Otto von Bismarck, as much of a bastard as he was, changed the course of European history as we know it.
I assume you’re being funny there. I laughed, anyway.
And a great pull there, Bippy.
For the record I am the greatest tactician ever. Don’t fuck with me. The MonkeyBoy will prevail…
Just for the record:
Although it is probably not true that he was the greatest tactician ever, I do hope you understand that Tacticus was a real person, and did write about tactics (one example of which survives to the present) and whose works were read, and studied by every military officer in the Roman and contemporary armies.
Miamoto Musashi, Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, and Genghis Kahn were strategists, not simply tacticians.
Perhaps Mosby, or one of the other small players in the great wars was the best tactician.
Tris
I hate to say it, but one brillant tactician would be Adolf Hitler.
I have to continue the Gates rant. I worked with Borland C++ many years ago, WAY before MS had Visual anything. Just a few short years later, here come MS with their C++ development system (a great innovation), an exact duplicate of Borland C++ development environment (with some added bugs and inconveniences).
Can any one list ONE single product MS innovated? Every MS product I have seen was either a rip off of an existing product, or some technology they had bullied and bought-out. I still to this day can’t figure out how Real Networks has survived. I can see how the Quicken products have survived (they were threatened to be bought out by MS or be crushed a couple years ago), they have much better software developers than MS and they continue to innovate daily, these things MS cannot overcome (reference Apple for example).
Now, how about this new MS .NET? Almost the exact same architecture as Java J2EE. I am happy to say the real world isn’t warming up to .NET over J2EE as fast as Big Bill and the Bullies would have liked.
I know an Alex Ferguson, and I won’t look at him quite the same…
I think you’d have to give Hitler credit for his skill in the things he did up until around 1940. Getting himself leadership of Germany was no small feat. But as far as the military things go, I would think a lot of the credit goes to his underlings. The war started to go much worse for Germany because Hitler made a number of bad calls and bit off more than he could chew. Taking on Russia, that sort of thing, and he apparently ignored more experienced advice from the real military planners, leading to more mistakes.
Gates use of vaporware can be likened to Sun Tzu’s admonishing that the best general is the one who wins the battle without fighting. (Oh and this was written on MS Word )
Building on the Hitler thing. Hitler showed amazing political instinct in going from a failed putz and a ridiculed man wasting in a dank cell in ’24 to be arguably the most powerful man of the World in ’39. Many powerful German groups thought they could control him, use him for their own end, but in the end he cheated all – including himself. He had a remarkable ability to spell bind people with his terrible charisma and oratory abilities (seldom though of now, but at least equal to Churchill’s) – it was referred to as the Hitler effect. He practically wrote the book on strategic use of terror in obtaining and holding on to power. He showed great ingenuity in using the propaganda machine. He was very good at gathering capable men around him, and playing them out against each other so they never got too much power. He was successful beyond measure in founding a number of myths (Aryan superiority, the WWI Dagger Theory etc.), and rallying the German people behind him against common outside enemies (Jew, Communists, American decadence). Of course he was also stark raving mad. I pity his tool the German people, any group of people might have succumbed and let themselves be used by this great and terrible man. This is the most important, the one lesson from WWII that should never be forgotten.
Hitler’s strategic decision to take on Russia was not so crazy, as it seems now looking back, they very nearly did carry it home – and Stalin did in fact sue for peace at one time offering up Ukraine. However Hitler’s military tactic record is mixed at best.
During the French blitz campaign Hitler kept holding back the forward panzer formations, giving the English respite to evacuate at Dunkirk and fight another day. Reeling from the onslaught of the Russian winter offensive at the gates of Moscow Hitler may have, with his obstinate insistence on not-an-inch-back, saved the eastern front from complete Napoleonic collapse, – probably not. At Stalingrad he completely dropped the ball, and lost the war. From there on he lost all contact with reality, unfortunately he never lost his ability to spell bind people with his charisma.
Speaking of unlikely Germans candidates. Von Manstein’s resurrection of the eastern front following the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad is commonly referred to as Manstein’s miracle. With a panicking retreating, numerically vastly inferior and morally confused force, and despite Hitler’s at this time constant nearly mad interference and micro-management, he managed within a single campaign season to reverse the situation completely, defusing the looming Crimean peninsular disaster, and even launch a limited offensive which resulted in the recapture of Kharkov – giving Hitler one last time to negotiate for peace from a position of strength. Of course Manstein did have some obvious advantages; better material and men, and the Russians weary from a long offensive, their momentum spent. Still a surprising strong come back.
Ripping away the tatters of the phony war, Rommel invented and spear headed the blitz war, a masterly use of land / air coordination and concentrated Panzer units, which broke the combined forces of the French and British in record time, and later nearly the Russians – so close. By all reason the Brits should have called it a day there and then, their greatness stemmed from the inability to know when enough is enough. The French were simply too sensible. Rommel went on to win some amazing victories on the African front. I’ve heard that the desert fox is the only WWII general deemed worthy to be included in the teaching at West Point. Don’t know if it’s true.
- Rune
Zhu Geliang, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Guy was awesome tactician even after his death. It’s a long read though
Bobby Fischer would have wiped the floor with either of the above.
Old red conk? don’t make me laugh
Bitpick: he neither created or even really popularized these ideas. He made them a policy plank and spread them everywhere, though.
You’re probably correct as far as Alekhine is concerned, but Tal seems to have had Fischer’s number on at least one occasion.
The biggest gyp of my lifetime has been not being able to see Fischer and Kasparov duke it out.
My failure to include Fischer in the tactician list is that his style was much more complete than just tactics. His mastery of strategy, both at the board and in the conduct of the game itself, is beyond comparison. Kasparov learned from Fischer in the away-from-the-board measures, but Fischer wrote the book on it.
At the game itself, the precision of Fischer’s play is more striking than his brute force tactics, IMHO.
But your statement is correct. Fischer is still the best-ever player – once he got to the board!
Apologies for this slight hi-jack, Is Bobby Fischer still alive?
According to this link he’s still around. He turned 60 this year, but manages to stay out of public view and very little is known of his whereabouts. I don’t make it a regular practice to do Google searches on Fischer, nor to keep up with weekly chess news, although this link has what appears to be current (and past) info on him.
I disagree Triskadecamus Miyamoto Musashi was primarily a Tactician rather than a Strategist. Though he took part in large scale battles, I have not seen evidence of him being given the command of large groups of soldiers. Though the translation of Go Rin No Sho uses the word Strategy throughout, most of his writings to me seem tactical. For instance “Cutting the corners” (meaning attacking the hands, arms and legs in one-to-one combat, or attacking the corners of a group of soldiers) seems more tactical than strategic. The difference in scope between Sun Tzu’s book and Miyamoto Musashi’s book is most evident.
I’ll give a nod to Alexander the Great’s father, Phillip of Macedon, for developing and employing the wildly successful combined-arms tactical system which allowed Alexander to conquer the Persian Empire and beyond. If it wasn’t the first, it was certainly the most effective system of employing mutually-supporting units on the battlefield devised to that date (and the Macedonians could have schooled virtually anyone who came after them until the arrival of the Golden Horde, but that’s another debate).
Another nod should be given to Heinz Guderian, who was not only one of the projenitors of mobile armored warfare, but who also politically maneuvered Hitler and the Wehrmacht into accepting and employing his tactical system against fierce institutional resistence (along, of course, with a small minority of like-minded tank commanders such as Manstein). Within three years of the outbreak of World War II, the entire world had adopted (and improved upon) Guderian’s tactics, and they are still a cornerstone of modern military tactics.
WinstonSmith,
Probably untrue. I’m sure that all Generals involved would be studied at West Point. Guderein would be rated higher than Rommel, I feel sure.
As for Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s supposed brilliance in North Africa, he suffered three defeats in that war zone from armies commanded by General Montgomery.
Two defeats as the attacker, one defeat as the defender.
Alam El Halfa: Commenced 31 Aug 1942. the “6 Day (Bicycle) Race” as caustically named by the German troopers who went through it.
Alamein: 23 Oct - 2 November 1942 - Even American military historians noticed this one.
Medenine: 6 March 1943. Rommel’s second attack on an army commanded by Montgomery by three panzer divisions, plus a backup infantry Division. Failed absolutely.
Of this attack, Montgomery wrote to General Alan Brooke:
If you waqnt to peek.
Yes, in military matters he was extremely inept. I was thinking along the lines of political and economic standpoint, knowing how to push the buttons of the people and being the main force for the atrocious things regualar people did. I should have stated that.
Napoleon. He conquered Italy by age 26, was sole ruler of France by 31 and had turned the country around and conquered most of western Europe by age 40.
Jay Gould (the railroad kingpin of the 19th century) would be another guess. The guy was good at screwing people. Once he and cornelius vanderbilt were trying to compete for railroad traffic by each lowering prices. After a while vanderbilt lowered his prices to almost nothing so Gould responded by buying all the cattle he could and using Vanderbilts railroad system to ship them, costing Vanderbilt tons of money because he couldn’t cover overhead and making Gould hundreds of thousands in the process. Gould did something else with transferring bonds into stock too but i forget what it was, i think he was oversaturating the Erie railroad stock so Vanderbilt would have to spend millions more than he intended to.
Dean Smith