Greatest Generals Ever

Team Zimmerman 2013 said:
Been kicking this around in my head and with some friends, wanted to see what you history/military buffs thought. Pick your top 5 generals EVER.

Here are my picks:
1. Genghis Khan. No surprise why.
2. Alexander the Great. Again, pretty obvious why.
3. Julius Caesar. Yeah, still no surprises.
4. Napoleon Bonaparte. Other than disaster in Russia, it should be obvious why here too.
5. Gustavus Adolphus. Probably the only 'surprise' on the list, he pretty much invented modern warfare and made Sweden relevant, if only briefly.
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Regarding Napoleon, there is the small matter of Waterloo as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo
 
Owl in Now said:
hannibal might want to be put on there, but... you could also argue that while he was a total sicko in the field, he ultimately failed to realize his goals. That doesn't change how much he owned the romans during the second punic war though
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You couldn't have Hannibal with out Scipio.
 
Team Zimmerman 2013 said:
Been kicking this around in my head and with some friends, wanted to see what you history/military buffs thought. Pick your top 5 generals EVER.

Here are my picks:
1. Genghis Khan. No surprise why.
2. Alexander the Great. Again, pretty obvious why.
3. Julius Caesar. Yeah, still no surprises.
4. Napoleon Bonaparte. Other than disaster in Russia, it should be obvious why here too.
5. Gustavus Adolphus. Probably the only 'surprise' on the list, he pretty much invented modern warfare and made Sweden relevant, if only briefly.
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How do you define greatest general?

It would be easier to create a list of the most influential generals in history. I'd have.

Sun Tzu - strategy & deception
Gaius Marius - training, discipline, tactics and logistics.
Clausewitz - blending of war & politics. Engaging the citizenry in war.
Mao Tse Tung - Guerilla warfare (assymetrical warfare).
William T. Sherman - Total war. The mobilization of all a nations resources to conduct war.
 
Owl in Now said:
Yeah I recently heard that washington was actually really clueless a lot of times and a lot of his genius has been the result of american mythology. I don't know how accurate that is though, or if it's just another pattern of people trying to deconstruct our heros.
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It's not. Washington was a great leader. Both politically and militarily. As a tactician he was middle of the road at best. As a strategist he did know how to defeat the British and did so against tremendous odd. Washingtons true genius was in his abilities as a leader more so than as a general.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
How do you define greatest general?

It would be easier to create a list of the most influential generals in history. I'd have.

Sun Tzu - strategy & deception
Gaius Marius - training, discipline, tactics and logistics.
Clausewitz - blending of war & politics. Engaging the citizenry in war.
Mao Tse Tung - Guerilla warfare (assymetrical warfare).
William T. Sherman - Total war. The mobilization of all a nations resources to conduct war.
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Big fan of Sherman here for what he did. I don't think either he or Grant were great, though. I have been trying to get the good people of Seattle to start calling Cornerback Richard Sherman "General Sherman." Perhaps I'll make a sign for that purpose to take to a game next season.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Trotsky was a general??
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Yes, a particularly brutal one. He was someone who supported both conscription - a compulsory proletarian army - and executions for deserters. I know the first wasn't brought to be, but the second, I can't remember. In any case, his victory over the White Army was a great victory for the country.

Not that I think the Bolsheviks - maybe with some exceptions - could have actually produced a successful regime. But it was a lot better than it what's suspect the Whites would've lead to.
 
Threedee said:
Big fan of Sherman here for what he did. I don't think either he or Grant were great, though. I have been trying to get the good people of Seattle to start calling Cornerback Richard Sherman "General Sherman." Perhaps I'll make a sign for that purpose to take to a game next season.
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Again....what's your idea of "great"? Obviously history doesn't agree with you as Napoleon, Clausewitz, Grant, Sherman and Lee are considered the greatest generals of the 19th century. Though my point is "greatest" can be a subjective term.

Take Lee for example. Many consider him the greatest general of the American Civil war. I don't. He was a great military leader, a tactical genius and a complete failure as a strategist. George Washington faced far greater odds than Lee did and won. Washington may have been, generously, a mediocre tactician, but he had a winning strategy where as Lee was a failure as a strategist.

Had Winfield Scott not been too old and too sick to have been a field commander during the American Civil war I think he would probably be considered as far more significant general, as it is, I don't think he quite gets the credit he's due. He was certainly as able a field commander and tactician as Lee and it was his strategy that won the Civil war though to be fair he had the same failing as many of the Civil war generals, including Lee, who continued to used Napoleonic tactics of massed ranks even though modern rifles and miniballs had made that tactic obsolete. It was Halleck, Grant and Sherman who changed the tactics being used by the North that doomed the south though the idea of committing the nations recources to defeating the Souths resources to wage war (not just its armies) was Shermans and that's why Sherman is so influential. Sherman not only concieved the idea but he implemented it to great affect and demonstrated its value. All major modern conventional wars have been fought along those strategic lines since the US Civil war and that's why Sherman is such a influential figure.
 
Team Zimmerman 2013 said:
I'm not down playing Hannibal's ability, but he kind of lucked out in Rome. The roman generals of the time weren't used to thinking so it was easy for Hannibal to beat them. Scipio, however, did beat him. Maybe not under the conditions Hannibal' wanted to fight under but if he didn't Scipio was going to sack Carthage and end the war anyways.
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That's just simply not true. The Roman generals of that era (215 BC) we're the greatest generals in the ancient world. They were smart, disciplined and capable. Hannibal invaded the Italian peninsula, with no chain of supply to support him, with a ragtag army composed of largely uncivilized tribes from Iberia and Gaul that he single handedly welded into a disciplined, effective and versatile army. He then not only trounced the Romans in the worst military defeats they had suffured up to that time (Cannae, Trebia, Lake Trasimene) he then proceeded to make a mockery of the greatest military machine the ancient world had ever seen, within their own territory, for fifteen years!!

Imagine that! Imagine an enemy army invading the US, not only defeating but humiliating our armies in battle and then staying in the US, with no chain of supply for fifteen years! It was an extraordinary echievement that had not occurred before or since.

There is no doubt Hannibal Barca was one of the top three generals of the ancient world.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
What about Georgy Zhukov? Arguably the Second World War would have been lost without him.
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I don't think so. There were three nations in 1940's that Germany simply couldn't defeat and Hitler declared war on two of them. Had Zhukov failed the Soviets would have found another general who wouldn't have. Germany simply just did not have the resources to defeat either the Soviet Union or the USA. It was utter madness on Hitlers part to even think that he could. Same with Japan. It was utter madness for them to think they could defeat China in war.

There's an old joke that illustrates that point.

Chiank Kai-Shek was recieving daily battle reports from the front. Every day he would recieve a casualty figures like these. Japan: 2,000 killed. Chinese: 40,000 killed. Next day, Japan: 3,000 Killed. China: 50,000 Killed. Each time he recieved one of these lopsided casualty reports Chiang smiled and nodded his head in pleasure. He continued to do this for a month. Finally an aid asked him...."How can you be pleased by these lopsided casualty reports?" to which Chaing replied "Pretty soon....no more Japanese!".

And he was right!

The point being Germany Couldn't defeat the Soviets and, for the sake of argument, even if they had, the couldn't have beaten the USA. Remember, the US fought the European front of WWII with one arm behind it's back. Had the Soviets lost, the US would have brought that other arm around.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
That's just simply not true. The Roman generals of that era (215 BC) we're the greatest generals in the ancient world. They were smart, disciplined and capable. Hannibal invaded the Italian peninsula, with no chain of supply to support him, with a ragtag army composed of largely uncivilized tribes from Iberia and Gaul that he single handedly welded into a disciplined, effective and versatile army. He then not only trounced the Romans in the worst military defeats they had suffured up to that time (Cannae, Trebia, Lake Trasimene) he then proceeded to make a mockery of the greatest military machine the ancient world had ever seen, within their own territory, for fifteen years!!

Imagine that! Imagine an enemy army invading the US, not only defeating but humiliating our armies in battle and then staying in the US, with no chain of supply for fifteen years! It was an extraordinary echievement that had not occurred before or since.

There is no doubt Hannibal Barca was one of the top three generals of the ancient world.
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Mott, you are (in true Ohioan fashion), not understanding what I'm saying. Again, I wasn't downplaying Hannibal. I already said he'd easily make my top 10. But the fact is that Roman general after Roman general would willingly charge head long into battle at locations and times that Hannibal wanted them too means that they weren't thinking. After the first couple times in those 15+ years, you'd think they'd realize this.

Of course some did, but they fell out of favor quickly.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I don't think so. There were three nations in 1940's that Germany simply couldn't defeat and Hitler declared war on two of them. Had Zhukov failed the Soviets would have found another general who wouldn't have. Germany simply just did not have the resources to defeat either the Soviet Union or the USA. It was utter madness on Hitlers part to even think that he could. Same with Japan. It was utter madness for them to think they could defeat China in war.

There's an old joke that illustrates that point.

Chiank Kai-Shek was recieving daily battle reports from the front. Every day he would recieve a casualty figures like these. Japan: 2,000 killed. Chinese: 40,000 killed. Next day, Japan: 3,000 Killed. China: 50,000 Killed. Each time he recieved one of these lopsided casualty reports Chiang smiled and nodded his head in pleasure. He continued to do this for a month. Finally an aid asked him...."How can you be pleased by these lopsided casualty reports?" to which Chaing replied "Pretty soon....no more Japanese!".

And he was right!

The point being Germany Couldn't defeat the Soviets and, for the sake of argument, even if they had, the couldn't have beaten the USA. Remember, the US fought the European front of WWII with one arm behind it's back. Had the Soviets lost, the US would have brought that other arm around.
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I don't agree with much of that but I have to go out now.
 
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