"The Worst U.S. General Of WWII" Topic

Wow!
That Major General Lloyd Fredendall was really bad!.

See here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Italian ones: Graziani, Del Bono, Badoglio, Cavallero…never ending list….

I am not that versed on World War II but from documentries and what i Read its probably General Mark Clark

Yeah, Fredendall was really lousy. He's in a class with William Hull (1812), James Wilkinson (1812), Gideon Pillow (Mexico, ACW) and John Pope (ACW). Pope and Pillow at least were brave.

I have to disagree about Clark. He wasn't good but head and shoulders above Fredendall. He was able to win battles against the Germans, for starters.

I'm going with Clark. He had a plan for Italy and he stuck to it, no matter how much the situation changed. Showed little aggression and got the beachhead stuck at Anzio.

Pillow, brave???

When he lammed out of Fort Donelson and left Buckner stuck with having to surrender is definitely not brave.

Jim

He was not, strictly speaking a general, but I'd toss in Admiral Ghormley for consideration.

B

Anzio would not have been such a meat ginger if Clark had taken the initiative when there was nothing that threatened his advance off the beach.

The worst General of WWII was General Malaise. He got around to most of the armies during the war, so he was an equal opportunity fail.

MacArthur made a strong comeback, but his actions (inactions) during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines were grossly incompetent and border on the criminal.

How about the worst British, Russian, Italian, German and Japanese generals in field command?

Pillow had a brave moment at Belmont. That was it for the rest of the war.

British – Percival?

Clark at Anzio was applying the lessons learned from the previous near-disaster at Salerno. There the green American troops advanced rapidly at first against no opposition, only to be tied in knots and shoved aside by the German counter-attack. The Germans very nearly drove the Americans into the sea, it was a near thing. At Anzio, Clark made sure not to repeat those mistakes: no precipitate advance, consolidate the beach-head, make sure there's plenty of support ashore…which turned out to be a different mistake.

Sticking to the topic, there are two contenders.

Fredendall's been mentioned but Lucas was just as inert. What people are ascribing to Clark at Anzio was really Lucas' fault; he failed to take the initiative early on and by the time he was replaced the Germans had bolstered their defences. Clark's big fail was to not follow Alexander's orders and cut off the Germans; he went for his own glory. Other than that, he was a reasonable general.

Clark

Well, based on the results of nearly every WWII game I've played … it's me.

clark, fredenhall macarthur in no particular order, but they are the big names…there were some low-level divisional stinkers as well, as there were in all armies, but who ended up getting the most of their men killed?
I don't know.
You don't have to be a "bad" general apparently, to get a lot of your men killed, but in the end that's all that matters to the grunt on the ground.

Clark wasn't in command at Anzio Lucas was in charge and he is the one who ordered troop to consolidate instead of pushing forward.

Clark was a glory hound to boot…

John T

I don't like Bradley…

Amicalement
Armand

I'm with you there Armand. I think Bradley is overrated.

Jones the unfortunate commander of the 106th Infantry division has got to have one of the worst records in the US army for WW2 losing the bulk of his command in a few days. Of course circumstances conspired against him. Arriving on the continent having spent a couple of days on board ships riding out a storm before landing and then being dumped on the Schnee Eifel in the middle of winter to be told by departing vets of 2nd ID that they were lucky as nothing ever happened. Then hit by the German offensive almost immediately. However Jones and the staff of the 106th fell to pieces under the German attack and did nothing. Failing to keep a grip of the 14th Cavalry group protecting their flank or reacting aggressively to attack the flanks of the German penetrations. Jones then pinned his hopes of rescuing his trapped regiments on the tanks of the 7th AD riding to the rescue. When they failed to arrive in time he handed over defence of St Vith to Bruce Clarke and was evacuated as a non battle casualty.

I'm not sure that is fair to Jones. He was handed an impossible situation and while it's true that a really outstanding commander might have salvaged something from the situation, I think most 'good' or 'average' commanders would have done little better than Jones. It should be also noted that the 2nd ID had a contingency plan for what to do in the event of a major attack--but they didn't share it with Jones when his division took over their position. Ironically Jones had his staff put together a plan for the same situation and their plan was almost identical with what the 2nd ID came up with, but they finished it on December 15th and there was no time to implement it.

From what I've read the 106th headquarters was in chaos during the battle. While you can ascribe what happened in the field to training and preparation, if he couldn't even keep his HQ in order that's definitely on Jones. I'd be happy to admit I'm wrong if someone has evidence the 106th's HQ wasn't in chaos.