WORST Generals of WWII?

[Other Means]

I thought Finnish cuisine WAS big hairy donkey balls?

Percival for me, although that's only because he's British.

Mekhlis seems a good choice generally (sorry).

[Sergei]

Elks and reindeers, OM. Elks and reindeers.

[JonS]

big hairy elk and reindeer balls?

[Guest Mike]

I don't think you can count the French commanders on the ground in WW2 - even tho they lost they did so because they were utterly outthought at a strategic level.

Someone always losses - that doesn't necessarily make them bad.

AFAIK the French were ordinary, vs German brilliance. And even then the French did manage a few good counter strokes - but the average French general didn't hav the training, doctrine or equipment to do any more than they did.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Soddball:

In some ways 12 Group had the edge - they got sufficient warning of attack to allow them to get up above the Luftwaffe, and their bases were sufficiently far north that bombers were only escorted for a short while due to the 109's limited range.

On the other hand (there's always that bloody other hand...), by the time they had climbed to altitude and formed into their "big wing" the Germans had already dropped their bombs and gone home. At least that's the way I've heard it.

Hope you don't mind a little hearsay.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Sergei:

The French suck, and I hate all of them, except for those who don't think that Finnish cuisine sucks big hairy donkey balls.

But but but...I thought that's what Finnish cuisine consisted of. Or was it big hairy reindeer balls? ...It's so hard to keep track of all these little countries...

Michael

[Soddball]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Soddball:

In some ways 12 Group had the edge - they got sufficient warning of attack to allow them to get up above the Luftwaffe, and their bases were sufficiently far north that bombers were only escorted for a short while due to the 109's limited range.

On the other hand (there's always that bloody other hand...), by the time they had climbed to altitude and formed into their "big wing" the Germans had already dropped their bombs and gone home. At least that's the way I've heard it.

Hope you don't mind a little hearsay.

Michael </font>

[Wisbech_lad]

Re Singapore campaign.

Actually, there was quite a well thought out plan "Matador" for the defense of Malaya.

Unfortunately it relied on small things like there being 300 modern fighters available (the plan included pre-emptive strikes on the Japanese airfields in Thailand, followed up by invasion)

What Perceval deserves contempt for was that when it was obvious "Matador" was phantasy, he didn't come up with anything to replace it.

[The_Enigma]

what actully happened over there, what was the course of events of that campaign?

[Sunray]

Wisbech_lad I agree with you absolutely. It was not as if Percival had arrived in theatre at the last minute and had no time to change things. He was appointed to the post in the spring of 1941 and it was not until December that the Japanese attacked. During this period no real attempt was made to come up with realistic(Matador not realistic)plan to defend the Malaya Pennisular. Compare the actions of his contemporary, Montgomery, who arrived in the Middle East in August 1942,immediately "gripped" the 8th Army and was able to launch the Battle of El Alamein in October.

Cheers

[Wisbech_lad]

Linkies on Matador - most of the research was by Singaporean historian.

http://ourstory.asia1.com.sg/war/headline/church.html

Info on Matador & fall of Singapore

http://www.chs.edu.sg/~y02chs282/operation%20matador%20intro%20page.html

Actually, Brooke-Popham was sacked in Nov 1941 I thought? So Perceval had very little time?

[von Churov]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Parroting rubbish purveyed by Fox News on French military performance is not good enough.

de Gaulle, Juin, Koenig, Leclerc. All solid to outstanding generals, with de Gaulle also capable of developing modern doctrine and providing some superb leadership from exile.

Clearly they had bad generals, but so did everybody else. To say that all or most of the French generals could qualify for worst is just stupid and shows your ignorance.

All the best

Andreas

Oh yeah!

Did you know that in '40 de Gaulle was a colonel,

not a general?

And later he was not in direct command of the troops?

He became a politician.

Or shall we say an Ally puppet?

Anyway, what was the great battle he won? Or great military performance he had?

A counterattack with his armoured brigade in June '40?

His main succeses was political not military.

So, politicans not included in the competition.

Colonels eather.

Just a word on ignorance my friend.

Have fun.

And all the best.

P.S. I LOVE France and I hate to say these kind of things but...you provoke.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by von Churov:

Did you know that in '40 de Gaulle was a colonel,

not a general?

De Gaulle was promoted acting Brigadier-General with effect from 1st June. He held a high-level command before that as commander of tank forces of 5th Army.

Apart from Gamelin, which French generals qualify for worst, and why? Names, appointments, reasons please. It is very easy for you to show you are not talking out of your arse. Just answer the question.

[WineCape]

Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by WineCape:

Andreas, it's not worth it mate.

Are you refering to our PBEM game??? Mind your OWN business, Sir! :mad: </font>

[Zalgiris 1410]

On the subject of the French Generals of 1940, it was their doctrine that was flawed which is different to being incompident. Their techniques were hopeless, ie planning delays too long to deal with the fast pace of Blitzkrieg though to be sure they were strategically out thought by the Munstein plan of course. They also suffered from the technical / logistical falabilities of their armoured Divisions which were enept, the 2nd for instance was split up and vertually ceased to exist while trying to be diverted to face Hoth thus having no impact at all on the campaigne. Their tanks had one man turretts with all the problems that this entails in overloading the commander with too many responsibilities and were with out radios! Fragile WWI era tank forces for sure. I think also that the French Army was practically abandoned by its Airforce as it retreated and hid on airfields in the depths of France after Luftwaffe raids on their forward bases. So much was wrong that incompitence and therefore worst actual Generalship did not need to be a factor in their defeat, IMHO. That said, IIRC their overall commaders relied upon the public telephone lines as their most advanced form of communication, as bad as that sounds though I would suggest that this be taken as an indication of their static warfare dependent thinking rather than providing evidence of them constituting amoung the worst generals of WWII. They were following outmoded methods for the most part.

The same goes for Soviet Generals in 1941-42 except those so far as mentioned as being totally inept in their military capacity. They understandably, given the system and the purges and what they were up against, weren't going to perform too spectacularly. As a Lithuanian I emphatically have no love for Soviet or Nazi political apointments period.

On Clark, who has been castigated here as I have read elsewhere, I personally don't hold a negative view of him as most. He tried to bounce the Gothic line at its most strategically important offering, that is at Cassino and when that failed and again I don't blame the Texan 36th Div in anyway for that, wasn't it he who dreamed up the idea of combining the 2nd attempt with the Anzio landings? To my mind it was a good enough concept but failed due to 3 factors, the strength of the Gothic line, the limited amount of landing craft and reserves for the punch of the Anzio forces and thirdly the effectiveness and agility of the German response to the landings which were quite fast. The weather effected both these battles as well as the third battle of Cassino with the 4th Indian and Freybergs' NZer Div. Clarks lunge for Rome is cirtainly a case of attrocious misjudgement but it stemmed more for vainity at the worst while definately not being excusable militarilly. Sorry I'm no expert here on Clark but these are my impressions considering what he at least attempted to do to reach objectives more so than the British did in the North Western Theatre while under Alexander in Italy who was hamstrung strategically by a lack of priority.

My Grandfathers' brother was captured in Sinapore and died after the Sandakan Death March so the less I say about Percival the better. The posts in this thread so far outline the facts true enough.

[ August 04, 2005, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Guest Mike]

The fall of Singapore was pretty much done a year befoer the Japs invaded when a German U-boat captured documents being transported to Singers stating how woeful teh defences were and that they were not going to be upgraded!!

It is interesting to note that "Matador" was a plan to do to the Japanese what the Japanese did to the allies!!

[Tagwyn]

RE Singapore: Chruchill was astounded when he discovered S. was unable to direct its guns against a land assault! I remember reading this in the Memoires of WWII. No U-boats had anything to do with it. Tag

[ozi_digger]

Originally posted by Tagwyn:

RE Singapore: Chruchill was astounded when he discovered S. was unable to direct its guns against a land assault!

If you're referring to the large naval guns in Singapore pointing out to sea and not being able to swivel inland - its not true. The guns could swivel inland. Problem was they were naval guns capable of only firing solid shot. Their weakness therefore was that they didn't have HE ammo that would have been beneficial in supporting a land operation (and they have a flat trajectory which makes them suitable for DF role only).

I probably agree that Percival was a bit of a numpty, but holes in the plan for the defence of Singapore appeared during the 1930s. It was realised that the Commonwealth navies could not fight a war on two fronts. That is, they could not defend Singapore and Britain concurrently. Same with necessary air assets and land assets. Consider also British doctrine in the early war. It was unsuitable for jungle fighting. The British preferred defensible strongpoints and roadblocks which the Japanese simply by-passed through the jungle.

Just putting stuff in context here.

[Guest Mike]

The did have explosive shells, but they're a type known as "Common shell" in naval parlance - these are low capacity and are perhaps best described as semi-armour piercing.

Naval guns did fire high capacity HE shells but they were not issued in large numbers unless shore bombardment was expected.

AP shells had even lower HE capacity of course, but were not solid either.

Generaly speaking Naval HE would be used for bombardment and against unarmoured targets (light ships, merchants, etc), common shot against moderately armoured targets such as cruisers, and AP against heavily armoured targets such as BB's.

[ozi_digger]

Thanks Mike, consider me better edumacated!

You'd agree that they'd be *mostly* ineffective in the ground support role?

[Guest Mike]

Oh certainly not as good as their calibre would suggest - possibly like the Brit & US 4.5" guns that had such a low HE filling as to be considered pretty usseless and only retained for their long range in an counter-battery role.

[melb_will]

Originally posted by juan_gigante:

Perhaps I'm a bit behind the times, but I'd like to speak up for "Dug-Out Doug". That nickname is actually woefully inaccurate. Douglas MacArthur spent large amounts of time at the front, in combat. He repeatedly (against the advice of much of his command staff) put his own life in danger so he could examine the current state of his fighting units. This was a habit of his from WWI (where he went over the top with his men) on.

And even though early in the retaking of the many South Pacific islands he took his lumps, he soon adopted an strategy of bypassing and isolating Japanese strongholds and starving them out, saving the lives of many American soldiers. Was he a glory-hound politician? Yes. But did he still get the job done? Yes.

Hmm, my reading suggests that though MacArthur loved to issue press releases saying he was at the front he was in fact leading from behind.

For example during the capture of Buna in New Guinea MacArthur issued releases and subsequently stated that he was at Buna directing the troops. MacArthur was in fact still in Australia, he did visit New Guinea but only as far as Port Moresby and then only for a few days.

Always remember what MacArthur said and what MacArthur did are two entirely different things.

Cheers

Will

[von Churov]

Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by von Churov:

Did you know that in '40 de Gaulle was a colonel,

not a general?

De Gaulle was promoted acting Brigadier-General with effect from 1st June. He held a high-level command before that as commander of tank forces of 5th Army.

Apart from Gamelin, which French generals qualify for worst, and why? Names, appointments, reasons please. It is very easy for you to show you are not talking out of your arse. Just answer the question. </font>

[Sunray]

For Wisbech_lad, Percival arrived May 1941: interesting bio summary on him at

http://www.onpedia.com/encyclopedia/arthur-ernest-percival

Cheers

[Dave H]

Okay, maybe not the worst general, but the general who made the worst single mistake in WW2 has to be Lt. General Lesley J. McNair. I'm not talking about his theories about tank destroyers versus tanks, either. No, this was the commander of all American ground forces who decided to get a front row seat for the beginning of Operation Cobra and was killed when the Allied bombs fell short. Sometimes staying behind the lines is not such a bad idea.