Abraham Lincoln. 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. On the night of August 15, 1812, Tecumseh led his forces across the Detroit River, and Brock followed the next morning. The Worst Civil War Generals on the Confederacy Confederate Maj. Gen. Gideon Pillow. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. Alas, call it the laws of probability or just cosmic karma, but every nation produces bad generals as well as good onesand . When all is said and done, it doesnt matter how nice, brave, courageous, gutsy, loyal, or brilliant commanders theyve been. But then MacArthur thrived on controversy like bread thrives on yeast. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. Muammar Al-Gaddafi. Although Westmoreland denied it, he imposed a ceiling on the reported number of enemy by instructing his intelligence officers to adhere to a command position of not more than 300,000, even though newly acquired and more accurate data developed in his own headquarters then indicated a much higher figure. Caepio reportedly lived out the remainder of his life in luxury, however. Varus himself, seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide. I flew into Vietnam in June 1968 as a young . Instead he simply sent more and more replacements to make up his losses. Pierre de Villeneuve had his first brush with history when he bravely ran away at the Battle of the Nile. In the famous Battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna struggled to defeat about 250 Texans with 2,400 Mexicans and subsequently lost nearly 600 men. 92. [i] However, the list is subjective, and open to debate, as top 10 lists tend to be. Hundreds of thousands died of disease. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. 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. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. And what then? As a result, American military power and prestige took a dramatic downturn. But his crowning achievement was bad generalship in Korea. Westmoreland told him, "We're killing these people at a ratio of 10 to 1.". Even if Moscow holds onto territory, the war has wrecked its future. 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. Whatever its military wisdom or lack thereof, it was a decision that should not have been made by generals under the American political system. Darius never showed up for the first battle and defeat (Battle of Granicus) because he didnt see Alexander as much of a threat to his empire. 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. Michael Ray oversees coverage of European history and military affairs for Britannica. He first demonstrated his ineptitude during the Mexican-American War, where he had received an appointment to the rank of major general from his friend Pres. Hannibal. Top 10 Most Underrated Military Generals. His work as an observer during the Crimean War gave him insight into the importance of logistics for an industrialized army, and years spent as the chief of engineering for the Illinois Central Railroad made him aware of the transformative nature of rail transport. Varus was stationed with three of his legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th when news arrived of a revolt growing in the Rhine area. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air. Haig had largely dismissed the effect of the machine gun on the battlefield, believing that previous Allied failures owed to something other than an impenetrable wall of lead traveling at ballistic velocity. 3. James K. Polk. 4. (You May Also Like: The Five Best Generals in U.S. History). With a few relatively minor changes, thats just about where they stayed for the next four years. Despite fresh salvos of Western sanctions, Tehran and Moscow are buddying up on defense ties. Fortunately, along came Reaganif not for that, Westmorelands military reversals could well have signaled the beginning of our end. Delivered Monday-Saturday. Military 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. Having several decades of duplicity to draw on at this point, everyone had a pretty good idea of how any such deal would turn out, and the aging general was rebuffed by both parties. Although he eventually disavowed Hitler, by that point Ludendorff had become so deeply involved with mysticism that few took him seriously. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? Eschewing a direct overland march to the Confederate capital of Richmond, McClellan orchestrated an impressive amphibious landing of more than 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe, at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. Russias war is receiving critical assistance from authoritarian regimes around the world. 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. 4. He earned a B.A. That may have been true in the east (the worst of the Union generals in that theater rates his own entry on this list), but in the west it was a much different affair. Grant had encircled the fort. Hulls nerve was shattered. 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. Operational Culture General Training LREC SME Support Training Course Catalog Cognitive Dimension Training Additional Resources . 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. (You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. 1 Erwin Rommel Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, popularly known as the Desert Fox, was a German field marshal of World War II. Publication of the PROVN Study, whose precepts were later implemented with great success by Westmorelands successor, illustrated a matter of fundamental importance. 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. Scott claimed that Pillow was ''the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood. When talk of secession reached Pillows home state of Tennessee, he helped organize the state militia and was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army. What was the worst battle of Vietnam? The Second Battle of the Somme was the first of a series of successful German offensives, but Ludendorff had failed to integrate these tactical victories into a broader strategic plan. This was true in matters both great and small. The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week. Thats the point. 3. But Franks, who commanded the invasion, made a bad situation worse. Needs to Talk About the Risk of War With China, Putin Has Assembled an Axis of Autocrats Against Ukraine, The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart. On the other side of the trenches in World War I was Erich Ludendorff, commanding the armies of Germany. 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. As a military commander, Napoleon may have thebest batting averageof all time. Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. Todays list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam. In 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire. 8. 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. He spoke up in Honolulu, during an important U.S. planning conference in February 1966, observing that we can beat up North Vietnamese regiments in the high plateau for the next twenty years and it will not end the war. Westmorelands later dismissive comment was that Ambassador Lodge does not have a deep feel of military tactics and strategy.. His battlefield losses marked the end of the Persian Empire. The pandemics outbreak brought rare reporting freedoms. He also issued orders to his troops in a personal code that no one else understood, such as this gem of command clarity: Move your command, i. e., the walking boys, pop guns, Baker's outfit and the outfit which is the reverse of Baker's outfit and the big fellows to M, which is due north of where you are now, as soon as possible. He was certainly nave, but the Boy Scouts need to be defended here. The resulting Peninsular Campaign (AprilJuly 1862) was a marvel of planning but something of a farce in execution. In fifteen thought-provoking essays, each written by a professional military historian, readers are introduced . 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. 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. Santa Anna was found wearing a privates uniform, hiding in a marsh. FPs Ravi Agrawal spoke with two of the very best Russia experts:Angela Stent, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author ofPutins World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, and Michael Kofman, the research program director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses. Grachev played a key role in initiating and leading the First Chechen War. Download the FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. The Persians had a mixed record against the Greeks. In the end, the Romans leveled Carthage and salted the earth. After months of inactivity, McClellan was finally spurred to action by Pres. The Legion numbers XVII, XVIII and XIX never again appeared in the Roman Armys order of battle due to the shame and ill luck they carried. Francisco Solano Lpez managed to stumble into a war with pretty much all of that. But the rash advance into North Korea was a blunder of strategic proportions. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Others would say that it is not victory, but success in fulfilling a mission that counts. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. 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. He would eventually be betrayed and killed by a friend. Allied with Brock was the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was head of the most formidable pan-Indian military force the continent had ever seen. Explore the benefits of your FP subscription. Creighton Abrams was an U.S. Army General who commanded American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. 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. Darius did not take the field against Alexander until a year and a half after Granicus, at the Battle of Issus. A more positive example is George Washington. He continued on to suffer defeats at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, almost letting the war slip away from the British. The Soviets saw the American humiliation in Vietnam as a turning point. Vietnam War. Michael Peck is a contributing writer at Foreign Policy and a writer for War Is Boring. Military historian Russell Weigley rendered a succinct judgment on LBJ: No capable war President would have allowed an officer of such limited capacities as General William C. Westmoreland to head Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, for so long.. On a visit to Vietnam Senator Hollings from Westmorelands home state of South Carolina was told by Westmoreland: Were killing these people, the enemy, at a ratio of 10 to 1. Said Hollings, Westy, the American people dont care about the ten. The premise was that, if he could kill enough of the enemy, they would lose heart and cease their aggression against the South Vietnamese. General William Westmoreland. In 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, the Vietnamese army had only 36 generals, but by 2018, peace-time Vietnam had 415 military officers holding general ranks. 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. Haig was cruelly mocked, first in the satirical musical Oh! It wouldn't take a large force to slice through the ramshackle Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein, but securing a country the size of Iraq required a larger force. A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. Lebanon (1982-1984) 240. The man who appealed for Varus help was Arminius, a Romanized Germanic prince. 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. But its not just the United States. The alternative was to split the United States asunder. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln and the Union expected great things. In reality, it is a collection of ideas, images, and information that enough people have chosen to preserve and disseminate. General Westmorelands close associate, General William DePuy, later admitted the futility of the Westmoreland way of war. There is no Carthage. Yet, Hannibal nevertheless ranks as one of the worlds epic fails. 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. For the most accurate and up-to-date information, consult individual encyclopedia entries about the topics. A very influential visitor, Senator "Fritz" Hollings from Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina, had warned him about reliance on such ratios. The inept Luigi Cadorna of Italy fought a dozen battles on the Isonzo before his army completely collapsed at Caporetto. War is an extension of politics, and if commanders dont help secure the desired political ends, they get a failing grade. He was called the "inevitable general." A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. All the enemys losses were quickly made up. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. After eight years at Foreign Policy, here are the ten most popular Best Defense posts. According to formerly classified Army documents, an investigation disclosed that from at least March 1968 through October 1969, "Vietnamese [civilian] detainees were subjected to maltreatment" by. On March 24, 1976, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1 st Viscount of Alamein, hero of World War II, died at home in England. When two able and progressive Nationalist generals, Pai Chunghsi and Li Tsung-jen, begged the generalissimo to adopt similar methods, Chiang rejected them outright. 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. Maximus managed to form up his men but to no avail. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. Others were experienced military men who should have known better than to take the risks they took - or not take the risks they should have. Its prewar population was reduced by more than half, and perhaps 90 percent of Paraguays fighting-age men perished. Applications for the Gettysburg College-Gilder Lehrman MA program are open and considered on a rolling basis. Rommel is by far the greatest military general of the . But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. This infuriated the Marines, who viewed it as evidence that Westmoreland lacked confidence in them. Washington also suffered his share of defeats. Quintus Servilius Caepio takes the cake amongst the worst Roman generals ever to take command of a legion though. So unused to being challenged, the United States has become so filled with anxiety over China that sober responses are becoming nearly impossible. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. If Gates had been in command, we might be paying for our groceries with shillings and pence. What does that mean for trade and globalization? While there were a host of bad generals serving on both sides during the American Civil Warmostly on the Union side unfortunatelythe one that usually gets the most credit for dragging out the war as long as he did is Union General George McClellan. The Cimbri destroyed Caepios force and, emboldened by their success, marched on Maximuss camp. Westmorelands strategy throughout the war was to win through Attrition Warfare (pounding the enemy through greater numbers and resources) which military strategists including Sun Tzu caution against using. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. After only 10 weeks into the Pacific War, Percival became responsible for the largest surrender of British-led forces in history. Yes, Westmoreland was the general who lost Vietnam. Sure, he won big at the Alamo. George Custer at the Little Big Horn and Lord Chelmsford at the Battle of Isandlwana leap to mind.
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