Not that there haven’t been genuine idiots promoted to the ranks of general… but remember the axiom Tom Clancy repeats over and over: the greatest, most disastrous blunders in military history have usually been made by brilliant men. That’s because idiots don’t often get trusted to make the kinds of important decisions that could lead to disaster.
Don’t anybody cut one, it throws the bloodhounds off the scent.
Gen. William Westmoreland, whose strategy seemed to be one of urgently requesting a lot of soldiers (necessating ongoing conscription), oversupplying them at exorbitant expense (taking money away from domestic programs), and having them stumble around S. Vietnam killing everybody.
Gen. Paul Harkins merits a dishonorable mention as well. From Wikipedia:
It’s not clear exactly what Santa Ana was doing or why he was so inattentive at that crucial moment, but until then he was, by all accounts, a helluva general. I don’t think I’d care for him as a person, myself, but his officers were awed by his abilities, and swore that he could do damned near anything. And until San Jacinto, he won mos, if not all, of his battles.Amazingly, he won several years afterwards as well.
My choice is Sultan Khalid bin Barghash of Zanzibar, who ignored a British ultimatum when they had three cruisers and two gunships in his harbor in 1896, leading to history’s shortest war – 40 minutes from start to finish.
He lost.
This is doubtful. Santa Anna enjoyed a huge reputation for military success. He did, however, only live up to it irregularly. He was good at the J.O. level, sure, but he only fought against Amerindians, and not well-armed or organized ones. He did drive the Spaqnish out of Veracruz. However, his later “victory” over a tiny force of horribly sick Spaniards at Tampico was a joke. He lost (badly, and embarrassingly) to Texas, but did defeat other rebels. He later was wounded fighting against the French.
In wouldn’t say he was the worst general around… but he was no genius. He was a poor strategic thinker, which is to say he didn’t think of it at all, and his conduct during battles was erratic.
it has to be the english general montgomry, he got most of his men killed in itali. isinhower had to fire him and send him back to england. he was a complete idiot.
This is a joke, right?
I don’t know who the english general was but when the english attacted mysor in southern india in 18somthing. the mysor army withdrew into the walled city. the english general sent his intire 100,ooo troups to attack the walls of the city. mysor unleshed a rocket barage that lasted 4 hours. the 100,000 man english army was wiped out. this was the first use of a rocket barage. the most stupid general in history.
no, you are, look it up.
Lloyd Fredendall doesn’t seem to have many supporters.
Eisenhower never sacked Bernard Montgomery in Italy. He came back to the UK to be in operational command of the allied forces for the Normandy landings.
“Of all time” is a qualifier I won’t try for, but Confederate General Braxton Bragg is up there. He’s something like a mad king out of Shakespeare or Tolkien.
For starters he was extremely neurotic if not psychotic (hereditary probably- his mother had to be released from prison for him to be born because she had killed a slave [not her own- that’s why she was in prison] who she felt had shown her disrespect]). He was also damned near paralyzed when it came to making decisions- imagine Adrian Monk commanding troops. He was so anal about military procedure that he once reprimanded himself in writing (this was before the war when he was serving as both quartermaster and commander of a fort- and the “quartermaster” Bragg carried on a correspondence with the “fort commander” Bragg) and recommended his own removal and or court martial in a letter to a superior officer who wrote back something to the effect of “Good God Bragg! Have you finally pissed off so many people you’re having to argue with yourself!”
The reason he had been quartermaster at that fort was because all of the men who had served as quartermaster had resigned with a “jail me, dishonorably discharge me, court martial me, whatever, but I can’t work for this nutcase”. He was so hated by his men in the Tennessee Campaign that almost every single officer on his general staff signed a petition demanding his removal and Nathan Bedford Forrest threatened to kill him (to his face and in front of witnesses). After the Battle of Chickamauga, which he never should have won but did due to a chain reaction of blunders on both sides, he completely ignored the screams and pleading of his entire army and disobeyed the direct orders of (the CSA government in) Richmond to pursue the defeated Union Army back to Chattanooga. In spite of his complete bungling and the fact he was hated and an official inspection by Davis where everybody screamed hatred of and no confidence in the man, he was left in charge by Jefferson Davis.
Had Bragg crushed the army en route to C’nooga, which was very much within the Confederate grasp, it would have been a much needed and important (for both strategic purposes and morale) victory that could conceivably have altered the war. While Confederate victory was off the table entirely from the time they fired on Sumter, a decisive blow at Chattanooga could have at very least delayed the advance on Atlanta and Sherman’s march until after the 1864 election and President McLellan would probably have been more likely to negotiate a peace with than President Lincoln. Instead Bragg let the Union escape safely back to Chattanooga, dealt with the hatred of him by his senior officers and the enlisted men by having his two most popular (with their troops) arrested, arming the mountains around Chattanooga with what’s often considered the most ineffective positioning of cannons possible, then relieving Forrest not of his command but of his cavalry to give them to the far less capable (but loyal) General Wheeler who he dispatched, ill provisioned and exhausted, on a pointless and almost suicidal series of raids that made him have no horse units even though he knew that the Union was going to eventually be reinforced in C’ga. and in Knoxville.
When the Battle of Chattanooga finally began his cavalry force was so completely exhausted, so many of his infantry had been dispatched to Knoxville (too late to prevent its investment), and the artillery had been so poorly positioned that it was a complete rout of the Confederacy. While he was in a completely disorganized retreat, Bragg was assigning blame. Only at this point Davis finally decided Bragg should be replaced.
One of my favorite pieces of historical snark was Lincoln’s letter to him,
“Baboon” and “compleat idiot” were two of the kinder things McClellan referred to Lincoln as. I’ve wondered how much of his hatred was classist in origin.
“Contrarian for purposes of tenure” historians can be very irritating. I was reading one recently who was arguing that Nathan B. Forrest was a completely overrated commander who was at best competent and on the whole completely undeserving of being called a military genius but who is called so because of the “lost cause” romanticism. (Can’t remember his name but I can google it if anyone’s interested.)
While it’s highly possible that his reputation has been embellished, and while I’m not a military historian, all I could think of while reading this deconstruction of Forrest was "you know who disagrees with this guy on Forrest’s military abilities? Sherman and Grant- two men who have been military geniuses themselves, who graduated West Point, and who had to contend with Forrest in the war and considered him damned near the wrath of God on the battlefield. While I realize that academia isn’t all “ivory tower” elitism, I’m gonna have to go with Sherman and Grant, whose experience and analysis of the man came from having fought him, rather than someone whose views on Forrest’s military skill come from a library and perhaps some battlefield tours.
Do not insult other posters in this Forum.
[ /Moderating ]
Lord Cornwallis, of the Yorktown surrender fame, first siege of Seringapatam, 1791. The above is a wee bit of an exaggeration - although his assault did stall ( and Tipu’s rockets did indeed make an impression ), he made an orderly withdrawal rather than being annhilated. He returned in 1792 and pursued the action more successfully the second time, winning the Third Anglo-Mysore War. A final siege in 1799 was also ultimately a British success and the end of the Mysore state.
He wasn’t incompetent. Not brilliant, by any means. But more success than defeat to his credit.
You have your facts and your conclusions equally wrong.
The battle was in 1780. It was fought away from any fortifications. Rockets did play a role in the battle, (possibly setting off a munitions explosion that disrupted the British formation at a time they were holding their own), but they did not rain down for four hours and the Brits never had 100,000 troops to lose. The commander had around 2,800 troops. (Most of the accounts are sketchy.)
The British were, indeed, nearly wiped out–after thirteen separate charges by an army much larger than their own.
Baillie did not demonstrate any particulr stupidity as he had been ordered into the field with the troops he had and was attempting to reach a secure location.
Even if your odd scenario had been true, it would not have demonstrated incompetence on his part as rockets were not in use as weapons in Europe and the variety of rockets being used by Mysore were much more powerful with a much larger range than anything in Europe. It would be rather like calling the Inca stupid for failing to realize the advantages that the Spanish armor and steel blades gave them.
I suspect that Tamerlane has the better account, although the reduction of Baillie’s command might have figured in the confusion that roger tindall has expressed.
Guess I should note that my post above is a bit conjectural, but it’s the closest match I could think of, where a British force retreated from a major siege/city assault operation against the Mysore state. There are other possibilities, but increasingly less similar.
If I guessed wrong roger, do let me know.
ETA: Heh. Maybe we’re both guessing wrong, tom :D. Or like you said, maybe it’s a conflation of a couple of accounts.
Has anybody forgotten John Bell Hood. Lost Atlanta, and then managed to have his army destroyed in Franklin-Nashville Campaign.
He is in many ways the archetype of why it is hard to say “worst general”, he was definatly the worst field Army commander in the Civil War (and probably in US History), and he was indifferent as a Corps Commander. But he was probably one the top Division and Brigade commanders of the war.
Someone who is brilliant in one posting, may be in over his head in another.