As a general, Benedict Arnold doesn’t belong on the list. He was one of the Revolution’s best generals from a purely military standpoint.
Lee once said McClellan was the toughest general he face. McClellan was far too cautious, but the good thing about that was that it was difficult to go after him.
Burnside was high up on the incompetence list. He never wanted command of the army of the Potomac, and floundered badly when he was given it.
My point about Lee was that, the disaster at Gettysburg generally and specifically Pickett’s Charge were ordered by LEE, to send men through a mile and a half of open ground(under artillery fire) and take a position uphill from them, when your opponent is on the defensive and has superior numbers, is clearly insane and he should have known better. The war was lost then and there IMO and the South was never able to recover both physically and psychologically. His other actions mitigate this a bit, but I think he ranks among the worst for this one. I for one believe that he was an American but I see how others could debate that.
CAPT
Oh yeah he sucked a bag of rocks too, I am amazed by the gross incompetence of some Civil War Generals and the absolute brilliance of others.
I have to again disagree about Custer. Overall, his performance and leadership on the battlefield was stellar. Little Bighorn was an anomaly in an otherwise brilliant military career. We’ll likely never know what he was thinking, other than having the arrogance to believe that Indians could never mount a successful offensive against an entrenched smaller military force with repeaters (although this had been proven to be the case in his past). As they say, “one aw shit wipes out a hundred attaboys.”
If we’re using the field of battle as a criterion, then Eisenhower would get very low marks. I’m pretty sure he never commanded troops in the field. Of course, that whole WWII victory thing pretty much vindicates him as someone who listened to his field generals.
Custer doesn’t count anyway. The OP is specific to generals, and while a BG Custer was brilliant.
Sherman rocks! He did exactly what needed to be done, with every bit of the power and terror at his command. If you ask me Georgia got off light, especially compared to the way he treated South Carolina, which deserved every last bit of it.
If we extend it to admirals then Kimmel ranks right up there, along with Robert L. Ghormley, who left the Marines on Guadalcanal to rot while he scooted with all their supplies.
Maybe you could translate that into English for us?
Custer was a very talented cavalry officer during the Civil War, where he was promoted to Brigadier General and eventually to Major General. After the war he reverted to his permanent rank of Captain. He was later promoted to Lt. Colonel when he took command of the 7th. So he hardly counts a one of the worst “generals,” because while he was a General he was extraordinary.
Ok, gotcha. Based on that explanation, I agree.
Concur with the Fredendall nomination; My runner-up vote’s in for MG John P. Lucas who commanded the “beached whale” also known as “the largest self-contained Prisoner of War camp” in Europe, i.e. the Anzio invasion force in WW2. He was not a terrible soldier, but had neither the strength of character nor the aggressive instinct needed to parley that landing into something other than a near-disaster for the Allies.
Rather obscure and didn’t command battles, but Leslie McNair belongs on the list-he’s policy on tanks as infantry support weapons and not using them to fight other tanks meant that heavy tanks weren’t developed until the M-26 Pershing after his death and as a result American Shermans were greatly outgunned by German Panthers and Tigers.
At Gettysburg Custer commanded a much smaller cavalry in the Union rear that stopped Stuart’s larger Confederate cavalry from disrupting the Union rear to link up with Pickett’s charge. Lee had all the artillery softening up the Union rear right behind the target of Pickett’s charge at the fence of the Union line for the cavalry to rush through and slaughter. Meade had anticipated this and moved all the troops up from the rear right to the line, so the artillery was aimed too far and useless. This has been described by some historians as a failure of the gunpowder and fuses to behave as expected, but in my most unexpert opinion, it was in fact Lee’s plan. Had Custer been more level headed he never would have charged the superior cavalry under Stuart. Had either Custer not stopped Stuart’s cavalry, or had Meade not moved his reserves in the rear in anticipation of this, Pickett’s charge might have worked. Had Euell understood that “attack if practicable” meant attack at all costs now and take that hill, Gettysburg might have gone the other way.
Gettysburg was a very important crossroads, and anyone who controlled it controlled all the surrounding roads. It was Lee’s plan to take it and then take Washington and end the war. He had to do it when he did it, because Vicksburg was going to fall soon (if fell the same day Gettysburg was won by the Union) and the Confederacy was doomed to strangulation from all sides after Vicksburg fell. Gettysburg is called the high water mark of the Confederacy because it was the very best chance for the confederates to win. Their army was as strong as it was ever conceivably going to be, their moral high and their aims within their reach. There were any number of times the confederates came close to breaking the Union’s lines, which could have caused a collapse. Had Meade not anticipated Pickett’s charge and had Custer’s foolhardy bravado not beaten back Stuart, it might have worked. It still would have been very bloody for Pickett’s men. Lee’s other choice was to pack up and go home and hope for a better opportunity later on. But he judged that was unlikely and took a gamble.
I am not a fan of Lee’s by any stretch. He picked the wrong side to fight for, a side of treason, slavery and almost certain long term loss. But as far as attempting to move his pieces on the chessboard, he had every reason to attempt everything he did in the Gettysburg campaign for the objectives he set. Picking the wrong side was a huge mistake. But he understood the conflict he was in, what the stakes and consequences were and gave rational orders based on that.
Custer was brilliant at Gettysburg. As reckless as it was, it all worked, and it saved the union. As a general, he saved the Union (others did too at Gettysburg). That same recklessness and disregard for the enemy got him and all his men killed a decade later when he was no longer a general.
One of the reasons in the different Custer outcomes was whose territory was being fought on. At Gettysburg he was defending his country’s territory. At Little Big Horn, the Sioux and Lakota were defending theirs. But as any biologist will tell you, defending home territory gives the defender and advantage in any wildlife fight. There is something of confidence, and family defense that helps the defender some and hurts the attacker some.
All the little breaks would or could have the other way if Gettysburg had been fought at a similar town in Virginia. Euell would damn well have held a hill. Stuart would have crushed a smaller daring charge. Pickett’s men would have slaughtered Meade’s charge on his lines. The earlier battles in Virginia bear this out.
But Gettysburg broke the back of the Confederates. Where McClellan did not wish to waste his magnificent army earlier, the weakened survivors from Gettysburg no longer had the resources and manpower to stop Grant’s willingness to fight a war of attrition with now vastly superior resources and manpower. I also think that McClellan has been criticized as a general. The Union army at his time was not ready or able to do to Lee’s pre-Gettysburg army what Grant did to Lee’s post-Gettysburg army. McClellan’s job was not to lose Washington, and he didn’t.
So since Custer was brilliant while actually holding the rank of general, I will go with Wastemoreland as the worst. He had better education, experience, resources and manpower by several orders of magnitude on all but experience. But General Giap (still living and almost 101 years old) whipped him. Westmoreland didn’t understand his enemy, didn’t enforce discipline among his troops resulting in among other things bizarre body counts, didn’t understand that he was fighting to support a corrupt regime and was not frank with his superiors.
Nobody has yet mentioned General Thomas Power of Strategic Air Command. I mean, when Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay thinks you’re an unstable sadist you’ve really gone somewhere in life.
Mach Tuck, thanks for that article about Power who I had never heard of. Although Le May thought him unstable, he seems not to have done anything particularly wrong. Indeed, reading the Wiki article it seems his broadcast during the Cuban crisis was the correct move?
As you and others have pointed out, Custer wasn’t a General anymore when he lost his entire command. And I think that’s extenuating circumstances. His entire command at the Battle of Little Big Horn was about 200 soldiers. There have probably been lots of unfortunate commanders who have lost an entire command of that size. Custer just happens to have been famous for it.
How about Charles Lee?
He never accomplished much on the battlefield. His disobeyed direct orders at the Battle of Monmouth. He was a political intriguer who constantly undermined his superior (Washington). And when he was captured (due in large part to his own incompetence) he started giving the British advice on how they should fight the Americans!
I thought Khe Sanh did exactly what it was supposed to do…suck in enemy units and grind them down through severely lopsided attrition…
Broadcasting in the clear as Power did during the Cuban Missile Crisis was unauthorized. It was the worst kind of saber rattling at the worst time, which Kennedy never intended. Power, like his mentor LeMay, wanted to instigate World War III and they damned near succeeded.
I rank Power as worse than LeMay because he was known to be a whack job. My reading of LeMay is that he at least had some degree of self awareness, while Power was just plain crazy. Richard Rhodes’ book “Dark Sun” goes into some detail about LeMay and Power during the CMC. I found this passage chilling:
In the end, General Power didn’t lose a spectacular battle or panic in the face of the enemy. It’s that he got so close to intentionally causing a global holocaust that I rate him as one of the worst we ever produced. He was one of the most dangerous men in history.
Not being a traitor to my country, I’m going with silenus. Sherman got the job done, the treasonous bastards in Georgia be damned.
Marching through Georgia was no more a war crime than bombing Hiroshima or Nagasaki. If we’re including war criminals Nathan Bedford Forrestt probably tops the list.