Mirror, mirror on the wall, who the stupidest of them all?

[Mostlyharmless]

Who was the most stupid political figure of the period before and during WW2? Military leaders can be included if their stupidity was political such as Admiral Yamamoto's attack on Pearl Harbor.

[BlackWave]

Hitler. Maybe Chamberlain, although he did have justifications. Stalin, maybe, for ignoring all the intel on the Barbarossa buildup.

[nbcman]

Franz von Papen

For his backdoor scheming that allowed Hitler to get to the Chancellorship.

[burmafrd]

Remember Yammamoto had it that the Declaration of War would come one hour before the attack. Now we still would have been furious but it would not have been quite as bad. He knew full well that going to war with us was virtually suicide without all the breaks going Japans way. A lot of them did but not enough to really matter in the end. Even if he had gotten both carriers at Pearl it would only have delayed the inevitable. And he knew that. But he followed his orders and did the best that he could have with a losing hand.

[BlairWitch749]

Mark Clark, Goering, Udet, Hitler, The entire Japanese high command, the French general staff 1940, but the cake has to go to Marshal of the Soviet Union Buddeny

[Riain]

Australian PM John Curtin. He was opposition leader in 1939 and became PM in 1941 but in 1945 said to Macarthur 'I don't know anything about war' and meant it. How friggin dumb can you get, surely being in the top amn in waiting and then becoming the top man during a 6 year war would give you the opportunity and incentive to become very familiar with war. Instead he just signed over Australia's contribition to Macarthur and Bomber Command, no wonder we did so little in WW2.

[Fenrir_Angerboda]

how is this Alternate History?

[Riain]

Doesn't AH lever off real history?

[Awilla the Hun]

Marshal Kliment Voroshilov is pretty bad. Budyonny, at least, realised that the Red Army had to retreat from Kiev (or something like that.)

Whereas Voroshilov was the most swashbuckling, "asskicking equals authority" type of general you could imagine: gunslinging at Panzers, inspiring the men by standing in the midst of artillery bombardments. The trouble was, his generalship was magnificently poor.

Or perhaps Mekhlis, he who didn't allow his troops to dig in so as to avoid a loss of "offensive spirit", and behaved like a Warhammer Commissar, roaring around in a Jeep brandishing a handgun at retreating soldiers, but lacking any other knowledge of military affairs. Or Lazar "Lazarus" Kaganovich, a constantly angry Soviet Commissar, who was a competent administrator, but alas failed to lead his troops with any success. Hilariously, when his staff car was blocked, he went bezerk: "Demote! Court Martial! Arrest! Shoot!" he bawled, in a characteristic rage.

Really, I could go on listing Soviet political leaders who at one time led troops. Many were actually pretty brave-Kaganovich, for example, was wounded by shell fire. But, alas, incompetent when it came to military leadership. Blairwitch, Budyonnoy at least had a moment of strategic inspiration that was entirely absent amongst my other examples.

[Fenrir_Angerboda]

Originally Posted by Riain

Doesn't AH lever off real history?

All I see are people Posting who they Think was the stupidest in WWII.

[Mostlyharmless]

I agree that some of the generals mentioned were fairly incompetent but we have already had some threads on military stupidity. I was hoping that posters would be able to assess the relative stupidities shown by Mussolini in declaring war initially and later invading Greece, Hitler's declaration of war on the USA or Japan's signing of the Tripartite Pact or attack on Pearl Harbor. The minor powers could produce interesting examples such as Poland's demand for Teschen (Zaolzie) at Munich. In 1939-40, did Belgium really believe that it would avoid involvement? There are even some "neverwere" stupidities such as the Anglo-French plan to bomb Baku in 1939-40. Returning to generals but keeping to political decisions, I especially like Sugiyama Gen telling Hirohito that the war, about to be launched in 1941, would be quickly won, only to be reminded that he had told him in 1937 that China would be defeated within 3 months.

p.s. Notice how I missed the "was" from the thread title in the spirit of the thread.

[admkenshin]

Truly stupid people at the high levels of command were rare in this time. There were some, of course, but the rest were merely not competent in a field other than politics. This is the general failure of politics: Political experts are great at coming into power, but they rarely have the skills required to make good decisions, more so during a war.

In militarist nations as Japan, you generally needed to be in the army or navy to get a political position. This is why Japan had many generals who were excellent politicians but complete failures in the field. These were the ones that were put into command once all the sane ones realized that the war was lost in late 1943.