Innumerable battlefield commanders have had disastrous days at the office. When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. A more minor case, but one revealing of Westmorelands character, stemmed from his unwillingness to level with his senior Marine subordinate at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. The 5 Worst Generals in U.S. History. Loyalty to himself and himself alone would be something of a running theme in the narrative of Santa Annas life, and his rise to power in Mexico was characterized by near-constant vacillation and betrayal of his allies. This entire list could be populated with Roman commanders, but one manages to rise above the rest with an ineptitude that defies logic. Darius again was the first to flee the battle, abandoning all of his soldiers and his property to be taken by Alexander. How might Vietnam or Iraq have turned out if a George Washington, a Ulysses Grant or a George Patton had been in command? The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. General William Westmoreland. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. Others would say that it is not victory, but success in fulfilling a mission that counts. But beyond the goals of one leader in Moscow, it is also clear that Ukraine has suffered horrors of a historic nature. The self proclaimed Napoleon of the West didnt quite leave the same legacy as his idol. This is one of the more controversial ones, but Douglas MacArthur is incredibly overrated in the annals of the US military, in my . Creighton Abrams was an U.S. Army General who commanded American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. Nelsons victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was so complete that it established British supremacy on the high seas for more than a century. The last king of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, Darius was not quite as qualified to rule a mighty empire as his predecessors were. But the award for the biggest Persian loser goes to Darius III. Here is a list of the 10 most famous Chinese generals in history. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. There are issues around killing and counting unarmed civilians (non-combatants) as enemy combatants, as well as inflating the number of actual enemy who were killed in action (KIA).For search and destroy operations, as the objective was not to . Thats the point. Seared into all who fought it and many who merely lived through it that conflict remains a bitter stew of second-guessing and recriminations. James K. Polk. Gates thought otherwise, and fancied himself a better commander than George Washington. Mexican general Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna probably wished that everyone really did remember the Alamo, because: (1) he actually did win that battle (he outnumbered his opponents between 10- and 30-to-1); and (2) during the 13-day siege, he somehow resisted the urge to betray all his allegiances and change sides. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. Persian Gulf (1988) (Oil Platforms) 2. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777. History is not a fixed set of facts. After the Germans attacked, Gamelin was eventually removed from his post, but by then it was too late. Westmoreland held a press conference in which he categorically denied any such loss of confidence. In 1940, after increasing pressure from dictator Benito Mussolini and facing demotion, Graziani followed orders and invaded Egypt with his Tenth Army. Finally, when it comes to bad generals, let us remember Truman's immortal words about firing MacArthur: I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. He gritted his teeth and wore down the Confederacy with incessant attacks until the South could take no more. These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. Delivered Friday. Gamelin made the mistake of viewing the Ardennes as impenetrable and chose to defend it with ten of his weakest, least well equipped and least well trained divisions. How well that would have worked can be seen when Gates was sent to command American troops in the South. Alas, as a historian, he passed on the opportunity to answer Battlelands questions about what Vietnam should teach us about Afghanistan, and who, if anyone, is todays Westmoreland, during our email chat earlier this week: Whats the most important thing you learned writing Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam? By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. Alas, call it the laws of probability or just cosmic karma, but every nation produces bad generals as well as good onesand America is no exception. 1. After his defeat by the Texans at the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna was captured. McClellan was a proto-Douglas MacArthur who bad-mouthed his president and commander-in-chief. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. He was soon released, however, and, as more capable French admirals either died or somehow incurred Napoleons disfavor, a path to the top echelons of command was opened for Villeneuve. 10. Instead of holding a natural defense line around Pyongyang, which would have given the United Nations control of most of the peninsula, the UN troops retreated all the way back into South Korea in a humiliating reverse for U.S. power after the crushing victory of World War II. He lacked the schooling and relevant experience to understand the war and devise a viable approach to prosecuting it. Alexander, Napoleon, Rommel. Yes, eminently. Their orientation, indeed the core of Scoutings values, is selflessness and service to others. 15. (You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. By the way, here is the first review I have seen of Sorley's new biography of Westmoreland, which I read in galleys last summer, and enjoyed. DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/Contributor/Getty Images, Biden Proposal Puts Climate Agenda Above Americas Defense, Russias New START Breach Means U.S. Nuclear Weapons Modernization Is a Must. The Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial LectureThomas E. Ricks is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). In fifteen thought-provoking essays, each written by a professional military historian, readers are introduced . The inept Luigi Cadorna of Italy fought a dozen battles on the Isonzo before his army completely collapsed at Caporetto. Not good, Hannibal. 8. On the night of August 15, 1812, Tecumseh led his forces across the Detroit River, and Brock followed the next morning. Who was the worst US general during the Vietnam War? McClellan truly disappointed president Lincoln at the Battle of Antietam where the North and South would fight the bloodiest battle of the war. That may have been true in the east (the worst of the Union generals in that theater rates his own entry on this list), but in the west it was a much different affair. - 1 Best: 1996 Chicago Bulls. Advancing to the North Korean border with China also was a red flag for Mao-Tse Tung, who feared that American troops on his border were a prelude to U.S. invasion. - 3 Best: 1987 Los Angeles Lakers. He was uninterested in other viewpoints on how the war might be prosecuted, dismissing the PROVN Study sponsored by Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson (which concluded that Westmorelands way of war was not working and could not work) and basic disagreements with Westmorelands organization and approach voiced by his brilliant classmate General Bruce Palmer Jr. 7. Ulysses S. Grant made his Civil War debut at the Battle of Belmont against Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE. Panama (1989) 2. Sorley skillfully uses Westmoreland's own words to show time and again his duplicity at worst and his lack of touch with reality at best. Weekly update on whats driving U.S. national security policy. These American commanders have lost the battle for history. Rommel is by far the greatest military general of the . Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. But in a contemporaneous cable to General Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Westmoreland complained that the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. I flew into Vietnam in June 1968 as a young . Not later than the autumn of 1966 the leaders of both services involved in fighting the ground war in VietnamArmy Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson and Marine Commandant General. Yet backstabbing your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war is taking ambition a little too far. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges. He overestimated the American peoples patience and tolerance of friendly losses. Considering some militants as instruments of regional influence while fighting others has had disastrous consequences. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. On the other hand, there was that bad day at the Battle of Salamis when most of the Persian fleet went to the bottom. On September 9, 1965, Navy Cmdr. (The leg did get a state funeral). His invasion of Canada came to an abrupt halt when he failed to capture Fort Malden, a British position that was a laughably short distance from Hulls headquarters at Fort Detroit. Seriously, who represents The British Empire; had the worlds greatest navy, enough cash to hire half the mercenaries of Europe, and the advantage of having a pretty pathetic-looking foe: a rag-tag army of ill-equipped rebels. He was found guilty of 11 counts, and only the intervention by Pres. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. He was certainly nave, but the Boy Scouts need to be defended here. He bears a lot of responsibility for one the greatest reversals of military fortune ever experienced by a super power. It is probably not a coincidence that corruption in the military appears to have escalated since 2006, when the number of military generals started to jump sharply. Having several decades of duplicity to draw on at this point, everyone had a pretty good idea of how any such deal would turn out, and the aging general was rebuffed by both parties. You worked for GEN Westmoreland when he was Army Chief of Staff. [i] However, the list is subjective, and open to debate, as top 10 lists tend to be. Saul David reviews a surprising study of military failure and names his own five most infamous generals Saul David Thursday February 17 2022, 12.00am , The Times 2. Westmoreland established a headquarters known as MACV Forward in the northern provinces of South Vietnam and put his deputy, General Creighton Abrams, in charge, placing him over the Marines and also the Army forces in that region. Delivered Thursday. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. The man who appealed for Varus help was Arminius, a Romanized Germanic prince. A key plank in the Democratic platform that year was, appropriately, not fighting, and McClellan lost in a rout. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on. A U.S. ship conveyed him to Mexico, and upon his arrivalto the surprise of virtually no onehe executed a volte-face and took charge of the Mexican troops. This proved possible only with enemy cooperation, since they could break contact and limit casualties as they wished by withdrawing into sanctuaries across the border. After achieving moderate success in Libya and Ethiopia, the Butcher of Ethiopia became Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Royal Armys General Staff and of Italian North Africa at the start of World War II. Casey was an Army insidera four-star general and the son of the highest-ranking American casualty of the Vietnam War, a division commander who was killed in a July 1970 helicopter crash. Many have described his activities as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history." 3 Nidal Malik Hasan Nidal Malik Hasan was a U.S. Army Major, and the sole suspect in a shooting at the Fort Hood military base, only weeks before he would have deployed to Afghanistan. Once again, McClellan worked his organizational magic, restoring the morale of a shattered Union army. On the other side of the trenches in World War I was Erich Ludendorff, commanding the armies of Germany. He also issued orders to his troops in a personal code that no one else understood, such as this gem of command clarity: Move your command, i. e., the walking boys, pop guns, Baker's outfit and the outfit which is the reverse of Baker's outfit and the big fellows to M, which is due north of where you are now, as soon as possible. By the end of May 1862, Confederate commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had withdrawn his forces to Richmond, and McClellan was close enough to the Confederate capital to hear its church bells ringing. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? Franz Conrad von Htzendorf of Austria couldnt decide which country he wanted to invade, so the German General Staff eventually took his armies away. Pillow escaped during the night, leaving Simon B. Buckner to surrender the fort and 15,000 Confederate troops. But for whatever reason, some American commanders have lost the battle for history. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. Grenada (1983) 3. His senior staff lacked diversity of experience and professional outlook, consisting mostly of people with backgrounds similar to his own, especially airborne. Read More. Think about how history would have been different if Hannibal had a military plan to outlast Roman might. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces. 2. He worked under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich as a leading general and gained fame from his battles in North Africa. However, not even they managed to get themselves court-martialed and sentenced to death for ineptitude on the battlefield. The war soon ended in a Russian defeat, with hundreds of thousands of military and civilian casualties. Darius never showed up for the first battle and defeat (Battle of Granicus) because he didnt see Alexander as much of a threat to his empire. Johnston was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Seven Pines, six miles east of Richmond, and he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. There appeared to be little serious planning for what would happen the day after Saddam was gone. Todays list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam. It would be nice if all American generals were great. All the enemys losses were quickly made up. Thus, almost by default, Westmoreland was left to go his own way, year after bloody year. [1] World War I provided a forum for any number of truly horrible commanders to assert themselves. Lpez, possibly in a fit of madness, ordered the execution of hundreds of people, including some of his own family members. 15. Varus placed his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germanic Cherusci tribesman maximized. It was a humiliating baptism of fire for the U.S. Army in Europe, and more important, caused British commanders to dismiss their Yank allies as amateur soldiers for the rest of the war. Darius III. What was the worst battle of Vietnam? For many soldiers, a major tipping point happened when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, news of which reaches the soldiers in Da 5 Bloods during one particularly stirring scene .
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