Who were the 2 best and worst generals of WW2? | Forums

[FlatSpinMan]

Been reading some books by Max Hastings - Armageddon and Nemesis - which deal with the period of 1944-45 in Europe and Asia respectively. In these books he comments on various leaders' and generals' abilities, quirks and failings.
Very interesting stuff.

As this forum numbers so many esteemed personages knowledgeable (and more to the point, opinionated)I thought I'd ask for your valuable two cents.

Which 2 generals of WW2 (any nationality) were the BEST? You may define best as you please.
Similarly, who were the 2 WORST generals?

[jarink]

Best:
Albert Kesselring
William Halsey (OK, so he technically wasn't a General, but he still kicked azz!)

Worst:
Lloyd Fredendall
A. Hitler

[DrHerb]

Hitler was by far the worst

[Choctaw111]

Lloyd Frendendall? Without using Google, who in tarnation is that? I can understand if he was a nobody with stars, but if he was that bad, history surely would have remembered him better...or I would have remembered him better.

[arthursmedley]

Hmmm....really interesting question Flatspinman.

I think the two best were Bill Slim in Burma for fighting a war with very limited resources across fairly inhospitable terrain against a manic suicidal enemy and persevering with it whilst knowing, at the end of the day, it was merely a sideshow.
The second imo would be Eisenhower for holding it all together and on track whilst being in the middle between Washington, London and the various allied 'personalities' on the western front.

The worst; well take your pick. Any Japanese or Russian general for profligate waste of their soldiers lives in pointless, suicidal operations out east or for ruthless drives against the Germans to please Stalin.

WW11 generalship is marked by an absolute disregard for the human cost of operations by both the Japanese, Russian and to a slightly lesser extent the German staffs.

And Hitler? Well the mind boggles at what the Wermacht might have managed without him at the controls but at the end of the day I suppose you could say Enola Gay would have visited Berlin before Hiroshima.

Good thread though. Plenty to discuss here.

[joeap]

Originally posted by arthursmedley:

The worst; well take your pick. Any Japanese or Russian general for profligate waste of their soldiers lives in pointless, suicidal operations out east or for ruthless drives against the Germans to please Stalin.

Utter nonsense. At least not without putting a timeframe on it. The Japanse won their early victories with minimal loss of life-later in the war they did have a tendency to use banzai tactics which were born out of desperation. Yama****a has been named as one of the better generals, certainly against Arthur Percival.

Same with the Soviets, early in the war desperate counterattacks, which nonetheless bought time and ultimately saved Moscow, Leningrad (from falling though not from seige) by an army gutted by purges and inexperienced in the operational art of war and combined armed tactics. Later on the Red Army got better and the combat casualty ratios much more favorable (not got the data at hand check out Glantz among others) though to their credit the Germans managed to hand on a lot longer than Napoleon did.

Agree about Slim, don't agree about Ike...the Anglo-American ETO ground commanders were competent but not brilliant. They didn't need to be. The best wore wings or anchors among the Anglo-Americans IMHO.

[BSS_CUDA]

Originally posted by joeap:
Agree about Slim, don't agree about Ike...the Anglo-American ETO ground commanders were competent but not brilliant. They didn't need to be. The best wore wings or anchors among the Anglo-Americans IMHO.

I don't entirely agree with you, Patton was a more than Competent commander, totally arrogant, but a VERY good ground commander

[b2spirita]

Originally posted by Choctaw111:
Lloyd Frendendall? Without using Google, who in tarnation is that? I can understand if he was a nobody with stars, but if he was that bad, history surely would have remembered him better...or I would have remembered him better.

HERE you go.

[Breeze147]

Best -

Patton and Rommel

Worst -

Montgomery and any Italian

[Choctaw111]

Originally posted by b2spirita:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Choctaw111:
Lloyd Frendendall? Without using Google, who in tarnation is that? I can understand if he was a nobody with stars, but if he was that bad, history surely would have remembered him better...or I would have remembered him better.

HERE you go. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks for the link, but just after I left my post here, I did a Google search and read a 15 page rundown on the guy. He didn't start out that great, then started to do well, and then went downhill in a hurry. What is disheartening is that this is by far an isolated incident in the US military with officers, but it sure is with such a high ranking one. There is an old saying that states that you don't know how good a soldier really is under he is under fire, or in a combat zone doing it for real.