Greatest General of WWII

Best WWII Army Commander?

  • Franz Halder, Germany

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Heinz Guderian, Germany

    Votes: 6 9.5%
  • Erich von Manstein, Germany

    Votes: 15 23.8%
  • Erwin Rommel, Germany

    Votes: 6 9.5%
  • Gerd von Rundstedt, Germany

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hideki Tojo, Japan

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japan

    Votes: 3 4.8%
  • Hajime Sugiymama, Japan

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Vittono Ambroso, Italy

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Georgy Zhukov, Soviet Union

    Votes: 10 15.9%
  • Konstantin Rokossovsky, Soviet Union

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Alexsander Vasilevsky, Soviet Union

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, United States

    Votes: 3 4.8%
  • Douglas MacArthur, United States

    Votes: 2 3.2%
  • George S. Patton, United States

    Votes: 4 6.3%
  • Charles de Gaulle, France

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Bernard Montgomery, United Kingdom

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Claude Auchinleck, United Kingdom

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Harold Alexander, United Kingdom

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 11 17.5%

  • Total voters
    63
  • Poll closed .
I voted for other because neither General Sir Alan Brooke (later Lord Alanbrooke), nor Sir William Slim were on the list.
Brooke certainly deserves to be there, not because of any great battlefield leadership, but because of his work as head of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and acting as a balance to WSC.

guderian...the man effectively invented blitzkreig, without which commanders like rommel would never have been able to acheive their great victories.

And he based his ideas on those of Major General JFC 'Boney' Fuller. Moreover if you look at the British operations in Palestine and Syria in 1918 under the command of General Allenby you'll see rates of advance that were not equalled until 1940. Allenby's army, especially the Desert Mounted Corps were carrying out what was essentially a 'Blitzkeig', though with horses rather than horsepower.
 
Bill Slim.

He did the most with the least, suffering from his army being placed at the very bottom of the priorities when it came to resupply and equipment. He dealt the Japanese their largest land defeats at Imphal and Kohima, and showed great ability to learn from his mistakes, all without the tidal-wave-sized publicity machines of the other great generals.

Other.

Bill Slim

I probably should've put Slim over Auchinleck... Maybe I should've made 2 threads out of this and make yet another competition poll, so as not to forget anybody. There are way too many good (or at least good enough to consider) generals for 19 options.
 
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I certainly rate Slim above Monty. Both were good generals, but Slim was by far more modest (which I admire) and IMVHO Slim could have done Monty's job in NW Europe, but I doubt Monty could have done Slim's.
Slim also publicly admitted when he made mistakes in his memoirs, whereas Monty almost never admitted publicly that anything he did went wrong (he did admit that not going for Antwerp early on was an error).
 
And he based his ideas on those of Major General JFC 'Boney' Fuller. Moreover if you look at the British operations in Palestine and Syria in 1918 under the command of General Allenby you'll see rates of advance that were not equalled until 1940. Allenby's army, especially the Desert Mounted Corps were carrying out what was essentially a 'Blitzkeig', though with horses rather than horsepower.
what i mean by "inventing" is implementing it on a large scale. guderian was the first to implement doctrines like blitzkreig in the world. fuller never succeeded in getting the british army to adopt his theories. guderian did. and everyone can see the results.
the rates of advance in syria and palestine were only posible because of the lack of density of men and material on that front. on the western front, none of that was possible, even with primitive tanks. cavalry was essentially rendered obsolete by ww1. after 1914, all cavalry was good for was being mown down by machine guns. the middle east campaign was the exception rather than the rule.
 
I'm not gonna vote in this. It's just missing too many good officers. American's don't include their best (Bradley), or really anyone beyond the well-known ones (of whom only eisenhower has any reason to be here). The British, as has been noted, are missing Slim, Alanbrooke, and a few others (Wavell, anyone?). The French and Italians don's have anybody; the French are stuck with de Gaulle (Weygand, at least?), and the Italians get a nobody. As for the Soviets, so many good commanders missing. Konev, Tolbukhin, Vatutin, Meresokov to name a few. The Germans list also looks rather sparse, but I don't have time to take it apart.

You aren't going to determine the best general of WWII from a poll, especially when there are so many options. What you are going to see is a general popularity contest while specialists debate a few generals whom a lot of people haven't heard of. So you will see a wide spread of votes, a lot of "other" selections, and people like rommel and Patton being given the lion's share of the credit (far more than they are due).
 
guderian...the man effectively invented blitzkreig, without which commanders like rommel would never have been able to acheive their great victories.
on rommel: he was a great divisional commander, probably one of the best, but he had no understanding of logistics. he needed a superior to keep him in line and make sure he didn't outrun his supply lines.

Rommel had no control over his logistics... he was a guest of the Italians in their theater... he was the first to admit his logistics sucked but what was he supposed to do about it... Hitler decided to committ 90 percent of German power to the east and gave him the scraps

Rommel was also one of the greatest company and battalion commanders who ever lived his ww1 stuff reads like a movie
 
Voted other - Erhard Raus... the guy was a monster, he defeated two soviet armies with a single panzer division and spearheaded army group north's drive to leningrad unsupported on his flanks making 50 miles a day... he doesn't get the respect and laurels given to Manstein, Rommel or Guderian but he was a true master of of Blitzkrieg

Also ommitted from this list and worthy of mention is Hermann Balck. His command of the 11th panzer division rivaled Rommel in France... also a true mechanized warrrior
 
Eisenhower was not a great military tactician. By the time of the Ardennes offensive just about every general in the Army Groups had come to regard him as somewhat of a mythical commander, someone who issued directives from afar but didn't do anything to get them done.

Montgomery considered him a useless General because he spent all his time at the strategical HQ far to the rear, assigned no levels of importance to strategical or tactical targets, exersized very little control over his forward tactial HQ to the extent that it might not have existed at all for the good it did and gave none of the Army Group Commanders any guidence from above as to how he wished the campaigns to unfold - save for the occaisonal vague directive.

Field Marshall Alanbrooke said of Eisenhower when Ike was commanding the North African front that "I am afraid that Eisenhower as a general is hopeless! He submerges himself in politics and neglects his military duties, partly I am afraid, because he knows little if anything about military matters." This opinion was not changed with the War in Europe and Alanbrooke was heavilly critical of Eisenhowers performance in the field to his dying day.
Before accepting this view, students of World War Two should read Crusade in Europe which shows that Ike knew what he was doing most of the time and had good reasons for his decisions. The book reveals a mind steeped in the "military matters" that mattered most, including combined arms doctrine, logistics, force ratios, morale, coalition building, and how to handle prima donnas (of which there were many on the Allied command levels). Also there are many military historians (although not British ones) who take a very positive view of Eisenhower's leadership.

Oh, and read in Ike's book about how Alanbrooke wanted to call off D-Day, predicting disaster.
 
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The list we are voting on is a jumble of (a) strategic theater commanders (Eisenhower, MacArthur, Zhukov) with control of combined arms, (b) tactical army commanders (Patton, Rommel) and (c) political figures chiefly concerned with the policy behind a war (De Gaulle, Tojo). I submit that (c) is irrelevant, and (a) and (b) are not comparable if you are dealing with 20th century warfare. Until recent centuries, of course, tactical and strategic leadership were usually combined in one commander, like Alexander or Frederick the Great, with combined arms not usually being a factor.
 
It's hard to make everyone happy; I try! I swear!!! It's especially hard with a WWII generals thread, just look at the standings! Though only 14 votes thus far, there's one for many of them.

I couldn't think of any Chinese generals that really stood out head and shoulders above most, but then again, neither did my Italian option, did he? :eek:
Xue Yue, best General in Asia. Called the Patton of China. Victorious in four separate campaigns against the IJA. Would have been five but for Chiang's sabotage at Changsha. Xue Yue had become so successful Chiang saw him as a political threat.:mad:
 
It's hard to make everyone happy; I try! I swear!!! It's especially hard with a WWII generals thread, just look at the standings! Though only 14 votes thus far, there's one for many of them.

I couldn't think of any Chinese generals that really stood out head and shoulders above most, but then again, neither did my Italian option, did he? :eek:
See it would have been better if you had no poll, and just the first post was a list to keep track of votes, that way it would fit as many generals as needed and people could suggest their own.

Anyways as a side comment the Italian general you picked was a really minor guy. Although i cant think of any outstanding Italian generals ether, ironic eh? Italians fought so bravely but they dont have a good general to put in the poll.
 

maverick

Banned
Don't get me wrong, I ain't bitching, just commenting on the options:p

Yeah, Italian general are errr...you might as well have skipped that category and put a Greek General or Tito :p

About the Chinese, there's Sun Li-Jen, known as the Rommel of the East, Li Zongren and even communist leaders like Zhu de, who led the Hundred Regiments Offensive, a great chinese military victory that nevertheless resulted in horrible strategic consequences (namely, the Japanese "burn this fucking country to the ground" policy between 1940-1945)

About the Japanese, I don't particularly think Tojo is the greatest example:p...to complement Yamashita, there's Masaharu Homma, who took the Philippines while Yamashita took Singapore and Malaysia.
 
Before accepting this view, students of World War Two should read Crusade in Europe which shows that Ike knew what he was doing most of the time and had good reasons for his decisions. The book reveals a mind steeped in the "military matters" that mattered most, including combined arms doctrine, logistics, force ratios, morale, coalition building, and how to handle prima donnas (of which there were many on the Allied command levels). Also there are many military historians (although not British ones) who take a very positive view of Eisenhower's leadership.

Oh, and read in Ike's book about how Alanbrooke wanted to call off D-Day, predicting disaster.

Except that Eisenhower Crusade in Europe is his bit of propaganda. Its his biased version of events and is disputed in its validity. Its something that he wrote to try and present himself in a better light than he deserved and did this at the expense of either other generals or of Allied relations.

One thing, for example, that Eisenhower is to blame for is the split of historians and in the public mindset of the Normandy Campaign between the fighting of national armies. Where as Montgomery planned the whole Overlord Campaign as an Allied offensive, utilising both British/Commonwealth and United States troops to bring about one main strategical plan with one great victory for all and never tried to talk of the battle as seperate engagements Eisenhower alleged that the British/Commonwealth had failed in the tasks assigned to them and it was up to the Americans to save the day, which greatly annoyed Montgomery because he had told Eisenhower repeatedly throughout the planning of the campaign and its execution what the plan was and how he was planning to execute it.

Alanbrooke may have been nervous of the potential successes of Operation Overlord but he never officially called for it to be called off even if he expressed such a desire in private which, reading through his diaries, he does not seem to have done anyway.

Eisenhower was not above lying about other commanders and thier views or misquoting them if it meant making himself look good as a general. He did in one very clear example when trying to justify his broad front strategy when he claimed that Alanbrooke had admitted Eisenhower had been right to insist on the Broad Front.

Eisenhower telegraphed Marshall around March 25th 1945 with these words: Naturally I am immensly pleased that the campaign west of the Rhine that Bradley and I planned last summer and insisted upon as a necessary preliminary to a deep penetration of the Rhine, has been carried out so closely in accordance with the conception. You possibly know that at one time the C.I.G.S [Alanbrooke] thought I was wrong in what I was trying to do and argued heatedly upon the matter [on the eve of the German Ardennes Offensive]. Yesterday I saw him on the banks of the Rhine and he was gracious enough to say I was right, and that my current plan operations are well calculated to meet the current situation....I hope this does not sound boastful, but I admit to a great satisfaction that the things that Bradley and I have believed in from the beginning and have carried out in the face of some opposition both from within and without, have matured so spledidly. This Eisenhower repeated in Crusade in Europe and raised the ire of Alanbrooke.

Alanbrooke's diary entry of this meeting between him and Eisenhower read thus: We were met there [Rhineberg] by Eisenhower, Bradley and Simpson [commander US 9th Army]. I had a talk with Ike on the question of the surrender of Kesselring and all the other purely military surrenders. He also wanted to know whether I agreed with his present plans of pushing south for Franfurt and Kassel. I told him that with the Germans crumbling as they are the whole situation is now altered from the time of our previous discussions. Evidently the Bosche is cracking and what we want now is to push him relentlessly wherever we can until he crumples. In his present condition we certainly have necessary strenght for a double envelopment strategy which I did not consider as applicable when he was still in a position to resist seriously.

Alanbrooke wrote of Eisenhower version in Crusade in Europe that: On page 372 of Eisenhowers Crusade in Europe he refers to a conversation which took place between us on the day this diary entry was written [March 25th 1945]. I feel certain he did not write at once the statement which he attributes to me, and I can only assume that when he came to write it down he did not remember clearly what I had said. According to him when we stood together on the bank of the Rhine on March 25th, I said to him "Thank God, Ike, you stuck to you plan. You were completely right, and I am sorry if my fear of dispersed efforts added to your burdens. The German is now licked. It is merely a question of when he choses to quit. Thank God you stuck to your guns." I think that when this statement is considered in connection with what I wrote in my diary that evening, it will be clear that I was misquoted. To the best of my memory I congradulated him heartily on his success, and said that as matters had turned out his policy was now the correct one, that with the German in his defeated condition no dangers now existed in a dispersal of effort. I am quite certian I never said to him "You were completely right", as I am still convinced that he was "completely wrong", as proved by the temporary defeat inflicted upon him by Rundstedt's counter stroke [Ardennes Offensive/Battle of the Bulge], which considerably retarded the defeat of Germany.

So I stand by my original statement. Eisenhower may have been a great coalition leader, he may have been a great politician but he was a complete amatuer as a general. That Eisenhower was written off as "hopeless as a general" at least twice by Alanbrooke is something worth noting and because of the weight Alanbrooke carries in assessments of military abilities and situations the only way we can disregard his assessment is if you believe he was bitter about not getting the SHEAF job - which is not a theory I subscribe to.

America had better generals that Eisenhower during WW2. Bradley was better, Patton was better, Hodges was better, Simpson was better, Devers was better, Collins was better, Truscott was better, etc, etc but Eisenhower had two things in his favor that the others did not. The first was that he was Marshall's favorite and was promoted to the highest office availble mainly because of this (his record pre-war and his performance during the North Africa and Mediterranean campaigns certainly didn't justify him being overall commander of any coalition force) and the second thing he had in his favor was that he was a damned good politician and that allowed him to balence and control the egos involved in the the Army Groups below the office of SHEAF and the ego's above the office of SHEAF. Had any of the other American Generals listed been SHEAF it would have been an unmitigated disaster.

I believe that there are only two people who could have concievably done as good a job as Eisenhower from a political stand point and I believe they are George Marshall and Alanbrooke but of those two I can only say that I beleive Alanbrooke would have done a better job from a military stand point as Marshall was completely untested as a field commander.
 
I probably should've put Slim over Auchinleck... Maybe I should've made 2 threads out of this and make yet another competition poll, so as not to forget anybody. There are way too many good (or at least good enough to consider) generals for 19 options.

No worries - we'll just assume that 'other' means 'Slim'. And hm - he's proving popular with the voters :)
 

maverick

Banned
WTH? VON MANSTEIN BEATING ROMMEL ON AH.COM?! :eek:

I should have known that Blairwitch's 3 dozen Manstein TL would have this sort of effect on the site...:p
 
WTH? VON MANSTEIN BEATING ROMMEL ON AH.COM?! :eek:

I should have known that Blairwitch's 3 dozen Manstein TL would have this sort of effect on the site...:p

In my book I rate them both an excellent commanders. If anything I might Rommel higher due to his near mythical status as a company, battalion, and division commander that Manstein never achieved

Manstein distinguished himself as a staff officer, corps commander, army group commander and general tactician... only in his command as a distinguished staff career did he have something Rommel didn't.
 
what i mean by "inventing" is implementing it on a large scale. guderian was the first to implement doctrines like blitzkreig in the world. fuller never succeeded in getting the british army to adopt his theories. guderian did. and everyone can see the results.
the rates of advance in syria and palestine were only posible because of the lack of density of men and material on that front. on the western front, none of that was possible, even with primitive tanks. cavalry was essentially rendered obsolete by ww1. after 1914, all cavalry was good for was being mown down by machine guns. the middle east campaign was the exception rather than the rule.

You should have said implement then. :D

Horse cavalry did not become obsolete until a fast, reliable tank was invented and that did not happen until the late '20s, or early '30s. In some parts of the world the change over did not happen until post '45.
If you think that all cavalry was good for post 1914 was being mown down by machin-guns then I suggest you read up on what the British regiments got up to on the Western Front between 1914-18, you might be surprised.
 
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