(In the future, I will be looking to remove Prittwitz, Sickles, Ledlie, etc. All of them made mistakes and Ledie was a disaster, but don’t measure up on the badness scale.
I feel I can at least ask that McClellan stay in it. He was an absolutely awful general and frankly deserves to be in the competition for worst. I can think of no other man who combined intelligence and energy with utter uselessness, selfish ambition, and borderline treason. He nearly destroyed the United States’s war effort solo, and passed over so many opportunities it’s disgusting. His “victories” would have been easy and complete in the hands of rank amateurs, yet he consistently turned them into blood and indecisive quasi-wins, at best. He so damaged and wrecked the army of the Potomac that it was useless for years afterward, never recovering until 1865!
I nominated Prittwitz because I think he presents an interesting case study in military command. The Germans basically had three advantages against the Russians in East Prussia:
Their system of rails gave them the mobility to move their forces where needed.
The Russians were communicating freely by radio, unencrypted.
They knew about the animosity between Samsanov and Rennenkampf
The German high command wasn’t asking for too much from Prittwitz. All he had to do was maintain a stalemate long enough to wrap things up in the west and shift forces eastward. But after losing at Gumbinnen, Prittwitz wanted to retreat all the way to the Vistula. Look at this map, with Gumbinnen near the top right, and Prittwitz’s planned withdrawal highlighted.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff, looking at the same maps as Prittwitz, ultimately made their stand here, and not only stood up Rennenkampf’s force, but encircled and destroyed Samsanov’s force.
Tannenberg may have been a brilliant example of operational warfare on the part of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, but I don’t think they did anything truly incredible. They utilized their advantages in mobility and intel, but their most important impact was simply deciding not to abandon territory and choosing to fight. The difference between what they accomplished, and what Prittwitz was all too willing to concede, speaks volumes to me about Prittwitz’s abilities as a commander. Just an utter failure of leadership on his part.
Christian de Castries - 4
Daniel Sickles - 3
Rodolfo Graziani, William Westmoreland - 2 each
William Calley, Maximilian von Prittwitz - 1 each
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Oreste Baratieri: Routed by Ethiopians at Adowa
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Duke of Buckingham: Useless sycophant, incompetent military leader
Ambrose E. Burnside: Defeat from jaws of victory
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
William Calley: Ordered, led My Lai Massacre
Christian de Castries: Dien Bien Phu loser
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
Crassus: Army pincushioned by Parthians
Carlo di Persano: Loser of Lissa
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Maurice Gamelin: Relied on the Maginot Line
Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
Gaius Claudius Glaber: Why fortify against slaves?
Hermann Goering: Prancing figurehead misused Luftwaffe
Rodolfo Graziani: Trounced in North Africa
Douglas Haig: Incompetent British WWI general
Paul D. Harkins: Ignorant, overoptimistic in Vietnam
Heinrich Himmler: Nazi botched every field command
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
William Hull: Surrendered peacefully to inferior forces
Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick: Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
Ratko Mladić: Ordered Srebenica massacre; since indicted
Napoleon III: Clobbered, captured at Sedan
Nicias: Commanded ill-fated Syracuse expedition
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Philip VI of France: Crushed own army at Crécy
Maximilian von Prittwitz: Peed his pants in Prussia
Romanus IV of Byzantium: Lost Battle of Manzikert
Zinovy Rozhestvensky: Led Russian Navy to annihilation
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
Daniel Sickles: Almost lost Gettysburg single-handedly
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre: Lost badly in Spanish Morocco
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Zhao Kuo: Became idiom for “bad general”
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Fri. Dec. 10.
Most generals only get one chance to prove their worth, and Prittwitz failed. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, with the same forces Prittwitz had, succeeded. It doesn’t get any more stark than that. And we’re not dealing with a minor sideshow to the main events of WWI. We’re talking about an entire strategic front.
I feel like people in this game are way too enamored with the annihilation losses. Varus lost his legions, but Rome didn’t collapse; the empire’s frontier was merely checked at the Rhine. Really, I don’t think Varus’s loss was much more significant than what Prittwitz’s loss would have been had he conceded East Prussia, just because Varus’s loss was particularly gruesome.
He’s honestly just not bad enough. He was irritable, foolish, and did not inspire confidence, yet his concepts weren’t totally mistaken and he still didn’t create constant disasters. As a loser, he simply doesn’t measure up. True, he was unable to follow up on any success, but while a serious problem, he just doesn’t rate.
Heinrich Himmler 1
Looking closely at Himmler, we face an odd problem: he was not a military man and was in a position where victory was realistically impossible. Did he fail? Yes? Did he make numerous mistakes? Yes. Did he every have a prayer of victory which his ineptness lost?
No. Regardless of his crimes, he barely qualifies as a military leader (the S.S. being a parmilitary force and frequently under military command), and he himself being tossed to the dogs for political reasons. If someone, for example, handed me command of Saddam Hussein’s army in either of the Iraq wars, I sinceerely hope they’d at least not insult me for failing.
Prittwitz 2
No, it’s about the Worst Military Leader, and Varus was an absolute boob who completely fluked his entire job, military and non-military ,and then led his troops into an idiotic and easily-avoidable defeat, and then managed to make it as bad as possible.
Prittwitz may have flubbed when threatened by superior numbers and fell back, but he never created any kind of terrible defeat, and was not in fact defeated. That may be technical, but I think your big military loser ought to have actually been beaten in war. Is he the general I want on my side? No. But honestly, he simply doesn’t belong on the same page as McClellan and Santa Anna.
Too much of your analysis comes down to psychoanalyzing him, not his actual success or failure.
So we’re voting off Westmoreland before Harkins and Calley? That makes no sense.
Christian de Castries - 2
Daniel Sickles - 2
Carlo di Persano - 1: Wikipedia says the Battle of Lissa was “mostly inconsequential on a grand scale” and, in terms of naval history, “occurred during a period of weapons development when armour was considerably stronger than the guns available to defeat it.”
Prittwitz: - 2 votes. I can understand MOIDALIZE’s defense of the man being on this list, but despite the advantages listed in post 202 there was the minor detail that the Russian Army really wasn’t supposed to be mobilzed at all at that point. German Intelligence and planning had totally failed to plan for the Russians being speedy at getting their act together. His reaction was poor, granted, but it makes him a far, far cry from being the worst.
Rodolfo Graziani -2 Votes. C’mon, how many times to I gotta 'splain!?
Sickles - 1 Vote. Yeah he screwed up in the battle, but ironically some argue it may have helped the Union win. Accidental consequences, sure, but were not looking for the best general here, just voting off the person who is the worst.
And if you fought your army sensibly - hurting the Coalition forces when you could, withdrawing when you couldn’t, maintaining your army as a fighting force for as long as possible - I wouldn’t dream of insulting you for failing. At least, assuming you’d done everything you could before the war began to build up your army as a competent fighting force.
Himmler had command of real military power - men, tanks, artillery. The SS were monsters, but they were competent monsters - if Himmler had handled them well, they could have “accomplished” a great deal before being crushed. Is there any indication that he did anything at all to delay Germany’s defeat?
Besides, I would argue that spearheading the Final Solution imposed such a logistical drag upon the SS as a fighting force that, even from the most cold-bloodedly evil Nazi perspective imaginable, it was a serious blunder. And logistical blunders certainly should qualify one to stay on this list. I only hope that there’s a Hell, and that someone has taken the trouble to inform Himmler the Dope is mocking him still.
Maximilian von Prittwitz - 5
William Westmoreland - 4
Braxton Bragg, William Calley, Crassus, Rodolfo Graziani, William Hull - 2 each
Carlo di Persano, Heinrich Himmler, Publius Quinctilius Varus - 1 each
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Oreste Baratieri: Routed by Ethiopians at Adowa
Braxton Bragg: Bungling, irritating Confederate general
Duke of Buckingham: Useless sycophant, incompetent military leader
Ambrose E. Burnside: Defeat from jaws of victory
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
William Calley: Ordered, led My Lai Massacre
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
Crassus: Army pincushioned by Parthians
Carlo di Persano: Loser of Lissa
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Maurice Gamelin: Relied on the Maginot Line
Horatio Gates: Fled headlong from Camden, S.C.
Gaius Claudius Glaber: Why fortify against slaves?
Hermann Goering: Prancing figurehead misused Luftwaffe
Rodolfo Graziani: Trounced in North Africa
Douglas Haig: Incompetent British WWI general
Paul D. Harkins: Ignorant, overoptimistic in Vietnam
Heinrich Himmler: Nazi botched every field command
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
William Hull: Surrendered peacefully to inferior forces
Thom Karremans: Toasted Mladić, allowed Srebenica massacre
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick: Nicknamed “Kill Cavalry” for reason
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
Ratko Mladić: Ordered Srebenica massacre; since indicted
Napoleon III: Clobbered, captured at Sedan
Nicias: Commanded ill-fated Syracuse expedition
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Philip VI of France: Crushed own army at Crécy
Maximilian von Prittwitz: Peed his pants in Prussia
Romanus IV of Byzantium: Lost Battle of Manzikert
Zinovy Rozhestvensky: Led Russian Navy to annihilation
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre: Lost badly in Spanish Morocco
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Zhao Kuo: Became idiom for “bad general”
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Daniel Sickles
Christian de Castries
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Mon. Dec. 13.
Crassus -1 vote. Crassus lost to the Persians. Roman history is littered with quite a few of these losses to Persia. I think Emperor Julian also got killed in Persia. He could have done much worse by losing to Sparticus.
