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.

[Strategerist]

OK, explain Louis Davout.

Marshall Louis Davout was the greatest subordinate general in military history, hands down....much less debateable than greatest military commander.

Davout was one of Napoleon's Corps commanders. Totally loyal to his commander right to the end. Fought an amazing amount of battles, basically never made a mistake, was the key commander in a number of Napoleon's greatest victories (Jena-Auerstedt for one.)

Probably fought in 20 times more battles than Stonewall Jackson, and never had some of the mistakes and weak performances Jackson did.

Thing that hurts him is that he had somewhat of a boring personality, and didn't have any odd quirks or habits to help make him famous. He was simply a great commander.

Ridiculous for Stonewall to be mentioned over and over again and get about 200 posts into the thread before Davout was mentioned, but, as always, the problem is that plenty of people at least know something about the American Civil War but currently in this country the number of people that have the foggiest notion of the Napoleonic Wars is very small.

[bagman]

Grant's Vicksburg Campaign of May, 1863, is pretty impressive. As I've studied the War of Northern Agression more and more, the more Grant impresses me. He learns throughout the War, whereas as Lee, of whom I have the greatest admiration (can look at three pictures of him as I type this), is pretty much the same general in April, 1865, that he was in June, 1862.

[Defiant]

Your post shows an incredible ignorance of what war is. The cause of the war is irrelevant. You can believe that it was the war of Northern Aggression if you want to. The point I was making, and that should be understood by anyone posting on this hypothetical topic was that great commanders are great because they won their wars, not because their cause was great or just. Alexander had no claim to Bactria, nor did Genghis have the right to take Russia, but they did, killing thousands or in the case of Genghis, tens of thousands, of innocents along the way, raping and pillaging and committing all manner of atrocities.

In the Civil War, the North's goal was to defeat the South militarily, and force them to rejoin the union. The south's goal was to hold out long enough to force the North to let them go. They did not aspire to defeat and occupy the North, but they did hope to defeat its Army. The south's armies roamed all over, crossing over into the North, and engaging the North in southern and border states.

So long as the North fought the war by trying to chase down and defeat the South's armies, they could not bring an end to the war. To win the war, they had to take the war to the enemy, much as we have to take the war to the terrorists in order to defeat them. A brilliant way to do that was to slice across the south and cut it in half, while at the same time rampaging enough so that the word got back to the armies in the field and demoralized them, making them eager for an end to the war.

As Sherman said, war is hell. Because it's hell, when you're in one, you want to do what you can to win it and get the hell out of it.

They brought it on themselves because they were in a war and they were going all out to win it, causing immense casualties on the Northern side, and they had left the North no option that would allow them to win except to destroy the South's ability to fight the war. This presaged the type of war that was fought in WW2, where we had to destroy the industry of the Axis in order to win the war, killing millions of civilians along the way. The Civil War was what they later termes "total war".

When you get in a war, especially one that you started, like the South started the civil war, you accept that the other side will do what it takes to win. If you don't, don't get in the war, or surrender. But don't whine about it. That's what war is.

On another note, what Sherman did seems brutal to us today, but in the 1860s, was not outside the bounds of what happened in wartime. The British did crap like that in the Revolution and war of 1812, the French did it in the French and Indian wars, the Europeans did it to each other throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and most other cultures in existence at that time in Africa and Asia were worse, not better, they just weren't as advanced.

Similarly, when Zarqawi beheads people as part of a brutal strategy to drive out the Americans, its pretty silly for him and Arabs to whine about the mean Americans when they go into Fallujah to wipe out the terrorists, and some buildings and terrorist harboring civilians get hurt in the process. We're at war; they forced us to do it to win the war. That's that.

[Zechariah11]

slingshotwrong.a sling. no generalship or strategy involved.

[CWOJackson]

He defeated a mighty army...not bad for a shepherd.

[Arioch7]

Thanks man!

I asked you that because I have never heard of him and I am as you say woefully lacking on knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars.

You have expanded my reading lists and I thanl you for it!

Could you please explain this guy? Gephard von Blucher.

Is he part of the Prussian General Staff?

Arioch7 out

[Defiant]

Read no. 343.

[uncbob]

Douglas MacArthur is right up there... That's my pick too.

Posilutely

[Harris]

Clearly the greatest is Napoleon. If you can win with the French, you can win anywhere anytime. Of course he was flawed and eventually lost big time.

[JasonC]

Patton and Napoleon certainly, and Rommel was a good general, though he had his drawbacks (over extended many times, poor grasp of logistics, unsound plan for the defense of France). MacArthur lost his nerve, in command shock, after the Chinese intervention in Korea, as is proven by Ridgeway's superior performance with the same hand. Montgomery was mediocre - Market Garden is a telling failure, and the multiple failures in front of Caen, despite massive resources at his disposal, are not to his credit. Hannibal I addressed in a previous post, above. Nimitz was indeed a great military commander, though also one with a simply overwhelming hand. And arguably, if one is looking for flaws, 1943 was largely wasted in the south Pacific fighting, when the central pacific route taken later was already open. Schwartkopf made sound use of an overwhelming hand, only to see his forces stopped before they could save us from our present difficulties, but was never tested for real greatness by any real adversity or challenge. Zhukov was simply in charge of an eventually sound institution; he had some brilliant conceptions but also some stunning failures, and overall his record in an unimpressive one - great breakthroughs stabilized by inferior defending forces, much higher losses sustained from a position of material superiority, etc.

[JasonC]

George Washington was a statesman and showed it by refusing to be made a king and retiring after 2 terms. He commanded in some tough times without his army completely falling apart. But by the standards of straight military history, he was a mediocre corps level commander. We won because of our natural advantages in the war (distance, popular support, etc) and because of French help - not because of any brilliance in Washington's generalship. He was a good man, but not a gifted general.

[JasonC]

Tamerlane was basically just a butcher who fought smaller forces with huge ones and destroyed everything in his path, like a swarm of locusts. He trapsed across his own domains on missions of conquest, and left nothing but deserts and disunity. He was not a successful commander, he just killed a lot of people to no purpose. Note, this is not true of the earlier Mongol leaders, some of whom had real military accomplishments. But largely due to the weakness of their enemies and the native superiority of steppe nomad warfare at that time - whenever they got their act together politically. Not things any of them invented, incidentally.

[JasonC]

Yes, Nelson was indeed a great military commander. Fair point.

[JasonC]

The south didn't last 2 years, from the moment Grant was put in charge...

[Vicomte13]

Going in order from the ancient world to today, and picking out the greatest military leaders from each epoch. The greatest of all are in ALLCAPS:

CYRUS THE GREAT - conquered all the other empires of the ancient world of his time to make the great Persian Empire, and yet was a mild enough ruler to be remembered as "great" by foreigners.

(The Sargons and Nebuchadnezzars and Pharaohs before him were small potatoes. Cyrus' was the first "world empire", qualifying him as the first truly "great".)

Alexander the Great - for the same reason as Cyrus. Cyrus, however, was the greater leader, because Alexander left nothing but glory and civil war. Cyrus died leaving a world empire that lasted centuries.

Julius Caesar - in addition to conquering Gaul, he also beat Pompey the Great. Greater diplomatic and administrative skills than Alexander. Less than Cyrus, however. The Scipio Africanuses and Trajans of the Roman world won great battles and campaigns, but didn't change the whole world of their time the way Julius Caesar did. Atilla the Hun lost in Gaul, and didn't accomplish anything, so he's not on the list either.

CHARLEMAGNE: creator of the "West" as we know it. The European and Medieval equivalent of Cyrus the Great. Won all the battles. Christianized half of Europe.

SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT: the Cyrus the Great of the Ottoman Turks...unfortunately.

Tamerlane, Ghengis Khan, Richard Coeur de Lion and similar commanders, while brilliant field and operational commanders, and inspiring leaders, left nothing durable. Of the three, Ghengis Khan is the medieval equivalent of Alexander the Great. A great operational commander with no capacity to turn victories into a new civilization.

From the early modern era onward, there are none who rise to the level of Cyrus the Great, Charlemagne and Suleiman the Magnificent, because nobody else had the whole package of command and civilization building at his disposal. The closest one could find might be Peter the Great and Frederick the Great of Russia and Prussia, respectively, but their achievements, while notable, were either not as impressive militarily (Peter the Great generally did not personally command), or didn't change the world (Prussia was a gritty little state, but didn't change much of anything in the world by emerging on the scene.

So, with the moderns, when we talk about generals and admirals, we're talking about folks who, by the very nature of the limitations of office and development of bureaucratic government, could never rise to the all-encompassing greatness of a Cyrus or Charlemagne or Suleiman.

But let's look at the greatest of the military professionals:

For England, in order of importance to the realm: Nelson, Drake, Marlborough, Wellington.
Why that order? Napoleon could have conquered England had Villeneuve's fleet gotten there, and no other English Admiral had developed the capacity to pounce upon and tear apart a fleet like Nelson. But for Nelson, we'd all probably be speaking French. Drake fended off the Spanish Armada, but he had a lot of help from the weather and the desperation of the Spanish situation. (The Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander of the "Invincible" Armada, had more modest expectations, writing in his log before the Armada even left Spain of all of the supply and coordination and weather problems the Armada would face, and concluding with: "And so we sail, in the confident expectation of a miracle." Without Drake, the Spanish might not have gotten into England. Without Nelson, pass the foie gras.
Marlborough and Wellington were both the great operational warriors of their time. Marlborough was more important, because his enemy was Louis XIV at the very pinnacle of French power. By the time Napoleon faced Wellington at Waterloo, he'd already been defeated and was rolling the dice. Had Wellington lost, there were backstops. And the French were pretty desperate at Waterloo. Had Marlborough lost, there would be no Holland, Germany, Italy or Spain...and we'd probably all be speaking French.

For France:
Joan of Arc, actually. She did what no French general could do: inspired the French to throw the English out of France after 120-odd years of consistent defeat. Of course, it helps when God is whispering battle plans in your ear, so it's not fair to include Joan (or Joshua) on the list. Joan wasn't victorious because she was Joan. She was victorious because of her voices. Obviously God gets to win all the battles he fights in, so assuming that her voices were real, the English couldn't have won if they had had machine guns and tanks. Not fair to put her on the list, but she DID win an impossible campaign.

The Great Turenne. He essentially created the modern military, and won the wars for France until dying in battle.
The famous last words attributed to him, as he rode forward under fire to steady the lines and prevent a defeat, give a measure of the man. Shaking in the saddle with bullets flying about, he is said to have said: "Tu trembles carcasse, tu trembles, mais si tu savais ou je t'emmene, tu tremblerais d'avantage." ("You tremble, carcas, you tremble. But if you knew where I am taking you, you would tremble all the more.") Of course France has not had men like that for a long time.

Suffren. French Admiral who actually took most of India from the British during the American Revolutionary period. France's only fighting Admiral.

Davout. Davout was a better strategist than his master, Napoleon. He was a better field commander. He was a better operational commander. He was a better administrator. If he had had any ambition, Europe would have been in deeper trouble than it was under his boss. Fortunately for Wellington and Blucher, Davout was left behind in command of the defenses of Paris and Napoleon took the field himself at Waterloo. The greatest general on any side in the Napoleonic wars.

Foch. The Eisenhower of the First World War. More cautious with French and allied lives than the butchers who preceded him. Victor of the second battle of the Marne. France's last great general.

For the US:
Washington, Winfield Scott (Mexican War plans and Anaconda Plan were the keys to success in two wars), Grant (victor in the West, then the East), Nimitz, Eisenhower.

For the Germans:
Frederick the Great. Moltke the Elder. Von Hindenburg (victor in the East in WWI). Guderian. But in truth German officership has been seriously overrated. There have been many masterful German tacticians and operational commanders, but German strategic command has always been very poor, and prone to severe miscalculation that has generally led, over the course of history, to a practically unbroken string of military defeats. France has a much higher overall win to loss ratio than Germany.

Germany's greatest commander of all time was not a military man. Bismarck understood that in the modern world, neither colonies nor unlimited warfare were the key to power, but industrialization, social cohesion, good diplomacy, trade and science. Unfortunately for the Germans (and everyone else!), the great Bismarck was overruled by a headstrong Kaiser, and the rest, as they say, is history.

[patso]

I thought Genghis Khan was on Kerry's swift boat. He is really an historical character?

[Missouri]

The Nazi Submarine commanders had some excellent Officers as well although once again I am not able to remember the names.

Admiral Karl Donitz. Though I don't think he was a Nazi.

[AlienCrossfirePlayer]

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance -- American commander at Battle of Midway Island (June 3–6, 1942).

[swilhelm73]

Frederick the Great.

Leading tiny Prussia, he took on France*, Austria, Russia, Sweden and most of the rest of Germany.

And he fought them to a draw.

*This is long before France's military became the laughingstock of the world.

[Charles Henrickson]

I'll put in the top ten Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632), King of Sweden and hero of the Thirty Years' War, whose exploits saved the Lutheran (and Protestant) Reformation for Europe (and thus for America).