Worst Military Underperformance

George McClellan comes to mind...

"If General McClellan does not have any plans to use the Army, I should like to borrow it for a time." - Abraham Lincoln
How about any of his successors minus Grant? Pope, Burnside, even Gettysburg victor Meade, (his bad choice of words to Lincoln about how Lee having left the country when he could have ended the war wth a final blow as Lee attempted to escape back into Virginia.). Maybe the entire Army of the Potomac until Grant arrived along the scene.
 
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To be fair, it was 2:1 in favor of the Afghan and they used treason during the negociations to attack the delegation
(his main mistake was trusting them)

His concessions were insane, though, and he got duped repeatedly, not just once. Any human with a functioning brain cell would have realized Akbar was his enemy.
 
Well the Soviets at their best were supplied with LL and had massive help from the Wallies via strategic bombing of Germany, which resulted in removal of the 75% of the LW fighters from the East plus 1/3rd of the military budget spent on air defense and deprived German artillery of ammo, economic warfare via blockade of Europe and buying up of critical raw materials from neutrals, threatening so much of Europe with invasion that nearly 50% of German divisions were not on the Eastern Front as of May 1944 rather in occupation/coastal defense duties, plus they were in combat in Italy and were bombing German oil to bits before Bagration even happened and killed the Luftwaffe in early 1944. The very best Soviet offensives came after the LW was then not a factor due to losses in the West and bombing of oil production, economic issues due to blockade and bombing of production/transport, use of major German resources in the West (Atlantic Wall, V-weapons programs that cost more than the Manhattan Project, strategic air defense), and the use of nearly half of German divisions on coastal defense duty, plus nearly the entire German navy being used outside the Eastern Front. The Soviets were able to clean up against a severely weakened foe from July 1943 on, as they shifted a huge part of their strength West in increasing amounts from that point on (really actually November 1942 with the Tunisia landings and subsequent loss of 42% of the Luftwaffe in 6 months in the Mediterranean, plus Panzerarmee Afrika). By the time the Soviets went on the strategic offensive in late 1942 the Germans weren't putting 2/3rds of their strength into the East anymore and overextendedthemselves in the East.

None of these are actually explanations for the superlative performance of Soviet arms in 1944-45 in contrast to their abysmal failings in 1941-42. At best, their a list of advantages the Soviets accrued on the strategic level but those advantages still needed to be applied to mean anything. The onus for that was purely on the Soviets.

The very best Soviet offensives came after the LW was then not a factor due to losses

A more specific point of order, but the LW was always a factor on the Eastern Front right to the end.
 
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The humiliating and very costly performance of the US 8th Army in the fall of 1950 north of the 38th Parallel has always struck me as among the worst. That the UN forces managed to escape is about the only positive thing that happened.
 
The humiliating and very costly performance of the US 8th Army in the fall of 1950 north of the 38th Parallel has always struck me as among the worst. That the UN forces managed to escape is about the only positive thing that happened.

It wasn't just them, most Western militaries were in a pretty poor state in 1950.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Well, the French at the beginning of the world war 1, by abandoning their previous sound active defensive doctrine for Joffre's lunatic cult of offensive. You can easily imagine what would happen if the French absorbed the German offensives via forming entrenched positions instead of facing them in an offensive manner.

Also, the British because they should have adopted bite and hold tactic earlier.
 
How significant of a factor?

Enough that the Soviets were always factoring them into their plans and were having to run deception campaigns specifically dedicated to things like having the German bombers hit the wrong targets or German reconnaissance aircraft pick up only the decoys. Even as late as the start of '45, during the opening of the Vistula-Oder campaign, the Luftwaffe was enough of a worry to the Soviets that they had massive concentrations of AA guns grouped to protect their equally massive concentrations of infantry, armor, and artillery.

What percentage of the Luftwaffe was fighting in the East in 1944-45?

In mid-1944 during Normandy and Bagration there were ~3,300 German aircraft of all types in the West and ~2,950 in the East. While only ~25% of their fighters were in the East, the vast majority of the CAS and tactical bombers remained in the East, as well as half their reconnaissance aircraft and many of their best aces.
 
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How far do we want to extend this? Most of the replies have focused on tactical incompetence... but if we extend that to a strategic debate, then how is Adolph Hitler walking away unscathed? Has any national leader's military underperformed to a greater degree than Hitler's during Stalingrad, or Barbossa in general? What about the decision to leave Moscow and go for Kiev? If that is not "underperfomance," then what does the term mean?

Just to be clear... not drawing a line in the sand here, or declaring this position to be some sort of absolute fact... just saying that if we are talking about underperforming militaries, why are we not talking about the entire German Army in the early 1940s?
 
How far do we want to extend this? Most of the replies have focused on tactical incompetence... but if we extend that to a strategic debate, then how is Adolph Hitler walking away unscathed? Has any national leader's military underperformed to a greater degree than Hitler's during Stalingrad, or Barbossa in general? What about the decision to leave Moscow and go for Kiev? If that is not "underperfomance," then what does the term mean?

Just to be clear... not drawing a line in the sand here, or declaring this position to be some sort of absolute fact... just saying that if we are talking about underperforming militaries, why are we not talking about the entire German Army in the early 1940s?
I'm pretty sure that the current military understanding is that going for Kiev rather than Moscow is what prevented the Germans from suffering a humiliating and catastrophic defeat in front of Moscow, and which would have also left the Soviets with vastly more military and industrial capability of their own without the loss at Kiev.

The french in the Franco Prussian war
Given that the thread is supposed to be about armies underperforming relative to strength, training, equipment, I'm not really sure if France underperformed. Yes, France as a state underperformed in producing the army of 1870, but given the terrible blemishes which pervaded the French imperial army and the fact that the German system was simply superior at putting a large army in the field quickly with good supplies, intelligence, aggression, artillery, systematically good training, aggressive doctrine, and an effective general staff, the outcome of the war was effectively pre-determined from day one... Although admittedly, the sheer scale of the French loss might have been lessened by different command.
 
How far do we want to extend this? Most of the replies have focused on tactical incompetence... but if we extend that to a strategic debate, then how is Adolph Hitler walking away unscathed? Has any national leader's military underperformed to a greater degree than Hitler's during Stalingrad, or Barbossa in general? What about the decision to leave Moscow and go for Kiev? If that is not "underperfomance," then what does the term mean?

Just to be clear... not drawing a line in the sand here, or declaring this position to be some sort of absolute fact... just saying that if we are talking about underperforming militaries, why are we not talking about the entire German Army in the early 1940s?
Because they did smash the French and did smash the Russians west of Moscow?

After that you actually have logistic concerns that, while possible to overcome in a better manner than the Germans did, make their loss not so much underperformance. They failed, sure, but you couldn't quite expect them to win easy.
 
And Eisenhower compounded that weakness with his defense policies. Why did anyone ever call him a great president? Because of a farewell speech about a social ill he hadn't lifted a finger to stop?
Defense wise, remember that Eisenhower came after both Korea and Truman substantially increasing defense spending as a result, the only big conventional war between Korea and Desert Storm is widely acknowledged as an utter disaster that should have been avoided, and the U.S. having near total nuclear superiority through the mid-60's, and parity afterwards, was sufficient to deter Soviet action in Europe.

As to his actual Presidency, mainly because the position of the U.S. was one that was utterly dominant and domestically America had yet to go through the turmoil of the 1960's. I think remember reading here at some point that Eisenhower was viewed contemporarily as a relatively weak President since a lot of policy originated from Congress as opposed to the white House, but I can't totally vouch for that.
 
The bad performance of different Arab armies vs. Israel is hard to beat - they have had vast numerical advantage vs. the enemy without strategic depth and always got spanked.
 
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