“Soviet jerkasses”? How do you say “redundant” in Russian?
Lemay and Harris are mostly on the list for their callous mass-murder, yes?
That being said IIRC Harris was quite the jerkwad in person.
MacArthur was the biggest douchebag of the war. The more I read about him, the more of a douche he appears to be. A mama’s boy who rode daddy’s coattail to become the defacto king of the Phillipines and then completely failed in his duty the one time he was put to the test. There was no way he could have defended the islands of course but he had a lot of resources, he knew the threat and somehow he managed to be caught completely by surprise. Then he spent the rest of WWII trying to regain his kingdom, not matter the cost in lives. World class douche.
General McNair has to be in there.
He was the one mainly responsible for the US Army doctrine of not developing heavy tanks, he ensured that the Pershing would not be available in time or in numbers significant enough to impact D–Day or during the Battle of the Bulge. In fact it was only after his death that those tanks were rushed into service - and they really could have made a huge difference - how many lives were lost because of this idiot clinging on to his personal military doctrine?
Admiral Ernest King
This utter idiot almost lost the war on his own. His arrogance in refusing to accept the Royal Navy advice that had been hard won in battle is breath-taking. He refused to implement a convoy escort system, despite the advice from the British. He refused to take measures to deal with specific sub wolf packs despite being warned of their likely area of operations by - you guessed it, the British. All this merely because he was Anglophobic.
The result was the second ‘happy time’ for U boat commanders.This cost thousands of Allied lives, massively prolonged the Battled of the Atlantic, and even when the second happy time was at its worst, he simply refused to change tack until he was forced into it - he tried every stupid option available first. This cost over 2 million tons of allied shipping in less than 2 months, had it continued than the Atlantic supply line would simply not have been viable - which would have seriously hampered both the British and the Russian war efforts.
His decision not to allow maritime patrols by US long range aircraft to keep U-Boats down was almost as disastrous, his decision not to release enough landing craft for D-Day had to be overturned by others, quite how this arrogant idiot was allowed to operate as long as he did is still a surprise to any person who knows about maritime warfare in WW2 - as an Allied Admiral, Germany could have hardly had a more helpful assistant, and the US a more incompetent military commander, he just about out reaches the incompetence of every US military commander, especially due to the nature of his high ranking which make it especially difficult to overturn his sheer stupidity.
It also has to be added that his personal life was hardly any better, a bully, and an ignorant rude ill tempered arsewipe if ever there was one
Or the Poles. It’s been estimated that over 2 million German women were raped by Russian troops, not counting Prussians and Poles. There are accounts of nurses being dragged out of operating theaters to be gang-raped. Beria was the architect of this, and considered it just paybacks for the death of 26 million Russian soldiers, all of whom he sent to their deaths or had killed by their own superiors. One evil dude.
But I guess this transcends the intent of the OP, who was just looking for the biggest asshole, rather than the most heinous of the bunch.
I’d nominate whoever was running the Bureau of Ordnance for the U.S. before and during the war. Their failure to realize (and then own up to and correct) the problems with the Mark 14 torpedo used by U.S. submarines was beyond criminal.
King was an Anglophobe, no doubt, but I think a lot of his issues arose from trying to raise awareness of the Pacific theater among the Joint Chiefs and the Allies.
Overall, though, I’d probably vote for MacArthur.
It does not really matter what King was trying to do or even why he was trying to do it, his obnoxious behaviour cost thousands of lives, based solely upon an almost racist view of Britain.
He reinforced his stupidity by resolutely refusing to learn from the obvious reports he was receiving about losses.
What the hell was he thinking when he tried to hold landing craft back from D-Day? Almost every decision, or lack of decision at the very highest office he held actually made the war more difficult, there is almost nothing whatsoever he did that made a positive contribution.
Combine that with his bolshie assholish nature and you have the worst Allied commander of maybe the whole of that century
I mean, imagine you have the capability to made life very hard for U-Boats by using your aircraft, do you do it or don’t you? His answer was not to do it.
He really makes Montgomery look like a paragon of modesty, at least he was capable
Plus, King forbade Navy aircraft from having cool nose art like iconic USAAF.
From wiki "In King’s defense, noted naval historian Professor Robert W. Love has stated that "Operation Drumbeat (or Paukenschlag) off the Atlantic Coast in early 1942 succeeded largely because the U.S. Navy was already committed to other tasks: transatlantic escort-of-convoy operations, defending troop transports, and maintaining powerful, forward-deployed Atlantic Fleet striking forces to prevent a breakout of heavy German surface forces. Navy leaders, especially Admiral King, were unwilling to risk troop shipping to provide escorts for coastal merchant shipping. Unscheduled, emergency deployments of Army units also created disruptions to navy plans, as did other occasional unexpected tasks. Contrary to the traditional historiography, neither Admiral King’s unproven yet widely alleged Anglophobia, an equally undocumented navy reluctance to accept British advice, nor a preference for another strategy caused the delay in the inauguration of coastal escort-of-convoy operations. The delay was due to a shortage of escorts, and that resulted from understandably conflicting priorities, a state of affairs that dictated all Allied strategy until 1944…It should be noted, however, employment of long-range maritime patrol aircraft in the Atlantic was complicated by inter-service squabbling over command and control (the aircraft belonged to the Army; the mission was the Navy’s; Secretary of War Stimson and General Arnold initially refused to release the aircraft… Although King had certainly used the allocation of ships to the European Theatre as leverage to get the necessary resources for his Pacific objectives, he provided (at General Marshall’s request) an additional month’s production of landing craft to support Operation Overlord. Moreover, the priority for landing craft construction was changed, a factor outside King’s remit. The level of sea lift for Overlord turned out to be more than adequate.
In that wiki entry, its worth noting that someone had to make a case to defend him, the fact of that defence and that someone felt the need to do it is pretty damning in itself.
The second happy time could have been almost completely averted, he made the excuse that the US fleet did not have the types of vessels suitable for this purpose, but the offer had already been made by the Royal Navy to escort from port to port and he turned it down.
His refusal to provide escorts for ‘coastal merchant shipping’ covers up the fact that this shipping was only classified in this way because he refused to adopt a convoy system - in other words those single ships could have been gathered together as a convoy, then it would have been convoy escort - this is the entire reason that those single merchant ships were vulnerable in the first place. Its almost a self fulfilling argument
It is utterly useless to get troops across the Atlantic without the material resource to keep them supplied and in the field, so not allowing the Royal Navy provide the convoy escort in US waters is unforgiveable.
As for having lots of differing priorities, this is hardly a novel aspect to the role of a senior military commander, the important bit is recognising the most important ones, this is what separates out the good from the great, and when you are considering the invasion of a continent it would seem to be reasonably obvious that enabling a successful outcome is THE number one, after all, a successful invasion makes all the other problems go away.
Inter-service squabbling as an excuse will not do either, it just demonstrates that there were other idiots in US high command, still does not exonerate him in any way, on this aspect of his poor policies and decision making it simply means he was one dolt amongst several.
His Anglophobia is hardly at dispute, one academic trying to wash it away will not change that.
There are plenty of cites available
https://suite.io/martin-hill/5z18282
In fact his Anglophobia is so well recognised it has even become a point that defines the term
Taking advice from Kaylas Dad I guess I wouldn’t like to have a beer with Monty. Actually, not many on the list would I want to discuss much with.
I agree MacArthur was let off extremely lightly for the Phillipines debacle when he had ample time to be prepared. As for King- He must have had compromising pictures of someone. The sheer arrogance and refusal to accept hard learned lessons cost many seaman their lives.
If you had wished to do so, it would have been just you literally with the beer: Montgomery was a staunch teetotaller. Though I gather that he was OK with others drinking in his company – one of the few likeable traits of his, that I’m aware of.
Wasn’t MacArthur primarily responsible for the immunity of General Shiro Ishii and others involved in Unit 731, from war crimes prosecution? In the end only the Soviets brought prosecution against those involved.
In the west they did the same thing with rocket scientists, even though V-2 sites used slave labour. Still, it would’ve been like Eisenhower granting immunity to Mengele for his data, and like that data it was completely worthless due to its sadistic and unscientific nature.