Top Ten Worst Military Leaders of All Time

[panzerde]

What we need is a Grogheads Bottom 100 list   8)

Now that would be an interesting discussion! Probably tougher to do than coming up with a Top Ten best list, since there are so many, many bad military leaders!

As for MacArthur being an egoist, and Monty as well, it's amazing to me just how many generals fit that description. I understand that a general has to have a high degree of self-confidence both to attain the rank and to do what a field commander does. A lot of these guys seem to go well beyond that into full-blown narcissistic personality disorder.

[Sir Slash]

How about a Grogheads Bottom-Out List? I'd be at the top of that bottom.

[panzerde]

A Grogheads list of 100 best bottoms?

[Steelgrave]

A Grogheads list of 100 best bottoms?

I think Gus carries that very list in his wallet   8)

[BanzaiCat]

Gus probably put his own bottom at the top.

And re-wrote the Carly Simon song, "You're So Vain," just for good measure.

[undercovergeek]

Gus is the chuck Norris of ass

[SirAndrewD]

Funny.  I posted this on a very, extremely long dead military blog in 2001.  I'm just going to copy and paste and not read the previous entries.  This is how I put it, my first year as a teacher, listed on Jan 28, 2001....

10. Bernard Montgomery - In Operation Market Garden Monty stripped resources to drop a bunch of paratroopers on an SS division. Nice one you limey.
9. Henri Nevelle - 300,000 casualties and a mutiny for about 2 kilometers of land taken in April 1917. What do you expect from the French?
8. Jean Michel Ney - BIG CAVALRY CHARGE! Forget the infantry. Napoleon loved you for losing Waterloo for him. Again, the French blow it. (AHA! Napoleon was Italian, so he doesn't count as being good)
7. Joseph Hooker - He uttered the famous words "May God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none." A few days later Lee demolished Hooker's 100,000 strong army with about 40,000 Confederates.
6. Joeseph B. McClellan - At Antetiam he had a fresh Corps looking at a wide open Confederate line. He refused to attack tacking three years onto the Civil War.
5. Marcus Lucius Crassus - When he lost an entire legion to the Parthians, they poured molten gold down his throat. Ow. He was probably a Gaul.
4. Ernst von Rundsted - The man argued with Rommel, and won. That's why there weren't German tanks blowing our boys up on the beach in Saving Private Ryan.
3. Napoleon III - Let's entrench the entire French Army in Sedan and let the Prussians surrouned it! Again, what do you expect from the French.
2. Henri Navarre - Let's paradrop an several divisions into a valley surrounded by the Vietnamese and see if we can win! Nice job Frenchie.
1. Adolph Hitler - Ok, he really wasn't a general, but he pushed the German armies around on a map. His mistakes were so frequent and moronic that it's impossible to list them all here. Suffice to say that the reason we won World War 2 was because we had a lot of help from this idiot. The only point in his favor, he at least beat the French, and baby, that ain't saying much.

[SirAndrewD]

And for even more funsies, same day 2001 I posted this.  Top ten best.  Forgive me for I was very, very young...

10. Tokugawa Ieyasu - He managed to unify all of Japan under a Shogunate that lasted till the Meji. Nobunaga helped out, but since Tokugawa sealed the deal, he's # 10
9. Helmut von Moltke - This guy crushed Denmark, Austria and then France in three lightening campagins. Granted, Napoleon III helped him with France, but he still rocked.
8. George S. Patton - So feared he tied down an entire German Army without firing a shot. If it wasn't for Monty he'd have been having dinner in Berlin Christmas 1944.
7. Robert E. Lee - Took an army that never broke 65,000 men and held off the might of the United States for four years. He lost only one defensive battle in the entire war.
6. Erich von Manstien - Took a defeated army at Stalingrad, rallied it, counterattacked, performed on of the greatest feats of military history by breaking the Russians at Kharkov and almost pocketing them at Kursk.  Only our buddy Adoolph could put the breaks on this juggernaut.
5. Hienz Guderian - The father of modern mobile warfare. Thank this man for the Blitzkrieg.
4. Julius Ceasar - Crushed the Gauls, crushed Pompey the Great, almost subdued Rome. Pretty good I'd say.
3. Horatio Nelson - The greatest master of naval tactics ever to breathe oxygen. He won the Napoleonic Wars at Trafalgar.
2. Napoleon Bonaparte - He's Italian! Corsica just happened to be under French control. Thefore, the Frenchies happened to get the greatest military mind of the 19th century. Austerlitz, Marengo, Ligny, Borodino.. This man was worth 10,000 soldiers on a battlefield. He's only not #1 because of the whole invading Russia thing.
1. Alexander the Great - Kind of a no brainer here. Napoleon comes close, but ole Alex takes the cake. This guy never lost a battle, and the only reason he didn't take over even more territory was because his army refused to go any further. It's said that when he saw the mountians of India he wept, for he had no more worlds to conquer.

[SirAndrewD]

And, as an older and more learned person.

I way underestimate Ney, and von Rundsted. 

I am spot on in neglecting Rommel in either list. 

von Manstien should probably be a touch higher.

Moltke should be a lot higher.

Tokugawa shouldn't be on the list at all.  I'd probably pop on von Lettow-Vorbeck and put him much higher.  Also big neglect to Slim.

[mirth]

Napoleon III - Let's entrench the entire French Army in Sedan and let the Prussians surrouned it! Again, what do you expect from the French.

[mirth]

Napoleon Bonaparte - He's Italian! Corsica just happened to be under French control. Thefore, the Frenchies happened to get the greatest military mind of the 19th century.

It's always amused me that France's greatest military mind had to be imported from Italy. But what do you expect from the French?  ;D

[BanzaiCat]

To be fair, even if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, he wouldn't have lasted long and I highly doubt he'd repeat the successes he had previously across Europe. But yeah, Ney did something kinda dumb, there.

[mirth]

Plenty of blame to go around in the Hundred Days campaign. D'Erlon screwed the pooch at Ligny. Ney was slow to attack at Quatre Bras. And Grouchy dicked around instead of marching to the sound of guns at Waterloo.

[SirAndrewD]

Plenty of blame to go around in the Hundred Days campaign. D'Erlon screwed the pooch at Ligny. Ney was slow to attack at Quatre Bras. And Grouchy dicked around instead of marching to the sound of guns at Waterloo.

Neither Napoleon nor his generals were the same men by the Hundred Days.  20 years of constant warfare takes a toll on anyone, and the fatigue of yet another war against impossible odds and a persistent enemy really was too much for them, and it showed. 

That's why I was especially hard on Ney, and he really shouldn't be on the list at all.  If Napoleon hadn't been napping, Ney wouldn't have had the authority to launch that moronic charge, and I doubt the Ney of a decade earlier would've been anywhere nearly so sloppy.

[mirth]

Davout was sorely missed.