I am of the opinion that that trait was used very well in the Normandy campaign. It certainly drew German troops to his sector that the Germans better could have used to stop the American breakthrough. To my understanding this was part of the plan.
Worst 10 officers of each WWII power.
- Thread starter Spencersj345.346
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nbcman
Donor
That's a good one. He basically pimped his sister to a prince to get into the military and assigned to a favorable position.
By not abandoning his men at Singapore (as the person directly above him on the list did). He didn't really commit any remarkable feat of courage, I was just alluding to the fact that (unlike the two above him) he didn't commit any egregious act of cowardice.
And that's a big part of how I chose the rankings for my list. Others may have made stupider or costlier mistakes, but if one's actions would have warranted an execution then that person automatically goes to the top of the list.
Yes, and? I'm not considering pre-WWII service (unless it directly impacts WWII performance, as McNaughton's stint as Chief of staff did).
SsgtC
Banned
Tadamichi Kuribayashi was pretty damn good. Refused priveledges of rank, shared the hardship with his men and held Iwo Jima for 36 days when the USMC expected to take the island in 5.
Ramontxo
Donor
One of his worst failing was to defend that everything went always according to his previous established plans. In fact he always adapted to circumstances and was quite flexible. But of course he would never ever admitted having made a mistake
More like he said after several plans failed.
Monty did a piss poor job around Caen.
Beating his head fruitlessly against it for months wasn't in any plan before or after D-Day.
Fast, but Rommel retreated faster. That's the problem, it was a tailchase, with Rommel retreating in good order, rather than the rout it should have been. He never should had been able to get to Tunisia.
Shōjirō Iida's blitz of Burma was pretty well executed. He was then relived from duty for being realistic.
That explains a lot.
Back to the worst--Tojo obviously should top the list for Japan. Prince Asaka had no control over his troops (and that's the CHARITABLE take on him).
I wasn’t talking about his competence as a military officer. I was pushing back against the idea that he was a coward.
From what I understand it was less a matter of not being able to have the better tanks developed in time and more a matter of the constraints of meeting the absurdly high demands for amphibious landing craft meant the US had to choose to stick with the smaller older tanks like the Sherman longer then would have been desirable. It was a matter of going with a larger tank and disrupting production of landing craft (since they would have been forced to change production to larger craft) and theoretically not being able to make Normandy in time. Even after Normandy it took till near the end of the war for the Allies to capture a functional deep water port. Until then pretty much everything still had to come via landing craft.
The Germans could just ships armored vehicles via rail, canal, or in an emergency road. The US had to ship them across the Atlantic to Britain then repackage them into smaller landing craft then use said landing craft to drive them up the beaches.
It was a matter of going with plenty of tanks that were reliable but underarmored and undergunned compared to the latest German models or going with not enough tanks that were at least nominally the equal of the latest enemy models.
This criticism isn't entirely fair, because before the breakthrough all the sectors didn't do as good as planned before D-Day.
Seriously, the great misdeed he committed was suggesting "maybe we shouldn't relentlessly exploit and rape the locals that we're trying to get on our side."
He was then reassigned to the home islands and his replacement doubled down on abusing the locals so hard that the collaborationist Burma Independence Army defected to the British and helped reestablish colonial rule.
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nbcman
Donor
EASTERN PERIL
Doihara in a press photo in Tokyo during 1936, by then a Lt. General With the Japanese samurai all means are permissible as long as they lead to the end in view. To them it is smart to lie, to chea…
weaponsandwarfare.com
This just shows that if by some miracle Japan won the war in the Pacific it would have been faced with dozens of unending guerilla wars until it called it quits and went home
Or more likely (unless the guerilla's are getting massive foreign support. Which is pretty likely) the Japanese just murder everyone in the general area the Guerilla's are operating in until either there is no more local populace or guerilla's.
You can definitely end insurgencies if you're willing to go brutal enough. And Imperial Japan was short of pretty much everything except brutality.