Who was the WORST General in history ?

McArmalite

Since we had a discussion on the best General in history, maybe a wee discussion on the worst general in history might throw up a few interesting postings. ( I'm sure our own nation may have a contender or two ? ) My own would have to be George McClellan in the American civil war. ( Appartently, his great grandfather was born in Ireland and served in the American army against the british. Hope he was a better soldier than the great grandson ). Continually overestimating the strength of the enemy and reluctant to engage them even when he had much superior forces. His performance at the Battle of Antietam permitted Lee to eke out a precarious tactical draw and avoid total defeat, despite being outnumbered was the last straw for Lincoln. On removing him from his command Lincoln famously said "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time."

purple'n'gold

A total waste of space called Percival was a young officer in the British army in Ireland during the war of independence. This brave man was in command of the detachment of British soldiers who burnt Michael Collins mother’s house to the ground. On 16/12/1942 during World War 2 General Percival surrendered an army of 65,000 soldiers and all of Malay and Singapore to the Japanese without a fight. Most of these men died in prisoner of war camps. This absolute incompetent gets my vote.

Manic Moran

Custer has got to be in there.

He had one battle plan at all times: Charge.

It just happened that most of the time it happened to win. (Though casualty rates were hideous)

Of course, there was that one time...

NTM

mikemac

+1 for General Percival

Snickers Man

micmclo wrote: »

+1 for General Percival

I think there could be a revisionist case to be made for saying that Percival, while no genius, was not as bad as his reputation suggests.


HE was hopelessly underequipped in Singapore. He had no tanks for instance; the Japanese did. And his air force was hopelessly inadequate.

His reputation also took a pounding in TOm Barry's book Guerilla Days in Ireland in which he singled out Percival and his Essex regiment for particular criticism, contrasting their behaviour with the "ordinary decent British army", in which of course Barry had served during WWI.

Barry's book, incidentally, came out just after WWII when Percival's reputation was at a low ebb and seemed to be putting the boot in with particular venom. I wonder was he capitalising on the prevailing mood to get back at his former enemy. Singling out one man to epitomise the brutality of the British army in Ireland just seems a bit strange.

purple'n'gold

Snickers Man wrote: »

I think there could be a revisionist case to be made for saying that Percival, while no genius, was not as bad as his reputation suggests.


HE was hopelessly underequipped in Singapore. He had no tanks for instance; the Japanese did. And his air force was hopelessly inadequate.

His reputation also took a pounding in TOm Barry's book Guerilla Days in Ireland in which he singled out Percival and his Essex regiment for particular criticism, contrasting their behaviour with the "ordinary decent British army", in which of course Barry had served during WWI.

Barry's book, incidentally, came out just after WWII when Percival's reputation was at a low ebb and seemed to be putting the boot in with particular venom. I wonder was he capitalising on the prevailing mood to get back at his former enemy. Singling out one man to epitomise the brutality of the British army in Ireland just seems a bit strange.

On 16/12/1942 during World War 2 General Percival surrendered an army of 65,000 soldiers and all of Malay and Singapore to the Japanese WITHOUT A FIGHT. I rest my case.

Capt'n Midnight

Singapore had no landward defences. But two capital ships were squandared that could had defended it. I reckon if they had known either how bad the Jananese treatment would be or how week the attacking force was the result would have been quite different.

purple'n'gold

General Percival was the general officer commanding. It was up to him to defend Singapore with the resources he had at his disposal. He failed to do that, he didn’t even put up a fight. The man was a disgrace to the British army and a true incompetent. IMO he was also a coward.

brianthebard

Manic Moran wrote: »

Custer has got to be in there.

He had one battle plan at all times: Charge.

It just happened that most of the time it happened to win. (Though casualty rates were hideous)

Of course, there was that one time...

NTM

I was going to say the same thing. P'n'G I think you are getting a little worked up about this Percival. He obviously didn't expect his men to be treated so badly in the POW camps. Petain made a similar decision and wasn't afforded as much flack as you are giving this Percival chap, even though Petain's decision had arguably a much bigger impact on the war, with the dunkirk events and everything that followed. Actually perhaps Petain is a contender for the title....

purple'n'gold

The Japanese were sadistic and inhuman brutes. They were murdering raping and torturing people with abandon in Manchuria for years. Percival would have been aware of this. But that’s not the point. The point is he was an incompetent general. He just didn’t do what he was charged to do, use the resources at his disposal to defend Singapore. He failed miserably in his duty. And yes I despise him, he burned down Mrs Collins house in Sam’s Cross. But that’s not the reason he was a useless general. That’s just the reason I hate him.

purple'n'gold

Ok, Custer was no military genius. But the battle of the little big horn was no more than an embarrassment to the US government. About 300 soldiers killed, a drop in the bucket compared to the carnage of the civil war. Strategically it was a victory for the US government because what it did was concentrate their mind to completely defeating the Native Americans, which they did with efficient brutality within a few years after the battle.

pickarooney

Francisco Solano Lopez of Paraguay who, for no apparent reason, decided to declare war on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay simultaneously. Paraguay lost almost 60% of its population (90% of its males) and 30% of its land in six bloody years.

purple'n'gold

pickarooney wrote: »

Francisco Solano Lopez of Paraguay who, for no apparent reason, decided to declare war on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay simultaneously. Paraguay lost almost 60% of its population (90% of its males) and 30% of its land in six bloody years.

Wow! Now, that will take some beating.

Capt'n Midnight

pickarooney wrote: »

Francisco Solano Lopez of Paraguay who, for no apparent reason, decided to declare war on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay simultaneously. Paraguay lost almost 60% of its population (90% of its males) and 30% of its land in six bloody years.

yip this is the winner

IIRC in order to enforce loyalty and prevent treason one in three of the army were allowed to kill anyone in the ranks up to captain. They acutally won some battles against the Argentinains becaus the Arginentans retreated walking backwards, rather than show their backs to them.


After the war monogmy was gone for a while.

Manic Moran

purplengold wrote: »

General Percival was the general officer commanding. It was up to him to defend Singapore with the resources he had at his disposal. He failed to do that, he didn’t even put up a fight. The man was a disgrace to the British army and a true incompetent. IMO he was also a coward.

That didn't sound quite right, but I have refrained from commenting until after I pulled out the forklift and pulled my Big Boy's Book of the Pacific War out of the shelves.

I think you're doing Percival an injustice here. He was forced down the Johore penninsula over a period of two weeks, with Indian troops being overrun repeatedly by Japanese tanks. Jap tanks were horrible, but when you've got the only ones, they're very good. The RAF's Buffalos were all but destroyed, and the two battlewagons were gone as well. The fighting on Singapore itself lasted a full week, and cost about 10,000 lives on both sides.

It is true that Percival guessed wrong: He put most of his force on where he believed the most likely assault point was. When Yama****a actually crossed the Straits on Feb 7th, he did it in mangrove swamps where the first line was held by a relatively thin bunch of Aussies. However, it is absolutely not true that he surrendered without a fight or cause.

The Aussies were overrun later that day after some brutal fighting, made a lot worse by a communication screwup between the front line and the artillery gunners which failed to provide fires at the critical time. It took until Feb 9th for the Japanese to punch a hole in the Jurong Line, the second British defensive line.

Feb 10th saw a British counter-attack, urged by Wavell when he visited Percival, which petered out disastrously, and was reasonably known to have little chance of success anyway: It was done more for honour than good military sense.

By Feb 13th, the Japanese had cut off the water supplies to the city.

At this point, the British had no supply lines, no air support, almost no naval support and absolutely no chance of reinforcement or resupply (The Aussies were so short of ammo that they were instructed by Bennet to fire only to defend their own perimeter). With no water, the city's civilian population was vulnerable to anything from disease through starvation. Whilst it is true that the Japanese were very low on supplies as well, there was no way for Percival to know that, and in any rate, resupply would come to the Japanese before it would come to the British: All they needed to do was look South to see what happened in the Philippines despite all the hoopla about how help was coming to the Americans there. Where would have been the benefit to continuing fighting from the British point of view?

Was Percival out-generaled? Yes. Was he an embarassment to the British Army? No, I wouldn't say that, at least, not on his performance in late 1941/early 1942.

NTM

ETA: Oh, for God's sake, what sort of automatic censoring software does this bloody board have?

Snickers Man

Manic Moran wrote: »

Oh, for God's sake, what sort of automatic censoring software does this bloody board have?

ROTFL

Hey Mods. The Japanese General really was called Y a m a s h i t a.

Not Y a m a * * * * a

FiSe

Some of French WWI Generals would deserve this title as well.

TerrorFirmer

pickarooney wrote: »

Francisco Solano Lopez of Paraguay who, for no apparent reason, decided to declare war on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay simultaneously. Paraguay lost almost 60% of its population (90% of its males) and 30% of its land in six bloody years.

What I was about to say as well. They actually managed to win some large battles incredibly.

Though not a general, in terms of military leadership Hitler was the biggest ass in recent times.

Mrs. MacGyver

Sir John Cope

ilkhanid

McClellan wasn't so bad. He was a talented organizer and administrator, although very timid about engaging in battle. But the fact is at Antietam,he held Lee to a tactical draw, which was a hell of a lot better than several other Union generals did. When Lee engaged Burnside and Hooker he routed them. Considering Lees abilities not having your army destroyed by him is a feat in itself.
I'd nominate Burnside as worst general of the Civil War. As Lincoln said about his part in the battle of the Crater ”Only Burnside could have done it,snatching one last catastrophic defeat from the jaws of victory”.

Pride Fighter

When politicians with some military experience think they are military geniuses is generally when there are bad generals. Churchill with the Gallipoli disaster and Hitler with his several disasters being cases in point.

anonymous_joe

Darius the 2nd?

He could have fielded a viciously effective force of Cataphracts and elite if weak Persian Infantry.

Instead he decied on political expediency and fielded a bloated, logistical nightmare of a force that was unable to cope with a professional army.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. He lost the biggest empire the world ever knew.

Capt'n Midnight

Bomber Harris - 55%

Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war.[20] A Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I.
...
No. 460 Squadron RAAF, which had an aircrew establishment of about 200, experienced 1,018 combat deaths during 1942-45 and was therefore effectively wiped out five times over.[

27% of the aircrew wern't casualties

Despite having first hand experiance of the Blitz and how it did not affect morale he carried on and it achieved so little, 400,000 civilians killed but material shortages affected industry more than bombing, certainly diverting a fraction of that effort in to anti-submarine work , or supporting "the bridge too far" would have been more productive. Also more lives could have been saved , dropping the turrets from lancasters would have given another 50mph , once the mosquitos were in use speed was shown to be more effective than defence

EamonnKeane

Darth Vader. First he builds a space battlestation with a gaping flaw. Then, when he is supposed to be commanding the battle, he decides to attack the enemy personally.

brianthebard

Pride Fighter wrote: »

When politicians with some military experience think they are military geniuses is generally when there are bad generals. Churchill with the Gallipoli disaster and Hitler with his several disasters being cases in point.

I think you'll find Churchill was an admiral of the royal navy and not just some politician playing with his toy boats.

anonymous_joe wrote: »

He lost the biggest empire the world ever knew.

Do you mean up to that point?

mikemac

brianthebard wrote: »

I think you'll find Churchill was an admiral of the royal navy and not just some politician playing with his toy boats.

If he was an admiral that would imply he started as a junior officer and worked his way up. While he was an army officer, he wasn't an admiral

But he was First Lord of the Admiralty, which is just a state office.
So realy he was a chairman of the Board of Admiralty and any politican could get this job.

Old thread but I'm still going with General Percival as worst general. Surrendered Singapore without a fight and life as a Japanese POW ended up as a death sentance for many thousands of his men.

Hookey

Percival was responsible for the most embarrassing defeat of the British Army, I think you could still make a case for Douglas Haig as the worst British general. Of course his reputation is more contentious because he actually won.

For worst ever Lopez takes the prize though; Paraguay's population still reflects what he did to this day.

Manic Moran

Singapore without a fight

See my above listing of events.

NTM

nhughes100

ilkhanid wrote: »

McClellan wasn't so bad. He was a talented organizer and administrator, although very timid about engaging in battle. But the fact is at Antietam,he held Lee to a tactical draw, which was a hell of a lot better than several other Union generals did. When Lee engaged Burnside and Hooker he routed them. Considering Lees abilities not having your army destroyed by him is a feat in itself.
I'd nominate Burnside as worst general of the Civil War. As Lincoln said about his part in the battle of the Crater ”Only Burnside could have done it,snatching one last catastrophic defeat from the jaws of victory”.

McClellan was dreadful, as were most US generals of the time. Burnside was not in command of the army of the Potomac at the time of the battle of the crater - U.S. Grant was, Grant basically brute forced the victory in the end, it was through no military genius, rather the south ran out of options. You have to remember at the Crater it was originally decided to let a Negro regiment lead the attack as they had trained specifically for the atypical assault but this was over-ruled at a more local level for a white regiment which was massacared, I can't remember of the top of my head but will revert as to whether it was a high ranking General or not.

As for Custer, he performed quite admirably during the Civil war, he stopped JEB Stuart's assault before Picketts charge at Gettysburg thus enabling the Union to give it's full attention to the infantry frontal assault. He was up against Nathan B Forrest too and he was only in his mid 20's so he didn't do too badly.

Worst General - Saddam Hussain & Kitchener.

turly

Virtually every commander involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade...?

nhughes100

nhughes100 wrote: »

McClellan was dreadful, as were most US generals of the time. Burnside was not in command of the army of the Potomac at the time of the battle of the crater - U.S. Grant was, Grant basically brute forced the victory in the end, it was through no military genius, rather the south ran out of options. You have to remember at the Crater it was originally decided to let a Negro regiment lead the attack as they had trained specifically for the atypical assault but this was over-ruled at a more local level for a white regiment which was massacared, I can't remember of the top of my head but will revert as to whether it was a high ranking General or not.

Checked this last night, Burnside had originally planned for the Negro regiment to lead the charge but was overruled by George Meade and US Grant, Burnside was fuming so drew lots as to what White regiment would lead the attack, the lucky general was a drunk and stayed in a bomb shelter during the entire attack, around 6000 union soldiers were massacared including the Negro regiments which were sent into the crater while it was already packed with the lead regiments trying to get out.

Not defending Burnside as what he did at Fredricksburg was enough for anyone to put a gun to their head but interesting attitudes regarding a war popularaly misconceived to be about freeing the slaves.