WORST Generals of WWII?

[ozi_digger]

Originally posted by the_enigma:

well from what ive read of the crete campaign that new zealand? chap who was put in charge of the allied forces. he was a general wasnt he? anyhoo from what ive read he really balls up his job there.

ignoring intel, where the drop zones would be, the targets, how they where getting there etc etc

The NZ general in question is Freyberg. JonS is probably the best authority here (being a sheep-shagger ). I think Freyberg's failure on Crete is one of those examples of a good commander having a bad day. I used to think Freyberg was an oaf, but when you consider he'd lost his guns and tanks in Greece, he didn't have much to fight back with. The paratrooper threat was real but the threat of amphibious invasion was greater in his mind. I guess Freyberg thought he could mop up penny-packets of paratroopers with his reserve, while concentrating his artillery on the coast. I reckon its just an example of a calculated risk on his part that didn't pay off.

[JonS]

It seems to me that Freyburg was a little out of his depth with anything greater that a division. The few times he got a Corps - or a Corps-like command - he seems to have come rather unstuck. Crete and Cassino stick out like sore-thumbs in this respect. There was another occasion in Africa where he had a Corps, but I can't remember the exact details of that one at the moment.

On the other hand, it could be coincidence that when he was given a larger command were also the times he was given a hospital pass. Crete and especially Cassino stick out like sore-thumbs in this respect.

*shrug*

That aside, he was a fabulous divisional-level commander. He also did a fabulous job as the NZ national-component commander.

[Tifosi]

Originally posted by Derfel:

Interesting issue actually, what constitutes a bad commanding general?

My attempt at definition:

"One who snatches defeat from the jaws of victory"

i.e a leader that has:

adequate forces (quantity and quality)

a defined task

good logistics

a functioning staff

good communications

and STILL manages to lose a battle or fail a given task.

Anybody comes to mind?

-Derfel

Goering. Battle of Britain.

Adequate forces - easily. All the way from the Bay of Biscay, right the way along the French, Dutch, German and Norweigan coast were Bomber and Fighter forces, who had the RAF outnumbered at least 5:1 IIRC

A defined task - Render the RAF unable to fight.

Good logistics - In 1940 there was no serious bombing campaign underway against German industry, the Germans occupied the whole of Western Europe more or less and therefore had nothing to seriously interrupt supply lines.

Functioning Staff - Not only functioning, but many of them were seasoned and experienced officers having fought in a number of actions from WWI to the Spanish Civil War and the Blitzkrieg in the east in 1939.

Good communications - OK, possibly not. The luftwaffe was split into Luftflotten (Air Fleets) with each Luftflotten responsible for a different area of the occupied territories. I will need to go do a bit research to remind myself of which fleet covered which area, but there were 2 in France & the Low Countries, one for Germany, one in Scandanavia and another for the East by late 1940.

The Luftflotte generally operated indepently of one another, however they were in theory being co-ordinated by the Luftwaffe high command back in Berlin.

On paper, it should have been a two-week job.

[ozi_digger]

*Off topic* Check yer yahoo e-mail JonS!

[JonS]

* checks *

[JonS]

w00t!

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by the_enigma:

well from what ive read of the crete campaign that new zealand? chap who was put in charge of the allied forces. he was a general wasnt he? anyhoo from what ive read he really balls up his job there.

ignoring intel, where the drop zones would be, the targets, how they where getting there etc etc

Freyberg? AIUI, he was held in high esteem both by the men he led and the commanders he served under. Perhaps you could study the Crete battle in a little more depth to appreciate the constraints he was operating under there.

Michael

[roqf77]

true. but i heard on a documentry that he chose to use carrier pigeon over radios. and was given dates and times off the invasion. and ignored them. so ge may well of been under serious constraints. but that isnt to say he didnt make serious mistakes. especialy as it was as i have been led to believe, the lack of radios which led to the airfield being taken allowing the moving of enoughtroops to take crete.

[JonS]

Here's two questions for you:

1) Why did F choose to use carrier pigeons?

2) Why was there a shortage of radios?

Of course, 2) partially answers 1), but you seem like a nice guy, so have the hint for free.

[roqf77]

cheers jons. im not preaching as a gospel truth. mearly stating what i heard. i was informed there were radios available and were not used. they were left where they were. im sure it may not be true but thats all i was saying.

[JonS]

So, your opinion that F was the worst general in WWII is based on hearsay? Which you haven't bothered to verify? And which you aren't even prepared to defend?

Riiiiight

[roqf77]

actualy i was ellaborating on a comment by emrys. i never once said in my opinion he was the worst general in ww2. history channel, ukhistory, bbc and discovery arnty exactly hearsay. i was mearly pointing out that i am no expert on the subject.

if you are you should enlighten us. rather than getting on your high horse. be careful or you will end up like dorosh.

[JonS]

You need to get your temper under control, son. And stop being so sensitive. If you don't like being disagreed with, posting on an open forum isn't for you. That is especially the case if you aren't prepared to put in the leg-work to back up your statements.

You might also want to try using more of the tools at your command, starting with spellcheck.

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Tifosi:

[Goering. Battle of Britain.

Adequate forces - easily. All the way from the Bay of Biscay, right the way along the French, Dutch, German and Norweigan coast were Bomber and Fighter forces, who had the RAF outnumbered at least 5:1 IIRC

(snip)

On paper, it should have been a two-week job.

Nah - on paper it was impossible.

The British were out-producing the Germans in single-engined fighters 3:1 (450 huricanes & Spitfires amonth vs 180 Me109's), the British had 50% more pilots for their fighters - you may remember teh story how they were panicing when they got down to 1.5 pilots per fighter? Well the Germans NEVER got ABOVE 1.1 pilots per 109!!

The only scenario where teh Germans "win" the BoB is when the RAF withdraws "behind London", abandoning the S-East airfields like Tangmere, Biggin Hill, etc.

But even then they do so when they still ahve 500+ fighters available, and there are no strategic targets in the area that need to be defended anyway - apart from civilian morale.

Indeed had that happened, and sealion actually been launched, it is likely the war would have been shortened by the loss of 90% of the Kriegsmarine, a significant proportion of the barges carrying commerce on the Rhine, most of the rest of the Luftwaffe and 300-500,000 of Germany's best troops, because none of them would ahve gotten away.

If Goering was incompetant - not hard to argue for - it was because he thought he could achieve his aim in the first place, not because he failed an impossible task!

as for Freyburg in Crete - well it was one of those bloody near run things - had the NZ Brigade at Maleme held the airfield instead of withdrawing then the invasion might well have been utterly defeated - it was pretty much only in that sector that the Germans managed a "successful" invasion - everywhere else they were in rout.

So the points for that cock up don't go to Freyburg - he put his troops in excellent positions - they go to the commander on the spot who declined to attack on the day - I forget his name.

[roqf77]

okay, fair enough. but you were being rude yourself.

you could of responded in a civil way. instead of being so sarcastic. and you made several assumptions about the intentions of my post that were wrong.

so in short its not the fact you disagreed with me, its how you put it. i admit it im not perfect, i wont make a perfect post all the time. if you look back emrys was replyng in a civil manner to a speculative post by some one else. who in your own words didnt put the leg work in. i was simply saying a heard this too.

[JonS]

Hargest.

[roqf77]

cheers looks like a good site.

[Zalgiris 1410]

Freyberg commanded the Tenth Corps at end of the North African campaigne, IIRC. His two obvious sandout failures were IMO both exceptional circumstances. For Crete Wavell should also hold responsibility for not having equiped the garrison properly, (didn't provide more than a few captured Italian guns when he had more modern 25 pdrs and tanks that he kept in NA.) However Crete was cirtainly a case of him mishandling the accurate intelligence information that Ultra intercepts provided him, however he did not know of the reliability of that source. He was not informed of the exact nature of Ultra though I would assume he had some incling as to it. I view this I would excuse this as a case of being properly informed without knowing the nature of the information- as happened elsewhere with Ultra reports at times and I would expect elsewhere even these days in the information age. Of couse having that information was no gerantee of Genereals making the right decisions. For example O'Conner underestimating the threat that Rommell posed in March-April 1941 because Ultra sources gave the mission of 5th Light Division as defensive and that a Light Div :confused: was heavy in ATGs? Not that I rate O'Conner as anyway brilliant, penny packeter he was but good enough I suppose. Monty also expected a surprise reposte from Rommell after Alemain, Ultra info indicating Hitlers Fuhrer Order to hold on! This was the only excuse for his tardiness in following up hard enough. So I can forgive Freyberg for apparently dismissing the reports of two Airbourne Div being in the attack forces and as it turned out the 22nd Airlanding Div was diverted to Rumania anyway. It quite easily could have sounded hair raising I suppose. The critical loss of Meleme Airfield was due to the local NZ Battalion and Brigade commanders overseeing tactical withdraws in the face of the supprised attack that allowed the strategic defeat, definitively not Freybergs' fault. On the subject of the third battle of Cassino it was his best Brigade commander Kippenberger who convinced a not unwilling Freyberg mind you for sure to demand the carpet bombing of the Monestry, the position was just too stong for any kind of local success anyway. The way the NZ Div or rather more specifically the 28th Moari Battalion tried to pierce though the defence was a fair enough plan IMHO and probably resulted in less casualties than another kind of attack, while still attempting to successfully get to the open ground beyond, which had been the objective. Eventually in the fourth battle of Cassino the Allies didn't directly attack there again waiting until the Gothic line was smashed before allowing the Poles to move in. There wasn't enough support that could be given in the first three battles of Cassino including Freybergs' attempt mostly due to bad weather as well as the good German defensive positions in the Gothic line. After the failure Freyberg and Kippenberger AFAIK and everybody else drew the proper conclusion to wait to launch a full attack in better weather, they had still been trying to bound the Gothic line in bad conditions. If Freyberg had have continued to bash directly against the Cassino position and badly in the face of heavy casualties then he would have to be considered to rate amount the worse Generals of WWII, which obviously he was not.

[ August 02, 2005, 10:49 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Andreas]

Mekhlis still takes the first spot. The Cattle Reporter is spot on. Had he been on Crete, he would have had his officers lined up, shot and replaced with privates who had read 'Das Kapital. ' He would have his radios destroyed as counter-revolutionary instruments, except for the one which he had used to send fawning messages of to Stalin, and only released carrier pigeons on missions that could fly a star-pattern to demonstrate their allegiance to the cause of the workers. He would have spent his time collectivising the peasants, and this would have created a pro-German partisan force.

Then, with paratroopers dropping around him and the invasion fleet approaching, he would collect his men in political meetings, lecturing them on why fascism can not win, and employ them to destroy church icons while the paras stand around scratching their heads. Finally he would flee on a submarine leaving everybody else behind, denounce the new officers as traitors and have their families deported to Siberia.

All the best

Andreas

[von Churov]

Ok, guys.

Anybody heard of France participation in WWII?

Anybody heard of them having some generals in the process of the War?

So?

NOBODY SAID A WORD ON NUMBER OF FRENCH GENERALS!!!

And you could point the finger at any of them.

From Gamlain and Fosch downwards, down the chain of command.

Or you just find them being out of cometition in order to enable some other countries generals to win the title?

If it's so I agree.

Having them in the competition for the WORST, general strips everybody esle a one milionth piece of a chance to win the title. And it's not fair.

Viva la France!!!

[Andreas]

Originally posted by von Churov:

And you could point the finger at any of them.

No you could not.

Originally posted by von Churov:

From Gamlain and Fosch downwards, down the chain of command.

I agree that Foch would have been a very bad commander in World War II. He died in 1929. He would probably have been worse than Perceval if they still had given him command despite this drawback. But maybe not.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by roqf77:

history channel, ukhistory, bbc and discovery arnty exactly hearsay.

You wanna bet? I don't know about the last two, but THC is chocked full of crap, and I do mean crap. Some of the programs that I've seen aren't too bad, but some of them are clearly not well researched and given to misinformation in broad swathes. Read my lips: THC is there for entertainment, not education, no matter what they might claim or what might be claimed on their behalf. I'd be extremely cautious about using them as an authority on anything. And that means repeating anything you've seen on one of their shows without carefully verifying it from other reliable sources.

Michael

[roqf77]

yes i do actualy. as i clarified it as being simply what i heard. and in another that i was not an authority. but yes as i was not on holocenagenic drugs, i will bet it is what i heard.

[roqf77]

and it still isnt hearsay. that would be a rumour someone told me. seriously though if thats the case you should get a job makig this documentries.

[von Churov]

Originally posted by Andreas:

No you could not.

Yes I could!

And I DO!