Darius again was the first to flee the battle, abandoning all of his soldiers and his property to be taken by Alexander. Nor is being a bad battlefield commander, by itself, sufficient to make the cut. It doesnt matter if theyve won more often than theyve lost. General Earle Wheeler was essentially a staff officer with virtually no troop leading experience, much less combat acumen. To say that he failed in both regards is to dramatically understate the case. 151. The Top Ten. Scott claimed that Pillow was ''the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood. When talk of secession reached Pillows home state of Tennessee, he helped organize the state militia and was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army. With high hopes set upon his shoulders at the beginning of the American Civil war, quickly becoming General-in-Chief of the Union Army, McClellan would earn the distinction as a general of little action. Even a string of bad days does not guarantee entry. Fighter Aircraft of All Time). Hull had served with distinction in the Revolutionary War and was appointed governor of the Michigan Territory in 1805. Their orientation, indeed the core of Scoutings values, is selflessness and service to others. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch. However, not even they managed to get themselves court-martialed and sentenced to death for ineptitude on the battlefield. Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. James Madison spared him from execution. He graduated second in his class at West Point (well ahead of classmates Stonewall Jackson, George H. Gordon, and George Pickett). It's not the first time that someone thought he was smarter than his boss. With the Little Corporal running everything, Europe might have become a very different place. Franz Conrad von Htzendorf of Austria couldnt decide which country he wanted to invade, so the German General Staff eventually took his armies away. in history from Michigan State University in 1995. And what then? Ludendorff is one of historys greatest examples of a general who can win battles but still loses the war. HANOI, VIETNAMForty years ago, on April 30, 1975, Nguyen Dang Phat experienced the happiest day of his life . He was responsible for coming up with the idea of using force to restore constitutional order in Chechnya. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges. Not one to let his own failings stand in the way of personal glory, Pillow submitted fanciful accounts of his actions at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco to various newspapers, incurring the wrath of overall American commander Winfield Scott. World War I provided a forum for any number of truly horrible commanders to assert themselves. When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. This was heeded about as well as any piece of parental advice, anywhere ever. The result of his manic commitment to the war of attrition was that Westmoreland squandered four years of his troops bravery and support by the public, the Congress, and even much of the news media for American involvement in the war. Concurrently with hi. Delivered Wednesday. The United States entered the war, forcing Ludendorff to accelerate his time line for a conclusive battle against the Allies on the Western Front. Watchthe conversation onFP Live, the magazines forum for live journalism, orreada condensed transcript. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. They dramatically upped their game, pressing the U.S. worldwide. As military professionals, we should think about more . Thats the point. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. Considering some militants as instruments of regional influence while fighting others has had disastrous consequences. - 4 Worst: 1990 Cleveland Cavaliers. Applications for the Gettysburg College-Gilder Lehrman MA program are open and considered on a rolling basis. Military historian Russell Weigley rendered a succinct judgment on LBJ: No capable war President would have allowed an officer of such limited capacities as General William C. Westmoreland to head Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, for so long.. 10. Think about how history would have been different if Hannibal had a military plan to outlast Roman might. Where is Carthage you ask? Opportunistic firms in Asia and Europe have already begun to relocate investments to the United States. Westmoreland is often described as a Boy Scout, usually implying, it appears, that he was well-intentioned but nave. Abraham Lincoln. Today's list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam By the way, here is the first review I have seen of Sorley's new biography of Westmoreland, which I read in galleys. After achieving moderate success in Libya and Ethiopia, the Butcher of Ethiopia became Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Royal Armys General Staff and of Italian North Africa at the start of World War II. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. And he was able to inflict massive casualties on the enemy. The Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial LectureThomas E. Ricks is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). After eight years at Foreign Policy, here are the ten most popular Best Defense posts. The alternative was to split the United States asunder. He was called the inevitable general. A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. Jacob Zuma is a cherry on the top of the world's worst leader cake. Vietnam War. He was soon released, however, and, as more capable French admirals either died or somehow incurred Napoleons disfavor, a path to the top echelons of command was opened for Villeneuve. 336 pages | 16 halftones | 6 1/4 x 9 1/4. Would he be upset if he were alive to read this book today? Here is a list of the 10 most famous Chinese generals in history. The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. Marcus Licinius Crassus was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who started a pointless war with the Parthians, and Publius Quinctilius Varus lost three legions at Teutoburg Forest, but Proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio manages to top them both with his actions at the Battle of Arausio. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. He also issued orders to his troops in a personal code that no one else understood, such as this gem of command clarity: Move your command, i. e., the walking boys, pop guns, Baker's outfit and the outfit which is the reverse of Baker's outfit and the big fellows to M, which is due north of where you are now, as soon as possible. Somalia (1992-1994) 2. Lpez, possibly in a fit of madness, ordered the execution of hundreds of people, including some of his own family members. George Brinton McClellan, a self-proclaimed Young Napoleon, ran dreadful campaigns, but he doesnt make the grade because he was canned before he could lose the entire war. While there are plenty of books that analyze the keys to success, The Worst Military Leaders in History offers lessons of failure to avoid. A very significant instance was his determination to arbitrarily hold down the estimate of enemy strength during a 1967 order of battle controversy. FPsRavi Agrawalsat down with U.S. Trade RepresentativeKatherine Tai, the Biden administrations top official tasked with mapping out and implementing the White Houses trade policy. To counter these, Major General William R. Peers commenced Operation Greeley using elements of the 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest darkened Emperor Augustus remaining years and he was heard, upon occasion, to moan, Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!, Notable mention: George Custer, Joseph Hooker, Ambrose Burnside, Charles Cornwallis, John II of France, Top 10 Utterly Bizarre Things Banned In China, Top 10 Military Bases Linked To UFOs (That Aren't Area 51), 10 Bizarre Military Inventions That Almost Saw Deployment, 10 Futuristic Sci-Fi Military Technologies That, 10 Awesome French Military Victories You've Never Heard Of, 10 Oddities That Interrupted Military Battles, Top 10 Top-Level Domains That Caused Controversies, 10 Controversial Toys You Might Already Have in Your Home, Ten Absolutely Vicious Fights over Inherited Fortunes, 10 Female Film Pioneers Who Shaped the Movies, Ten True Tales from Americas Toughest Prison, 10 Times Members of Secretive Societies and Organizations Spilled the Beans, 10 Common Idioms with Unexpectedly Dark Origins, 10 North American Animals with Misplaced Reputations, 10 Japanese Weapons Invented Too Late To Win World War II, 10 Ways The History Of Thanksgiving Is Nothing Like You Imagined, 10 Great Buildings That Were Not Built Quite Well Enough. He underestimated the enemys staying power, maintaining that if he could inflict enough casualties the communists would lose heart and cease their aggression against South Vietnam. You start by being the only thing that can frustrate Napoleon more than a Russian winter. Had Lincoln retained McClellan in command of the Union armies, many former Americans might still be whistling "Dixie.". During the darkest days of the rebellion, when Washington's army had been kicked out of New York and King George's star seemed ascendant, the "Conway cabal" of disgruntled officers and politicians unsuccessfully schemed to out Washington and appoint Gates. Darius was a different sort of game-changer. 10 Redvers Buller Military greatness can most easily be defined by comparison. The 1970s were scary times. While there is much to criticize LBJ for in his conduct of the war, one cannot help having some sympathy for the dilemma posed by the often wildly conflicting advice he was getting from his senior aides and advisors, including those in uniform. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him. Not later than the autumn of 1966 the leaders of both services involved in fighting the ground war in VietnamArmy Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson and Marine Commandant General Wallace Greeneboth saw Westmorelands approach as fatally flawed and agreed on a viable alternative. A more minor case, but one revealing of Westmorelands character, stemmed from his unwillingness to level with his senior Marine subordinate at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. Informed that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and were certain to attack the Philippines next, MacArthur failed to disperse his aircraftthe only force that could disrupt the Japanese offensive in the absence of the American fleetand to attack Japanese airfields before the enemy wiped out his air force. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. Persian Gulf (1988) (Oil Platforms) 2. Villeneuve lost 20 ships, while Nelson lost none. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? The unprecedented violence of battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and Gettysburg shocked citizens and international observers alike. 5. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. The War of the Triple Alliance devastated Paraguay. Best Defense: Overseas during World War II he had limited line duty (16 months of battalion command, then 13 months in staff positions) and of 14 months of command during the Korean War and its immediate aftermath he spent eight months in reserve in Japan and only six months in Korea, and that during the mostly static final months of the war. History is not a fixed set of facts. Delivered Wednesday & Sunday. They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at county fairs. By December 1864 Paraguay was at war with Brazil, and, when Argentina denied a request for the transit of a Paraguayan army across its territory, Lpez declared war on that country as well. Outstanding commanders such as George H. Thomas, Phil Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman routinely bested their Confederate opponents. Ulysses S. Grant, who replaced McClellan, understood this. Yes, eminently. Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced his fateful decision to double the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam. But he was overly cautious by nature. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE. But beyond the goals of one leader in Moscow, it is also clear that Ukraine has suffered horrors of a historic nature. He was found guilty of 11 counts, and only the intervention by Pres. 1. What does that mean for trade and globalization? Armchair historians often generalize that during the American Civil War, while the Union held a clear advantage in material, the Confederacy could field superior commanders. These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. There are issues around killing and counting unarmed civilians (non-combatants) as enemy combatants, as well as inflating the number of actual enemy who were killed in action (KIA).For search and destroy operations, as the objective was not to . James Bond Stockdale was flying his A-4 Skyhawk on a mission over North Vietnam, just days after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when his plane took fire and hurtled d For many soldiers, a major tipping point happened when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, news of which reaches the soldiers in Da 5 Bloods during one particularly stirring scene . Thus the progress Westmoreland claimed in racking up huge body counts did nothing to win the war. Who was the worst general in history? In the famous Battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna struggled to defeat about 250 Texans with 2,400 Mexicans and subsequently lost nearly 600 men. But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. While serving in Vietnam . Military Villeneuve was then to return in secret and help establish naval dominance of the English Channel in preparation for a land invasion of Britain. Yes, Westmoreland was the general who lost Vietnam. 15. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777, The Five Best U.S. Darius never showed up for the first battle and defeat (Battle of Granicus) because he didnt see Alexander as much of a threat to his empire. When the French deposed Benito Jurez and installed Maximilian as emperor of Mexico, Santa Anna, now 70, reached out to the U.S. for support in deposing the emperor. Necessarily, more is lost to time than is remembered. Johnston was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Seven Pines, six miles east of Richmond, and he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. At the Battle of Gaugamela, he helped make Alexander great by losing half his army to the Macedonian upstart. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? Michael Peck is a contributing writer at Foreign Policy and a writer for War Is Boring. For its part, Washington has made a series of policy choices over the last few years that can be summed Show moreup as tough on Beijing, even seeking to contain the rise of the worlds second-biggest economy. Having amassed roughly twice as many losses in a single day as Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, had suffered during the entire Peninsular War, Haig saw no reason to change tactics. Even now, the easiest way to get into an argument at a V.F.W. The Biden administration has passed landmark legislations such as theInflation Reduction Act(IRA) and theCHIPS and Science Act, which provide subsidies in clean energy and semiconductoShow morers worth well over $400 billion. George Custer at the Little Big Horn and Lord Chelmsford at the Battle of Isandlwana leap to mind. There's an entire myriad of generals from the American Civil War that fought for the Union that were incredibly inept. What a Lovely War and then in the 1989 television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth. The most important, and also the saddest, is that in Vietnam and thereafter Westmoreland was willing to shade or misremember or deny or invent the record when his perceived interests were at stake. Join in-depth conversations and interact with foreign-policy experts with. Following on from our list of the greatest and most successful military commanders, we are presenting this list of the worst. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. Quintus Servilius Caepio takes the cake amongst the worst Roman generals ever to take command of a legion though. This was true in matters both great and small. He thought he could take over the war from the South Vietnamese, bring it to a successful conclusion, and then hand their country back to them and go home in triumph. Soon after declaring himself dictator of Mexico, rebels who opposed the Mexican dictatorship created three new republics, one of them being the Republic of Texas. Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. The elder Lpez had bequeathed to his son a relatively powerful military by regional standards but had cautioned Francisco against using it to settle diplomatic issues. Under Westmorelands command, the Vietnam war began smoothly as the U.S. won every battle. But in 1968, when Westmoreland became Army Chief of Staff, Communist forces baited Westmoreland into committing nearly 40% of his strength to the military outpost at Khe Sanh, then attacked cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. On September 9, 1965, Navy Cmdr. There were available better concepts of how to prosecute the war. The self proclaimed Napoleon of the West didnt quite leave the same legacy as his idol. When it came to military command, Westmoreland was everybodys all-Americanuntil he met his Waterloo. What does that mean for trade and globalization? But with that kind of advantage in troops and firepower, who wouldnt? Youre on the list! Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. But in a contemporaneous cable to General Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Westmoreland complained that the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. And how might that be impacting the world? Westmoreland established a headquarters known as MACV Forward in the northern provinces of South Vietnam and put his deputy, General Creighton Abrams, in charge, placing him over the Marines and also the Army forces in that region. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln. Wrote Kevin Buckley in a scathing review, From the beginning Westmoreland probably expected to write a memoir of victory similar to Crusade in Europeand the defeat in Vietnam has not deterred him from this.. Fort Bragg was named in 1918 during the Jim Crow era. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. Pillow suffered slightly more casualties than Grant in the engagement, which possibly makes the Battle of Belmont the high point of Pillows military career. Seared into all who fought it and many who merely lived through it that conflict remains a bitter stew of second-guessing and recriminations. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on The enemy did not lose heart, did not cease aggression. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. As the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles crippled Germany, Ludendorff effectively sabotaged the Weimar Republic by propagating the belief that he and his armies had been undefeated on the battlefield. Haste risked casualties and defeats at the hands of a formidable opponent like Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. From Kaiser Wilhelm to Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi, there is no end of national leaders who squandered their nations blood and treasure in futile conflicts. In his single-minded pursuit of that objective, Westmoreland (despite his repeated claims to the contrary) essentially ignored two other crucial aspects of the war, improvement of South Vietnams armed forces and pacification. Many of these generals had their worst defeats when their countries were least prepared for conflict, such as the hapless Soviet generals who faced the German infiltration of Russia in 1941. Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. General and presidential candidate Douglas MacArthur (1880 - 1964) at his headquarters in Yokohama, Japan with US Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright (1883 - 1953) (right), and British Lieutenant-General A E Percival (1887 - 1966) (left) who were taken prisoner by the Japanese after the US retreat in the Bataan peninsula and released in 1945. McClellan and Burnside in particular. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. He first demonstrated his ineptitude during the Mexican-American War, where he had received an appointment to the rank of major general from his friend Pres. He was called the "inevitable general." A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. Assuming you believe the subtitle to be accurate, who were GEN Westmorelands biggest accomplices in the loss? There was no warmth, no apparent interest in his associates as people. The Americans lacked sufficient troops, supplies and air cover (when was the last time an American general had to fight a battle while being pounded by enemy bombers?). James K. Polk. . But the argument is unbalanced. A very influential visitor, Senator "Fritz" Hollings from Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina, had warned him about reliance on such ratios. In fact, he did a lot to ensure that Germany would find itself in another war that it couldnt win, but, since he died in 1937, he gets extra credit for being a bad World War II general from beyond the grave. On the other side of the trenches in World War I was Erich Ludendorff, commanding the armies of Germany. Westmoreland told him, "We're killing these people at a ratio of 10 to 1.". Westmorelands first resort in claiming progress in the war was always body count, but in fact this was meaningless. How might Vietnam or Iraq have turned out if a George Washington, a Ulysses Grant or a George Patton had been in command? Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. These Vietnam War photos taken by U.S. Army photographers reveal a side of the conflict that few people have ever seen. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy.

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