Posted on 11/14/2004 5:23:06 PM PST by 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.
Washington ranks up there with the greatest statesmen of history... but not the greatest generals. His accomplishments in holding the army and the new nation together were truly remarkable, but his military exploits were not the stuff of Alexander, Hannibal or Napoleon (my top 3).
two from that list that bear mentioning: Belisarius and Xenophon. Xenophon's march of the 10,000 is right up there in the great campaigns of all time, even if it was a retreat.
Aother great German General of WWII was Eric Von Manstein. He was a Panzer Commander and an old style Prussian Aristocrat who detested Hitler and was one of the few who wpuld stand up to him. He refused to obey Hitlers order to shoot all of the Soviet Commisars they captured.
He was the victor of the battle of Kharkov and had Hitler heeded his counsel instead of firing him, the Soviet Union would probably have fallen and there certainly would have been no Stalingrad.
American Generals: The Confederate trio of Lee, Jackson and Forrest. MacArthur was brilliant at times: His S. Pacific campaign, WWI and Inchon but he could screw up royally as well: Corrigador and his ineffective defense of the Phillipenes and the Red Chinese ambush in Korea.
Best Regimental and battalion Commander: Chesty Puller, USMC who, BTW, was a cousin of Patton (both were descendents of Confederate soldiers).
Best American Naval Commander: admiral Nimitz. (Its ironic that our chief Army Commander and our chief Naval commander inWWII (Eisenhower & Nimitz) were both of German descent).
G. Washington, McArthur and Patton.
That reminds me what General George Patton said. "Becoming a Nazi was like becoming a Republican or Democrat". He sure caught a lot of hell for saying that.
Charles Martel.
He fought against the Islamic Moors out of Spain against overwhelming odds, beat them, kept them from invading the rest of Europe, and basically saved our society from domination by the hordes.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the great Charles Martel.
Very little is known about this today.
With regard to Inchon -- words of admiration fail me. To think that the Allied Forces were all but beaten when he pulled it off. He turned a sure defeat into a huge victory. And lasting consequences -- just look at the stark contrast in the two Koreas fifty years later.
Nathan Bedford Forrest?
Zat you Algore?
Is he the Spartan whose response to the Persians demand that they surrender their weapons was "Come and get them"? (Molon Labe)
Schwartzkopf's envelopment of the Iraqi Army was not his idea but came from a retired Air Force Colonel named John Boyd, who, living in Boynton Beach discerned and critiqued Schwartzkopf's plan. Boyd then got through to allies in the Pentagon -- including Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Schwartzkopf was furious at what he saw as meddling but in time saw the wisdom of the "end run" that Boyd had proposed. Take a look at the book Boyd, by Roger Coram, for the details of a remarkable and tempestuous military career.
Somewhere in the list below is your answer. But I can’t pick the winner. So let’s look at some of those who would be certain candidates for the greatest military leader of all time.
Hannibal said the 3 greatest generals were Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus and himself. He probably knows more about it than I do, so I defer to his opinion of a list of greatest ancient generals. Though I personally believe that Scipio Africanus, the greatest Roman general of all time, ranks just above Hannibal.
Julius Caesar - there is a reason Napoleon studied all of his battles. I mean, when you are primarily responsible for the brilliance of a Napoleon Bonapart, you must have been doing something right. One of only 2 people to conquer Britian in the last 2000 years.
Khalid ibn-al-Walid - Somebody was responsible for the huge spread of Islam. Might as well give him the credit.
The unknown Viking leader. Whoever he was, he kicked ass and took names!
William the Conqueror, the only person to have ever conquer Britain since Julius Caesar.
Genghis Khan – needs no intruduction
Gustavus Adolphus – the grandfather of modern war.
Frederick the Great - still studied today. He was great!
Napoleon Bonapart – the father of modern war.
Red Cloud - you wonder what he could have done with armored divisions and air cover.
Shaka Zulu – if we had him leading the US forces today, would we still be fighting a war in Iraq? I think not.
Robert E. Lee - a military genius when advised by Stonewall Jackson, less so after Jackson’s death, and you wonder if it wasn’t Jackson who was the genius.
Heinz Guderian – the father of modern battlefield tactics.
Patton – if you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.
Add to that the fact that he basically told the JCS to go pee up a rope; it would take a direct order from Truman to keep him from launching an invasion of Inchon.
What was left unsaid is that, had he been forbidden to invade Inchon, he would have resigned and run against Truman in the next election.
No question that Inchon was a brilliant operations, but by that time, the NK's were outnumbered and the Pusan perimeter was stabilized. More importantly, the NK's around Pusan were at the end of their supply lines and running low on food and ammo. They were ripe for a counterattack anyway, but Inchon maximized the blow, no question.
Will do. Thanks!
Chengis Khan pretty much invented modern warfare, and he and his luitenants invented getting around. Subudai needed only for Khan Oktai to live another two years and he'd have been the first military commander in the history of the planet to have stood on both the Atlantic and Pacific shores of Eurasia. Those guys were moving entires armies 100 - 200 miles per DAY and were getting messages from Beijing to Moscow in a week.
You'd have to put Julius Caesar in there somewhere. He once laid seige to a city by building a wall completely around it and was then attacked by forces coming to rescue the city.
He responded by building a second wall and putting his outnumbered soldiers between the two walls with his enemies on either side. He defeated the forces on both sides.
And Inchon prevented a costly campaign back up the Korean peninsula. The problem is that there weren't enough troops in the Pusan perimeter at the time to mount an effective counterattack.
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