Robert E. Lee vs. Helmuth von Moltke

Robert E. Lee vs. Helmuth von Moltke. Who Wins?

  • Lee

    Votes: 39 46.4%
  • Von Moltke

    Votes: 40 47.6%
  • Draw

    Votes: 5 6.0%

  • Total voters
    84
How, exactly, is it possible to quantify effectiveness of a general based on casualty ratios and troop ratios alone, when so many different factors enter into the conduct of a battle. That system would be, in the ACW, unfair to a commander such as Sherman, whose Atlanta Campaign was brilliantly waged, with the exception of Kennesaw Mountain, who then suffered tremendous casualties due to his offensive.

Such a system would give no credit to Sherman for coming within a hair's breadth of trapping and destroying Joe Johnston without a battle at Snake Creek Gap, but punish him severely for a lone poor outing.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
How, exactly, is it possible to quantify effectiveness of a general based on casualty ratios and troop ratios alone, when so many different factors enter into the conduct of a battle. That system would be, in the ACW, unfair to a commander such as Sherman, whose Atlanta Campaign was brilliantly waged, with the exception of Kennesaw Mountain, who then suffered tremendous casualties due to his offensive.

Such a system would give no credit to Sherman for coming within a hair's breadth of trapping and destroying Joe Johnston without a battle at Snake Creek Gap, but punish him severely for a lone poor outing.

We're assessing battlefield performance though, not operational performance. The two don't necessarily correlate.
 
We're assessing battlefield performance though, not operational performance. The two don't necessarily correlate.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (sudden realization).:)

Well, that explains almost all of this mini-debate.

I am prepared to believe.....maybe ~80% of 67th's claims in that case (leaving room for lack of data sets, which can still change stuff drastically, this account for 10%). The other 10% comes from 67th's wanton use of 'better' and 'worse' to describe Generals after the math is done.

While this may be entirely true in a battlefield sense, most people in this debate (and I would hazard many historians) only use the blanket statements when doing a combined, if not wholly operational, analysis.

Furthermore, at times the line between battlefield and operational becomes very indistinct. For instance, the period from May 13th-25th in the Overland Campaign: not a single large battle, dozens of skirmishes and maneuvres, plus the main movement of 20 miles south. In that instance, does Grant get a brilliant label for forcing Lee back and for Peyton farm and Jericho Mills? Or a horrible label, for the 2nd Spotsylvania assaults, 2nd Myer's Hill, Milton Station, and all the cavalry engagements? And which of these can actually be considered battles?

And even at battlefield level, it is never exactly clear to whom the results should apply. Like at Myer's Hill in the above time-frame. Grant ordered Myer's Hill to be captured. Meade picked the brigades with which to do it. Upton captured it once, then was forced off. Warren with the 5th corps, 'on his own initiative' (sort of), sent a division to help. That division commander (forget which one) carried the hill the second time.

In that case, who do we apply the math to?

etc.etc.etc.

Hopefully we are prepared to acknowledge that, up to a point, numerical analysis can give labels better/worse based entirely on command performance. Hopefully also, 67th will acknowledge that, given the indistinctness between battlefield and operational performance, and for the various other reasons pointed out above, that the numerical results are not absolute and can in fact be reversed (depending also on certain 1-time-only factors such as weather, random general deaths, special orders from government that influence strategy [a biggie], and supply situation, some of which directly influence even battlefield performance).
 
Comparing 19th century generals from the US and Germany is pretty much like comparing the US soccer team to the German one today.

--> For both, it's something in which the US just hadn't (or hasn't) catched up yet with European levels.
 
You have to give props to Lee. He fought a numerically superior enemy for 4 years and won without giving up too much ground. He is one of the best generals of his time.
 
Wow, it's a close one. I'm going to go with von Moltke. Although Lee may have been a skilled general, as others have said the Union incompetence helped burnish his reputation..
And how many competent generals did von Moltke ever face? A Bazaine or von Benedek would flatter any foe. Even in the field of strategy it was the incompetence of their foes that allowed the Prussians to escape unharmed – there were numerous occasions in both the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars where mistakes committed by von Moltke in his deployments would have been swiftly and brutally exploited by an opponent with a sliver of skill

I’m no fan of Lee and I know little of his victories but von Moltke’s reputation is certainly grossly overblown
 
And how many competent generals did von Moltke ever face? A Bazaine or von Benedek would flatter any foe. Even in the field of strategy it was the incompetence of their foes that allowed the Prussians to escape unharmed – there were numerous occasions in both the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars where mistakes committed by von Moltke in his deployments would have been swiftly and brutally exploited by an opponent with a sliver of skill

I’m no fan of Lee and I know little of his victories but von Moltke’s reputation is certainly grossly overblown

Both of them are, for various reasons, overrated.

Moltke was a decent strategist. But he also had the benefit of the first professional general staff, some of the best artillery in europe, and bad opponents. I can't think of any instances of him actually conducting field battles, so Im unsure of how good he was there.

Lee was a competent commander, but not someone brilliant. Very few generals of the period anywhere could be qualified as brilliant the way napoleonic ones were. Lee got lucky a fair bit, and he won a few battles. But as others here have described, he wasn't the best general of his day.
 
Fiver said:
So what are your assumptions that lead to your conclusion that McClellan was a better general?

The only assumption I had to make was troop quality. Others have shown a CEV of 1.5 in the CS favour. Everything else (bar command quality) can and has been quantified. Lee has already been analysed (Hattaway and Jones) and found to be average.

So terrain, maneuver, goals, and success don’t factor into your calculations? And if a CEV of 1.5 has been shown, you should be able to tell us where they showed it. And you still haven’t explained what you mean by a better general.

As to Hattaway and Jones, they say “the data on Lee confirms that he was a representative Confederate general except he won more… It says nothing about McClellan, let alone whether he was better than Lee. Their analysis only covers the years 1861 to 1863. One of their conclusions is a Union attack was about twice as likely to succeed as a Confederate attack.

And they are a lot more equivocal than you are, saying things like “The foregoing superficial quantitiative analysis should raise more questions than it answers.” and “Ceratianly the hypothesis of Confederate combat superiority should be carefully tested against individual battles to ascertain whether it correlates with, among other factors, the length of service and degree of combat experience of the units engaged, with the amount of offensive and defensive combat by each side, and with the quantitiy and quality of field fortifications used.”

Lancaster’s equation is obviously lumping together several different things in its calculation of efficiency – training, experience, equipment, terrain, leadership, etc. And it’s clearly presented as based on assumptions, the most obvious being that a force twice the size of its opponent will inflict twice as many casualties at any moment in time.

That’s, of course, highly idealized and ignores certain realities of combat, like not all members of an army of 100,000 can attack an army of 300 at the same time.

As for the seven days, it's interesting. After detachments to the rear are counted, Lee had more effectives, and effectives of a better quality. Had Lee been a better than competent General he should have been able to destroy McClellan, instead he batters himself in a series of frontal attacks.

He did better than McClellan did at Antietam and Lee didn’t have a copy of McClellan’s marching orders.

No familiar with this field are you?

I’ve heard of Dupuy, as well as the criticism that his methods consistenatly overrate the defenders in any conflict. If your conclusions are based on his equations, then I’d say Dupuy’s critics have been unusually generous.

Anyway, it can be shown that on average the number of effectives on each side were usually roughly equal.

If it can be shown than maybe you should show it.

Fiver said:
Of course, your numbers could be explained by Union leadership quality rising throughout the war and/or Confederate leadership quality dropping. After all, if Lee’s troops are twice as effective at the end of the war as they were at the start, then Grant must more than twice as effective as McClellan, since Grant is actually beating Lee.
Really? Despite the near collapse in Grant's Army?

For those of us familiar with the actual American Civil War, we know that Grant actually beat Lee. If we accept your unsupported and unlikely claim that Grant’s army was near collapse, that logically means Grant must be more than twice as effective as McClellan to compensate for his inferior army.

Well, that's better than your initial claim that McClellan was "better than Lee...by a large margin", but if you want to persuade anyone you need to show what your assumptions are based on.

Very made that claim either. That's a strawman.

Perhaps you should read post 49 of this thread where someone named 67th Tigers said:

Yet Pope and McClellan both come out as better than Lee, the latter by a large margin

It’s no strawman; it’s an exact quote.
 
We're assessing battlefield performance though, not operational performance. The two don't necessarily correlate.

Finally, you explain what you mean by a better general. Perhaps you should note that while you are assessing based on battlefield performance (and apparently using a rather flawed model) , no one else is. I have obviously from the first been basing my assessment of who is a greater general based on operational performance.

To give a few examples of why operational performance is more important, take a look at the Battle of Monocacy, the Monitor vs the Virginia, or Sherman's March.
 
Top