"Worst battlefield commander" Topic

Just a thought: how about a poll on the worst (e.g., least effective, most incompetent, most wasteful of human life, etc.) battlefield commanders in history? Some ideas to get the discussion started:

William Elphinstone – led a British army in a disastrous retreat that ended in its complete annihilation in Afghanistan, 1842.

Ambrose Burnside – Union general in ACW; his poor leadersip and planning at Antietam, Fredricksburg, and Petersburg resulted in enormous waste of human life.

George McClellan – Union general in ACW; an excellent garrison commander, McClellan was unable to effectively lead an army in combat.

Douglas Haig – Architect of the Somme Offensive and resulting massacre.

Lord Chelmsford – British general who split his forces and saw his army destroyed by the Zulus at Isandlwana, 1879.

Valens – Roman emperor who died leading a Roman army to its doom against the Goths at Adrianople, 378 AD.

Publius Varus – Roman general who led his army to complete slaughter in the Teutoburg Forest, 9 AD.

Braxton Bragg – Confederate general in the ACW; mishandled his armies and subordinate commanders, losing many crucial opportunities against the Union army.

Maurice Gamelin – French commander-in-chief at the beginning of WWII; viewing infantry as supreme, his attitudes towards armor and aircraft were almost medieval and completely unsuited to 20th century warfare.

Lord Raglan – British general in the Crimea; sent the Light Brigade to their fate through poor orders and then sailed out to the comfort of his private yacht, 1854.

Lloyd Fredendall – US general in WWII who commanded a corps in North Africa; his incompetence and concern with his own creature comforts led to the US defeat at Kasserine Pass.

Robert Nivelle – French general in WWI; launched wasteful and repeated frontal assaults until the French army finally mutinied against him.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples (World War I alone could provide dozens). Whom would you nominate for the title of worst battlefield commander?

King Edward the second, Richard the second come to mind, as do one or two ungifted wargamers I could name!!!

Some of the men on your list are there chiefly because of the catastrophic consequences of their ridiculous over-confidence (like Varus in the Teutoburg Forest) so I'd like to throw Douglas MacArthur up there. His certainty that the Chinese would never dare to mess with America was criminal negligence. That man was an amazing ego monster.

the unfortunate General Mack. Not really worst, just bad.

Steinmetz, Pz Augustus, Bazaine, McMahon, Bourbaki, Napoleon III.

Kitchener, Custer, the Grand Old Duke of York.

Custer?

Haig? I refer you to John Terraine's very well written "Douglas Haig The Educated Soldier" which puts his command skills in a better perspective. As for Kitchener, how can he be rated as one of the worst battlefield commanders when he had a number of victories under his belt?

I am assuming they mean George A. Custer and his unfortunate decision to attack at the Little Big Horn.

While Braxton Bragg had the people skills of a wounded badger (notoriously arguing with himself) he was no where near a "worst" battlefield commander in a target rich environment. Pillow and Polk rank well ahead of Bragg in the "worst" list.

John Pope. Burnside managed to win a few in North Carolina.
Pope only "won" when the Navy neutralized his enemy first.

Valens was not an emperor. Augustus didn't like equals.

Cestius Gallus, the Roman legate of Syria.

In 66 AD got his entire army, principally Legio XII Fulminata, wiped out by *half their number* of *Zealots*. You know, those beardy Judean rebels who never, ever won a battle. Except that once.

"Webews? Thewe awe no webews anywhewe awound hewe. Now mawch youw men down into that defiwe, Centuwion! No need to send out scouts. Mawch bwiskwy!"

A war hasn't been fought this badly since Olaf the Hairy, High Chief of all the Vikings, accidentally ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside.

Publius Licinius Valerianus Augustus : Emperor of Rome and part-time footstool to Shapur I

Mark Clark for the Rapido River crossing and the Salerno landings.

Dug out Doug for the fall of the Philippines and the loss of his Air Force after Pearl.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus stayed in Stalingrad when he could have broken out. Then lied about the fate of his men and hid in East Germany after the war.

Horatio Gates. Stayed in his tent during Saratoga.
Led the rout at Camden.

I'll raise a quibble about Chelmsford. Only a part of his army was destroyed at Isandlwana and he was not present. Also, the idea of multiple invasion columns wasn't bad, it was just poorly implemented. He did remain in command, reorganized his forces, launched the second invasion and crushed the Zulus.

Haig oversaw the transformation of the British Army into the most technologically advanced fighting force the world had ever seen. He was also victorious.

Mark Clark for the Rapido River crossing and the Salerno landings.

What about Imperator Clark's "seizure" and grand parade through Rome when he could have bypassed it, or at least made a corridor through it to kick the Germans all the way back across the Austrian border instead of giving them time to fall into their defensive positions in the north thus prolonging the war in Italy for another bloody year?

Dug out Doug for the fall of the Philippines and the loss of his Air Force after Pearl.

Let's not forget his "I know it all" attitude that led to the debacle of the Chinese invasion in Korea in 1950. Nice way to ignore intel reports just like the last time that happened nine years before eh Douggie?

I can't believe nobody brought up Commissary Banks for the ACW.

Nivelle? The man who retook Fort Douament?? Sadly his artillery intensive tactics which worked at Corps level were less suitable for an Army level attack.

"Douglas Haig – Architect of the Somme Offensive and resulting massacre."

I think you will find it was actually Foch who was determined upon a joint Anglo-French attack on the Somme, Haig wanted to attack in Flanders. In any case, the Somme was intended to be a massacre, just as the Germans own Verdun offensive was. Both sides had hit upon attrition as the key to freeing up the western front in 1916. Attrition was never going to be pretty, and in WW2 the Russians did it for us instead.

For WW1 I would nominate General Charles Townshend who abandoned his men to their fate after Kut.

For the APW I would nominate Von Steinmetz whose solution to every tactical problem was 'charge' (perhaps he was a wargamer:) but for overall command incompetence, poor old Benedeck who managed to lose the Austrian Empire in an afternoon and spent most of Koeniggratz being faintly surprised by what the troops notionally under his command were actually doing.

I'm going to throw in a third for Mark Clark. Far mroe concerned with his own reputation than the lives of his men or with any kind of long term strategic goal.
I'm also going to throw in Churchill for insisting that the allies fought the length of Italy.

I'd like to throw Monty into the mix.

He was only a moderately bad general, but as a man he stank the place out.

This is a man who boasted, in his own memoire, of how he and several comrades put a fellow officer cadet into the hospital, by stting him on fire whilst in bed, because he wasn't the 'right sort'. Here is a man who took someone elses plan and posted it as completely his own, then almost cocked it up through sheer bloody minded incompetence (Alamein and Aukinleck / Dormain-Smith); he had to post apologies under threat of law suites when his memoire came out. A truly awful, selfish, murderous man.

Having your army destroyed in an ambush doesn't rate as highly as completely missing the opportunity to take the fight to the enemy or bending over backwards to avoid victory.

Mark Clark and McClellan and I'll throw in Sickles, who also sinned to blackwash everybody except himself.

Can I nominate someone who was pretty consistently good but spectacularly bad when it really counted? "Fighting Joe" Hooker was a good corps commander who as an army commander was able to lose to a force 1/3 his size.

Oh, and another vote for Dugout Doug.

Cestius Gallus, the Roman legate of Syria.

In 66 AD got his entire army, principally Legio XII Fulminata, wiped out by *half their number* of *Zealots*. You know, those beardy Judean rebels who never, ever won a battle. Except that once.

Nah. That was more like an ambush on a battle ravaged force that had been ordered to transit through what they were told was a secured corridor in order to refit, rearm, and recruit after a success and a stall. I'm actually not a big fan of CG (or most of the other legates, for that matter), but I can't pin that one on him.

Cardona ;1917 Italian front. When his attack at the Piave or the Isonzo failed he had a sizeable number of his own troops shot on erroneous charges of "cowardice".

Santa Anna. His ability to always lose is nigh ridiculous.
-Kle.

"Cardona ;1917 Italian front. When his attack at the Piave or the Isonzo failed he had a sizeable number of his own troops shot on erroneous charges of "cowardice"."

Ferdinand Schorner hit on that method as a good idea too.

Here is a jolly list of bad British generals, I'm glad to see that Townshend is on it, as is Percival.

link

I think it is a little unfair to Hicks Pasha though.

Here is a fun book dedicated to the subject:
amazon.com/dp/0671209973

I have had it for years, and it never fails to inspire me.

Wow, after reading all of the above, it appears to me that America has a trifecta in MacArthur, Clark, and Fredendall. The last was, fortunately, removed before he could do too much damage, but the other two got to screw up on a much grander scale.
Clark was even idiotic enough to let the Germans know the Allies had broken their code in North Africa. To quote Mr Bunny, "what a maroon."

Olicana -

He was only a moderately bad general, but as a man he stank the place out.

A truly awful, selfish, murderous man.

You knew him personally did you? And murderous? What a hateful and ill-informed rant that was.

Despite your assessment, Montgomery was highly regarded by the soldiers who fought under him, and also apparently by the junior officers who worked closely with him. Allenbrooke, who knew Montgomery very well, rated him highly and perhaps he was in a better position to judge than you.

I know from other posts that the western desert is a major interest for you, but if you seriously consider Auchinleck as a superior battlefield commander to Montgomery I respectfully suggest you are reading the wrong books.

Cestius Gallus, the Roman legate of Syria.

Patrick: "Having your army destroyed in an ambush doesn't rate as highly…"

etotheipi: "Nah. That was more like an ambush on a battle ravaged force…"

You're missing my point, fellas. The victors at Beit Horon were *Zealots*. Their strategic concept was to put themselves in a hopeless position, then confidently await divine deliverence. Their native martial art was spitting. And Cestius Gallus lost his entire army…to *Zealots*.

"Of cawse we can twust them, Centuwion. They'we wewigious peopwe, and they gave us theiw wowd. Now stop wowwying and mawch the wegion down into that defiwe."

OFM – I, too, have a copy of "From the Jaws of Victory." It never fails to amuse and appall.

A war hasn't been fought this badly since Olaf the Hairy, High Chief of all the Vikings, accidentally ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside.

well, we all make mistakes

Despite your assessment, Montgomery was highly regarded by the soldiers who fought under him, and also apparently by the junior officers who worked closely with him. Allenbrooke, who knew Montgomery very well, rated him highly and perhaps he was in a better position to judge than you.

I know from other posts that the western desert is a major interest for you, but if you seriously consider Auchinleck as a superior battlefield commander to Montgomery I respectfully suggest you are reading the wrong books.

Wel I must have been reading the wrong books too! Any objective assessment of the two, with access to the facts about ULTRA decrypts, would say the same…

The Auk was also CinC Mid East Command, which Monty was not, and even his boss, Alexander, only had half of that command to worry about.

The Auk did not have access to the same precise Intel that Monty did, indeed his dispostions were being assiduosuly fed to Rommel, via the US Diplomatic key, a leak which had been stopped by the time Monty took over.

The Auk, despite Monty's attempts to conceal the truth, actually fought and won the First Battle of El Alamein, stopping the Desert Fox in his tracks.

Monty actually used The Auk's plans, but insisted on a far greater ratio of superiority before attacking…..

The 'Monty' cocktail is a martini mixed at a ratio of 15:1 as reputedly those are the odds he considered fair…

Whilst Monty is a proven liar and fraud, the Auk was a gentleman throughout, which is why he didn't go around telling the press corps that his men loved him….

Well said Sparker!

I disagree about Auckinleck and Montgomery: Monty instilled confidence in his troops and sorted out the muddled command structure in the 8th Army. Auk might have had some good ideas but he often appointed poor field commanders and his command was infested with a defeatist mentality.

The Auk, despite Monty's attempts to conceal the truth, actually fought and won the First Battle of El Alamein, stopping the Desert Fox in his tracks.

Monty actually used The Auk's plans, but insisted on a far greater ratio of superiority before attacking…..

I think you probably have read the same books! That the Axis forces were stopped at First Alamein is not in dispute. However, the Axis assault was halted relatively quickly and the remaining fighting in July (under Auchinleck's tenure as CinC ME) saw five separate attempts (Operations Exaltation, Splendour etc) to dislodge the Axis forces from their positions and destroy them. All failed despite 8th Army having a significant advantage in men and material. 8th Army's offensive performance in this period, despite some hard fighting, was disappointing and the failure to throw back the Axis was as much responsible for Auchinleck's sacking as anything else.

The myth about Montgomery using Auchinleck's "plan" (in reality Dorman-Smith's scheme) has no real foundation. The Alamein line was an obvious place to make a stand and even the average WW2 wargamer would probably have had little difficulty in picking it. When Montgomery assumed command of 8th Army, the dispositions had already been made so in effect he played the hand dealt to him. That is not the same as taking credit for anyone else's plan.

Certainly Allenbrooke believed that Dorman-Smith had undue influence over Auchinleck's decision making, which was why he was also sent home. Although initial planning to withstand a renewed Axis assault assumed defending the existing positions held, the emphasis shifted in early August. The focus then became a withdrawal to positions further back, and it was these positions which began to be seen as the main line. Kippenberger referred to 8th Army as "always having a foot in the stirrup" at this time and a similar comment in someone else's memoirs talks of 8th Army always "looking over its shoulder".

Preparations were also underway to protect the Nile Delta with a further defensive line around Natrun (from memory so I may have the name wrong) with much focus on demolitions, destruction of documents etc should it be necessary to abandon Cairo and Alexander. The essence of Auchinleck's strategy under Dorman-Smith's ideas was that 8th Army would remain a "fleet in being". You might say all this was prudent but it did little to dispel the aura of invincibility that was building up around Rommel.

Montgomery's plan, starting with the same dispositions he inherited, was different from Dorman-Smith's/Auchinleck's. There would be no retreat from the positions presently held. The outcome of the Dorman-Smith plan would not have been pretty if the Afrika Korps caught 2NZ Div in its exposed flank as it retired to the new "main line".

I have no particular axe to grind about Auchinleck, but I do think that Montgomery detractors who see him as a victim and superior to Montgomery gloss over a fair number of important points. Firstly, Auchinleck's appointments as 8th Army commanders were mistakes and show his judgement of men in a poor light. Secondly, largely it seems as a result of Dorman-Smith's influence, 8th Army dissipated its fighting strength using "brigade groups" which were unpopular with divisional commanders. Separation of the armoured brigades was one of the main failings of the Crusader plan, and Montgomery rightly insisted that divisions fight as divisions when he assumed command. Thirdly, the Auk's tenure saw a number of serious setbacks (the so-called Msus stakes and Gazala gallop), at least one of which was viewed as calamitous, i.e the loss of Tobruk. Fourthly, during this period fundamentally 8th Army lacked a belief in its ability to defeat Rommel. Although perhaps understandable in the context of a series of defeats, changing tactical doctrines, withdrawals and plans for further retreats, all suggesting uncertain leadership, this was hardly a recipe for success in a theatre vital to Britain's interests.

I am not sure what the foundation is for saying Montgomery used a "press corps" to convince people he was loved by the troops so you may have to elaborate. The point is that Montgomery was visible to the rank and file rather than being seen as aloof as his predecessors had been. Montgomery believed he would defeat Rommel and throw the Axis forces back, rightly so as it turned out, but perhaps more importantly he convinced 8th Army it would win.

Montgomery is a controversial figure certainly but the mis-representation and vitriol that seems to be aimed in his direction when topics like this come up are simply not supported by the facts.

And finally, if you haven't read Allenbrooke's diaries yet (I mentioned them to you in a post concerning the Dieppe raid), you might like to get a copy. Allenbrooke did not see Auchinleck in quite the same favourable light as you and was certainly displeased by his monumental sulk (including refusal of the new Persia command) after his replacement. Perhaps not quite the perfect gentleman after all.

but he often appointed poor field commanders

Auchinleck's appointments as 8th Army commanders were mistakes and show his judgement of men in a poor light.

No argument there, gentlemen, but of course Monty was guilty of the reverse, throwing out, or accusing of cowardice, perfectly good commanders who, correctly, pointed out the casualty implications of Monty's WW1 tactics and shocking refusal to allow combined arms tactics which the 8th Army was slowly but surely developing…

and his command was infested with a defeatist mentality.

Preparations were also underway to protect the Nile Delta with a further defensive line around Natrun (from memory so I may have the name wrong) with much focus on demolitions, destruction of documents etc should it be necessary to abandon Cairo and Alexander. The essence of Auchinleck's strategy under Dorman-Smith's ideas was that 8th Army would remain a "fleet in being".

I think it was Goebbels who said if you repeat a lie often enough it will become truth. Monty certainly repeated this one over and over. The Auk had no more of a 'retreat plan' than anyother responsible Chief of Staff would have prepared for ANY eventuality – barring I suppose odds of 15 to 1 against an army with 24 hours of fuel – so I should not be surprised that people still believe that The Auk was planning on retreat.

In fact of course he was actively planning on a counter attack, sooner than Monty was persuaded to eventually move, and with less superiority and intel.

The irony is that Monty presented himself as the modern general sweeping the army clean of old style Colonel Blimps, when of course he was the one insisting on WW1 attritional tactics, and rigid use of Armoured Divisions on their own, rather than the all arms tactics which the Ith Army was just starting to copy from the Afrika Corps.

Eventually, in NW Europe, it took the sociallly priviledge independence of the Guards Armoured Div, and the political independence of the Canadian Divisions, to return to all arms armoured formations which are now generally accepted as the way to fight a full spectrum land conflict.

They say the way to gauge a good commander is the way he reacts when things go wrong, well, I give you The Auk. Look at Monty's 'pursuit' of Rommel after Third Alamein to assess his command – he couldn't even exercise command once he'd won!

Visconti Prasca, the Italian commander of the Greek invasion in 1940 always struck me as bad. But he did have folks like Benito Mussolini and his friends to help with the disaster.
Grelber

I think it was Goebbels who said if you repeat a lie often enough it will become truth. Monty certainly repeated this one over and over. The Auk had no more of a 'retreat plan' than anyother responsible Chief of Staff would have prepared for ANY eventuality – barring I suppose odds of 15 to 1 against an army with 24 hours of fuel – so I should not be surprised that people still believe that The Auk was planning on retreat.

You really do have it in for Montgomery, don't you Sparker? I begin to detect signs of an overdose of Correlli Barnett, an apologist for Auchinleck, in your posts! How about this from "Infantry Brigadier" by Kippenberger, who commanded 5th NZ Bde under Auchinleck and Montgomery was well-placed to speak with authority on the mood within 8th Army at the time:

"A series of reserve positions was prepared twelve or fifteen miles to the east. We were allocated sectors and took our officers back to look at them. Our transport was kept well forward and we did not know whether we would fight where we stood, or in the reserve positions, or run away. On 26 July there had been further attacks by the Australians on Miteiriya Ridge in the north. We heard of objectives being taken, got the usual fatuously cheerful stories from the intelligence summaries, and slowly realized that there had been another failure with the same old story of no tank support. The whole attitude of Eighth Army was that of having one foot in the stirrup, and it was evident that, for the time being, the initiative had passed to the enemy. In my own small sphere, I realized the dangers of the prevailing mood and did my best to be cheerful and optimistic, but I let myself go in letters home. One phrase, ‘Things are not being done right in Eighth Army', rebounded violently a few weeks later."

Or this when Montgomery took over:
"The new Army Commander made himself felt at once. I saw him first when he called, unannounced, a few days after his arrival. He talked sharply and curtly, without any soft words, asked some searching questions, met the battalion commanders, and left me feeling very much stimulated. For a long time we had heard little from Army except querulous grumbles that the men should not go about without their shirts on, that staff officers must always wear the appropriate arm-bands, or things of that sort. Now we were told that we were going to fight, there was no question of retirement to any reserve positions or anywhere else, and to get ahead with our preparations. To make the intention clear our troop-carrying transport was sent a long way back so that we could not run away if we wanted to! There was no more talk of the alternative positions in the rear. We were delighted, and the morale of the whole Army went up incredibly."

That 8th Army fought with methods which were tactically unsound prior to Montgomery's arrival is generally not disputed although you seem to disagree. Brigade groups, Jock columns (or "Monthly columns"), battle groups etc came into and out of fashion but the latter had little in common with modern all arms structures. They were too weak in infantry to have any staying power (I read somewhere that an 8th Army wag described a battle group as a brigade group which had been twice overrun by tanks) and co-operation between infantry and armour during Auchinleck's reign was regarded as very poor with each arm blaming the other.

As to the pursuit of the Germans after Alamein, 8th Army had already been up to El Agheila twice and been thrown back twice, and Montgomery was sensibly determined that this would not happen again. Logistics and available transport dictated the pace of the follow up and to suggest Montgomery "couldn't even exercise command once he'd won" is frankly absurd. But it sounds as though you have made your mind up so I wouldn't let a few facts get in the way.

Sparker – And here is another extract recounting earlier events towards the end of June 1942:

"General Gott was in his Armoured Command Vehicle (A.C.V.), the first I had seen. He came out at once and walked a few yards clear of it. ‘Inglis has gone to Cairo', he said, and handed me a letter. It was a short note from General Corbett, then General Auchinleck's M.G.G.S. I remember very clearly the opening sentence: ‘The Chief has decided to save Eighth Army.' The note then went on to say that the South Africans would retire through Alexandria and the rest of us down the desert road through Cairo.
I asked what was meant by the first sentence. ‘It means what it says—he means to save the Field Army,' the General said. He went on to explain: a general retirement and evacuation of Egypt was in contemplation and Inglis had gone to Cairo to arrange for the evacuation of 2 N.Z.E.F. rear installations and hospitals; he supposed we would go back to New Zealand. I protested that we were perfectly fit to fight and that it was criminal to give up Egypt to 25,000 German troops and a hundred tanks (disregarding the Italians)—the latest Intelligence estimate—and to lose as helpless prisoners perhaps 200,000 Base troops. Strafer replied sadly that N.Z. Division was battle-worthy but very few other people were and he feared the worst.
I returned to Division and told Gentry of this unpleasant conversation. We said nothing to anyone else and were both sorely perplexed and depressed. In the evening a provisional order for our retirement arrived from 13 Corps. It certainly envisaged the abandonment of Egypt.
Inglis returned on the afternoon of the 30th, nothing else of importance having occurred in his absence, and I returned to 5 Brigade. He drew a vivid picture of the confusion he had seen on the Cairo road and of the prodigious ‘flap' in Cairo itself. This was the time of the famous Ash Wednesday when Middle East and B.T.E.11 were said to have burned many of their records and the Navy left Alexandria in haste."

But it sounds as though you have made your mind up so I wouldn't let a few facts get in the way.

Yes I have. And of course Brigadier's Kippenberger's view is important. But there are several facts he would not have been aware of at the time, both for reasons of honour, and security.

I say honour because the overwhelming number of officers at the time would have taken the word of Montgomery, a fellow officer, at face value. It is now a matter of legal record that he lied orally and in his written testimony about his premature takeover of 8th Army, and what he found there, and the degree to which he merely implemented existing plans, albeit much later and with far greater forces and supplies.

I say security because it is also a fact that it was a matter of grave security at the time that people did not know about Monty's immeadiate access to ULTRA decrypts, which of course the Auk did not.

I completely accept that the 8th Army, as a whole, accepted Monty's self portrayal as the Saviour, and I even accept that it was necessary. However there was no need, post war, to lie and falsify the historical record for motives purely of self aggrandisment.

And, in returning to the OP, with his absolute knowledge of Rommel's plans and locations, his overwhelming superiority in the air and on land, and his unparalleled build up of supplies, all in stark contrast to his opponent, the fact that so many men and AFV's were thrown away in outmoded 'single arm' direct attacks demonstrates that he was a pretty bad general…

Certainly not half as good as he repeatedly told anyone who would listen he was!

And, in returning to the OP, with his absolute knowledge of Rommel's plans and locations, his overwhelming superiority in the air and on land, and his unparalleled build up of supplies, all in stark contrast to his opponent, the fact that so many men and AFV's were thrown away in outmoded 'single arm' direct attacks demonstrates that he was a pretty bad general

You did see what I said in an earlier post about the July battles where Auchinleck, in the capacity as 8th Army commander, undertook five separate offensives, none of which succeeded? It was no easy proposition to dislodge the Afrika Korps from defended positions regardless of material superiority; the Axis forces were pretty much at the end of their tether by 3 July and Auchinleck had the benefit of fresher men and numbers but 8th Army got nowhere.

The idea, which I suspect you subscribe to, that El Alamein was a foregone conclusion is fallacious. Rommel had both been reinforced and strengthened his fixed defenses considerably by the time 8th Army attacked again in October. The whole point of the Alamein line was that it could have secure flanks and the same was true of the German positions facing it. Unless you are seriously advocating a detour through the Qattara depression, there was no alternative to a frontal assault, and of course the Axis were defending in considerable depth.

As to outmoded 'single arm' attacks, this was 1942 and the army fought best in the way it had been trained to do. That meant divisions fighting as divisions, with the brigades close enough to support each other and all divisional assets available to support whichever brigade needed it. Dorman-Smith's ideas might seem like the future to you, but most outside the Auchinleck inner circle seem to have felt at the time (and with justification) that they were too weak to achieve anything, and the bottom line is they didn't work!

Whether you are comfortable with the idea or not, Auchinleck was out of his depth by mid 1942 and was simply not the man to throw the Germans out of Africa. Having lost both the Board (Churchill and Brooke) and the dressing room he had to go in the national interest. 8th Army had suffered a run of depressing defeats and needed re-energising. Montgomery stopped the rot and his style of generalship (organisational and inspirational) was exactly what was needed to do what his predecessors had failed to do.

And as a general he was certainly many times better than you would have us believe! Montgomery had, and maintained throughout the war, the confidence of Allenbrooke, which objectively should really count for rather more than the jibes of post-war detractors.

There you have it. Bearing in mind that this debate has swamped what had originally been a poll suggestion thread, I suggest we leave it at that.

Ambrose Burnside
George B. McClellan
George A. Custer
Elphinstone
Publius Varus
Juan Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana
James Fannin

George McClellan? Don't you have to actually be on the battlefield to be a battlefield commander? When was he on a battlefield during a battle?

I vote for:

Santa Anna
James Fannin
Joe Hooker
Horatio Gates
Richard Ewell?
Hood
Bull Halsey
James Madison
Elphinstone
Braxton Bragg
Publius Varus

James Fannin…..coward

Clearly the dozens of old soldiers who have praised Monty to me during interviews were lying. Thanks for clearing that up, Sparker.

Timoshenko at Kharkov II.

Shouldn't Montgomery be on this list?