At the battle of Waterloo, Colonel Clement, an infantry commander, fought with the most conspicuous bravery; but unfortunately was shot through the head. Napoleon, hearing of his gallantry and misfortune, gave instructions for him to be carried into a farm where Larrey the surgeon-general was operating.One glance convinced Larrey that his case was desperate, so taking up a saw he removed the top of his skull and placed his brains on the table.
Just as he had finished, in rushed an aide-de-camp, shouting - 'Is General Clement here?'
Clement, hearing him, sat up and exclaimed: 'No! but Colonel Clement is.'
"Oh, mon général' cried the aide-decamp, embracing him, 'the Emperor was overwhelmed when we heard of your gallantry, and has promoted you on the field of battle to the rank of General.'
Clement rubbed his eyes, got off the table, clapped the top of his skull on his head and was about to leave the farm, when Larrey shouted after him: 'Mon général - your brains!' To which the gallant Frenchman, increasing his speed, shouted back: 'Now that I am a general I shall no longer require them!' (J.F.C. Fuller, Generalship)
This tongue in cheek introduction by Fuller in a way represents the perception that many have of leadership in general. Often this portrait is painted with the opinions of others as they have built the picture that we have viewed to help us form our perceptions of the leadership in the Second World War. Here in the United States there is not much demand to explore the attributes of some of the Soviet generals who where truly successful. German commanders suffer the stigma of having been on the wrong side of history which taints their record and victimizes their achievements with the classical mantra, “the victors write the history”. On the other hand there have been those who were completely incompetent in their command, but were shielded by the need of the time for heroes, or generally the desire of historians to cast them in a better light. But for those at the top, they have mostly endured the criticisms of time’s reexaminations of them and continue to be viewed as some of the best. Some of these are obvious, others are not as much. In making my list of top ten I had to weigh many things that placed them there. Many make the list based on excellence in completely different attributes and if the rolls would have been reversed these men may have ended up in the dust bin of history as failures. Eisenhower may not have been a very successful division general in France, while Patton would certainly been a disaster as head of SHAEF. But they were not in these positions and the positions they were in were well suited for their skill sets and placed them where they are on my list. Because of the length of this, I did decide to break it into two parts though. This first part is the glamour list. These are my top 10. Actually I think I have overall a top 30 and if you asked me on a different day some of these may slip off the list for another commander, but overall I think this is a good top 10. Stay tuned for part II which will have my bottom 10.
Best Commanders: (in no particular order)
Heinz Guderian – In my own opinion he was the top German general of the war. 
That really is a statement considering the fact that the Germans fielded more top notch generals than any other of the belligerents in World War II. He not only was a master of using the tank in mobile warfare, but he also had a masterful understanding of what it took to keep this new war machine working. In his execution of the Sickle Cut Plan in the western offensive many of his tanks had jerry cans of fuel and loads of ammo strapped to their sides. His biggest complaint prior to the beginning of operation BARBAROSSA was that most of his support and supply vehicles were confiscated French vehicles which he had no means of maintaining to keep his supply lines rolling.
George S. Patton - Another tanker. Patton was a hard headed and controversial figure in the American Army during the Second World War, but there is one thing that many cannot deny.
He got results. As the disaster at the Kasserine Pass took place in North Africa, Eisenhower of heard saying that he wished he had put Patton in command of the II Corps instead of leaving him in Casablanca. When Patton was at the front he made the most of it. His aggressiveness was first showcased on Sicily when first made his run on Palermo then began his move along the coast towards Messina. In France his biggest limitation was his supply lines. Omar Bradley wrote in his diary that Patton had told him as he moved on Metz that if Bradley would give him 400,000 gallons of gas, he would be in Germany in a week. Though this was perhaps boastful, there is not doubt that when he made his shift north to support the First Army that was reeling from the Ardennes Offensive, that Patton could take large forces and move them along offensive lines faster than about any other general in the war.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Ike, as he was called, probably would not have made a great commander of units, but there is one thing that stands out for him over other commanders.
He was a master at maintaining a military coalition and in the position he held this was absolutely critical. Many do not know just how large a task he had in front of him in doing this. Not only did Ike have to deal with keeping together two peoples separated by a common language, but he also had to deal with other nations and his how generals all of whom had different designs on how the war should be won. I’m having trouble narrowing down the number of examples so I’ll just pick one and go with it. In North Africa, Ike had to first deal with the fact that this was an unpopular move with the U.S. Army in general and the Navy felt it even justified shifting to a Pacific first policy (though Marshall dealt with that) but he also had to deal with some strong French personalities. General Giraud felt that he was coming in to take command of all forces in French North Africa which was essentially Ike’s job. Then he also had to deal with the wildly unpopular, but necessary decision to bring Admrial Darlan into the fold. Darlan was needed to bring the Vichy forces to the Allied side which saved many Allied lives, but the decision was not well like in the press and hated by the British. This political hot potato was a festering problem for Ike until Darlan was assassinated before the end of the year. His balancing of diplomacy and generalship kept the Alliance together.
Erich von Manstein – A fantastic operational general he is better remembered and perhaps rightfully so for his strategic mind. 
He is considered by many historians as the author of the Sickle Cut Plan which called for a shift in the planned western offensive from the area of Liege and Namur to a thrust through the Ardennes. This was the plan which crushed the French in May of 1940 as the forces quickly cut the Allied forces in two. Manstein also spent extensive time of the eastern front which I think may have been more significant had he not been shifted around as much as he was. What he did achieve while on that front was significant though. His accolades include the siege and capture of the city of Sevastapol, the destruction of Vlasov’s 2nd Shock Army when assisting in the siege of Lenningrad and even command of Army Group Don charged with trying to break Paulus out of Stalingrad. Though that effort did not allow him to get to the 6th Army, it did allow him to open a corridor long enough to allow the 1st Panzer Army to escape which would have compounded the disaster had that not been done.
Chester Nimitz - Put in command of the Pacific Fleet just days after Pearl Harbor, Nimitz inherited a naval force that had just been decimated by the Japanese attack. 
This did not stop Nimitz from immediately going on the offensive. With the backing of Admiral King he began planning for carrier raids in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. This lead to the birth of the Carrier Task Force which is what our current naval formations are still based on today. Halsey’s Task Force 8 and Fletcher’s Task Force 17 harried Japanese forward forces to the point to lead them to push the matter with a naval showdown, first at the Coral Sea, and them at Midway which was a disaster for them. Nimitz was also amiable enough to work with General MacArthur, but firm enough to keep the old soldier from dominating the theater. This is no small task and in fact despite this effort it cannot be said that other leadership, including the President didn’t have to occasionally intervene.
Lucian Truscott - Truscott was involved in the European Theater from start to end beginning with his command of the landing forces at Mehdia where his units truly did rock the Kasbah.
From there he continued across Africa and was a commander at Salerno and Anzio and continued on into France. He was always a reliable commander and was in charge of the planning and training of the landing forces that put Devers and Patch in southern France in operation DRAGOON. Where ever Truscott was, success usually followed and he continually moved up the ranks as the war moved on. He once said that “Polo games and wars aren’t won by gentlemen, no sonofabitch, no commander.” This personified his unrelenting style.
Jonathan Wainwright - I don’t think that anyone could have been handed a more impossible situation than Wainwright was in the Philippines in 1942.
The Japanese had landed and quickly demonstrated just how ill advised MacArthur’s “defend them at the beaches” strategy was and now MacArthur was called to Australia by the President himself and Wainwright was left to try and make something of this mess. Make the best of it he did by holding out until May of 1942. At this point though he knew that to wait any longer would just mean the sure death of his men and so he finally gave up the fight. Eisenhower, said on hearing that Wainwright had surrendered to the Japanese, “Poor Wainwright! He did the fighting in the Philippine Islands. Another got such glory as the public could find in the operation…MacArthur’s tirades to which TJ and I so often listened in Manila would now sound as silly to the public as they did to us. But he’s a hero! Yah.” Despite this valiant but hopeless effort he still worried that he had let his country down in surrendering at Corregidor. When he was liberated the first thing he asked the men relieving him from the camp was “how am I thought of back in the States?” MacArthur would block the recommendation of the Congressional Medal of Honor for Wainwright who eventually receive the award in September of 1945.
Teddy Roosevelt Jr. - The son of Rough Rider and former president Theodore Roosevelt, Teddy Jr. would serve with distinction in World War II.
His winning of the Congressional Medal of Honor along with his father doing the same makes them only one of two father/son pairs to both win that honor. In my personal opinion they are the only pair to legitimately win the award. Though Roosevelt was effective in his roll in North Africa, he really shown during the Normandy landings. He was one of the few commanders that landed with his troops on D-Day and was instrumental in coordinating the attack from Utah beach on that day establishing the bridgehead. Roosevelt is what would be called a field commander of the first order. He was never afraid to be right at the front and to make corrections immediately based on the situation he saw.
Georgii Zhukov - With Stalin’s tendency to purge his generals it is amazing that the Soviets had any decent generals at all. 
Hitler was absolutely counting on the fact and the stalemate that was the Russo-Finnish War in 1939-1940 would seem to have confirmed it. Luckly for Stalin, he did have several generals that did quite well. Zhukov stands out to me for the events in which he was involved in before the Germans attacked. Prior to the Soviets being at war with the Axis powers there was a dust up in the Mongolian frontier that really set the stage for the rest of the Pacific war. Japan tangled with Zhukov at the Mongolian town of Nomonhan. There Zhukov’s forces gave the Japanese a pretty severe black eye which I think made a difference in policy for the Japanese when it came time to decide whether to expand north into Siberia or south into the Indies. He was very sucessful on the Eastern Front first in the effort to help the besieged Leningrad and eventually to the point where he was the commander who accepted Germany’s surrender. So successful was he, that he ran afoul of the ever suspicious Stalin after the war and relegated to a lowly district commander until Stalin’s death.
Albert Kesslering - Smiling Al was an interesting commander in that he was an air commander and a ground commander. 
While I feel he was a top notch air commander, the thing that really sets him apart in my book is his use of ground forces. Particularly, his ability to use defensive lines in order to serve as a delaying action against opposing troops. In Italy for example, he took advantage of every aspect of the terrain and equipment he had available to make what Churchill thought would be a rather easy line of conquest, an absolute nightmare for the troops on the ground. In effect, with a minimal amount of troops he was able to turn Italy into a stalemate that ate up Allied troops and resources. Of all the generals in the war, if you were fighting a defensive action, Kesslering would be the man you would want in command of that defense.