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.
You Are The First Brigade!!
I'm no Reb...Yankee born and raised from Joshua Chamberlain country...
I know no one wants to give him credit but one has to admit that Hitler was pretty good. He was successful at taking over most of Europe, and was able to get his soldiers to do unspeakable acts in the name of his cause. That is pretty noteworthy when discussing military commanders.
Douglas MacArthur is the one.
Sherman
I've only scanned a couple of hundred but I haven't seen Winfield Scott's name anywhere...he deserves at LEAST an honorable mention.
I shall always believe that Lt. General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson was the greatest general. All I have to say is Second Manassas. Argue if you want, but I will live in my own little world, believing what I want...forever :)
LTG
I'm not saying that Scott was the best, just that he should be mentioned as being among that elite group. Jackson served under Scott in the Mexican-American war, each had great respect for the other.
Thank you! I'm shocked it took 24 replies to get to General Washington. With absolutely no formal training he became the adjutant general of the Virginia militia at age 20, and during the Seven Years War he learned the lessons of continental-scale warfare that were completely lost on the British, during that war and during the entire American Revolution.
What Washington did during the Revolution is nothing short of incredible, when you consider the political, strategic, tactical, and spiritual roles he fulfilled. Very few men would have inspired freezing, starving, unpaid citizens to remain at Valley Forge just to face the most powerful army again the following spring. Very few men could have convinced his men to cross the ice-strewn Delaware like they did. Very few men could have conceived of victory awaiting the ragamuffin colonials on the other end of years of toil, defeat, disease, and everything else they faced.
Every bit of the near-religious fervor with which his countrymen adored him was earned and deserved. Washington was nothing short of Providential.
p.s. The War of 1812 could easily have gone the other way had it not been for Scott...I can't recall for sure, but I think Scott and Jackson first met during that war.
Hitler was good as a corporal in WWI. He was a good rabble-rouser and he succeeded in taking over and Nazifying Germany. He succeeded at starting the most horrible war ever seen on earth, and had some initial success because he had good Generals working for him - at first. Some of those same Generals tried to kill him later in the war.
He was a psychotic SOB at best, and is no doubt doing eternity in the hottest furnace in hell and should never be mentioned in the same sentence as honorable men.
Welcome to FR, BTW.
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Captain John Chard commanding, Rourk's Drift.
King David
Not Montgomery or McArthur. Monty was largely responsible for the Battle of the Bulge by allowing the Germans to escape in 1943. He made mistakes all over N. Africa too.
McArthur gambled the farm on Inchon and won. Had the weather been anything other than perfection, he would have been among the worst.
Patton never lost period. He showed the world how to use armor and air power with almost precision coordination.
Washington did a whole lot with a very little. I'd have to say he's got to be up there.
Like Verginius said, Machiavelli probably got his information from the Roman historians that villified him.
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