Worst Mistakes by Otherwise Competent Generals

In keeping with the over/underrated threads and the best/worst threads...

What are the worst mistakes by otherwise competent generals?

Napoleon--Russian campaign. 'Nuf said. He made other mistakes but those were political ones.

JEB Stuart--Not being at Gettysburg. Had he been available to scout the Union flanks on day 2, Lee would have OKed Hood's divisional strike east of Little Round Top, and Pickett could have charged along Cemetery Ridge, rather than up it.

For that matter,
Robert E. Lee--Pickett's Charge. 15,000 men over a mile with no diversionary attack. What did he think he was going to accomplish?

Harold King of England--Hastings, 1066. While every day William remained in England was a stain on Harold's honor, it was also another few dozen Thegns in his army and another day William had to feed himself off of the coastal region (or rely on unreliable shipping from Normandy). If Hastings had been fought a week or two later, Harold would have been stronger and William's march inland would have been a desperate lunge rather than a calculated maneuver.
 
Monty & Market-Garden must rank rather high.

Grant & Cold Harbor.

Rosecrans at Chickamauga

Paulus, Manstein et al for Stalingrad.

Von Rundsted for not shooting Hitler at any time.
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
The Comte de Soissons accidentally blowing his brains out ? Pretty bad move that

Grey Wolf
 

Redbeard

Banned
Wrede at Hanau 30th-31st October 1813 for relying on intelligence reports from Cossacks saying that it was only scattered collums of disillusioned French soldiers approaching. He deployed his troops (40.000+ well trained Bavarians and Austrians) accordingly to take as many PoW's as possible, but then suddenly must realise that he faces Napoleon himself ahead of the Imperial Guard and the main collumn of the Grande Armee - uupps - need new deployment urgently!

Next Wrede found out that someone in his staff had forgotten to bring the ammo train from last engagement at Würzburg, so his troops ran out of ammo in the climax of battle - that is a bad thing when facing the Old Guard!

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
What about these ?

Macarthur twice- Dec 1941 failing to heed warnings re imminent Jap air attack on Philippines, and 1950 not taking threats of Red Chinese intervention in Korea seriously

Wellington- lapse in judgment re 1 of his sieges whose name I don't recall, in the Peninsular

Hooker losing his nerve on the eve of Chancellorsville despite having initially outmanouevred Lee and the ANV

Pershing turning his back on his heritage as an officer with the Buffalo Soldiers and insisting on racial segregation and poor treatment of black soldiers in the US Army on the Western Front
 
Chickamauga: That wasn't really Rosecrans' fault. An orders screw-up pulled one of his divisions out of line right where the Confederate attack was. With the level of communications they had, you can't blame him for the order, and it's certainly not his fault that Gen. Wood decided to follow orders rather than fight the enemy that was attacking his positions.
 
God_of_Belac said:
Chickamauga: That wasn't really Rosecrans' fault. An orders screw-up pulled one of his divisions out of line right where the Confederate attack was. With the level of communications they had, you can't blame him for the order, and it's certainly not his fault that Gen. Wood decided to follow orders rather than fight the enemy that was attacking his positions.

Nonetheless, he was the General in charge. It was Rosecrans that ordered the movement of troops to support his left wing. And when the battle crisis came, as the Southerns took advantage of the gap, he took off with the rest of the routed Union soldiers, & left it to Thomas & others to conduct an excellent rearguard action which saved the Union army from annihilation.
 
Fair enough. I don't think it was a particularly bad mistake, and I don't think he was that competent anyhow, but it was a mistake.
 
I'll mention Caesar's siege at Dyrrachium after crossing with only half his army. Without his whole force, it would have taken a miracle for him to have beaten Pompey upon landing. He should have either waited for the second half of his army to cross, or taken his entire army through Illyricum to Greece.

Caesar also made a possibly fatal mistake when crossing to Africa. He did not give his army a specific landing location. His army was then dispersed in the crossing, and it was only his unfailing luck that allowed him to find his army and bring it together before he was attacked by Scipio and the other Pompeians.
 
God_of_Belac said:
Fair enough. I don't think it was a particularly bad mistake, and I don't think he was that competent anyhow, but it was a mistake.

I agree that it wasn't the worst mistake ever to take place on battlefield, & it was more luck than anything that the Southerners just happened upon the hole more than design, nonetheless Longstreet took the chance offered to him & that's all the Southern army needed. The result was a routed Union army, when there shouldn't have been one. So, because it was the turning point in the battle, it was a dreadful mistake as these things go as a consequence of how things turned out.

As for Rosecrans as a competent general - he was one, especially by Union standards, until that fateful moment. Afterwards, he was a washed out old man by all accounts.
 
aktarian said:
Zhukov and Mars. When it doesn't go it doesn't go so stop wasting men.

You know, I recently read an account of Operation Mars, and that sums it up quite well. 40,000 German casualties against 500,000 Russian ones, in an offensive that it was clear it wasn't going anywhere by the second or third day...*shakes head*.
 
well, it wasn't quite that bad; 80, 000 for 440, 000. Still a Russian disaster though.

However, my understanding has always been that Zhukov's initial plan was to limit himself to a counteroffensive against the Germans threatening Moscow, which succeeded brilliantly, but that Stalin intervened and insisted it be expanded into a "General Offensive".
 
Vercingetorix. Avaricum and Alesia.

Dumouriez. Trying to turn his troops on Paris, when they won't follow him.

Brunswick. Threatening atrocities and reprisal against the population before fighting the battle.

Louis XVIII ( ok not a general, technically, but still .. ) sending Ney to capture Napoleon, with unsecure troops, at that.
 
DMA said:
As for Rosecrans as a competent general - he was one, especially by Union standards, until that fateful moment. Afterwards, he was a washed out old man by all accounts.

To be truly fair, he was a competent general by Civil War non-Lee standards. His location-focused, plodding style, however, wouldn't have done very well even if he hadn't been routed. He's another of those generals whose success is entirely due to knowing how to array superior firepower, and in an equal fight, or one in which he was outnumbered, would have been toast.
 
Clinton demanding that all Southerners koin the ranks of the British, and putting the loyalist in power. Cornwallis (probably the best British general in the war) alienating the local population. And Been~a~dick Arnold betraying his countrymen.
 
God_of_Belac said:
To be truly fair, he was a competent general by Civil War non-Lee standards. His location-focused, plodding style, however, wouldn't have done very well even if he hadn't been routed. He's another of those generals whose success is entirely due to knowing how to array superior firepower, and in an equal fight, or one in which he was outnumbered, would have been toast.

Well if you take everything into account that you've claimed here, almost all of the Union generals were the same. Sherman, on his march to Atlanta, did exactly the same thing. Grant, in the aftermath of Gettysburg & the Peninsular Campaign more or less did the same thing. Furthermore, bringing superior firepower to bare upon an enemy, who isn't expecting it, is textbook tactics 101 for every army, from the ancients to Iraq 2003. Likewise, the whole principle of Blitzkrieg, for example, is based upon concentrating the maxiumum firepower against a weak location of the enemy's defences. So, in this regards, Rosecrans did everything right.

Now as for taking on a force similar to his own, you're forgetting his victory at Murfreesboro where you had about 40 000 Union troops up against 35 000 Rebels. Well that's reasonably close to having equal armies, but the opposite took place as you claimed, he won! Rosecrans won Murfreesboro so convincingly, albeit costly, that the Rebels were pushed out of Chattanooga & further south towards the Chickamauga River. Then we get another battle.

Chickamauga, however, was going against the Rebels for the entire battle until Longstreet's troops found the hole made due to troop movements on the second day. But do note, it was Bragg's intention on the second day to continue to attack Rosecran's left where Thomas was conducting a tough defence. Rebel losses were horrendous & it's possible, without significant reinforcements, that Thomas may have held. More importantly, Longstreet's initial attacks got smashed as much as Walker's & Polk's attacks on the left. In fact the famous Texan Brigade found the going so tough that they retreated. So Rosecran's right was just as secure as the left. It was only when the hole was found that the entire balance changed for the Rebels. After that it was all over for the Union. But prior to that, the Union was winning the battle. So by Rosecrans, a proven commander, ordering reinforcements to his left, he ensured his own downfall. As a result, that's a pretty big mistake.
 
Oh, it was Burgos where Wellington seriously had a lapse of judgment.

What about also Norm Cota for continuing to pointlessly feed in thousands of American soldiers into the slaughterhouse of the Huertgen Forest in late 1944 (despite his success in commanding the 29th THE BLUE AND THE GRAY at Omaha Beach) ?
 
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