Last night I put up a post about the PBS documentary on Bobby Lee subtitle “At War with his Country… and himself“.
While the doc did touch on some of Lee’s shadow material (like being a violent slave owner quick to the lash) it mostly settled in on a lot of marble polishing. Once again, another opportunity to examine Lee’s feet of clay moves by. As bad as the PBS bow to the myth of Lee was, the discussion in the thread was great fun. I thought the idea from rickstersherpa to have a documentary comparing Robert E. Lee to George Henry Thomas was brilliant. That is something that I would like to see. I bet the story of these two Virginian Civil War Generals and the very different paths they took would make a great book as well. Thomas was by far a better General than Lee and there are many who argue that he was the best that either side produced during the war. That discussion was a fun part of the thread.
Now in my post I started this whole “who is the best general” when I said that Lee was the South’s best General and I further opened the door when I said of Lee that “he was not the best American General ever or even of his time–that honor would have to go to Grant.”.
I think that my praise of Lee as the South’s best General was more rhetorical than factual. A very strong case could be made for some of the others. Lee is the most over-rated figure in American history and I regret letting the myth of him seep into my prose. As for Grant, I still think he was the best General in the War, but the case for Thomas and Sherman are also strong. Sheridan and Farragut deserve a mention as do a few others, but I think that the North ended up with better leadership than the South ever had and that is why the traitors lost. And when one compares Lincoln and his Cabinet to Davis and his it is clear that the North just out thought and out fought the South on almost every level.
And yet, it is the Confederate traitors who are celebrated and the Union heroes who are dissed and forgotten. Such is the strength of the Lost Cause myth and white supremacy in American Culture. Perhaps the coming Sesquicentennial will offer fresh opportunities to relegate these myths to the dustbin of history where they belong. One can hope.
The “best General ever” thread of discussion brought in a few other names including an interesting discussion about Rommel. And if we want to discuss the whole “best General ever” thing–then I think the honors would have to go to Chinggis Khaan (or as he is known in the west, Genghis Khan). The introduction to Jack Weatherford’s excellent book on the Mongal leader (Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World) describes Temujin’s accomplishments in American terms:
In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade zone that stretched across the continents. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination and tax the resources of scholarly explanation.
If one wants to open the field of play to all recorded human history, it would be hard to top Genghis Khan as a General.
All of this should make for a fine bit of over-night chatter.
Cheers
dengre
Proper Gander
“Who is the best general ever” is in some senses a meaningless question- was it Livy who wrote that “Good luck is important to a general”? Remember that Grant was an alcoholic failure until he had his opportunity. So the greatness of a general is not reliant on innate qualities, but also circumstances.
Put me down for Patton.
Linkmeister
As long as no one suggests Westmoreland.
Thanks for the book title suggestion; that looks really interesting.
Scott P.
Afraid I must disagree. Lee was the best general on either side; I rate him ahead of Grant, and easily ahead of Thomas. I have no idea what other Southern general would rate ahead of Lee. Thomas was a solid, capable general but showed no flashes of brilliance. Grant was very good, and certainly more creative, but also not brilliant. Lee, on the other hand, did exhibit brilliance (although certainly not without flaws), and clearly outgeneraled Grant during the Overland campaign.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Is there a category for best ratio of blood to victories?
The general who gained the most by fighting least?
Geoduck
It wasn’t just leadership; the North also had a bigger industrial base and could simply out-produce the South in regards to supplies and weapons.
Raenelle
I happen to be reading J.F.C. Fuller’s Military History of the Western World right now. I’ve almost finished Volume 1–just about up to the Battle of Lepanto.
So far (c. 1500), I’d say he’d be going with Julius Caesar as the greatest.
Linkmeister
@Raenelle: Not Alexander?
Scott P.
Yes, Fuller loved Alexander, and says as much in his book on Julius Caesar. Then again, he was a cavalry man, and never really respected the Roman focus on infantry.
Dennis G.
@Scott P.:
Not really.
Konrad
For all the edification of Rommel, he wasn’t the best German general in World War II. That would be von Manstein, but since he fought the Russians instead of the UK and the US, he gets less attention. Also, the one man most responsible for German military victories in WWII was Guderian, although he did comparably little hands-on leadership.
Bill Murray
Wasn’t Subotai really the best Mongolian General? According to Wikipedia, he directed more than twenty campaigns in which he conquered thirty-two nations and won sixty-five pitched battles, during which he conquered or overran more territory than any other commander in history. He gained victory by means of imaginative and sophisticated strategies and routinely coordinated movements of armies that were hundreds of kilometers away from each other. He is also remembered for devising the campaign that destroyed the armies of Hungary and Poland within two days of each other, by forces over five hundred kilometers apart.
Scott P.
Huh?
And I agree Rommel is a bit overrated. Though for best overall general there are other non-German candidates that rank with von Manstein/
freelancer
Fuck the South.
Knocienz
If I recall my Sun Tzu correctly, one of the hallmarks of a truly great general is that they are unappreciated because all of their victories appear to be simple ones. Their ability to maneuver and prepare properly makes it appear that they had ineffective foes.
amk
Why are we fixating on something and someone that happened centuries ago ?
susan
My vote goes to Mikhail Kutuzov, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian forces because he understood that in the chaos of war it is the under-officers who make the real decisions because everything is in flux and a commander is handicapped by having only wrong or out-of-date information or rumors to guide him.
In War and Peace, Tolstoy lionises Kutuzov a bit and says he is the real hero of the war but Russians treated him with contempt because he ‘failed’ to ‘defeat’ Napoleon – and yet he did exactly what the Russian people wanted him to do, that is, evict the invader with minimal loss of life.
His greatness lay in his simplicity and wisdom, directing his powers to avoid killing people when he could.
sirpointyhead
@Scott P.:
If only Lee and Grant had gone head-to-head, in a protracted campaign, at the same point in history, on the same battlefields, with similar access to equipment.
Guess we’ll never know, huh?
amk
@freelancer: Pithy.
MeDrewNotYou
While not the best (I agree with Ghengis Khan as the #1), I think Zhuge Liang deserves an honorable mention. He was the chief strategist of the kingdom of Shu in the Three Kingdoms era of China (~180-280 CE). Video game fans might recognize him from the Dynasty Warriors series. Despite being severely outnumbered and with inferior supplies, he was able to keep Shu independent for many years. There are a couple of stories about him I particularly like.
In the first story, Zhuge Liang is falsely accused of treason. To prove his innocence, he’s told to produce 1 million arrows in 3 days. Zhuge gets a bunch of small boats, stacks them with hay, and floats them near the enemies side of the river. The enemy are so wary of him that they assume he’s up to something and archers are ordered to fire on the boats. Eventually he pulls the boats back, and collects the arrows, and presents them as proof of his loyalty.
The second story occurred at his death. He was leading his army against a rival kingdom when he suddenly fell ill and died. As his army begins to pull back, the enemy begins to cautiously pursue until they see a man who looks like Zhuge (actually one of his subordinates dressed in his robes) standing atop the city walls. Convinced that this is a trap and the retreat was bait, the enemy general orders a full retreat.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a novel written around Europe’s Renaissance that’s about 50% fact and 50% fiction which describes the era. I’ve heard it described as the Chinese version of King Arthur and the Round Table. While there’s plenty of embellishment, the man was certainly a formidable general whose reputation alone could bring victory.
PTirebiter
This seems a bit like picking the best NFL coach ever. When something works it’s brilliant and audacious, when it doesn’t it becomes the moronic move of a butcher.
Like Proper Gander said, it does seem to me like luck often played a large role in small number of battles I’ve read about. What were the odds that Rommel would be partying with his wife on the evening of D-Day, or that Chamberlain would have had such great instincts that afternoon at Little Round Top?
If the weather remained bad for another 24 hours, or if the 101st hadn’t been so inexplicably tenacious, Patton’s bravado at Bastogne would have been superfluous. I’d never discount the accomplishments of the good ones; I’m in awe of the tasks they undertook, bearing that kind of responsibility is almost unimaginable to me.
freelancer
@amk:
Soul of wit, and all that change.
Villago Delenda Est
As far as WWII is concerned, von Manstein. Hands down. The problem of course is that he was on the Eastern Front, the forgotten theater of WWII. So he’s relatively unknown in the popular imagination of the west.
Eisenhower wasn’t shabby, but his brilliance was keeping his prima donna subordinates (Patton and Montgomery) under some sort of semblance of control.
Overall, yeah, you’ve got to give Ghengis his due. The thing was, though, what he accomplished didn’t last very long at all, which was pretty much inevitable. No one could possibly fill his shoes, and there wasn’t an established tradition to carry on his works, a problem that Alexander and Caesar didn’t face to the same degree.
As for Grant and Lee, sirpointyhead makes the obvious point as to who was better. Can’t argue with success.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@freelancer
In legislative branch, South fucks you.
What a country!
Yutsano
@Villago Delenda Est:
It was even more drastic than that. When Jenghis died, his horde was prepared to conquer all of Europe. Then they all had to stop because all of them had to be present for the revelation of the next Khan. By the time Khubilai was selected, the gains in Europe were reversed and the Mongol Empire fell apart. Plus Khubilai focused on the easier wealth of China, so the Mongols stayed in the East until the next Han dynasty took over. Interestingly enough, the Mongols left behind competent administrators and fairer tax systems than the conquered had had before. Plus this new fangled concept called a postal service.
Jebediah
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
That’s funny!
Is your nom-de-BJ a musical thing? (The fifths part, that is.)
Jebediah
Regarding Lee- did the marble-knob-polishing begin immediately? I assume he was a diety in the South, but elsewhere, was there any sizable contingent in the press (or elsewhere) calling him traitor, etc.? I just wonder if he and other Confederates had been consistently referred to as traitors, etc. if the current crop of Confederates would have less pull.
Andy K
@Proper Gander:
When mobility was called for, he was right up there. But when the situation was static…Well, there’s his assaults on Metz. Bloody- not so much for the Nazis- and unnecessary.
Andy K
Lessee…The Duke of Marlborough, Eugene of Savoy, Gustavus Adolphus, Von Moltke (the Elder, of course)…
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Jebediah:
Yes, well spotted!
Parallel fifths, verboten in traditional voice leading and counterpoint but omnipresent in guitar (my instrument) music.
I had a black & tan coonhound named Jebediah. He was also observant but more in the dept of little furry things to tree or possibly kill.
wengler
Winfield Scott is probably one of the most underrated generals in the Civil War due to the fact that his only contribution was to outline the strategic plan to defeat the South. But it worked almost exactly as Scott envisioned. And like so many other Union military officers he was a Southerner that stayed loyal to the United States.
The South’s military prowess is a myth. They lost every single battle in the west and New Orleans, their biggest city by about a factor of five, was captured in April 1862 a mere year after the war started. Tell me which Southern military genius decided that the most strategically important city in their country was to be lightly defended? Not only that but by capturing the Mississippi River the Confederacy had 3 states completely cut off.
There is no doubt that the United States military was better equipped, better led, and better motivated.
Andy K
@Jebediah:
Yeah, pretty much.
Gotta remember that by the time of the Mexican-American War, he was already considered the shining young star of the US Army. His father was one of Washington’s compatriots, his wife Washington’s (step) great-granddaughter. He’d been the Commandant of West Point. He was seen to have conducted military operations in an honorable fashion. He was waiting to be polished.
Andy K
@wengler:
Most probably Jefferson Davis, who, in the antebellum, was considered quite the military genius. He was responsible for all of the grand strategy of the Confederacy. Lee had to run his ideas for campaigns by Davis.
Villago Delenda Est
One has to remember that the ink of Lee’s signature at Appomattox was not dry before the revision of why the Confederacy was formed was underway.
Before the war broke out, those who would become the Confederates were open about what the conflict was about, at its root. The “peculiar institution”.
After the war, all the mythology to obscure the fundamental reason for secession was being formed. It exists to this day. People make these arguments with straight faces in defiance of the historical fact that, before the first shot was fired, it was about, to quote a famous fictional character, “cotton, slaves, and arrogance.”
Jebediah
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Guitar, eh? I own one, and am trying to figure out how to make nice noises come out of it, but my lack of musical talent apparently is an obstacle. But I do like fifths, and thirds too.
And I am happy to share an appellation with your hound, although I rarely tree anything.
Yutsano
@Jebediah: Wait until you get into fourths. And sixths. And dominant sevenths. And then you start getting into the real obscurata of music.
Mnemosyne
I really disagree with you about the documentary. I thought it was a very fair assessment of Lee’s strengths and weaknesses without focusing too much on either one. You don’t correct hagiography by just reversing the poles and declaring that everything the guy did was bad instead of good.
He was a man who became a symbol even in his own lifetime, as Andy K pointed out above. Why not let him be just a man instead of a symbol?
Andy K
@Villago Delenda Est:
You mean it wasn’t about tariffs and states’ rights? [/snark]
How little they remember that the southern states were vehemently opposed to another state’s right to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act.
Villago Delenda Est
@Andy K:
Indeed, John C. Calhoun, of all people, viciously denounced the very idea of secession when the New England states rumbled about it prior to the War of 1812.
Then, suddenly, when HIS ox was being gored, it was a sacred right.
Andy K
@Villago Delenda Est:
Lovely man, that Calhoun.
Andy K
Another one for consideration: Wellington.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Jebediah.
As it happens, I am a gtr teacher too.
Patience. That first year is just for getting your brain & body on board with the mechanical operation of holding and playing the damned thing. It’s an alien, unnatural position. After that, trust that you are getting better even if it feels like are being thwarted or have plateaued.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
I look forward to it! If work and money situations stabilize, I will pay for some actual lessons. I really would like to get me some of that obscurata…
wengler
Great generals understand their enemies’ weaknesses but understand their own even more. I had a military professor make a pretty strong case for Ahmad Isma’il Ali, strategic planner of the Yom Kippur War for succeeding on both counts. Ali used the Jewish holiday time to his advantage and lulled his opponent into believing endless military drills by the Suez Canal were nothing out of the ordinary. He used the assumptions of the Israeli command against them by both attacking during Ramadan and fielding an army that was competent and able to engineer quickly bridging the canal and overwhelming the fortifications. Ali then exploited the Israelis strong reliance on their Air Force and protection of it by giving his soldiers anti-air missiles. After a number of shootdowns the Israeli Air Force was grounded.
Ali understood his own army’s deficiencies as well. Instead of listening to his own officers’ unreliable reports of their own success(apparently it’s a cultural thing to not tell the truth of bad situations), Ali listened to Israeli military reports instead through use of an extensive radio monitoring system. He also scripted in great detail the order of attack knowing that his army had absolutely no small unit initiative and would just grind to a halt if given the opportunity.
In the end, Ali’s triumph doesn’t look like much because the Israeli Army counterattacked and ended up on the west side of the canal before the ceasefire told hold, but the overall outcome of the war was very important politically to the Middle East. The Egyptian government that had been so shamed by the Six Day War proved that they were competent to their own people and dangerous to the Israeli government. Likewise the perception of Israeli invincibility was changed irrevocably. Six years later Egypt and Israel had peace, with Egypt gaining back the Sinai.
Judas Escargot
@freelancer:
Ditto.
“Southern Honor”: Robert E Lee the traitor. John Wilkes Booth shooting Lincoln in the back.
And was there a single hero from the South in WW2?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Yutsano
A fourth is just a fifth you haven’t inverted yet.
(that’s a howler to a first year music student.)
Jebediah
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Thanks for the encouragement… and yes, alien positions indeed! A friend is a musician, and showed me an E major open chord, and I couldn’t get my fingers to do even that!
wengler
Along the lines of Ali, I would nominate a guy still living -Vo Nguyen Giap. It’s easy to look at Tet as a major military disaster for Giap, but it exposed the lies US politicians were telling their people and upended public perception of that war.
You have to also remember that Giap had an army that defeated both the French and the US and resisted the Japanese before them. Has any other military leader done anything comparable in the 20th century?
Andy K
@Judas Escargot:
Patton- Virginia (well, California, but from a long line of Virginians; from WikiPedia: Patton came from a long line of soldiers, including General Hugh Mercer of the American Revolution.[3] Waller T. Patton, a great-uncle, died of wounds received in Pickett’s Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg. John M. Patton and Isaac Patton, two other great-uncles, served as colonels in the Confederate States Army. William T. Glassell, yet another great uncle, was a Confederate States Navy officer. Hugh Weedon Mercer, another relative, was a Confederate general. Additionally, John M. Patton, a great-grandfather, was a governor of Virginia. )
Chester Nimitz, Audie Murphy- Texas
That’s off the top of my head.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Jebediah:
Word. Until you can get to a teacher I recommend Hal Leonard’s first book for the guitar. It’s very nicely graded and doesn’t get crazy hard all of a sudden. It’s full of pictures and diagrams that show you where stuff is. Hopefully, your musician friend can tell you if you are doing anything totally wacky, technique-wise.
Batocchio
Nice to see some respect for Genghis Khan. I’ll never forget the horrible Biography entry on him over a decade ago now – the doc makers got one of the best experts at the time to participate, and then basically ignored him, even getting some basic chronology wrong. It was interesting to see how they depicted Genghis Khan as alien, a murderer, and sinister, while a Biography program airing the same week on Attila the Hun was comparatively sympathetic.
Yutsano
@Batocchio: The initial conquerings were often brutish, sadistic, and bloody. But once the town/area was subjugated, the areas were administered rather well and fairly. In fact, it got to the point where some areas just stopped resisting entirely, and only lost a token of their male population as a symbol of their subjugation. Jenghis would send a rider ahead to a town and give them a choice: total surrender or complete destruction. A lot of them chose option A, and ended up thriving under Mongol rule. But we just hear of him being a brutish thug and little to nothing of the effective imperial administration he also established.
NobodySpecial
@Judas Escargot: Yeah, I can think of at least one.
Colonel Hawkins was raised in Texas. And of course, Andy K. has a couple of others off the top of his head who fit the bill too. But Hawkins was some kind of tough.
Ed Marshall
My family has a Lee branch that traces it’s history back to the same county that Lee was born in, in Virginia.
The southerners were very proud to report that we go back to a Robert E. Lee born the same year and the same day. What they weren’t so proud of was that it was a different Robert E. Lee, same county, slightly different birthday and the only records of that guy were his arrests for battery on his wife. There is a picture of the whole family, woman has a black eye, he’s there, his brother who bailed him out of jail is there.
In a number of ways I’ll take my misbegotten kin over the Great General.
Andy K
@NobodySpecial:
Wait…Hawkins took almost an entire month after Pearl Harbor to enlist? Greatest generation my ass!
Kidding, of course.
John - A Motley Moose
@Judas Escargot: Even as a Northerner born and bred I find this over the top.
“And was there a single hero from the South in WW2? ”
Bashing Lee is one thing. What you wrote implies there were no brave men in the South. That’s ridiculous. There were brave men on both sides in the Civil War. There are brave men everywhere and always on both sides in any conflict. To suggest otherwise is foolish.
NobodySpecial
@Andy K: Heh, yeah, he was a real pansy, that guy. If he’d have had some stones, he’d have been in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade or Pappy Boyington’s group. But hell, WWII was so bad I heard Dick Cheney took out a couple of extra deferments just in case.
ploeg
@Judas Escargot:
@John – A Motley Moose:
For your consideration: Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., son of the general who surrendered to Grant at Fort Donelson.
Bonus points: When a bunch of Marines raised the Confederate battle flag over Shuri Castle, Buckner ordered the flag to be removed.
Andy K
@NobodySpecial:
Fuck, man, anyone who served at Tarawa is a badass in my book (ditto the guys who fought at Hurtgen Forest). IIRC, Lee Marvin was there. Probably what made him a little nuts.
ploeg
And then there’s the archtypical WWII war hero, Audie Murphy.
Edit: Oops, already taken.
hhex65
o well, the north will rise again…eventually:
“TV showed sham Chip and Dale
No concept of what they mean”
de stijl
Why would PBS air a documentary about some guy from Mad TV?
ploeg
Then there’s Chesty Puller.
David Richey
For my money, Jesus’ General is the biggest badass to ever stalk terra firma.
David Richey
@ploeg: Am I imagining things, or is Chesty a dead-ringer for the precious-bodily-fluids military man-of-yore?
Attaturk
I’ve no real problem with Genghis Khan.
However, one caveat. What he did was not too terribly different in form from what Tamer the Lame had done not long before, just a bit more long-lasting. Or for that matter what a series of relatively unknown Islamic military leaders had done a few centuries before.
I’m not a military historian by any means, just someone with a general interest in history. But I will still cast a vote for a general who did the most with the least…only to have his successes overcome by a natural disaster and political intrigue (i.e. the Plague and his emperors paranoia).
I vote for the Byzantine general Belisarius.
He reconquered North Africa with a limited and outmanned military funded on the cheap. Then he did it again in Italy. Then he did it again against the Persians, and then he did it again against the Bulgars.
From siege to set piece battle to defense he could do it all with limited means.
David Richey
Myself, I’d like to see a discussion of whether Tom Friedman or Dick Cheney is the bigger arm-chair general.
Friedman units is a compelling argument for staying the course, but knocking up yer wife to secure that 5th and final deferment (“free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty …”) — well, who can argue w/foresight like that?
Visionary.
Sun-Tzu woulda been proud.
David Richey
Used to make a comparison, I did, betwixt Robert E. Lee and Colin Powell. My mistake was, evidently, based upon erroneous myth-makin’ information about Lee. (Whocouldanode?)
So the story goes, Robert E. Lee usedta righteously oppose slavery, but fought on behalf of the Confederates anyways. (Whatta mensch!)
Turns out, thru scholarship that revisits them myths, that Lee warn’t such a forward-thinkin’ fellow. (Oh noes!)
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/175482
Anyways, the comparison I usedta likes to make was that Colin Powell, despite knowing that the CIA and the Bush administration was full of shit, played ball anyways b/c he was a company man. Which he was.
And Lee was a company man, also, the differnce bein’ that Lee didn’t recognize the bullshit in his own time (not that that helped Lee *or* Powell) but fully participated innit.
So Powell is the reluctant (but very serious!) cover-yer-ass fall-guy-stooge, and Lee is the defend-yer-honor, the-fuck-I-care, my-honor-is-more-important-than-yer-life minion.
The story of the tool versus the fool.
Not exactly “Profiles in Courage”, but it is what it is.
Robert Sneddon
The greatest single battle in warfare ever resulted in the destruction of an occupying army of over a million men strong in good defensive positions in less than two weeks. It was a masterpiece of logistics and pre-planning, positioning nearly two million soldiers, twenty-seven thousand artillery pieces, five thousand tanks and five thousand aircraft before the attack started. The attackers lost less than 1% of their forces while the defenders lost nearly 10% killed in action and over 600,000 were taken prisoner.
And nobody in the West noticed it was happening because more important things were hogging the news headlines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria
I put Vasilevsky forward as the best general of all time. He was the master of the greatest single victory ever in history, and it wasn’t luck or genius that got him that victory, it was professionalism and nitpicking attention to detail.
Chris
Slightly OT;
Slightly OT, but,
Western movies are a cardinal example of this. I’m still discovering the genre, but it seems to be a common theme that the heroes be Civil War veterans, and they’re almost invariably from the South – cue the Lost Cause mythology and the “I lost everything in that war!” tragic hero angle.
Kudos to The Wild Wild West for being the only Western product I’ve seen yet that actually gives the Union and President Grant their due. Does anyone know other Westerns where the good guys actually fought for the North? They’ve got to be out there somewhere…
Chris
Also, KHAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!! It’s indeed a pity he doesn’t get more recognition in the West.
David Richey
@Robert Sneddon: “My war-mongerin’ technocrat killt more of the enemy than yer piss-ant technocrat ever dreamt of!”
Well played, sir, well played.
(Asshole that I am, I confess that this entire discussion of whose general killt more folks most effectively under greater adversity and duress strikes me as absurd.)
Chris
Interesting, and it clicks with what I’ve heard about the abysmal nature of most Arab armies.
What people don’t bring up often is that the leaders of Arab countries seem to want their armies to stay that way. They’ve seen so many governments in their region fall to military coups that they’re more afraid of their own officers than they are of foreign invasions.
So they screw up the chain of command as much as possible to keep everyone looking over their shoulder so they can’t plot a takeover. In Saddam’s Iraq, for example, you had the regular military and then you had the elite Republican Guard which was supposed to keep an eye on the regulars (and eventually he created a Special Republican Guard because he wasn’t sure he could trust the IRG either). Most countries in the region have that kind of model. The politics keep everything screwed up and damp down on efficiency quite a bit.
(Lest anyone think it’s an Arab-exclusive problem, the Nazis and Soviets did the same thing by having the SS and KGB act as a check on the military, one of the reasons why both of them had their own troop units. Not sure if the Chinese do that – the PLA seems to have a lot more political clout than either the Wehrmacht or the Red Army did).
alwhite
@wengler:
A lot of the Civil Was was “East-centric” and you see that from the original sources but it gets out of hand when historians started wading in. Too much attention has been focused on the area between DC & Richmond. Davis, a poor leader for a government that wouldn’t tolerate a good one, particularly focused on the East. I often wonder how much of that had to do with Lee and so many other ‘aristocrats’ coming from the East. A lot also had to do with the press, which was heavily concentrated in the East and couldn’t imagine anything of importance happening way out there.
I tell people that the war was really won on July 4th, 1963 – a thousand miles from Gettysburg.
alwhite
@Chris:
“How The West Was Won” has a major character (Geo Peppard I think) that ran away to join the Union Army & fights at Shiloh. I can’t remember if if deserts after the horror but he does eventually go West & is instrumental in settling the land.
I think Clint Eastwood plays an ex-Union soldier in one of his films too (could be wrong & they were often vague about history). Bu it is sad that it is this hard to remember Union “good-guys”.
BarbF
You just broke my heart, dengre.
My family traces back to the Custis family, and therefore to R.E. Lee. I’ll credit him for this; as much as I love history I’d never cared for the history of the Civil War until I read a book that mentioned him, and then I read voraciously (albeit misleadingly) on the subject.
I’ll definitely be watching the program on him, so thank you for that.
David Richey
Generals need to go viral. Then they’d really get in the killing swing.
(Barbara Tuchman ain’t learnt near enough on bubonical-type plagues to suffice the appetite for destruction.)
Dave
I have to go with Alexander, and not only because of the sheer size of what he conquered (on a par with Genghis, though Khan’s was larger). Alexander faced off against a tougher opponent (the Persians) with fewer soliders (40,000) and never lost a battle. He fought and won two of the greatest battles in history (Issus and Gaugamela). He founded cities that still exist today. And he did it all in 12 years. It’s hard to argue against that record.
Oh, and Lee is WAY over-rated. Very good at tactical defense but no vision of larger strategy. Jackson was their best. And Longstreet was better as well. Actually, his post-war career is quite interesting. Lost Causers tried to white-wash him out and ruin his legacy because he was for Reconstruction and equality between blacks and whites.
Chris
@alwhite:
Yes, it is very sad.
As a politically unschooled teenager, when I first noticed how pro-Southern the Western genre was, my first thought was that it confirmed what Republican talking heads said about Hollywood being anti-American.
Looking back, I’m pretty amused by that. Because the funny thing is, I was right – the people who perpetuate the Lost Cause mythology are glorifying America’s enemies. But those Republican talking heads I was thinking about would never concede that the South was an enemy or that it’s wrong to glorify them.
p.a.
under the heading of ‘Did Most With Least’, my nominations, just off the top of my head, are:
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Vo Nguyen Giap
(using a very wide definition of generalship in Gandhi’s case)
p.a.
re: Lee. I believe even the CW now (at least among non-marble polishers) is that he was tactically very good-to-excellent, but strategically poor. His attempts to invade the North were unnecessary disasters when a purely defensive struggle was called for. Again, I’m not a Civil War buff by any means, but I think the CW in this case is correct.
An excellent way to judge generalship is to read well-informed foreign writers from nations which have no axes to grind about the wars/generals under study. Well, no discernable axes…
BrYan
Great post.
One day I’m going to get a Union Flag bumper sticker, most of the idiots down here wouldn’t even know what it meant. Then supplement it with a Maine 20th. Fix bayonets, MF’ers.
Keith G
@Dave: Alexander’s dad, Philip of Macedon was no slouch either. He innovated some of the ideas that Alexander and Hephaestion perfected.
Chris
@Attaturk:
I throw in Hannibal Barca as a guy with a similar story to Belisarius. He too was distrusted at home and faced huge obstacles (the Alps with elephants? Holy shit, dude!) which he overcame somehow, then handed the Romans their ass four times in a row. But the government of Carthage, like that of Constantinople for Belisarius, was jealous and afraid of his successes and delayed sending him help in Italy for far too long, thus allowing the Romans to regain their breath and go back on the offensive.
I know the “politicians-stab-in-the-back” theory’s been done to death and is usually just baseless militarist chest-thumping, but there’s one case where it was true.
Scott P.
As I said, Lee outfought Grant in the Overland Campaign. Grant himself admitted as much. Grant’s plan was to deny Lee reinforcement by simultaneous offensives elsewhere, allowing him to defeat Lee and occupy Richmond by the end of the summer 1864. Grant himself thought Lee was overrated at the start of the campaign. But as Grant attempted to maneuver around Lee’s right flank, he found Lee was continually able to block his advance, despite the fact that he knew where he was going, and had a shorter route to get there, than Lee did. At the North Anna river, Lee even managed to get Grant to stick his neck into a trap, and only Lee’s illness prevented the trap from springing. Grant’s frustration by his own account increased weekly, until at Cold Harbor he simply sent his troops in a frontal assault at Lee’s lines, an act that Grant noted was the nadir of his military career. By the end of the campaign, all Grant accomplished was to get the Union army into the same position it had occupied two years earlier. Now, that’s not nothing, it’s better than a lot of other Union generals, but it’s a far cry from Grant’s expectations at the start of the campaign.
DBrown
Without a doubt the greatest general in history was Genghis Khan – hands down – also, one of the bloodiest; during that time he killed millions (numbers only seen in WWI.) For the Persian campaign, he moved half a million men, over 5,000 miles in under three months, even today, that would be a major feat (and won a major battle when caught by surprise and heavily outnumbered – good soldiers and a great general is a bitch to face, ask Lee.)
I read that close to 5% of the world’s population is related to the Great Khan (when he raped, that son-of-a-bitch really got around (and strangely, his first born son was fathered by his greatest enemy but he always treated him as his own first born son.))
Of the Germans in WWII, hands down it was Model – he was often (almost always) heavily outnumbered in men, guns, tanks etc and always won his battles on the Eastern front (and was a huge war criminal who took his own life when he knew he’d be captured by US forces.)
Grant was a genius (IQ level) and his battles were always based on long term and deep strategic thinking with the aim not only to win the local battle but the long term war as well (Lee was a total incompetent in that respect); Grant could think locally and simultaneously on a theater level and always used what he had and even when heavily out numbered and faced by great generals, still won all his battles without ever loosing sight of the Unions main objective (unlike Lee who could never think pass his belief that God would give him victory – what an asswipe; Lee, not God.)
Grant was a good president but terrible judge of character and was terribly taken advantage of and was unfairly treated by historians (mostly southern – surprise.)
The Byzantine general Belisarius was also one of the top two or three but was a very good person, as well (but did have the hots for his niece … who he married – so much for that blood line.)
Shiloh was a total defeat for Grant on day one that he turned to victory even through he was faced by one of the South’s greatest Generals (Johnson.)
Grant’s personal bravery was second to none (he had a number of horses shot out from under him and never hesitated to go to the front to rally the troops even under heavy direct fire as the enemy was approaching – Lee was a total coward in that respect.)
Alex S.
Don’t forget the early arabian leaders, including the Prophet Mohammad himself. And I’d like to throw Leon Trotsky into the ring. He defended the young Soviet Union against the republicans and the monarchists who received help from the allied nations of WW1.
DBrown
Lee never out fought Grant – otherwise Lee, not Grant, would have controlled the battlefield and been the one forcing Grant to react; that never happened so you are wrong claiming that Lee won in any manner.
Control of the battle field after the fight, and control of the follow on battle defines victory for any single action. Also, Grant was always the main attacker but on average, lost FEWER soldiers than Lee during the entire campaign – that goes against all normal battle affairs and proves Lee just couldn’t match Grant.
While Cold Harbor was a true failure and Lee’s only real victory relative to Northern Dead versus Southern dead, the initial battle plan was sound but a slow start, mis-information and stupidity by junior officers made it a blood bath for Grant’s attacking forces. Grant’s responsibility but still, Lee lost overall because he still didn’t get any advantage and it just further weakened his army to no gain.
Worse for Lee, it still left Grant in full control of the field and his next maneuver would have won the war except a junior officer blew it (Grant’s brilliant and incredible maneuver to leap-frog around Lee and take Petersburg.) Lee was totally caught off guard and reacted slowly failing once more to foresee Grant’s strategy.
While Lee was a brilliant local general at times he was also a terribly stupid general most of the time (really, attack the North to save Vicksburg? Most of his decisions were based on his very dangerous and stupid belief that God would help him so anything he (lee) did would turn out well – stupid beyond belief!
And don’t forget he lost the West Virginia campaign at the start of the war, which was crucial for the Union) – you can’t say that about Grant at all – he won all his early, middle and late main battles and always made sure the Union’s interests were served first, not just his; he often sent his extra troops off to serve other commanders. Lee often undermined the South’s war efforts to enhance his position – that is not a good general.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Funny nobody mentions the one general who fought simultaneous major battles on the widest front imaginable commanding the most men engaged in all history in the bloodiest of all wars. Of course, Zhukov had the distinct advantage of having Adolph Hitler on his side.
JRon
Your mention of Davis and his staff reminds me of a conversation I had a few years back w a Canadian Army Capt stationed in the US as part of some joint training. He was writing a dissertation arguing that of all the “American” presidents, Dubya was most like Davis in temperament and style, entitled, extremely thin-skinned and therefore surrounded mostly by yes-men. His argument to his American counterparts was that this was not boding well for our war efforts.
Not that there was much they could do about it.
agrippa
Well, the South was going to lose the war. If the South were going to win – which they were not – it would be in the West. The South could not afford to lose at Shiloh.
The Army of Northern Va, could not win the war. Lee, and his army, had to protect Richmond.
In 1863, there was a choice to made: send part of the ANVa west to fight there; or, go into PA. Gettysburg was not planned; it was an encounter battle. That decision was a large strategic error on the part of Lee and Davis.
Grant, and Sherman, figured out what needed to be done. Lee and Davis did not. To my mind, that makes Grant better than Lee.
Dennis G.
@Villago Delenda Est:
It lasted a few hundred years and the impact of it shaped the modern western world. And his Mongolia has been essentially safe from repeated invasions ever since. All in all it was a pretty impressive accomplishment.
DBrown
Ronzoni Rigatoni
When you say “Zhukov had the distinct advantage of having Adolph Hitler on his side” you mean Stalin (so you know you are dead if you fuck up?) or did you mean to say had Hitler as his enemy? Yeah, that would help.
Zhulkov was a really good general but not great – sorry, but throwing countless men into battle, losing at the average rate of 7:1 while you far out number the enemy, have far more and far better tanks, guns, aircraft and supplies hardly makes you great when you win (and more often than not, lose!)
rickstersherpa
Thank you Dennis G for the shout out. Yes, I think it would be an interesting book to write (or documentary to produce), although one of the problems in writing it is that many of the personal papers of General Thomas were lost. The record is quite clear that his sisters destroyed all the correspodence they received from hm after his decision to remain loyal to the Union and, her their eyes, turn traitor to them and Virginia. Some articles stated that he destroyed his own correspondence, but I doubt that because of the continuing controversy he was engaged in John Schofield, his second at command at Nashville, and he died in the middle of writing a response to Schofield’s claim that he deserve the greater credit for that victory. That story has been the basis of a lot of articles and probably will continue to be. Another interesting aspect of Thomas is the role and impact of the Nat Turner revolt on him and his subsequent decisions, but one that I am afraid is somewhat speculative with the lack of personal papers.
Partisans of Thomas often become very anti-Grant and Sherman. Were these two perfectly just toward Thomas? No. Does that lack of justice mean that they weren’t good generals in their own right? The answer is they were both excellent generals, who learned from their mistakes. Grant organize and directed the final campaigns that led to victory, refusing to let tactical setbacks force him to surrender the strategic initiative. Sherman’s march through Georgia and the Carolinas destroy the morale of white South.
If Lee had decided to follow Thomas and Winfield Scott’s decision and stayed loyal it is hard to know how his reputation would have evolved? He certainly had problems dealing with novice troops and amateur leaders in his initial campaign in West Virginia, the same problems that befuddled McDowell in the 1st Bull Run Campaign. Of course McDowell’s continuing history of failure does not say much for his competence. And one thing about Lee, he was not shy about fighting, and like Grant, could be very stubborn about surrendering intiative or giving up a battle. Like Sherman and Grant, he may have had initial failure and then a comeback.
joe from Lowell
Good to see a couple of people give Giap his propers.
George C. Marshall really should be in this conversation.
Dave
Here’s another name we have to add into the mix and I am pretty sure I haven’t seen: Suvorov. Had a long career battling the Swedes, Turks, Poles and French and fought an amazing tactical retreat through the Alps after the Austrians bailed on him after the Second Battle of Zurich. But he never got a chance to face off against Napoleon…
liberal
@Geoduck:
My thoughts exactly.
liberal
@DBrown:
I could be wrong, but my recollection is that some sign or handout at Gettysburg claimed that Lee was very liberal with his men’s blood (ie more so than other generals in the war), which ISTM is a negative point.
DBrown
rickstersherpa
All good points, especially Thomas who is very underrated.
Still, Lee was a terrible General, overall – sorry, but his nature to attack only helped the Union, not the South. IF (and this is the big problem with the man even as a local general) he had even once followed up any of his temporary victories and defeated the Army of the Potomac in detail rather than let it retreat in good order and heals its wounds, then his attacking nature would have been a huge advantage for the South and he might have won the war.
Instead, he sat on his coward’s ass, said God’s will will be done and do nothing to follow up his few victories – Jesus Christ, that is beyond belief that someone in that day and age could be that stupid in a long term war.
That does not mean he didn’t have flashes of brilliance but all his victories resulted in zero gain but his attacks into the North were disasters for the South.
Also, I do believe if Lee had as many bad junior general officers that Grant had then Lee would never have amounted to more than a typical loser that so many Northern and Southern Generals often turned out to be. Lee never once showed real brilliance outside of a few singular battles that only served to save Richmond for a short period of time. God, even his really good idea (in the strategic sense as well as in theater war) to attack the North (the first time) was a total fuck up that by all rights should have utterly destroyed his army.
As for not giving up a battle, Lee did that all the time – just not during the actual fighting, when he never hesitate to throw lives away when the outcome was no longer in doubt and retreat would be the far better option until he could maneuver into a better position (Gettysburg for instance – why in God’s name fight there when his army was blind and it was on bad ground?)
Grant was stubborn but always for the right reasons because his objectives where critical for overall victory – he never put an army in harms way to prove that he could; rather, to win a long term advantage for the Union; hence, stubbornness was essential and a benefit – can’t say that for 90% of Lee’s battles. Why did Lee fight battles if his objective wasn’t for complete victory over the Union army (ie defeat in detail) – at least at Gettysburg, that was his real objective but he just pick the worse possible place to do it.
Dennis
Love this thread, have been a Civil War nut all my life. Check out The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War, by Thomas Buell. It focuses on Grant, Thomas and Barlow on the Union side, and Lee, Hood, and Gordon on the Confederate side. Is very complimentary to Thomas–tactics, organizational skills, field operations, etc. Thomas was in many ways ahead of his time in things like record-keeping, communications, logistics. He’s always been a favorite of mine.
DBrown
Liberal – I aggree completely; Lee was quick to let his men die (and often for no good reason or gain) and Grant hated to see lives wasted and tried to avoid bloodshed.
Ryan
The South’s best General was also its biggest asshole: Forrest.
dan
I don’t know much about the leadership of General Tso, but he makes a yummy chicken.
Chris
@Dave:
And, as many have pointed out, because he had the audacity to correctly blame Lee for the defeat at Gettysburg.
Cacti
@Andy K:
Or how the slave states weren’t the least bit reluctant to see anti-slavery rebellions put down by force of arms (Nat Turner & John Brown).
Or how Lee’s observation of “not being able to lift a hand against Virginia” didn’t extend to the western portion of the State, which Lee’s army tried to subjugate to the cause of Richmond secessionists.
Jack the Second
@Attaturk
Genghis Khan came before Tamerlane. Tamerlane was explicitly reconquering a subset of Genghis Khan’s territory, and eventually married a great-granddaughter of Khan.
Alwhite
I would tend to discount any ACW general’s standing for one reason. None of them ever understood how the new, rifled, weapons affected tactics or strategy. They kept fighting the way men had been since the invented pointy sticks, long charges across open land.
Its easy to forgive them their myopia since even after our example WW1 was fought much the same way to even more deadly results. But still a GREAT general would have figured out the new weapons & altered their tactics to match.
By the same token the only reason to mention Patton was that he did understand how tanks & trucks changed warfare & adjusted to that very well. But he did have the German example to learn from.
Dave
@Chris: Yeah. How dare he understand that the best way to get the Union off of superior defensive territory was to maneuver around them. The big jerk…
Steeplejack
@Chris:
Dances with Wolves. Kevin Costner’s character was a Union officer. Peckinpah’s Major Dundee. And I think there is at least one Western from the ’50s with James Stewart as a Union veteran. Can’t think of the name right now.
@alwhite: The Beguiled (1971) is the Eastwood movie in which he plays a Union soldier imprisoned in a Southern girls’ school.
mark
@Dbrown 92
Yours is a clichéd and shallow understanding of the Eastern front. If simply “throwing countless men into battle” was a viable tactic for defeating the Germans, we’d all be singing songs about the brilliance of Douglas Haig and the WWI French High command.
After the advent of the machine gun, frontal wave assaults obviously became useless. If you’re going to defeat a disciplined, mobile, and effective fighting force, and the WWII Wehrmacht was certainly that, you need to have a very detailed understanding of planning, logistics, maneuver, etc. Simply “throwing men” at the Germans didn’t work, as the men, if they were simply “thrown” at the German lines, would be cut down by machine guns, tanks, airplanes, or any number of other modern weapons.
No, in order to beat the Germans Soviet troops had to be in the right position, at the right time, and with the proper equipment. I actually took a class on Soviet military doctrine, and those commie bastards were brilliant, truly brilliant, at concentrating their forces in places the Germans did not expect to encounter them. Thus the Soviets were frequently able to turn a theater-level 3:1 or 2:1 advantage in men and material into truly insurmountable local advantages of 8:1 or sometimes even 15:1.
But this wasn’t fate or an accident: the Soviets deliberately maneuvered and planned so that they could exploit German weaknesses in the most ruthless way possible.
I’d also note that measuring a general’s efficacy simply by counting casualties is flawed. Douglas Haig wasn’t an awful general because he got a lot of men killed, Haig was an awful general because he GOT A LOT OF MEN KILLED FOR NO USEFUL PURPOSE WHATSOEVER. Did Zhukov suffer more casualties than the Germans? Yes. Did Zhukov totally annihilate the enemy forces opposing him and permanently alter/weaken Germany. Yes, and that’s a lot more important than the fact that his casualty ratios were higher.
joe from Lowell
@Alwhite:
Precisely. As great as Patton and Zhukov were, they were using ideas borrowed from innovators like von Seekt and Guderian.
Chris
@Andy K:
and
@Cacti:
Let C.S. Vice-President Alexander Stephens speak for his cause (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=76). Starting with paragraph nine.
He rambles on for a while more, mentioning among other things that the silly savage African tribes will never become civilized until they learn to work and feed and clothe themselves (a theme that’s remained remarkably unchanged until today).
But the point is, he explicitly stated that racial inequality was one of the founding values of the Confederacy; that secession happened because of Northern/Southern disagreement on that particular point; and that they were in disagreement with America’s founding fathers on that point.
Hard to find a more rock-solid refutation of the entire states’ rights mythology.
Chris
@Steeplejack:
Thanks for the titles (and to alwhite as well). Will try to track down a few of those at some points. (I never actually finished Dances With Wolves, sounds like a good starting point…)
AliceBlue
Kindly allow me to get something off my chest. I live in a tiny (pop. 170) town in a rural county in Georgia. We don’t sit around talking about the Civil War. Folks in my family are far more interested in World War II. We don’t have altars to Robert E. Lee in our houses. The men here are far more likely to be Masons than SCV members. ( I don’t believe there is even an SCV chapter in this county).
Rebel flag bumper stickers have gotten increasingly rare. The bumper stickers you see around here are far more likely to be American flags, yellow ribbons and My Son/Daughter is a Marine/is in the Army.
As for the sanctification of Lee, the post-Civil War northern press has some culpability there.
Thank you.
catclub
@Chris:
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, of course has no good guys.
but it does have a great anti-war set piece.
Also, when Tuco is yelling ‘hurrah for the South, hurrah for General Lee’ Clint Eastwood says that God hates idiots …
and reveals that the men in grey wore blue uniforms covered in dust.
marcus
I agree about Khan being one of the best. But please the characteristics or nobelness of a general should not come into play when considering the art of warfare….Nathan bedforest was one of the best for the south for all the above stated reasons but a vile racist like most of them for the period they lived in.
The best western general that the world ever produce was Ceasar…the political and military brilliance combined cannot be matched…a true progressive that came from the aristocracy that was able to identify and exploit the weaknesses of the republic. Remember the intent of the emperor at the time was the redistrubution of wealth from the elites to the “lower class”…he paid with his life but the seeds were already planted….
please comment
Hawes
Best general ever? Alexander of Macedonia.
Why did the South lose the war? Not because of Lee. If Lee hadn’t taken over from Johnson during the Peninsula Campaign, the war might have ended in 1862 with slavery still intact.
The South lost the war in spite of what it was able to accomplish on the battlefield. In most engagements the South was outnumbered. By most measures, the United States army was better supplied and better manned.
The old saw about amateurs talk of tactics while professionals talk of logistics applies to some degree. The North could overwhelm the South with material and manpower. Grant’s singular achievement as a general was in realizing this in ways that McClellan, Pope, Hooker and Burnside couldn’t. Grant introduced a war of attrition in Virginia because he knew he could win that fight.
Lee fought better in terms of maneuver. The Seven Days and Chancellorsville were his best examples of this, though he was capable of defensive action (as any army in the 1860s could have with the advances in armaments.)
What was striking about the Northern victory was not that it happened, but that it took so long. Even after Gettysburg and Vicksburg it took another 19 months to grind out a final victory.
Grant did not invent the war of attrition or war of posts, and while Sherman didn’t invent “total war” he should get a lot of credit to advancing its practice.
Finally, Grant’s reputation as a general stems from his personality which perfectly mirrored his troops, his culture and his President: steady under fire, resolute, unflappable. Lee’s reputation as an exemplar of Southern “chivalry” also accounts for his reputation.
I find it interesting that we likely acquit Thomas Jefferson for his crimes as a slaverholder as being a “man of his times” because we admire what Jefferson contributed to the science and theory of elective democracy. Whereas the degree that Lee or Grant were mens of their times comes into contention based on what we feel about their cause.
I agree, the South conducted treason. But the very issue of secession was still unresolved. The Civil War resolved the arguments that Jefferson and Calhoun first put forth.
But they weren’t resolved before then.
I think it’s absurd to glorify the Lost Cause today. But I think it’s harder to roundly condemn millions of people because they don’t live up to modern values. I don’t see how that’s any different from glorifying it.
Hesiod
It’s hard to argue with Genghis Kahn (Temujin). But, Alexander the Great was pretty goddamned impressive as well.
He never lost a battle in 20 years of straight up fighting against some excellent commqanders and against greater odds, etc. His siege works were unparallelled.
Hawes
@wengler:
You mention Scott. It was Scott who recommended Lee for field command of the US armies. He had seen what Lee was capable of during the Mexican War, where Lee wrote a brilliant record as a junior officer.
Just saying…
jrosen
Consider Moshe Dayan in 1967.
Much of this discussion strikes me as out of focus. It is apples and oranges to compare commanders at widely different levels of responsibility over millenia. And different sorts of organization: division, regiment, army all mean different things at different times. And then do you judge on the basis of a battle, a campaign, or a whole war?
Or an idea well-conceived but badly executed (Churchill and Gallipoli)? Or a great success (MacArthur in New Guinea and Inchon) and a great failure (MacArthur in N. Korea 1950).
For low-level, on-the-spot leadership I’d say Joshua Chamberlain (a colonel) at Little Round Top. Or Dan Morgan at Cowpens (not least for putting that bastard Tarleton out of business).
Division commander: How about Norman Cota at Omaha Beach? Or De Gaulle at Amiens in 1940.
Corps level: really hard to say, since there are so many to choose from. I’d plump for George Thomas.
Army: Patton, or Zhukov at Stalingrad, Lee vs. McClellan in the Peninsula, Grant at Vicksburg and also at Chattanooga. Meade at Gettysburg wasn’t bad either.
Commander-in-Chief (Grand strategy): Stalin (after his early major errors), Roosevelt, Lincoln.
Harder, much harder, would be the screw-ups, because there are so many more of them. Hitler, Joffre, McClellan, Rennenkampf (Tannenburg 1914), etc. etc.
jrosen
Sorry…I left out Washington…after a major blunder (New York) hanging on and understanding war as political (Trenton, Princeton, Yorktown) and not just military. Giap certainly learned from him.
Geeno
Ghengis Khan’s empire lasted for almost 100 years and only fell apart when the various Mongol khans refused to recognize Kubilai as Great Khan upon his brother Mongke’s death. Kubilai was regarded by the other as too Chinese to be a Mongol Great Khan, and the various khanates became separate empires, often at war with each other.
The longest lived of the outer khanates, the Kipchak Khanate or “the Golden Horde” ruled Russia directly or through vassals until 1500.
Hawes
@DBrown:
Lee was a total coward? He was in his sixties! If you look at his performance in the Mexican War, especially in the Pedregal, he performed with great bravery.
I don’t think Lee was a the Marble Man – his nickname from his exemplary career at West Point. But I don’t think he was an overrated barbarian either.
Both sides are conducting an historical fallacy.
fourmorewars
Got beaten to the punch on pointing out Tamerlane was after Genghis. Was gonna gently correct a favorite blogger, Attaturk, who for some reason didn’t nominate as a successful general….well, do I have to name him?
This entire thread goes by and Stonewall Jackson never came up? He did some tings, I hoid. (also fell asleep at the Seven Days and ruined Lee’s month, they say)
When discussing Patton’s accomplishments, don’t leave out that he had access to his enemies’ every plan, thanks Bletchley! And Grant’s greatest feat, at least in Sherman’s mind, hasn’t been mentioned, i.e. the long-drawn-out patient maneuvering win at Vicksburg.
Genghis Khan brings to mind Doug Coe. Apparently he admired that Genghis put his conquered town’s head man into a steamer trunk or somesuch and ate dinner on it while the guy suffocated. Doug Coe admired this as a way to establish authority. Jesus and Genghis Khan, coequal saints in the pantheon of our coming Christian Fascist overlords!
DBrown
mark,
sorry if you think I believe that the Russians just threw men into battle (to some extent they did) – they did lose about seven men for every German killed. I do admit that they often used good tactics and had some really great troops. Zhukov suffer was a good general (as I said) but my point stands, if they didn’t outnumber the Germans in men and material, they would have lost big time.
Hawes, to excuse people then for slavery is not using modern morals – even then most people knew slavery was a terrible evil and just because a few million approved of it does not make todays attitudes just modern PC applied to another time; that is like saying Hitler was moral for his time – nonsense.
The civil war occurred in a country that knew full well that all males (but certainly not females) were equal and yet refused to accept that principle because it made economic sense to enslave people; those people as measured by the morals of their times were in fact very evil and any moral person living then, knew that.
Now, relative to the murder of native Americans, you would have a good case but not for slavery.
It is too bad Lee did not command the Southern forces during the Peninsula Campaign, Lee would have attacked and had his army destroyed. Lee was a bad general and needed great generals under him to be good for short periods of time – as seen in the West Virginia battles, he lost very badly without really good generals carrying out his ideas. Hell, he lost all key battles even with most his good generals working for him – strange anyone thinks he was any good on his own.
p.a.
@Hawes:
Yet the South had one tremendous advantage; it only had to fight a defensive war. and it failed. The North had to conquer an area larger than many European countries, and did it in 4 years, while at the same time continuing its westward expansion.
Ross Hershberger
Years ago I read a biography of Genghis Khan by candle light at a Goth club. They had strange books. That one gave me nightmares. By any measure he was practically a supernatural force in his own right.
It’s difficult to compare Genghis Khan to modern commanders. He used methods like genocide that were effective in keeping conquered territories under control but are not done today. Different rules, different game.
DBrown
Lee is a coward because he
1) Did not stand up for the country he swore an oath to defend
2) Thought nothing of having a woman slave savagely whipped because they ran away (some reports say he did it himself – the very least, he directly oversaw it!)
3) Served as a staff officer (for Scott) during the Mexico war and unlike Grant who faced battle day in and day out, he mostly didn’t face direct battle (and considering the lies of his achievements during the civil war, I have to wonder if much of his ‘bravery” during that war isn’t just more bullshit)
4) Sixty or not, he didn’t once put himself in harms way like when his army was routed and needed to be rallied (Antietam would have been a good time and a victory there really could have won the war for the South).
The first two cases are complete proof that the man was a coward.
His inability to control his senior officers was also a telling sign of his weakness but then, they said about lee that he was too much (in order to justifry his failing) a gentleman to call them out and force proper discipline – no, he just lacked backbone.
The fact that he threw men into conflicts to die so he could win a useless battle says even more about lee – cowards always like to prove themselves with other people’s lives for no gain. See bush and cheney – two more total cowards.
J. Michael Neal
@joe from Lowell:
Who in turn relied upon ideas borrowed from innovators like Fuller and Tukhachevsky. One interesting thing is that the Germans were almost the last major power to grasp the fundamental ideas of tank warfare. However, the British went in a different direction (not, in my opinion, entirely incorrectly; among other things, panzer doctrine left the supporting infantry frighteningly short on firepower), and the Soviets slaughtered their theorists. So, the Germans were the first to use advanced armor theories in a shooting war. They were far from the first to develop them.
It’s also the case that the German generals are seriously overrated, because they were allowed to write the history of the Eastern Front, given a big boost by Basil Liddel-Hart’s penchant for bureaucratic axe grinding.
J. Michael Neal
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not hands down. He’s not even my first choice. That’s William Slim, who had the problem that he served in the even more forgotten theater of Burma.
Also, Yamashita should be in the conversation. Not my pick, but also neglected.
Andy K
@DBrown:
Whoa, slow down.
There was now way that Lee was going to get a decisive victory in Maryland once Special Order 191 was discovered by the AotP.
As it was, while the campaign was a loss for Lee, the battle, when considered as a purely defensive action on Lee’s part, was fought pretty damned well against long odds. Lee needed to be in Sharpsburg, where he could see the battlefield clearly, in order to shift his forces as needed. He prevented a rout!
This is standard practice for officers commanding large forces: The larger the force commanded, the further the officer is removed from the action in order to coordinate their forces. Brigade commanders are closer to the line than those in charge of divisions; division commanders are closer to the lines than corps commanders; corps commanders closer than the commander of the army. This is why, at, say, Gettysburg, Armistead died after piercing the Union defense, but Pickett, Longstreet and Lee were unharmed.
Cermet
@Andy K: You are correct but Lee did know that his orders were in the enemies hands so he had an very interesting advantage if he had played it correctly – my point was, this was Lee’s most brilliant (really) idea for the CSA and best chance to win the war but he just didn’t have the balls, or brains, or 3 in the morning courage or ability or something because against a really bad General, he failed and didn’t/wouldn’t take the bull by the horns and force the victory – Grant did that many times and was often out numbered.
Numbers alone should not matter when you take the first action and have a better trained officer corps., junior officers and battle tested soldiers – being out numbered (within reason) shouldn’t stop a great general – and that proves my point about Lee.
Grant at Shiloh was out numbered too, caught by complete surprise, faced a great general who had great junior officers and a perfect battle plan and forces in full attack mode and yet, Grant turned the tide of battle (as many of his troops fled!) and still won Yes, the arrival of fresh troops the next day was critical.)
While the forces engaged at Shiloh were smaller, the ratio between Union? CSA wasn’t terribly different considering the Union forces at Antietam had most of their reserves out of the fight and useless.
Whether Lee was a man of honor, we know he wasn’t; as for courage, well, no – not as I view courage (an oath is an oath and even many slavers wouldn’t beat a helpless negro woman so savagely) but when the south most needed a victory on its greatest gamble of the war, against an indecisive general who was always determined to lose (McClellan always acted as if his army was already defeated before a shoot was ever fired), Lee let both the South and his army down.
Maybe unfair but that, for me, is what separates a great general from an average (the whole point of these posts – Lee was NOT a great general in any real sense of the word)- when the life of your cause is on the line, you come through – no excuses.
I am so sick of Lee being called better than Grant – bullshit.
Was he a good general at times and had some brillient moments? Yes, but he more than any other person did more harm to the CSA than anyone else who held major command.
...now I try to be amused
Re: High casualties in victory
Both Grant vs. Lee and the WW2 Soviet generals vs. the Germans faced very good armies. If your enemy is hard to surprise and he doesn’t break and run, then you’ll take a lot of casualties even in victory. Grant’s Henry-Donelson and Vicksburg campaigns were masterpieces of maneuver against lesser mortals. By contrast, in 1864-65 Lee could not maneuver at all against Grant. Grant had the initiative from day one, which is a mark of a great general.
But I’ll give Lee his props. He was the most beloved and inspirational army commander of the Civil War. In the battle of the Wilderness, when a Confederate attack faltered, Lee started to move to the front to lead the attack in person. His troops would have none of it and shouted, “Lee to the rear!” They knew the army needed Lee. Then they attacked with renewed ferocity, as if Lee had been at the front.
On the other other hand, the most beloved and inspirational army commander of the Napoleonic Wars might have been the Prussian Gebhard von Bluecher, who was no great shakes as a strategist or as a tactician, but as “Marshal Vorwaerts” got the job done.
Cermet
Let us never forget that twenty million Russians died during WWII and at no time was Russia fighting less than 70% of the German land army. That front had no equal in any war in history and few (Moguls included) wars were ever so brutal. Nazism was destoried by Russia – we, the Brits and others helped but I have nothing but respect for the Russian army and its suffering people during that terrible, terrible war.
Chris
@Cermet:
Hear hear. Somewhat shocking how little credit they get for it; walk into a Borders and compare the number of books about Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and whatnot to the number of books about Stalingrad and the like. Which, of course, helps perpetuate the myth that “America beat the Nazis,” and the whole world should owe us fealty for that, as if no one else was involved.
Though, I do think that it was a team effort and that even though the Russians took the brunt of the work, participation by all three major Allies was necessary to win the war – take either Britain or Russia or America out of the equation, and the Nazis would probably have won.
TOP123
Really want to go back and really read this thread through again–lots of great comments. Just wanted to second Belisarius and Giap as great picks.
Marcus, I think you’re spot on with Caesar. One of the most interesting figures in history… and it’s worth pointing out his politics, as you did. Not to mention, since many people have brought up Grant’s memoirs (and I am very much on the love Grant side of this whole discussion), Caesar was one hell of a writer, too.
anonymous
I also approve the mentions of Belisarius (fought with the military equivalent of toothsticks for a leader who did not deserve his services) and Giap (fought the French, Americans, South Vietnamese, Khmer Rouge Cambodians, and the Chinese PLA).
I also give credit to Washington for doing what Lee could not: win a war and found a great nation.
12yearoldhistorybuff
@Attaturk: tamerlane was 100 years after genghis khan not before.
12yearoldhistorybuff
@Geeno: the jagatai khanate( central asia) lasted until the 1600’s. the moguls were descendants of genghis khan, as were many other leaders of smalls nations and many nomadic tribes
12yearoldhistorybuff
@p.a.: population is much more important than land, the southern population was pretty small for it’s size, much smaller than most european countries of the time!
12yearoldhistorybuff
@…now I try to be amused: pyrrhic victory a victory in which the victor has heavy losses, after pyrrhus(hard to spell) of epirus who fought the romans in the 3rd century bce. hannibal, talking to scipio africanus rated him 2nd best general ever after alexander the great.
12yearoldhistorybuff
look up hsiang yu not greatest general, but annihilated his fair share of armies also check out Khālid ibn al-Walīd greatest win loss record of all time, won over 100 battles never lost one, he was mohammed’s general.
Andy K
@Cermet:
You’re correct, numbers alone shouldn’t necessarily count, and in this case it wasn’t about the aggregate number of his own force, but the fact that he was so spread out- and that McClellan KNEW he was spread out. If not for the presence of that big geographical feature known as South Mountain (and the fact that there aren’t that many passes through South Mountain, McClellan could have sliced through the middle of the AoNVA and taken at least that part of Longstreet’s corps that was to the north.
Once McClellan knew of Lee’s position(s), there was nothing offensive that Lee could do. The geography didn’t favor him one bit. Defending his retreat back into Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg was his only option.
There’s courage, then, there’s bottled courage. It would have taken more than a snoot-full of the latter for anyone in his position to do other than what Lee did.
And if it’s courage your looking for, look at Lee’s masterpiece less than a year later: Chancellorsville. First, Longstreet and his corps are in Norfolk, shielding Richmond. Lee leaves Early’s division and Barksdale’s brigade behind Fredericksburg to stave off Sedgwick there, and goes west with 40,000 men. When he gets there, he’s facing 70,000 who’ve already crossed the Rappahannock…And he divides his force again! He sends Jackson through the woods to flank Hooker, Jackson succeeds, and….If he doesn’t, Hooker’s in Richmond, and his face ends up on the $50 bill.
Well, if you’re looking for courage, there it is. No one else attempted anything so ballsy in the face of the enemy during the entire war.
CWD
I lurk but seldom comment. I present for your consideration
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
His is the wallet that says “Bad Ass M*ther F*cker.
His theater was admitedly a sideshow, but he really made the most of what he had to work with.
Chuck Silverstein
Umm, wasn’t the whole 1864-65 Overland Campaign and siege of Petersburg when Lee and Grant go head to head?
True, Grant had more men and resources, but the campaign wasn’t simply attrition.
Chuck Silverstein
Lee may have tactically outfought Grant at times, but Grant brought the strategic vision and, more importantly, will to see the thing through. The previous 3 years had been very 17th century -go on campaign fight the one big battle and then go into camp.
Grant also did his best to coordinate the Virginia campaign with simultaneous thrusts to Atlanta and down the Valley. His Shenandoah generals let him down terribly, and many of his Army of the Potomac subordnates snatched defeat from the jaws of vicory on many occasions. But Grant won because he saw the overall big picture of the campaign, not just a single battle.
And Lee never made an attack on Grant – he was forced by Grant’s manuevering to just be defensive, and never won the initiative from Grant.
Remember too that by 1864 tactics had changed tremendously -gone was Pickett’s Charge, in it’s place the pick and shovel. if you tour the eastern battlefields, the distinct thing you see is trenches. Don’t find ’em at Antietam or Gettysburg