Worst and Best American General?

[frigidmagi]

We've done best Presidents (Lincoln) and worse (Jackson) so let's move on. There are really to many governors to name and the competition for worse governor would drive many of us to drink (bleach). Same with Senators really. So let's try Generals. I request that the board name their picks for best American General and worst. Luckly American history is everywhere and the Canadians, English and Australian members of this board can't get away from it. So y'all get to name some to. :P

[Charon]

For clarification's sake, do Confederate Generals count as American generals?

[frigidmagi]

No.

[Steve]

I'm curious as to why not? It was a Civil War, after all, with both sides being from the same country.

Anyway, the best US generals sans Gray-clad officers have been Washington, Taylor, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Patton (Whom I don't hold as high as I used to, but who is probably still the best of our fighting WWII generals), Eisenhower, and Schwarzkopf.

[Josh]

Ah-fucking-hem.

Winfield Scott should be in the discussion. You have a guy who led an absolutely brilliant campaign into Mexico- made the first amphibious invasion in American history, bypassed Mexican defenses to get into the highlands before malaria season kicked in, held his army together in the face of mass exodus when a third of his force bailed as their enlistments ended, went to a 'living off the land' campaign because he didn't have enough troops to protect a logistical trail, took his rebuilt army in and captured Mexico City in the face of what was overall a numerically superior army.

All this while Zach Taylor was playing Blucher in Northern Mexico.

Wellington called that campaign the greatest in history. But just to seal the deal, Scott then goes on to devise the winning formula in a totally different war in a different era. The Anaconda Plan insured that no matter what successes the Southern forces had and no matter how badly McClellan et al fucked up with the Army of the Potomac, regardless of all that the Union could win so long as they kept in the fight until they got the leadership to figure out how to contain and defeat the CSA (Grant and Sherman, ultimately.) Scott wasn't entirely brilliant with regards to the Civil War- he fought over division-level organization despite the Army of the Potomac being vastly huger than than the forces he commanded in Mexico, but the Anaconda Plan was probably the single biggest element in the Union victory.

If he'd been in some of the various European Wars, he probably would've gone down with Napoleon and the like.

Winfield Scott, American badass.

[Josh]

As for worst, that's trickier. You have the likes of McClellan or MacArthur, who had the political connections to stay in power despite vast incompetence. Personally I've long had a hate on for MacArthur, who had a publicity machine that vastly exceeded his warmaking machine. He got supremely lucky in Korea because Inchon was about the worst place in the world to stage an amphibious invasion and if the DPRK had had any clue we were coming they could've turned that into a bloodbath.

(Per Puller's autobiography the invasion target was all over Tokyo from leaks from SCAP to the local brothels. Stone fucking luck.)

Like a broken clock, MacArthur did have a valid point about the situation in Korea- if we weren't going to expand the war into China, then we weren't fighting to win because we were essentially trying to bleed the Chinese out and that strategy was doomed to fail. That said, his attempt to trump the CINC were righteously slapped down and thank whatever fates or divinities you put store in that MacArthur then ego-tripped himself out of the presidency by staying in Japan with the expectation of being drafted for the nomination, which allowed Eisenhower to campaign and slide right by his goofy ass. A MacArthur presidency very well could've resulted in a lot of glassy ground in China and a lot of fallout from Korea clear to Japan. Among other issues he would've caused.

[frigidmagi]

I'm curious as to why not? It was a Civil War, after all, with both sides being from the same country.

Because it's my bloody thread Steve and I said no. I'm not interested in another argument over Lee and company so they don't get to play today. Maybe next time. So start naming generals that fought for the federal government or go home to sticky mucky Florida.

[Josh]

And your nominations, Frig?

For my first unit of military history, I had to list off the top three generals from the Revolution to the Civil War and rank them. I came up with Scott in the lead, followed by Grant and Washington.

I already made my argument for Scott, but the key element for all three was that they fought a campaign in which they identified the key elements to actually win and then executed to achieve that victory. Washington recognized that more important than any single battle, he had to maintain the Continental Army as a viable force while the British bled out, then go for the KO. Scott, of course, masterminded an agile campaign far from home with minimal support in notoriously hostile terrain and against superior numbers. Grant realized the lesson that had been staring them in the face all along, that the Napoleonic grand battle was no longer the model and that the war had to be won by pinning the enemy in position against terrain they had to defend, then grinding them to death. Once Grant denied the Army of Northern Virginia the ability to maneuver, the war was won even if it took the CSA a while longer to come to terms with that.

[Steve]

Jeez Frig, you need a chill pill.

And I can't believe I forgot Winfield fucking Scott. ARGH.

[General Havoc]

I have yet to narrow my selections down to a single one, but I'd like to propose a couple of names for either list, and reject a few others:



Candidates I reject for title of Best American General:


Ulysses S. Grant: Grant was a good general (no common thing in the Union Army), but by no means a great one. A better strategist than operations officer, his campaigns achieved their results... eventually, with many setbacks and un-necessary bloodbaths along the way. He was caught absolutely flat-footed at Shiloh, having failed to anticipate the enemy's capabilities (by his own admission), and prevailed only after a tough, pitched battle and the arrival of re-enforcements from Buell and Wallace (the latter of whom got lost, but still). Van Dorn ran rings around him during his initial push towards Vicksburg, and it was only on the second or third attempt that he was able to invest and capture the city. Once promoted to supreme command, his campaign towards Richmond was a series of escalating calamities, beginning with the severe mauling Lee dealt him at the Wilderness (in which he managed to get both his flanks turned and his center caved in all without retreating, no mean feat) and ending with the awful decision (again, admitted by himself) to charge Lee's lines at Cold Harbor. He failed to replace Butler (whom we'll get to) with someone who could exploit the thin lines around Petersburg, and thus dragged the war on for another six months, and he bears ultimate responsibility for the Battle of the Crater (not that he had direct control, but he did sign off on the effort).

Given that his opponent was Robert E. Lee, who while overrated, was still one of the finest masters of the set-piece defensive battle ever to take the field, I can't really give Grant a lot of flack. And Lincoln's comment that he liked Grant because "he fights" was not incidental. Grant recognized early on the strategic nature this war would take, and refused to flinch away from it no matter what Lee tried to do to him. The rumors of his drunkenness were politically motivated, and his "butcher" reputation was an undeserved slur. That said, Grant, indispensable as he was, was nowhere near the best general of the Union side of the Civil war, let alone of all time. After the war, Lee rated McClellan above him (sour grapes, perhaps, but still).


George Washington: While Grant was merely a decent general, and exactly what the country needed, Washington was not a general at all, and thus also exactly what the country needed. His record of field command is fairly poor. The Battle of Long Island was an undisguised disaster (Adams' comment, one of my favorites, was that "in general our generals were outgeneraled") saved only by an appalling lack of foresight and spirit on the part of the British forces. Many hands bore responsibility for the trials of Valley Forge, but one of them has to be Washington, a fact he was painfully aware of if his correspondence is anything to go by. His raids on Trenton and Princeton, while electrifying, were exactly that, and he had no hand in most of the major American victories of the war such as Saratoga or Cowpens. His one major military achievement is the great march of his army from New York to Virginia, and his subsequent conduct of the Yorktown Campaign. But while he did perform admirably and with great nerve in this campaign, it simply is not the stuff of greatness. Tactical command at the sharp end of the Yorktown fighting was mostly delegated to the French commanders (or occasionally, French troops), while it was De Grasse's fleet, not Washington's army, that ultimately sealed Britain's doom in that campaign.

Washington was a Great Man by all accounts, a statesman of rare wisdom and nerve, without whom this country would never have come into being. I would not wish him replaced even by one of the better generals the colonials had during that war (and there were several). But a great general he simply was not.


George Patton: This one's harder to make the case against, as there's no question that Patton was a very good general. The reason I'm citing him is basically that, despite being mired in the greatest war in history, Patton really never stood a major test. His campaigns in Africa were fought after Rommel had left and the Afrika Corps had been reduced to a shoestring of supplies, while being hammered by Monty and the British 8th Army (one of the few campaigns Monty fought properly). Being the general called in to save the day after Kasserine, he naturally garnered much positive publicity, and went on from there. In Sicily, he was facing a hodgepodge of poorly-motivated Italian formations and a handful of elite German ones who were so outnumbered they had no recourse but to do damage and give ground. His "lightning maneuvers" were mostly fought against opposition that, while locally fierce, were simply unable to stop the Allies in the strategic sense, and knew it.

Similarly, commanding the 3rd Army in the Normandy and French campaigns, Patton did well... but mostly against ever-dwindling opposition. Avranches was a major success, I grant, but mostly due to the overwhelming power of the US Tactical Air Forces, and the breakout it resulted in was mostly a matter of Patton unleashing his armored forces and making them drive forward. Given that neither Bradley nor Montgomery managed to do even that much, I recognize this isn't as easy as I make it sound, but to me it's still not the stuff of legend. His head-on bludgeoning at Metz was not exactly glorious, and while he did react decisively and very quickly to counterattack at the Bulge (probably his most impressive achievement), his forces were sufficiently powerful to overcome the already-stalled German opposition with or without fancy tricks, especially once the weather cleared. Finally, need I say anything about the fiasco that was Task Force Baum?

Honestly though, even with all that said, I can't hate on those who select Patton as the best US general. He was from beginning to end (I haven't even mentioned his First World War service) a very very good commander, and though he did make occasional mistakes, whatever forces were under his control always were led confidently and with skill towards their objectives, aggressively destroying the enemies before them. His cantankerousness has been vastly overstated in our popular perceptions (though frankly, he might actually have been insane), and compared to men like Montgomery, he was the second coming of Hannibal. That said, the post of Greatest American General is a lofty one, and given the lack of real opposition, I just don't think Patton quite makes the grade.


And a few others I have less to say about:

George Thomas: An excellent corps commander and effective army commander, but not the stuff of all-time Greatness. His dilatory preparations before the Battle of Nashville were so slow that Grant nearly cashiered him, though it's hard to deny that he won a very impressive victory by them. At Chatanooga and Chikamauga he showed great tactical skill, but overall his performance was much too sedate in a war already well-supplied with sedate generals, ranging from the decent (Meade) to the borderline useless (McClellan).

Philip Sheridan: Sheridan was a famously-effective cavalry commander, no doubt, but so was Custer, and look where that got him. Joking aside however, Sheridan entered the war in a big way at a point where the war was already a foregone conclusion, and while he was indeed instrumental in both conquering the Valley at long last, and hounding Lee to death at Appomattox, he did so after many of the best confederate Generals were already dead (Jackson for instance), and those that remained had inferior forces in both quality and quantity to combat him with. A good general, certainly, but not great.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Getting Charles De Gaulle, George Patton, and Bernard Law Montgomery to work together cannot have been easy, but it is not the stuff of great generalship. Eisenhower was, as seems to be a theme in the US military, not a great general, but still unquestionably the right man for the job. His military initiatives varied from the well-executed (Overlord, Varsity) to the not-well executed (Salerno, Market-Garden). Lest you object that Market-Garden was Montgomery's baby (which it was), Eisenhower still must bear some of the responsibility, given that he was Supreme Commander, just as he must bear responsibility for the unpleasant surprise that was the Battle of the Bulge. In every case, Eisenhower corrected his own mistakes dutifully, and applied the appropriate remedies to the appropriate situation. His Broad Front strategy was probably the best one available, and his command was even-handed and effective. If I do not rank him as the greatest general of the United States, it is no slight to the man who led the Great Crusade in Europe.

Next, the Generals I WOULD nominate for best US general of all time...

[General Havoc]

So here we go:


Candidates I endorse for title of Best American General:


Benedict Arnold: Yeah, I know Frigid's gonna come after me with pitchforks for daring to place the nation's greatest traitor above men like Patton, Grant, and Eisenhower, but this is a list of the Greatest American Generals, not a list of people I personally like. And while you may argue that the Confederates don't count, I refuse to produce a list of great American generals without citing a man without which (ironically) the US would never have come into being.

In a war commanded mostly by mediocrities, Arnold was a revelation. His capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the subsequent logistical feat of manhandling its cannon clear to Boston is what led the British to abandon the city and actually turn what had previously been a minor outbreak of colonial upheaval into a full-blown revolution. His delaying actions against a massively superior British force on Lake Champlain (a task for which he converted himself into an Admiral) managed, despite heavy losses, to delay the British for an entire year in Upstate New York, frustrating their ability to contain the rebellion, a task he capped off by racing to the aid of and relieving the siege of Fort Stanwix through a wonderful bit of military theater. But all of that pales in comparison with his brilliant handling of the Battle of Saratoga, one of the two or three most decisive battles ever fought in the United States wherein he dismantled his enemies in two successive battles despite the opposition of both his enemy Burgoyne (no mean general in his own right), but also his nominal commander, Horatio Gates (a useless time-server with delusions of grandeur). For the sake of Frigid's sanity, I won't go further than to simply mention his victories post-treason at Blandford and Groton Heights, and simply say that like it or not, without Arnold, the Revolution would have been stillborn.

And yes, there's of course the question of Arnold's ill-fated Quebec campaign, a useless gesture of disaster that ended in farce and tragedy for our side. I don't acquit Arnold totally of this operation, but I will point out that A: Congress demanded it of him, and B: Richard Montgomery was the one actually in command during the end-stages. Arnold somehow managed to salvage part of his command and get it back home through hundreds of miles of untamed wilderness crawling with enemy scouts. It's not a bright spot on his resume, but it's still impressive, and it doesn't stop me from nominating America's original traitor as one of her finest generals.


Winfield Scott: Josh and I do not always agree, but he's right on the money with this one. Where Scott got his reputation for indolence and lethargy is beyond me, but even when old and plagued by Gout, he produced a strategic plan for winning the greatest war in American history that, with some minor revisions, was implemented in total to the ruin of the Confederacy. But it's not the Anaconda plan that gave Scott this post, nor is it his brilliant actions in the War of 1812 (as one of the youngest American Generals in history), his glorious victory at Chippewa, or his instrumental role at Lundy's Lane. No, like Josh suggested, it's Scott's performance in the Mexican War, one of the most brilliant campaigns ever fought by an American commander, that promotes him to the post of greatness. I have very little to add to what everyone has already said about this campaign, save to say that in every case, from Veracruz to Cerro Gordo to Contreras to Chapultepec, Scott commanded his forces with consummate skill and poise, defeating in every case a numerically superior force comprised of what were considered to be the best soldiers on the continent. It's my private opinion that Lee learned most of his tricks while serving as a staff officer to Winfield Scott, and yet when the time came, all of Lee's tactical acumen could not defeat Scott's basic plan for destroying the Confederacy. Scott may be the best American General that nobody has ever heard of.


William Tecumseh Sherman: From my perspective, the best Union general of the civil war, Sherman was a man whom you did not want to face across the battlefield. His command at Shiloh was instrumental in turning the first day of that sanguinary disaster into a temporary setback, and won him deserved praise from everyone from Grant himself to his old nemesis Henry Halleck. His conduct at Vicksburg was professional and workmanlike, and his contribution at Chatanooga was (I think unfairly) overshadowed by that of Thomas (no slight to Thomas, that battle earned enough accolades to go around). But it's his campaign of maneuver through the mountains of northern Georgia on the march to Atlanta that really elevates Sherman to the top billing. For six weeks (Kennesaw Mountain notwithstanding) he outmaneuvered something like eight successive Confederate stopping lines, forcing Johnson clear back to the city. He then managed to maneuver Johnson's replacement Hood into a series of pitched battles, all of them decisive, crushing victories that annihilated much of Hood's army and allowed him to simply force Hood out of the city.

Nor should we overlook the rest of Sherman's career. His decision both to cut logistical ties and to ignore Hood's ill-fated Tennessee campaign, both much-maligned at the time, were unquestionably the right ones, and though his March to the Sea has been overstated somewhat, his subsequent campaigns into South and North Carolina were achievements of logistical genius scarcely equaled, particularly his effortless negotiation of the "impenetrable" Salkehatchie swamp and the even rougher Robeson County March, leading to his last great victory at Bentonville.

Sherman was not merely the greatest general of the Civil War on either side (yes), but one of the best ever, and if you hold my feet to the fire and force me to choose one person as the best US general of all time, he would be my pick. B H Lidell Hart (the eminent British military historian) called him one of the finest strategists of not merely his age but any age, putting him in the company of men such as Scipio Africanus, Belisarius, and Napoleon. Heinz Guderian (father of Blitzkreig) openly admitted using Sherman as a model for his theories, as did George Patton, who several times undertook pilgrimage to the sites of his victories (it's Patton, just accept it). I must defer to the opinions of these learned luminaries, and rate Sherman as one of the best generals not just of America, but ever.


And finally, just so Frigid doesn't think I'm trolling him...

Alexander Vandegrift: This is not a sop to Frigid. Archer Vandegrift, in addition to being the reason that there exists a Marine Corps today, fought only one campaign as a commanding officer, but what a campaign it was. Cut off from almost all support, faced by a Japanese Force with absolute command of the sea and control, if not command, of the air, Vandegrift's handling of the Guadalcanal campaign was simply masterful. In three pitched battles, each one conducted while surrounded and in several cases, under active bombardment from enemy battleships, Vandegrift handled his troops perfectly, meeting each situation without pre-conception to progressively obliterate everything the Japanese threw at him for six solid months. Strung out at the end of the logistical tether, he husbanded and employed his forces with great skill and poise, attacking when necessary, defending when necessary, counter-attacking when necessary, and generally giving himself all of the advantages while providing none to his enemies. His subsequent campaigns up the Solomons were a study in contrasts to MacArthur's plodding bloodbaths at Kokoda, Buna, and Gona, culminating with his capture of Bougainville, ending Rabaul's utility and completing a masterful campaign throughout the Pacific.

And goddamnit, the man who spoke so eloquently on behalf of the corps, preserving it to the present day, gets a goddamn bonus point from me. Sue me.


Next, the Generals I REJECT for worst US General of all time...

[Josh]

With Grant and Washington, I make my argument based not on their strategic/tactical finesse, but on their realization and acting on the formulas for victory in their wars. Grant gets an unfair knock for being a butcher in part because he was ahead of his time in driving matters toward trench warfare. Trench warfare's going to make a butcher out of any general, regardless of how well it's executed.

Grabbing another name out of the pile- Marshall was hands-down the most indispensable general of pre-WWII and into WWII. The logistics involved in fighting a global war are mind-boggling, and Marshall orchestrated all this in the slide-rule era.

Also Steve, my dead great-grandfather (Nathaniel Winfield Scott Atterberry) forgives you.

Oh and Havoc? When I agree with you, then I'm right on the money?

[Josh]

One point I will argue on the Mexican War- not to take anything away from the Mexican army itself, but Santa Anna was a self-promoting dolt that hyped his self-created 'Napoleon of the West' rep to the moon. That the Mexican army was considered superior in quality and leadership to the American army in the eyes of observers had little to do with the reality that the guy was a vainglorious boob.

I mean, as a good Texan and all I'm obligated to be all "Long live the Alamo!" but really Santa Anna took like two weeks to kick over a shitty little church, c'mon.

[Comrade Tortoise]

particularly his effortless negotiation of the "impenetrable" Salkehatchie swamp

I will concur with Sherman being on the list, for this reason alone. This alone I think qualifies Sherman as the greatest American general Ever. He did this at Roman Legionary Speed, with a baggage train, under fire. The Salkehatchie Swamp is otherwise known as the Great Dismal Swamp, and it is called this for a reason. I have a lot of experience tromping through swamps, and I cannot pull off 25 miles in a day. Let alone 60 thousand men and a baggage train. This was almost a miracle. It was almost sufficient to make be believe in a God. It was that fucking Not Supposed to Happen.

[General Havoc]

First, to get some preliminaries out of the way

Candidates I Reject for title of Worst American General:

George B. McClellan: How McClellan gets into this conversation, I'll never know. He was not a great general by any means, and Lee consistently outgeneraled him at nearly every turn. But worst general the US ever produced? He's not even the worst one on the Union Side in the civil war (in fact, he's probably not even top three). Yes, Seven Days was a humiliating defeat, but the tactical honors in the fighting were about even, and only McClellan's nerve forced him to retreat as he did. Antietam is considered a Union defeat only because of what McClellan failed to do, and in terms of actually fighting Lee, he managed something like a draw. Should he have done better? Yes, unquestionably, but this is not the stuff of which "worst general" titles are made.

McClellan was a wonderful organizer and logistician, beloved by his troops, and one of the few men capable of whipping the Union Army back into shape every time Lee beat the crap out of it. His biggest failing was indecision and reluctance to fight, but when a battle was forced upon him, his plans, though unwieldy and suffering somewhat from peacemeal-syndrome, were workable and not excessively stupid. His style of fighting did not end the war, but it must be said that his tactics preserved lives while Lee's expended them, and that by the end of the war those expended lives were missed. Lee rated him the best general he ever faced, and while there might be something of a backhanded slap in that comment, it's hard to dismiss it outright. As a general, McClellan was a mediocrity, but that's not even close to bad enough to make my worst-list.


Douglas MacArthur: This one at least I understand. People love to hate MacArthur as the man's ego is palpable even at this distance, and in a war that produced such modest personalities as Monty and Patton, that's saying quite a bit. But MacArthur, though he had his failures, was frankly not that bad of a general, and at times even quite a good one. People seem to forget his campaigns in World War I, where he commanded the 42nd "Rainbow" Division with great skill and tenacity in a war that was generally conspicuous for its lack of either. He bears great responsibility for the disaster at Clark Field at the start of WWII, but also for the skilled withdrawal into Bataan improvised largely on the spot, and its defense against all comers for four months. His New Guinea Campaign started poorly (Buna), but ended brilliantly (Hollandia), and though one can question the strategic priority of the liberation of the Philippines, his conduct of that campaign was... if not brilliant, at least adequate. Yes, there was the un-necessary disaster at Manila, and Yamaguchi basically outmaneuvered him at length in Northern Luzon, but the majority of the campaigning went well, and those who argue MacArthur would have been a terrible choice to command the invasion of Japan always fail to mention who they would have suggested as a replacement, beyond some obscure divisional commander.

As to Korea, it's a mixed bag. His role in establishing the Pusan Perimeter has been understated over the years. Inchon was a masterstroke, and while you can argue it was luck, I'm more of a believer of the notion that a good general makes his own luck. He does, of course, bear heavy responsibility for the Chinese counterattack, as well as for the bald-faced effrontery to try and face down the President of the United States (a professor of mine described him once as "the closest we've ever come to a 'man on horseback'"). But when all's said and done, MacArthur's record, checkered as it is, is simply too checkered to admit as a candidate for worst general we've ever fielded.

For that, we have to consider men such as these...

[General Havoc]

At last:

Candidates I endorse for title of Worst American General:

Horatio Gates: It takes some skill to nearly lose the American Revolution four times, but "Granny" Gates was up to the task. Beginning with his dilatory and painfully unremarkable actions at Saratoga, where he was technically the commander, during which he ordered Benedict Arnold off the field in disgrace for having the temerity to attack and beat the British without giving him sufficient credit (an order Arnold thankfully ignored), his insistence on taking all the credit for the victory was ridiculed then as it is now. He tried to argue Washington out of making his attack at Trenton, and when unsuccessful, started the first of a long series of intrigues designed to replace Washington as commander of the Continental Army. When whisper campaigns failed, he joined the Conway Cabal. Banished to the Eastern Theatre, he intrigued with congressional supporters to get himself appointed commander of the south, and proceeded to get his ass kicked at Camden by Washington's eventual Yorktown victim, Lord Cornwallis. Gates distinguished himself at that fight by abandoning his army and 'retreating' (read: fleeing) 170 miles in three days. The scandal was so bad that Congress ordered a Board of Inquiry into Gates' actions, which he managed to weasel his way out of in time to participate in the Newburgh Conspiracy, wherein he proposed that army officers, angry about their pay, follow him in a march on congress to demand payment at swordpoint. Foiled again by Washington, Gates retired at last in disgrace and never held another post.

The Revolutionary War did not lack for incompetent commanders, but Gates was a rare case. Not only was everything he did a disaster, but he's one of the few generals who probably would have harmed his cause more by succeeding at his various plots and plans than he did by failing at them. As it was, he turned out to be about the best thing he could be for the US, a half-forgotten nobody forever overshadowed by men like Washington.


Ambrose Burnside: It pains me to cite Burnside on this list of infamy, but the man's record speaks for itself, and if the Confederate dunces of Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood are closed off to me by virtue of being Confederate, then Burnside must stand tall as the most incompetent general of the Civil War, a title I assure you that I do not give out lightly.

One scarcely knows where to start with Burnside. His efforts at Bull Run were characterized by piecemeal incompetence and his role in the cashiering of Fitz John Porter (at whose court marshal he testified) does not do him justice. He was so slow and unwilling to fight at Antietam that even MacClellan was exacerbated, coming within a hair of ordering him off the field after he repeatedly refused to attack had AP Hill not done it for him in a counterattack. Despite this, he took command following MacClellan's failure to pursue Lee, and launched the infamous Battle of Fredericksburg, one of the most lopsided slaughters of the entire war, in which his army marched over open terrain to be cut to ribbons by Lee's emplaced army. Having failed miserably there, he then tried outflanking the Rebels in the middle of a torrential rainstorm, resulting in the infamous "Mud March". Removed from command, he returned later to command the Ninth Corps in Grant's 1864 campaign, failing singularly to distinguish himself at a whole trainload of battles, before finally exercising his initiative to launch an attack on the Confederate siege lines at Petersburg. The result? The Battle of the Crater.

Despite his manifest qualifications (and frankly, if I'm forced to it, he's probably my solitary pick for worst of the lot), I'm almost hesitant to throw Burnside under the bus like this. The man was an ardent patriot, and by all accounts an intelligent and well-liked man who knew himself to be unqualified for supreme command and repeatedly attempted to resign his commission, admitting frankly to everyone from his subordinates to the President that he was simply not a military mind and not suited for command. Why nobody ever took him up on this offer is beyond me, but in the words of Bruce Catton, "Burnside repeatedly demonstrated that it had been a military tragedy to give him a rank higher than colonel."


Mark W. Clark: Clark managed to escape much of the opprobrium due to him by virtue of having feuded with an almost equally useless General during his most controversial decisions, but while the myriad failures of the Italian Campaign in World War II had the fingerprints of many generals on them, Clark managed to grub his way onto most. The near-disaster at Salerno was Clark's mess from the beginning, and his inadequate staff work nearly got the landing annihilated before the Navy managed to save everyone's ass. His quarrels with his commander, the also-incompetent Sir Harold Alexander, were the stuff of dreams, and resulted in an endless series of misfired campaigns, blundered operations, and flat out missed opportunities that came to characterize the war in general. Alexander was the one who, despite knowing that there were no German forces in the abbey of Monte Cassino, ordered it bombed (an act for which he tried to blame his chief of staff after the war), which resulted in the Germans promptly occupying the ruins and using them to dominate the Allied forces for months. When the Cassino line finally broke, rather than cut the Germans off, he decided to race off to Rome, ignoring direct orders from his superiors and letting the Germans escape only to set up another fortified line, the Gothic Line, which stalled the advance for another full year. Promoted to Commander of all Ground Forces in Italy, he proceeded to have Kesselring run rings around him for twelve bloody months, until the utter collapse of German forces on other fronts finally loosened his opposition enough to permit him to break through.

Why Clark has never gotten the reputation he deserved is entirely beyond me. The frustrating, useless campaigns of wasted time, men, and opportunities in Italy were almost entirely on his shoulders, and yet after the war he was treated as some sort of conquering hero for having valiantly beaten his head against defensive line after defensive line. Honestly though, when your generalship is so bad that you force me to compare you unfavorably with the British commanders in the Mediterranean (a list which starts with Montgomery and gets worse from there), you have done fucked up.


William Westmoreland: There have been worse field generals than Westmoreland, but there have been few who knew what they were doing less than he did. America's enduring failure in Vietnam had many sources, but a hell of a lot of the blame rests solely on the shoulders of this man. His "attrition" strategy for defeating the North was not merely a bad plan, but arguably the worst possible plan he could have theoretically adopted, as it handed the North the ability to dictate the pace of the war to fit their own goals, and completely failed to understand the factor of the American public's patience for a war without end in Southeast Asia. His reliance on "Positive Indicators" for shoring up support made George W. Bush' "Mission Accomplished" look like Triumph of the Will, and his strategy of covering his ears and insisting everything was fine was fittingly blown to pieces when the Tet Offensive landed squarely in his lap like a live grenade. Though the Tet Offensive was an operational disaster for the north, Westmoreland was visibly caught with his pants down, and his suggested remedies varied from the horrific (nuclear weapons) to the laughable (a running "kill-tally" board in Times Square).

For all this, history has been harsher to Westmoreland than he deserves, for to his credit, he refused all pressure to cover up Mai Lai and other massacres, and did much, after his replacement, to repair the damage that Vietnam caused to civil-military relations in the United States. His after-action reminiscences were also refreshingly candid, and I agree with the position he took that his primary adversary, Vo Nguyen Giap, was a mediocre general who nearly destroyed his own country in quest for victory. That said, if your primary adversary was so mediocre, why did you fail to defeat him despite having the most powerful army on Earth at your disposal? Recent experiences of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places have only sharpened my opinion of Westmoreland as a general as, despite all the myriad flaws and failures attendant in those campaigns, they were both handled much more smoothly than Vietnam (and brought to a successful conclusion). Perhaps Westmoreland's greatest contribution to the US military was as an example of how not to fight a counter-insurgency. If so, it was a lesson hard-bought, and one making him worthy of a list such as this.

[Josh]

In fairness to Westmoreland, you have to look at the following factors:

-Johnson was president and was doing everything he could to micromanage the war from the White House.

-The public had no comprehension of the nature of the war, or the supreme unpopularity of the the South Vietnamese governments from the time we began our intervention. So if we're freedom, free enterprise and apple pie, why are we getting clowned around the countryside by a few goofballs in raggedy-ass pajamas?

-The object lesson of the war itself. Every post-Vietnam action has been compared to Vietnam thus far, though as that generation of veterans starts to dwindle and we move ahead after over a decade of our current wars, I think that will finally start to change. But every post-Vietnam president lived through that era and has had their military exploits shaped by that experience. The drumbeat is perpetually 'Not another Vietnam.'

The Army itself was in shit state when Vietnam rolled around. They'd gone through shifts in doctrine- conventional battle, no wait, pentomic, oh hold on, conventional battle? Now counterinsurgency! But counterinsurgency was in its infancy at this point.

Westmoreland had some dumb ideas, but given the situation with the Johnson administration you have to include the White House as an active participant in the chain of command in the theater. When you do that, you have the shift the burden of blame higher as well.

[Josh]

On the matter of MacArthur: I'll admit that my perception of the guy is colored by my extreme antipathy toward his personality, though his personality often bled over into his leadership. I look at him poorly for such matters as the Bonus Marchers, the massive corruption of his dual role military advisorship/chieftain of the Filipino military in the '30s, the way that he claimed Buna was intended to be a starve 'em out strategy from the get-go instead of the reality of it, which was that he bludgeoned his forces against the defenses until the Japanese collapsed from starvation. I wish to hell I could remember the book I read when I was a teenager wherein his former aide talked about how he mistreated prostitutes and used to play dramatic 'I'm going to commit suicide! Talk me out of it!' games.

The guy was an unmitigated shitbag, a narcissist and a megalomaniac. As I said, we dodged the bullet when he waited in Tokyo during the primaries.

[Charon]

Just to add on to some of what Havoc has said.

Ulysses S. Grant
Likewise, I am not gonna put him on the list for best general. Good general? Certainly, but while the man achieved many great accomplishments (compared to the rest of the Union Army), he did not have a solid record of success and the successes he achieved were often fairly bloody. But, as Lincoln said, "he fights". Unlike so many generals in the East, he was not afraid to bring the fight to his enemy and do so well enough to win.

George B. McClellan
Again seconding Havoc. Many bad things can be said about McClellan. The man had little stomach for a fight, and precisely zero ability at reading his opponent. He constantly overestimated not only his enemy, but himself. He was certain to his dying days that he was the savior of the Union and that if only Lincoln had not hated him so, he would have achieved great things. The man was a vain-glorious bastard, which is likely why he is so commonly thought of to be the worst, he was not nearly as good as he thought he was.

Still, he was arguably the second best Commander of the Army of the Potomac we ever had. His tactics were passable enough to achieve some victories but where he truly shined was not in the battlefield. McClellan was a quartermaster, holy hell was he a quartermaster. No one was as good at recruiting, training, and supplying an army as he was in America. Unfortunately for him, he was up against some of the best generals the Confederates had to offer and it showed. I have heard it said that Robert E. Lee had a knack for being able to read his opponent. He did it with Grant, and he played McClellan like a fiddle.

William Tecumpseh Sherman
If there was one man Lee might not have been able to read though, it would have been Sherman. The man was a brilliant general in most regards and was a pioneer for not only Blitzkrieg but Total War. His battles against both Johnson and Hood were well executed, but more importantly was that he knew when to fight, and when not to fight. Grant admitted that Sherman was a better general than he was, and the two were very close friends. His March to the Sea was a great logistical and propaganda movement but it was not his greatest display. It was his march through the Carolinas where he really shined, his aforementioned marches through territory that was considered impassable at speeds that were difficult for some armies to achieve in favorable terrain was nothing short of miraculous, not only that but the man has exceptional control of his army. After essentially sacking not one, but two entire states, most armies would have gone through North Carolina like a tornado, destroying everything in its path. But Sherman's masterful control of his troops showed in that North Carolina was not burned to the ground as Georgia and South Carolina had been.

Unlike Havoc, you won't have to put my feet under a fire to get me to say it, Sherman was the best American General we've had.

[Josh]

On the subject of Clark, Havoc's right about his competence. But the reason he generally gets a pass is because most history books take the angle that Italy's terrain was going to make the fight a slogging grind no matter what.

And down South there is that rule about folks with three first names.

[Josh]

I do have to say this, though: y'all have completely sold me on Sherman over Grant. My reading on the Civil War has always been more in passing, and primarily focused on the Virginia theater, with a dose of "And then Sherman waltzed down to Atlanta."

Fascinating stuff. Thanks folks.

[Josh]

And since I love the topic and can chatter about it all day, on the matter of Mr. McClellan: much as Lee's rep was polished and burnished post-war by the Lost Causers, McClellan probably took a lot of his beating simply from politics. He was a viable player as a presidential candidate and as such would be a huge target for smears and slander. When Grant proceeded to use the Army of the Potomac to full effect, McClellan's fate as being an incompetent predecessor was sealed.

[frigidmagi]

A note on Westmooreland: He also opposed various strategies that were working, such as the Marine CAP program. Because they didn't result in large bodycounts. To the point of publicly calling Marines cowards for having the gall to tell him that running around in the jungle and shooting anything that seem vaguely Vietnamese was a bad plan. Additionally his own actions forced many a Vietnamese peasant into the enemy column... By his own admission. One does that not create a plan that starts with "And then we'll make these people who have been farming the same land for longer then our nation has even existed, leave their homes." and expect it to work without hitch without being somewhat dim.

Frankly Moscow and Hanoi owe Westmooreland a medal, several medals perhaps. He was certainly worth more to Moscow then an armored guard division and killed more American troops besides.

But now I'm just being bitter.

[Josh]

Hunh. I thought the Strategic Hamlet thing came from over his head. Live and learn.

Nevermind then, fuck Westmoreland.

[Josh]

Oh hey, while we're on the subject of dull stars let's talk about Lloyd Fredendall.

Short list of Lloyd's fuckups:

Invented his own terminology, including referring to infantry as 'walking boys' and artillery as 'popguns'. His subordinates had to take time to decipher their own commander's language in order to figure out what the fuck he wanted.

Tasked an engineer company for three weeks to build his CP seventy miles behind the front in Tunisia, tasked an entire AA battalion for protection, and generally camped out there instead of going near the front. Tried to get an armored limo like Ike's, whined when it didn't show up.

Divided his forces all over the place, refused to communicate with the commander of the 1st AD because said CO was bitching about having his armor parceled all over the countryside. Also refused to have said commander in for briefings.

Was so out of it during Kasserine (and apparently drunk at one point) that the observer Ike sent to determine what the fuck was up ended up going forward to try to stabilize the front.

His enduring legacy was in providing a great quote from Patton after his relief: "I cannot see what Fredenhall did to justify his existence." Ice burn.