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Evening roundup with our editors favorite stories of the day. Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. The next major British offensive came at Passchendaele (July 31November 6, 1917), where Haig lost another 275,000 troops in a battle whose name became synonymous with pointless slaughter. This did not, however, achieve the postulated outcome. Thats the point. The deplorable conduct of Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmouth has been immortalized by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Benedict Arnolds name is synonymous with traitorous behavior. By the end of May 1862, Confederate commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had withdrawn his forces to Richmond, and McClellan was close enough to the Confederate capital to hear its church bells ringing. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he theoretically had some influence there, at least to the extent he could shape the collective viewpoint, but even then LBJ and McNamara were famously impervious to advice from the Joint Chiefs. Westmoreland told him, "We're killing these people at a ratio of 10 to 1.". 336 pages | 16 halftones | 6 1/4 x 9 1/4. How well that would have worked can be seen when Gates was sent to command American troops in the South. Instead he simply sent more and more replacements to make up his losses. To counter these, Major General William R. Peers commenced Operation Greeley using elements of the 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He would eventually be betrayed and killed by a friend. It was anotherhistory-changingevent, the birth of a truly exceptional nation. Advancing to the North Korean border with China also was a red flag for Mao-Tse Tung, who feared that American troops on his border were a prelude to U.S. invasion. Francisco Solano Lpez managed to stumble into a war with pretty much all of that. Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air. Instead of holding a natural defense line around Pyongyang, which would have given the United Nations control of most of the peninsula, the UN troops retreated all the way back into South Korea in a humiliating reverse for U.S. power after the crushing victory of World War II. James K. Polk upon the outbreak of war between Mexico and the U.S. and offered to become an agent for the U.S. (again). Delivered Monday-Saturday. Want to read more on this topic or region? A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. But Gates could have doomed the American Revolution. Percival was off mistreating Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders during the Anglo-Irish War before commanding British Malaya in World War II. In fact, he did a lot to ensure that Germany would find itself in another war that it couldnt win, but, since he died in 1937, he gets extra credit for being a bad World War II general from beyond the grave. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? It would be nice if all American generals were great. Top 10 Most Underrated Military Generals. (You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. He still had his defenders, but they were in the last trench, barely holding on. Thus, on July 1, 1916, Haig ordered his men to go over the top at the First Battle of the Somme, and 20,000 of them had the audacity to die almost immediately (there were 60,000 total British casualties on the first day of the attack). Consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was Caepios superior officer, but Caepio refused to obey Maximus or even put his forces into a shared camp with him. Grachev has also been linked to corruption among the higher ranks of the military, specifically the assassination of journalist Dmitry Kholodov. Alexander went on to march halfway across Asia, creating an empire, albeit short-lived, that changed the history of three continentsnot bad for an ancient millennial. The United States entered the war, forcing Ludendorff to accelerate his time line for a conclusive battle against the Allies on the Western Front. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. 92. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest darkened Emperor Augustus remaining years and he was heard, upon occasion, to moan, Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!, Notable mention: George Custer, Joseph Hooker, Ambrose Burnside, Charles Cornwallis, John II of France, Top 10 Utterly Bizarre Things Banned In China, Top 10 Military Bases Linked To UFOs (That Aren't Area 51), 10 Bizarre Military Inventions That Almost Saw Deployment, 10 Futuristic Sci-Fi Military Technologies That, 10 Awesome French Military Victories You've Never Heard Of, 10 Oddities That Interrupted Military Battles, Top 10 Top-Level Domains That Caused Controversies, 10 Controversial Toys You Might Already Have in Your Home, Ten Absolutely Vicious Fights over Inherited Fortunes, 10 Female Film Pioneers Who Shaped the Movies, Ten True Tales from Americas Toughest Prison, 10 Times Members of Secretive Societies and Organizations Spilled the Beans, 10 Common Idioms with Unexpectedly Dark Origins, 10 North American Animals with Misplaced Reputations, 10 Japanese Weapons Invented Too Late To Win World War II, 10 Ways The History Of Thanksgiving Is Nothing Like You Imagined, 10 Great Buildings That Were Not Built Quite Well Enough. Although Nelson was killed in combat at Trafalgar, Villeneuve outlived him only by six months. As a result, American military power and prestige took a dramatic downturn. Haig was cruelly mocked, first in the satirical musical Oh! The rise of American-made chatbots has kicked off a flurry of Chinese activity. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. Sure, he was the greatest commander of the Second Punic War, a titanic contest between Carthage and Rome. Gen. Charles Cornwallis. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam. Darius III. But the rash advance into North Korea was a blunder of strategic proportions. Darius quickly lost everything and became nothing but a fugitive. His war of attrition, search and destroy tactics, and emphasis on body count did nothing to affect the war in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam, where the enemys covert infrastructure was left free to continue using coercion and terror to dominate the rural populace. We ended up, he said, with no operational plan that had the slightest chance of ending the war favorably. Westmoreland could not or would not ever bring himself to acknowledge that reality. The problem begins with the fact that nobody in the chain of command was really competent to critique Westmorelands performance. Only recently have those in the defense and military complex begun to look at how we rate generals. Without question, many lives would be saved if their tactical professionalism were enhanced.. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. Born in 1901 in Quang Binh Province (part of North Vietnam), Diem was the son of a well-educated mandarin (Vietnamese civil servant who took part in running the country) who served as the Minister of Rites and Grand Chamberlain to Emperor Thanh-Thai (1889-1907). Here is a list of the 10 most famous Chinese generals in history. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777, The Five Best U.S. The result of his manic commitment to the war of attrition was that Westmoreland squandered four years of his troops bravery and support by the public, the Congress, and even much of the news media for American involvement in the war. He decided to conduct of a war of attrition, using search and destroy tactics, in which the measure of merit was body count. As the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, he faced a two-front war, an insurgency in the South and an invading army from the North. He worked under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich as a leading general and gained fame from his battles in North Africa. In the end, the Romans leveled Carthage and salted the earth. Is Weiss correct? Grachev played a key role in initiating and leading the First Chechen War. Opportunistic firms in Asia and Europe have already begun to relocate investments to the United States. Registration for summer courses begins March 18, 2023 and ends June 7, 2023. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. After early success in the Mexican War for Independence, the rest of his career didnt pan out the way he would have liked. The South Vietnamese thus went for years equipped with castoff WWII-vintage U.S. equipment while outgunned by the communists, who were armed with the AK-47 assault rifle and other top of the line equipment. rs worth well over $400 billion. It's not the first time that someone thought he was smarter than his boss. Michael Ray oversees coverage of European history and military affairs for Britannica. George McClellan is one of those generals who really looks great on paper. Historian Lewis Sorley author of 1999s well-regarded A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of Americans Last Years in Vietnam now zeroes in on General William Westmoreland. Some captured Romans were placed in wicker cages and burned alive, others were enslaved or ransomed. This was heeded about as well as any piece of parental advice, anywhere ever. Join in-depth conversations and interact with foreign-policy experts with. By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. If Gates had been in command, we might be paying for our groceries with shillings and pence. And he was able to inflict massive casualties on the enemy. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln and the Union expected great things. The Roman Empire has a long, proud tradition of producing some of the finest generals in human history- and just as many of the worst. He was uninterested in other viewpoints on how the war might be prosecuted, dismissing the PROVN Study sponsored by Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson (which concluded that Westmorelands way of war was not working and could not work) and basic disagreements with Westmorelands organization and approach voiced by his brilliant classmate General Bruce Palmer Jr. 7. The Summer 2023 term begins June 1, 2023 and ends August 24, 2023. When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. After the war, the phrase lions led by donkeys came to be associated with the British army for what should be obvious reasons. Johnston was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Seven Pines, six miles east of Richmond, and he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. Here are five of America's worst generals: Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. He lacked the schooling and relevant experience to understand the war and devise a viable approach to prosecuting it. Santa Anna, a lifetime gambler, was known for his risk taking in battle, but also his brutality. The Romans lost an estimated 80,000 infantry and perhaps 40,000 auxiliaries and cavalry, numbers that dwarf the staggering totals at Cannae. He continued on to suffer defeats at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, almost letting the war slip away from the British. Darius again was the first to flee the battle, abandoning all of his soldiers and his property to be taken by Alexander. McClellan and Burnside in particular. It is probably not a coincidence that corruption in the military appears to have escalated since 2006, when the number of military generals started to jump sharply. These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. Nelsons victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was so complete that it established British supremacy on the high seas for more than a century. Grant left politics to the politicians and did what had to be done. Lewis Sorleys new book, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, is being published today by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Implementing the attrition strategy, Westmoreland typically employed a series of large unit sweeps conducted in the deep jungle regions along South Vietnams western borders. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. Instead of sweeping around the French defenses in a massive flanking movement, the Germans were checked at the First Battle of the Marne. At this point, things somehow got worse for Hull. In the autumn of 1804 he was placed in charge of the French fleet at Toulon and tasked with drawing the British fleet under Horatio Nelson to the Caribbean. When major U.S. ground force deployments were under consideration in July 1965, for example, LBJ worried that North Vietnam would respond by pouring in more men of its own. Seared into all who fought it and many who merely lived through it that conflict remains a bitter stew of second-guessing and recriminations. After achieving moderate success in Libya and Ethiopia, the Butcher of Ethiopia became Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Royal Armys General Staff and of Italian North Africa at the start of World War II. Hannibal. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln. All the enemys losses were quickly made up. Yet, Hannibal nevertheless ranks as one of the worlds epic fails. On the other hand, there was that bad day at the Battle of Salamis when most of the Persian fleet went to the bottom. McClellan truly disappointed president Lincoln at the Battle of Antietam where the North and South would fight the bloodiest battle of the war. Military. While British cannons shelled the fort from the Canadian side of the river, Tecumseh marched his warriors through a forest clearing in an endless parade. - 2 Worst: 2007 Washington Wizards. The Cimbri destroyed Caepios force and, emboldened by their success, marched on Maximuss camp. Haste risked casualties and defeats at the hands of a formidable opponent like Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. Westmoreland established a headquarters known as MACV Forward in the northern provinces of South Vietnam and put his deputy, General Creighton Abrams, in charge, placing him over the Marines and also the Army forces in that region. One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture. And how might that be impacting the world? In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. Many of the charges leveled against him have also been laid at the feet of . Westmorelands general mistake: severely underestimating the Communists. He was found guilty of 11 counts, and only the intervention by Pres. Then, in an ill-advised comeback, he met his Waterloo. More ways to stay updated on global news: By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. [i] However, the list is subjective, and open to debate, as top 10 lists tend to be. Alexander, Napoleon, Rommel. But all that remains of his would-be empire today is a flaky French pastry. Gamelin was commander of the French forces in World War II and is largely responsible for the fall of France into German control during the Battle of France. However, Ludendorff and German General Staff chief Helmuth von Moltke had altered the Schlieffen PlanGermanys overall battle plan for fighting a two-front warin a way that had weakened the attacking army on the Western Front. Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security. But the argument is unbalanced. Once again, McClellan worked his organizational magic, restoring the morale of a shattered Union army. Have your boss report to the French gentleman whose name begins with J at a place which begins with D which is five grid squares to the left of M. The Kasserine disaster had repercussions. Dispatched to India, he led campaigns to help subdue the subcontinent, replacing the crown jewel he had lost. Somalia (1992-1994) 2. He need not be concerned, soothed Wheeler, because the weight of judgment was that the enemy cant match us on a buildup. That turned out to be one of the classic misjudgments of the war, comparable in magnitude and consequence to General MacArthurs assurances to President Truman that Chinese forces would not enter the Korean War. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. Fort Bragg was named in 1918 during the Jim Crow era. Contrarily, I would not so stigmatize another important player often criticized by others, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. What will another year of war look like? standing, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. Delivered Friday. Argentina, Brazil, and the Brazilian puppet government in Uruguay formed an alliance, and on May 1, 1865, they declared war on Paraguay. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Jessica Chen Weiss, formerly a senior advisor for policy planning at the State Department under the Biden administration, makes the case that the United States is becoming consumed by competition with China, a strategy that could lead to dangerous conflict. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. Overseas during World War II he had limited line duty (16 months of battalion command, then 13 months in staff positions) and of 14 months of command during the Korean War and its immediate aftermath he spent eight months in reserve in Japan and only six months in Korea, and that during the mostly static final months of the war. On September 9, 1965, Navy Cmdr. Hull withdrew after a series of harassing attacks by Tecumsehs highly mobile raiding parties. With a few relatively minor changes, thats just about where they stayed for the next four years. Darius family would be captured and even lost the Battle of Gaugamela, where so many factors were in his favor. The initial assault resulted in very high casualties for the Russians and an almost complete breakdown of morale in the Russian forces. General Harold K. Johnson was an authentic battlefield hero, and as noted above was fundamentally at odds with Westmorelands approach, but he was not in the chain of command. Not only is Sorley a third-generation graduate of West Point a Vietnam veteran and a historian, but he worked for Westmoreland as well. Caepio reportedly lived out the remainder of his life in luxury, however. It would be nice if all American generals were great. Not one to let his own failings stand in the way of personal glory, Pillow submitted fanciful accounts of his actions at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco to various newspapers, incurring the wrath of overall American commander Winfield Scott. 8. Mexican general Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna probably wished that everyone really did remember the Alamo, because: (1) he actually did win that battle (he outnumbered his opponents between 10- and 30-to-1); and (2) during the 13-day siege, he somehow resisted the urge to betray all his allegiances and change sides. And the number one reason why Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam: With his unavailing approach to conduct of the war he squandered four years of support by much of the American people, the Congress, and even the media. Loyalty to himself and himself alone would be something of a running theme in the narrative of Santa Annas life, and his rise to power in Mexico was characterized by near-constant vacillation and betrayal of his allies. Stay updated on the topics you care about with email alerts. Sun Wu Sun Zi, or Sun Tzu, was a prominent military general during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) who is always regarded as one of the greatest military strategists in China and even the World. Grachev once said that only an incompetent commander would order tanks into the streets of central Grozny, where they would be vulnerable. Yet near the end of the war he did exactly that. Nor is being a bad battlefield commander, by itself, sufficient to make the cut. This is one of the more controversial ones, but Douglas MacArthur is incredibly overrated in the annals of the US military, in my . General Westmoreland had complete freedom of action in deciding how to prosecute the war within South Vietnam. While Hull dithered, Brock captured Fort Michilimackinac, establishing British control of the Straits of Mackinac. You may opt out at any time. But in a contemporaneous cable to General Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Westmoreland complained that the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. A more positive example is George Washington. According to a Time magazine reporter who wrote about the Dak Son massacre, Viet Cong guerrillas shouted "Sons of Americans!" as they launched their assault on the village. As for the British, they had lost the most valuable jewel of the Imperial crown. Despite Lincoln's pleas for aggressive action, his Army of the Potomac moved hesitantly, its commander McClellan convinced himself that the Southern armies vastly outnumbered him when logic should have told him that it was the North that enjoyed an abundance of resources. Among them are, of course, Lyndon Johnson himself, Robert McNamara, and General Earle Wheeler. But for whatever reason, some American commanders have lost the battle for history. Seriously, who represents The British Empire; had the worlds greatest navy, enough cash to hire half the mercenaries of Europe, and the advantage of having a pretty pathetic-looking foe: a rag-tag army of ill-equipped rebels. The pandemics outbreak brought rare reporting freedoms. After months of inactivity, McClellan was finally spurred to action by Pres. Maximus managed to form up his men but to no avail. 7. He was an artilleryman who missed out on the Army's great schools system, never attending the Command & General Staff College or the Army War College. Like it or not, the U.S. military would become the governing authority. A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. 1 Erwin Rommel Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, popularly known as the Desert Fox, was a German field marshal of World War II. The Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial LectureThomas E. Ricks is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Marcus Licinius Crassus was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who started a pointless war with the Parthians, and Publius Quinctilius Varus lost three legions at Teutoburg Forest, but Proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio manages to top them both with his actions at the Battle of Arausio. Many of these generals had their worst defeats when their countries were least prepared for conflict, such as the hapless Soviet generals who faced the German infiltration of Russia in 1941. How the North Vietnamese remember the conflict 40 years after the fall of Saigon. The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week. Ulysses S. Grant made his Civil War debut at the Battle of Belmont against Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow. There is now little doubt that Putin failed in his initial goals: Kyiv is still Show morestanding, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. When it came to military command, Westmoreland was everybodys all-Americanuntil he met his Waterloo. This strategy inevitably failed as the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong maintained control over how the war was fought which was through guerilla warfare.