good operation but you need to understand it in the context of the all out pursuit having seemingly paused and the last ditch attempts proposed to unlock it and cross the Rhine before the weather change. It was “a near run thing” even so, and if Patton et al had not raced to the Rhine into a strategic dead end there would have been enough supplies to cross the Rhine, seize the Ruhr and effectively end the War in 1944. Blame Ike for not imposing the agreed plan he signed up to on Patton.
If you are relying on “A Bridge Too Far” for your historical insight then I pity you.
Arthur “Bomber” Harris by a mile. Some of the others were assholes and/or incompetent, but Harris has the unique distinction of being competent, an asshole, and ultimately a war criminal.
He’s the guy who planned and executed the saturation bombings on Germany. and KEPT THEM UP beyond the point when there was any point to them, culminating in the bombing of Dresden in 1945.
LeMay was definitely an asshole, and used the same tactics more or less vs. Japan, killing hundreds of thousands as well, but at least in his case, it wasn’t clear that the Japanese were near to collapse, or that there was any option other than continued bombing and invasion of the home islands.
Harris, on the other hand, kept saturation bombing German cities when there wasn’t any real military need to do so.
Admiral “Bull” Halsey deserves at least dishonorable mention for sailing the Third Fleet in the Pacific into the heart of a fierce typhoon in 1944, resulting in the sinking of three destroyers, heavy damage to other ships and the deaths of 778 men. Then in 1945 the Third Fleet was caught in yet another typhoon, resulting in damage to 33 ships and six deaths.
It’s true that weather forecasting was imprecise in those days, but Halsey seems to have been rather careless about avoiding these storms.
And Adm. King does deserve censure for being slow to awaken to the threat of German subs off the U.S. coast after Germany and America declared hostilities.
Millions? A bit exaggerated. More like 110,000. Although I agree, it was a shameful event in American history that deprived all of those people of their basic human rights and their dignity and caused irreparable harm.
Curtis LeMay. Firebombing people is about as barbaric as it gets.
Why MacArthur?
My Father hated his guts for not sending Father and his associates back when he received their replacements, but that is personal.
Harris was subordinate to Charles Portal in the RAF command structure, and Portal was a Big Fan of area bombing, but Harris seems to get all the grief. Anyway, that level of resource spend was approved all the way up.
Ike did a grand job handling the massive egos above and below him - it must have been like juggling rabid weasels. A staff officer of great diplomacy and skill, and the right man at the right time.
De Gaulle was a massive prick, but the Free French needed one just to keep a toe hold in the game.
A more difficult question would be who was not a major jerkass. 
A certain amount of assholishness seems to go with the territory.
[I’m defining “jerkass” here as a personality trait - egotistical and abrasive with it - not as doing bad things or being incompetent, though these can exacerbate the jerkishness].
I would vote for Ike - he was legendary for ability to get along with - also general Slim - who seems to have been genuinely loved by his subordinates.
Never read it. Presently reading the third book in Atkinson’s trilogy. Market Garden wasn’t a bad plan, just poorly executed and stopping short of insuring that Antwerp could be used as a port in the short term. Why the field commanders weren’t told to go ahead and secure that area remains a mystery. The battles for the bridges, especially Arnhem, were bloody, but I don’t think anybody thought it would be otherwise.
Anyhow, sorry to derail the thread. I’ll still stay with Monty as a prime asshole. The area bombing was atrocious, and really had little effect in the final analysis, other than to piss off the German soldiers.
My issue with Harris wasn’t the area bombing per-se, it’s the continuation of the area bombing past the point when it was militarily useful. At that point, it was just destroying cities and killing Germans for their own sake. For example, when Dresden was bombed, the Allied forces were within Germany proper on the Eastern and Western fronts, and were advancing rapidly, and the Western front Allies were capturing large numbers of German troops.
And I’m aware that the USAAF both adapted the RAF firebombing tactics for use in Japan, and also bombed German cities right up until VE-Day. The defining difference in my mind is that in Europe, the 8th AF was bombing specific targets- marshalling yards, chemical factories, etc… NOT deliberately targeting civilian areas, or indiscriminately bombing cities as a whole.
In Japan, the firebombing, while barbaric, was a page from the RAF playbook, and was done while Japan was still considered to be actively fighting- in particular, fighting was still going on in the Phillipines, and on Iwo Jima at the same time as the March 9 Tokyo firebomb raid, and Okinawa was still weeks away, not to mention the expected invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Another black mark against MacArthur is his insistence that his right flank be protected during the Leyte operation, which led to the invasion of Peleliu. In fact, Halsey — of all people — had advised that the capture of the island was unnecessary, and the assigned forces would be better employed in the Philippines; but he was overruled by Nimitz (possibly to keep MacArthur from complaining).
On a more general note, I’ve read more than once that MacArthur had a habit of assigning anything really hairy in the SoWesPac to the Marines and Australians, then bitching & moaning when they didn’t meet his unrealistic expectations.
I would have to say MacArthur. I know he graduated at the top of his class at West Point, and he apparently didn’t want anyone to forget that: I read that with his ego he demanded personal credit for all triumphs under his command, whatever his role may have been; he did not tolerate dissent or criticism.
This topic being not necessarily about high-ranking figures responsible for “the fate of tens of thousands”, but also admitting individuals and their traits: I am inclined to put high on the “jerkass” list, the heroic leg-less British airman Douglas Bader. From things which I have read, this guy’s less admirable characteristics included his being a bully, and a very harsh, un-empathetic leader of men. His own overcoming of extreme setbacks and hardships, tended to make him feel that everyone should as a matter of course, match his own fortitude. While a prisoner-of-war, Bader “took it as read” that all his fellow-POWs must be as defiant of their captors, and intent on escape, as he was himself. A fellow-POW of Bader’s is quoted re the man: “There were some pathological people, very pathological – psychopathic a lot of them, including Douglas Bader, who was a menace”.
It is cited by the same basic source (book “The Barbed-Wire University”, by Midge Gillies) that in 1943, Bader’s POW batman (“soldier-servant”) was offered the chance (re physical infirmity, or whatever) of repatriation. Bader reputedly said, “He came here as my lackey and he’ll stay here as my lackey.” It is cited that “whatever else”, the batman remained a POW until the end of the war; but – Bader’s reputed comment on the matter – arrogant / contemptuous / demeaning, or what?
People have “the faults of their virtues”, and vice versa; in the face of undergoing Bader’s hideous misfortune of – re a career for which full physical fitness was reckoned essential – losing both legs: any gentle, mild-mannered, grounded-in-reality person would have reckoned that their hoped-for career as a flier, had been terminated; and would have planned and acted accordingly. It would have needed a very highly tough, awkward, contrary, pig-headed, reality-be-damned. egotistical son-of-a-bitch, to refuse to be defeated and to go on flying nonetheless. Britain no doubt needed such people in the desperate times of the early stages of WWII. However – much though I honour Bader’s guts in doing all that he did (and without legs); I get the picture that he would probably not have been a pleasant person to associate with first-hand.
I’ll vote for DeGaulle, and I’ll note that his being a jerkass worked. France for no reason other than DeGaulle was accepted as the fourth Allied power after the war.
Didn’t the Allies keep some other popular French general drunk in a whore house in case DeGaulle didn’t play ball?
The only reason you guys aren’t voting for Lloyd Fredendall is you don’t know just how awful a general he was. Seriously, do some reading. He was a jerkwad of the highest order.
Really, most the the nominations are terrible. There were a dozen or more far bigger asswads, jerks, doofi, slapnads, assholes and jagoffs with stars on their epaulettes.
