Who Were the Greatest Military Commanders (Of All Time) ?

[Cyropaedia]

In light of the upcoming film Alexander (the Great), who in your opinion were actually the greatest military commanders our world has known...?

Mine are Genghis Khan, Alexander, and U.S. Grant.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Isn't that Jenjis Khan?

Temuchin.

[Cyropaedia]

I understand that Rommel was a great fan/student of Khan's.

[Bombardier]

One thing about US Grant and why he is one of the greats. West Point venerates Lee for many reasons, his military record not least among them. But Lee was a general of the old school. Given sufficient resources in men and materiel, Lee was tactically quite conservative and tended toward frontal assaults of enemy positions (Gettysburg is an object lesson of this point: When given the advice to flank the Union Army by Longstreet, Lee opted for frontal assaults against troops holding high ground, specifically Culp's Hill and Little Round Top).

Lee's reputation for daring comes primarily from necessity: He generally had fewer men and fewer resources, so he had no choice but to take long chances. This led to his having to be bold, but by watching Lee's performance at Gettysburg, as well as Sharpsburg, I don't see him as a particularly innovative commander. Able, yes. Driven, yes. Dedicated, definitely. Intelligent, beyond doubt. But essentially, Lee was tactically conservative, and strategically didn't grasp how crucial the western theater was in terms of the Civil War as a whole.

THAT MUCH SAID....I do admire General Lee immensely, and were I a soldier of that time, I would not hesitate to follow Lee into battle.

Grant, however, was cut from an entirely different mold from Lee. Grant wasn't the "Marble Model" that Lee was. He had been a middling student, but was a personally brave officer. The small and gossipy nature of the Army of the 1850s had more to do with Grant's reputation as a drunkard than his actual behavior does (my theory is that the wife of some other officer in Grant's regiment wanted the prestige of being married to an officer of higher rank, and so started the rumors of Captain Grant being an alcoholic in the aim of getting Grant busted. I've seen officer's wives in the modern military try similar stunts today, so that's where my theory comes from). Grant understood tactics from the level of a company grade officer, whereas Lee understood them from the level of a field grade officer. This contributed to their styles of command as generals.

Grant knew that to win a battle you took territory, but to win a war you had to destroy your enemy's means to prosecute that war. This is elementary to us today, but was radical thinking in the 1860s. Officers were schooled in the thought of Henri Jomini, a Swiss theoretician who taught that wars were won by taking objectives, not by killing more of the enemy's soldiers than he killed of yours.

Grant practiced maneuver warfare wherever possible....his Virginia Campaign of 1864 was one series of left flanking assaults against Lee. This is similar to how he handled Vicksburg. Grant tried to isolate Vicksburg by maneuver, but was unable to accomplish that, and thus settled into a siege. Grant understood the value of siege warfare, but it was always his final option, not the first. Compare that to McClellan, who believed in the siege as being the highest form of warfare because it focused on a geographic objective, not open field battle.

The breakout from Petersburg in 1865 was a further example of maneuver warfare. Grant always tried to hit Lee on the flanks, or to encircle him. Yes, Grant lost more men than Lee, but this is because of two reasons: Grant had a bigger army, and Lee had to husband his men carefully DUE TO HAVING FEWER BACK HOME TO DRAW ON. When Lee was in a situation where he was not outnumbered, he spent men to the same extent as other commanders during the Civil War.

My whole point is that Lee and Grant are BOTH officers and commanders to be proud of. Lee represents the best of the Old Army...the tradition, the valor, the legend. Grant represents the New Army...mobile, aggressive, dogged and determined. Think what an army the US would have had with those men on the same side....and to an extent, that's what we have now...the Rebs and the Yanks all in US camo. Hell of a good Army. Best on Earth.

(Great great grandson of a sergeant in the 9th Texas Volunteers, 1861-1865, CSA)

[MagnumRancid]

Interesting observation, but I think Grant is too readily dammed. He, like Lincoln, understood that the Confederacy did on not need to "win" the war. If they went long enough without "losing" they could achieve most of their objectives. He understood that the Union needed to "win" decisively and win as soon as possible. The jury may still be our on whether the sacrifice was justified.

[Malleus Dei]

Puller, Patton, Sherman, Forrest, Wellington, Epaminondas.

[libertyman]

......& others can't handle the truth

[Malleus Dei]

Oh, and Bobby Lee is WAY overrated...and I'm a Southerner. Forrest was ten times the combat commander.

[Defiant]

I agree that 30,000 Mongols of AD 1200 would defeat 30,000 Macedonians of BC 330. But they were from two different eras. If Alexander had come across the problem of defeating the Mongols, and lived in an era where the same technology was available to both, I think he would have done it. The armies he defeated and lands he conquered presented even greater challenges in many ways. Defeating the siege at Tyre. Defeating much larger Persian forces several times. The Bactria campaign. Defeating Porus and his elephants. These were absolutely amazing feats.

The Mongols won because no one in their day could come up with a way to counter their speed and maneuverability. If anyone could have come up with a counter strategy (without computers and wargaming), it would have been Alexander.

[jocon307]

"George Washington has to rank up there."

Yes, I like your argument.

First in war
First in peace
First in the hearts of his countrymen

Even to this day. I feel a fine revival coming on. I think our "values" may yet carry the day.

If we look to General Washington we can't go far astray.

God bless America and our noble fighters, doing such good jobs, so far away from here.

[AndrewC]

Rowan Atkinson(aka Black Adder)

[DixieOklahoma]

I'll agree with that.

[Timmy]

Grant? Are you nuts? The only reason he beat Lee was that he had far more men who were much better equipped. If Lee and Grant had swapped sides, the South would not have lasted two years.

Although I would have agreed with you once upon a time, I now believe Grant was a greater general than Lee. Lee was always on the defensive against Grant (in fact, he never went on the offensive against Grant at all). That gave him a tremendous advantage in terms of casualties.

Also, Lee twice nearly squandered his army, only to be saved by the timidity of the generals opposing him. He stayed on the field of Antietam on September 18. An attack by Porter's unused Corps would have destroyed his army and ended the war very early. However, McClellan lacked the guts. Then, after Chancellorsville, he ordered a full frontal assault on the Union position. Had not Hooker retreated earlier, the result would have been disasterous.

Lee was a great general, who was very lucky with his opponents . . . until Grant came east. Then he was finished.

[wagglebee]

They both had their early wartime experience under Winfield Scott in the Mexican War. NOBODY can dispute that Lee was clearly Scott's favorite, Grant and every other commander in the country knew it. Lee's record at West Point is a legend to this day and Lee's strategies have been studied for 140 years (I am fairly certain that Rommel was a student of Lee's tactics). Grant fought the modern all out war because he could, Lee never had the opportunity.

[Malleus Dei]

Grant was a proto-Eisenhower, a general who loved broad pressure and attrition. That's hardly brilliance. Sherman, on the other hand, was a proto-Patton.

[Burr5]

Good point about Lee. Better than Grant, who was pretty good as well.

Here are some other "bad guys" who should be mentioned:
Nathan Bedford Forrest- Confederate genious. Scary tactician-founder of the KKK.

Heinz Guderian. The architect of the modern ground war as it incorporates heavy armor. Nazi bastard. Smart guy.

Good guys:

Moshe Dayan. You have to love someone who kicks the sh*t out of so many Arabs.

MacArthur and Nimitz. Fixed the East in a way we somehow failed to fix Europe.

Ronald Reagan. Destroyed America's most dangerous enemy ever without firing a shot. THAT'S a general.

Not-so-sure-if-they're-good-guys:

Alexander the Great. The Persians had launched numerous wars against Greek civilization and Alex would have no more of it. Made it all the way to India.

Julius Caesar. Nothing needs to be said about this guy. Created the Empire. Screw the Senate, as I say unto this very day.

[CondiArmy]

I would have to say Shaka Zulu. He designed a new weapon for his troops (the "i-klwas"), instilled modern style discipline, and used completely different tactics in each of his major battles. Although he died before the Zulu Wars against the British, he had built an army which was able to inflict the worst single defeat against colonial Britain (Battle at Isandlwana), while using basically iron age weapons.

[Florida native]

Yes, David, and also Joshua.

[omega4412]

And what about Scipio, who defeated Hannibal?

[jocon307]

"Nathan Bedford Forrest....It was he who came up with the saying, "Get there firstest, with the mostest."

Aha! I have always sort of wondered about that. Now to know its martial origin, that gives it more meaning.

[Polybius]

I can't believe none of y'all have mentioned Gaius Marius yet. He was a great general who got overshadowed by Julius Caesar, but he brought many innovations to the Roman Army that made Caesar's later successes possible; most notably, the idea of a standing professional army, using members of the capite censi, or Head Count citizens, men not of landed or privileged classes, and consequently equipped at the expense of the state. It was a novel idea in its day.

Unfortunately, Marius' "reforms" eventually killed the Roman Republic by replacing an army of "citizen soldiers" fighting for their Republic with an army of de facto mercenaries whose loyalty was not to the Republic but to their commander who brought them riches.

Prior to Marius, the Roman citizen soldier fought for the Republic.

After Marius, the Roman soldier fought for Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Octavian, Galba, Titus, ad nauseum

One of the root causes of the disastrous Roman performance in the first half of the Second Punic War was the Roman Republic's fear of a military tyrant. To avoid this, their separation of powers doctrine was so overdone that the Consulship was divided between two men for any given term and the term was limited to two years. As a result, Rome repeatedly pitted relatively amateur Generals against the professional, Hannibal.

Only Scipio Africanus' extended training period in far off Hispania allowed him to become an equal to Hannibal and Scipio, in the finest tradition of the Republic, did not use his Army for the pursuit of personal power.

The fear of the example of what Marius brought about was such that our own American Founding Fathers had a dread of the threat of such a "standing army" and, right up until Pearl Harbor, America modeled it's Army on the "Cincinatus" model of the citizen soldier of the pre-Marius Roman Republic.

Since the beginning of the Cold War, the co-existence of one of the most powerful Armed Forces the world has ever known with the continued freedom of America has been a historical anomaly and any student of history can only be in awe of the maturity of the American Republic that has allowed our Republic to survive where the Roman Republic perished.