Worst Military Leader elimination game (setup thread)

Usual Wikipedia caveats apply, but he was apparently both present and giving orders at the Battle of Sedan.

Good enough for me. Napoleon III is in.

Didn’t stop me though - I nominated Stopford for his little part in that drama back in post #11 ;). It is actually unfair to blame Stopford for Gallipoli as a whole - it was a composite failure and Stopford’s superiors bear a lot of blame for giving him his command in the first place ( he was more an administrative officer and was given the job largely because he had the requisite seniority to command divisional commander Sir Bryan Mahon, who like Stopford held the rank of Lieutenant General ). But Stopford did good and truly screw the pooch at the one point where the British might have had a shot of making something out of that campaign. His was the most egregious and obvious battlefield failure and the culmination of Britain’s series of missteps.

Hamilton’s failures were less obvious and he did have a varied and solidish career before that.

Updated list of nominees with about two and a half hours to go:

Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Heinrich Himmler: Nazi botched every field command
Christian de Castries: Lost at Dien Bien Phu
James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan: Charge of the Light Brigade.
Arthur Percival, surrendered Singapore to Japan
Publius Quinctilius Varus, army totally annihilated in Germany
Lieutenant-Colonel Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre.
2nd Lt. William Calley: Ordered, led My Lai Massacre.
**Ratko Mladić **: Ordered Srebenica massacre, convicted scum.
General William Tecumseh Sherman: Arsonist, War Criminal.
George Armstrong Custer: Idiot.
Ulysses S. Grant: Butcher
Benjamin Franklin Butler: Beast.
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
Paul D. Harkins: Ignorant and overoptimistic, allowed Vietnam to escalate
Maximilian von Prittwitz: Peed his pants in Prussia (alliteration quadruple bonus!)
Xerxes I of Persia: Epic blunders in Greece
Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana: Napoleon of the West? Ha!
Ambrose E. Burnside: defeat from jaws of victory
Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives (Crassus): Army pincushioned by Parthians
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - “Run! The Bogeyman is coming!”
Charles le Temeraire - Rash, rather than “Bold”
Charles Alexander of Lorraine - A sustained career of incompetence
Frederik William Stopford - Blunderer at Suvla Bay ( Gallipoli )
Emperor Romanus IV of Byzantium: Lost the Battle of Manzikert
George B McClellan - Led Union unsuccessfully
[/QUOTE]

William George Keith Elphinstone - Lost an army in Afghanistan
Douglas Haig: Lions led by donkeys
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson :went mad in dark Afrika
Francisco Solano López: almost unmade Paraguay
Curtis LeMay: tried to preemptively use nukes
Oreste Baratieri - Routed by Ethiopians at Adowa.
Lord Chelmsford - Zulu dawn at Isandlwana
Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon - Sunk his flagship on maneouvres.
General Maurice Gamelin - Relied on the Maginot Line.
General William H. Winder - Loses Upper Canada; Washington, D.C. burns.
Benedict Arnold. Rarely has an officer of his level turned traitor.
Bill Halsey deserves a nomination at least just so we can enjoy the debate.
General John A McClernand was a useless political hack that hurt the Union’s efforts.
Douglas MacArthur – Dismissed from Korea by Truman
Nicias - commander of the Syracuse expedition
Abdel Hakim Amer - panicked, lost Sinai in 1967.
Pyrrhus of Epirus - invented new way of losing.
Daniel Sickles - almost lost Gettysburg single-handedly.*
James II of England - surrendered Britain without a fight.
Philip VI of France, crushed own army at Crécy.
Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, who wrecked his fleet on the Scilly Isles: “one of the greatest maritime disasters in the history of the British Isles.”
**George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham **- useless sycophant, incompetent military leader.
Zinovy Rozhestvensky - Led Russian Navy to annihilation
Zhao Kuo, there’s a chinese idiom for bad generals thanks to him.
Rodolfo Graziani - Trounced in North Africa.
William Hull: surrendered peacefully to inferior forces.
Carlo di Persano - Loser of Lissa
Gaius Terentius Varro – Blamed for defeat at Cannae
Tiberius Sempronius Longus – Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Gaius Claudius Glaber: why fortify against slaves?
Napoleon III - Misadventures to many to name, but primarily added for foolishly declaring war on Prussia, getting clobbered in a double envelopment at Sedan, then watching as Parisians lived on rats.
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick – Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
Admiral Ernest J. King – Disastrously opposed convoy, Anglophobic
John Bell Hood – Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
Hermann Goering – Prancing figurehead misused Luftwaffe
Luigi Cadorna – Lost 12 consecutively, hated, cruel

Tom Scud, this was my mistake - but Mladic hasn’t yet been convicted, as he’s far too great a coward to stand trial. Could you change his entry to “indicted scum”?

Hopefully Elendil will be sure to change this when he makes up the official list. I’ve also left the work of alphabetizing & editing everything to five words up to him. :wink:

Much obliged for what you’ve already done, Tom Scud!

Gah, I searched for Hamilton but stopped there…exposed on the beach…without taking the heights. Heh.

In a situation vaguely similar to Stopford’s, I considered nominating Lloyd Fredendall for the Kasserine Pass fiasco, even though his superiors should share some of that blame. Although Fredendall seems markedly less likeable, due to his egotistical extravagances and terrible inability to communicate clearly. Only the (IMHO) greater culpability of the five I did nominate forced him off my list.

What about Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell? He’s on the list, for much the same reason.

And while considering that, you might want to review Tryon’s sinking the Victoria. It was a collision of warships on training maneuvers…arguably that’s not “battlefield” per se, but at least it was a military exercise.

Francisco Solano López - Innovations include starting three-front war.

I was taught that the man (if we can call him such) was named General William Tecumseh May-He-Rot-in-Hell Sherman.
Just for the record.

This probably works better, since the convention in Anglophone names is for the family name to come last, and for the family name to be used with titles and ranks. Thus, putting “May-He-Rot-In-Hell” at the end could create ambiguity, with the fellow being referred to as “General May-He-Rot-In-Hell”, which would be at odds with the naming convention employed in records of the period and earlier Civil War histories. :wink:

And so it begins! Thanks for all the nominations. Here’s the game thread: Worst Military Leader (game thread) - The Game Room - Straight Dope Message Board

King Gelimer: Coward Heart
Christian de Castries: Dien Bien Phu Fail

Shoot. Didn’t see the last post. :frowning:

S’okay. De Castries at least was already nominated, so you can still vent your spleen on him :).

In the navy…

Shinedu, Naval invasion of Japan. Failed.
Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y de Zúñiga-Sotomayor, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia, Lost the Spanish Armada.
Yamamoto Isoroku, Not a Monster of Midway.

Sorry. The nominations closed at noon Monday after being open for a week. The game thread is already underway.

It was still a victory. The fact that he won at a high price doesn’t change that he won.

There are plenty of military leaders who suffered high casualties and also didn’t win! Pyrus is miles ahead of them. Because of that, there’s no way you can seriously call him the worst military leader.