And yet MacArthur was very aggressive and exceeded the scope of his orders in attacking the Bonus Army, didn’t he? President Hoover was appalled by how it was handled, ISTR.
William Halsey, who made some mistakes but was generally a damn fine admiral - 2
Curtis LeMay, who never lost a battle and did what was asked of him - 2
George Tryon, for the reasons stated earlier - 1
The results of our 5th round of voting:
William Halsey - 8
George A. Custer - 6
Gaius Terentius Varro - 3
Lord Chelmsford, Crassus, John Bell Hood, William Hull, Curtis LeMay - 2 each
Benjamin F. Butler, George Tryon, 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
Benjamin F. Butler: “Beast” hated in New Orleans
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”
Lord Chelmsford: Zulu dawn at Isandlwana
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
Ernest J. King: Anglophobe disastrously opposed Atlantic convoys
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Curtis LeMay: Reckless, nuke-happy SAC chief
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
George B. McClellan: Timid, bungling, arrogant Union commander
John A. McClernand: Useless political hack hurt Union
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
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson: Naval commander undone in Africa
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
George Tryon: Sunk his flagship on maneouvres
Gaius Terentius Varro: Blamed for defeat at Cannae
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Xerxes I of Persia: Epic blunders in Greece
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
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Weds. Dec. 1.
Maybe I can’t place blame on MacArthur for that, but many people present at the time did, and the were eyewitnesses.
Are you aware that a baby died as a result of Mac’s actions, and some military officers and civil authorities regarded his assault on the encampment as brutal? Many military people never forgave him. Specifically him, not Hoover.
Yeah, that’s why Rommel and Patton and Guderian were famously hundreds of miles behind the front, because they were keeping up with trends. And they were weak generals.
Imm’a have to take a stand for my man Butler…as a military incompetent. Sure, he was a political appointee. Most sources seem to agree the man was smart as a whip and an absolute rascal. And he was hated for the occupation of New Orleans. But what he was most hated for in that case (the famous “women of the town” order) actually did some good…it suppressed Yankee-hatred to subsurface levels instead of outright assault. He was called “Beast” Butler, or “Spoons,” a reference to the Southern belief that he stole silverware from homes that hosted him.
The circumstances of the order: Southern women had been acting increasingly hostile in the occupied city, culminating in a chamber-pot being emptied onto Admiral Farragut’s head. While funny, let’s recall that in those days typhus and other illnesses were fatal and all but untreatable; bathroom humor could kill. After Butler’s decree he was infamous in Europe and seethingly hated in the South, but the germ warfare stopped.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
New Orleans was unusually healthy and orderly during the Butler regime.
[/QUOTE]
But Butler was much less competent in outright military command, particularly on the offensive.
His first battle, Big Bethel, regarded by some as the first battle of the war, ended in humiliating defeat, despite his almost 3:1 numerical advantage.
He was infamously bottled up in Bermuda Hundred, when his two corps failed to break out and seize Petersburg. Several marches were made; at first his subordinates failed him, but on subsequent attempts, Butler himself ordered the men back to their entrenchments as they were on the verge of smashing vastly weaker Confederate forces which were basically bluffing him. Petersburg was later taken in a ten-month siege at grievous cost.
Butler then moved on to [not] attack Fort Fisher. He determined not to carry it by assault, then withdrew entirely, disobeying orders to lay siege to it. This eventually resulted in his being called in to testify before Congress’s Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to justify his actions. During his testimony, he had literally just finished detailing the strength of the fort and declaring it impregnable when someone burst into the chamber shouting news that the fort had been taken by a lesser-known general. Butler smiled enigmatically and shrugged, and somehow escaped censure yet again.
An occasionally cruel man (he was declared a war criminal in the South for executing a man who had torn down a Union flag) who was probably corrupt, unquestionably venal, and militarily unsound (given to indecision and hesitation in key moments), he was however right on the issue of slavery, getting into trouble for prematurely freeing slaves on his own authority. An interesting man to have over for dinner, instead of commanding you in battle.
But for God’s sake count those spoons.
.
Sticking with:
Lord Chelmsford – 2 votes
Adding:
Curtis LeMay – 2 votes (he’d have a better shot if the game were titled “Least Moral Military Leader”)
Benjamin F. Butler – 1 vote (he often demonstrated hubris, but he did have some skills in negotiation and administration)
Curtis LeMay - 2
George Tryon - 2
Benjamin Butler - 1 (seems to have been a poor commander, but not done much damage to the Union cause thereby, compared to the other available Civl War generals)
New Round!
OK, let’s get Butler out of there. He wasn’t ‘ept’ but there are much worse on that list:
**Benjamin Butler **- 2 votes as I explained before
Varro - 2 Votes against propaganda blame!
Rodolfo Graziani - 1 Was sent into a no-win situation and knew it.
Lord Chelmsford - 2
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson - 1: What was his major blunder?
Curtis LeMay - 1
Christian de Castries - 1: Thoroughly outgunned at Dien Bien Phu, but not his decision to defend there.
Curtis LeMay, who never lost a battle and did what was asked of him - 2
George Tryon, for the reasons stated earlier - 2
Benjamin F. Butler, ditto - 1
Lord Chelmsford:2
Hermann Goering 2
Heinrich Himmler 1
Lord Chelmsford: 2
Gaius Varro: 2
Curtis LeMay: 1
George Tryon - 2. Too meh.
Gaius Terrentius Varro - 2. Too uncertain.
Agree that LeMay is more of a “potentially worst military leader, but it never happened” if you’re talking about a global nuclear exchange, and “just another ruthless bastard” if you’re talking about the strategic bombing of Japan’s cities.
I don’t understand why people are moved to vote Goering off so soon. Although we consider him a buffoon, he was actually a decorated officer and the Nazis put him in charge.
He promised he’d destroy the RAF in the Battle of Britain and then managed to lose through a combination of:
[ul]
[li]simply not putting much effort into thinking about how to do it[/li][li]failing to understand the new technology of radar[/li][li]failing to adapt to the unexpectedly well-coordinated RAF response[/li][li]repeated, ill-timed meddling in the targeting priorities[/li][li]believing uncritically in wildly overoptimistic claims by his pilots (despite his own WWI experience with pilot claims)[/li][/ul]
At one point the Germans had fought roughly equal numbers of RAF aircraft on their previous mission, yet somehow Goering was persuaded that intelligence analysts now thought that Britain was down to only 40 operational fighters. Maybe he thought the 700+ he’d faced only the day before were all being repainted?
One hallmark of a truly bad military leader is when they draw the wrong lesson from real-world experience. The big lesson Goering drew from the Battle of Britain was that the British wouldn’t “come up and fight,” facing the Luftwaffe in battle so that their fighter strength could be destroyed. This was after he’d decided to stop attacking their bases (which had in fact almost worked before he prematurely called it off in favor of ineffective savagery against civilians) edit: and which could be characterized as “going down to fight them where you find them,” thus being equivalent to what he complained they were too afraid to do. Rightly or wrongly, Goering was certain in his own mind that a numerically inferior fighter force that came up to face escorted bombers could be destroyed, opening its homeland to invasion.
So what was his response to Allied bombing? He sent his numerically inferior Luftwaffe up to “fight it out,” where it was indeed destroyed, opening his homeland to invasion, exactly as his own theory predicted.
Maybe not the worst ever, but I say he should stay on the list until after we’ve booted off the non-losers and accident victims, at least. And maybe also the massacre guys…Goering ordered bombing of civilians and lost big-time.
Plus, I enjoyed calling him “prancing.”
And McClernand should go off the list before Butler, when you’re booting Union political generals.
Still concerned I don’t know enough about some of these guys.
My votes:
George Tryon - 2
Curtis LeMay - 2
John McClernand - 1
.
Don’t forget Goering’s role in the abandonment of the 6th Army at Stalingrad. He insisted that he could resupply them by air, but the best he managed to deliver was 1/10 their needed daily supply. It was an insane boast.
Gah! That’s exactly what I’ve forgotten! And it’s the logistics (the “important” part) of the biggest battle / turning point in the war!
The results of our 6th round of voting:
Curtis LeMay - 10
Lord Chelmsford - 8
George Tryon - 8
Gaius Terentius Varro - 6
Benjamin F. Butler - 5
Hermann Goering - 2
Christian de Castries, Rodolfo Graziani, Heinrich Himmler, John A. McClernand, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson - 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
Benjamin F. Butler: “Beast” hated in New Orleans
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
Ernest J. King: Anglophobe disastrously opposed Atlantic convoys
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
John A. McClernand: Useless political hack hurt Union
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
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson: Naval commander undone in Africa
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
Gaius Terentius Varro: Blamed for defeat at Cannae
Publius Quinctilius Varus: Army totally annihilated in Germany
William Westmoreland: Brutal, unimaginative technocrat
William H. Winder: Lost Upper Canada; Washington burned
Xerxes I of Persia: Epic blunders in Greece
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
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Fri. Dec. 3.
Gaius Terentius Varro 2
Benjamin F. Butler 2
Hermann Goering 1
yes I copy pasted the runner ups…lets get them out of the way
Benjamin F. Butler, who wasn’t the best general ever, but wasn’t an utter disaster - 2
John A. McClernand, ditto - 2
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, too obscure to stick around much longer - 1
Sticking with:
Benjamin F. Butler – 2
Adding:
Christian de Castries – 1
William Westmoreland – 1
Returning to:
Xerxes I of Persia – 1
but, but, did you read about the grass skirt?
a grass skirt is like negative facial hair