"Most Overrated US General of WWII?" Topic

If we're going by the narrative of all his colleagues respected him but his performance bombed, I'll nominate Lesley McNair.
He's the father of the Tank Destroyer, held up production and shipping of American heavy tanks, and most importantly came up with the murderous replacement system.
Other than that he was a genius.

But I'm rejecting my own nomination because few have heard of him, so by definition he can't be "overrated".

He's the father of the Tank Destroyer, held up production and shipping of American heavy tanks, and most importantly came up with the murderous replacement system.

I don't think that is the narrative now, certainly with respect to the M26. It seems to be a combination of the army didn't want it, it took up too much shipping space, was a piece of junk and anyway the Sherman was a war winning tank all on its own. So McNair was a genius for stopping it. Quite how the Americans managed to produce a successful design like the M4 and fail to produce an acceptable follow on design for another 9 years is never really explained.

I'll nominate Lesley McNair. He's the father of the Tank Destroyer, held up production and shipping of American heavy tanks, and most importantly came up with the murderous replacement system.
Other than that he was a genius.

And I will stand to his defense.

In 1939 the US Army was smaller than the army that Germany had overrun in Poland. It had a new rifle.

In 1944 the US Army was the 3rd largest army in the world, maybe the 2nd. It had new rifles, carbines, trucks, howitzers, long guns, AA guns, bridging, radios, field telephones, uniforms, boots, rations that were the envy of every soldier of any other army. The US had made fewer than 100 medium tanks by the time of the French campaign of 1940, and they were so far behind that even in their dire hour of need the French (and the British) rejected them. By 1944 in ETO the US Army had more tanks supporting it's average Infantry Division than the Germans had in their average Armored division! And the US was supplying tanks to the French, the British, the Poles, the Brazilians, the Mexicans, the Chinese, and even the Russians.

He was the single most critical player in the growth of the US Army from smaller than Portugal's, to larger than Germany's. He is the single most important contributor to all that it took to put a million+ man army on the other side of an ocean, and to support it in high intensity combat operations -- a feat that no other army in history has achieved, before or since. And that army was the most highly mechanized army in the world (at that time), meaning that every ton of soldier shipped needed 10x more tons of support and supplies.

But no, he didn't send heavy tanks. Because the US Army's M6 was certainly going to make a difference in the war.

Yep, putting the 3-inch gun with a co-ax 37mm gun 12 foot up in the air with 80mm of armor to protect it was sure going to beat those Tigers and Panthers! That is the heavy tank that existed in 1943, which means that is the heavy tank that could have been shipped in time for D-Day and ETO.

Yep, McNair's silly War Need / War Ready policy, insisting that the using service actually needed what was shipped, and that it was tested and proven before it was shipped, sure put the US to shame. Yeah the US achieved what no other nation could have done, but think of the shame it brought to generations of wargamers!

I would put McNair's name in nomination for the most underrated general. Because he was a genius. There was no model for what he did, no manual to look at to see how it could be done. He just had to create it as he went along, with little more than the disastrous performance of the US Army in mobilizing for WW1 as his guide.

It's a good thing the Germans didn't have a general or two of his ilk in positions of responsibility. Image if all of their equipment and mobilization had been done with an eye to competence and utility instead of political demands for "big and shiny".

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Mark, very well done.

He is the single most important contributor to all that it took to put a million+ man army on the other side of an ocean, and to support it in high intensity combat operations -- a feat that no other army in history has achieved, before or since.

Sorry Mark the XIVth Army was over a million men strong by late ‘44 and Burma is a heck of a long way from Britain. And of course there were a lot of British personnel in all sorts of places that were a long way from Britain. Of course the US also had a number of significant advantages going for it, ready and secure access to raw materials, particularly critical things like oil, a well developed industrial base with which to build a war economy on and a secure base on which to build it. Things might have been different if the US had been subject to an intense and sustained air attack that the Germans and Japanese suffered and had to scrabble around, hand to mouth for raw materials like oil and critical metals like tungsten and nickel. That 3,000 mile ocean works both ways.

Sorry Mark the XIVth Army was over a million men strong by late ‘44 and Burma is a heck of a long way from Britain.

Fred:

To my understanding the British 14th Army, at various points in time, included the Indian 5th, 7th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, 25th and 26th Infantry Divisions.

I know the terrain can be difficult, but the distance from the Ganges to the Irrawadhi is less than 200 miles.

Sure it was a "British" Army, as India was a British Colonial possession. But it had all of 2 British Divisions. The majority of the 14th Army was raised in India. Their manpower, their food, their munitions, their food, their textiles, their food, their medications, their food, their replacements, and their food all came overland. There are NO oceans to cross between India and Burma. In WW2 the two countries were neighbors with a common border.

And all (ALL) of the divisions in the 14th Army were infantry divisions. Foot infantry, as it would come to be called (again) once it became clear that some infantry divisions in this world were motorized (as opposed to Motorized Divisions, a term used to distinguish from foot infantry in armies where motorization and mechanization were rare).

As it stands, with all of India right next door, I don't consider the 14th British Army to be a force on the other side of an ocean. If you want to claim that the British Army supported 2 foot divisions on the other side of an ocean from the UK, but only 200 miles overland from the British Empire's largest source of resources and manpower, I would agree.

But it's kind of hard to imagine the British government deciding it had 3 years to construct 500 additional naval vessels (an increment that was larger, in itself, than any navy on earth at the time), and an extra 2,000 merchant ship hulls, to support the 14th Army. IDK maybe they had those discussions and put in place that infrastructure. Be interested to see any docs indicating they did.

My point is only that the undertaking necessary to have the US Army that fought in ETO should not be dismissed or assumed away. "Oh of course the Americans would have a bunch of everything. That's just a given. But look at this one thing out of 50,000 things that disappoints me 70 years later -- clearly they were fools!". No, there is no good reason to assume that the US in ETO would have an abundance of everything other than the OVERWHELMINGLY massive, mind-blowing complex task of anticipating and putting in place the thousands upon thousands of inter-dependent projects to have an abundance of everything got done by guys like McNair.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Mark. So none of the food that US troops ate while in Britain came from British supplies? Every scrap was shipped from the US? And while much of the manpower came from India, much of the other requirements came from the UK. Weapons, munitions, uniforms, equipment etc. and while the food may have been supplied from India, a lot of food had to be shipped into the U.K. to prevent the population starving. In 1939 20,000,000 tons a year were imported into Britain, so yes the Brits were used to shipping a lot of food across oceans. Also it wasn't the only large force far from the UK. At its largest there were nearly 300,000 UK personnel in N Africa, and while closer to the UK a lot of the time ships had to go the long way round as going through the Med was too dangerous. Then of course there were troops in East Africa, Persia and protecting all the British and Commonwealth bases around the world. Yes the American achievement was enormous, but they had a lot going for them. The US was never bombed, never had half the country invaded and had to move all the factories a 1,000 Miles east, had to concern themselves with just getting enough food into the country so the population didn't starve. So yes maybe the dumb Brits and stupid Russians weren't as clever as the US and churned out lots of material to support millions of troops half way round the world, but they had a few other things on their minds. The British and the Russians too threw everything they had in to the war and winning it. The UK bankrupted itself in the process and was in hock to the US for lend lease for years and it was all paid back.
As a final thought I can't think of a single other country at the start of WW2 that had the neccessary ready access to natural resources, manpower, educated population, industrial know how and infrastructure to pull off what the US did. Russia and China had the manpower and resources, but peasant populations, and limited industrial capacity. Germany, France and the UK had the industrial know how and educated population, but not the manpower and access to resources. All the clever planning in the world won't achieve anything if you haven't got the wherewithal to put it into action.

So yes maybe the dumb Brits and stupid Russians weren't as clever as the US and churn out lots of material to support millions of troops half way round the world, but they had a few other things on their minds.

Fred:

I'm sorry if you have taken my comments as a criticism of the British or Russian war efforts. I'm not sure where in my comments you have found any criticisms to give you that view.

My only point is that we should not simply dismiss the guy (or guys) who made the American war contribution possible, because they didn't do something that would have given wargamers comfort 50 years later.

That the term "small contemptible army" was used to describe the British Army in 1914 is well known as a massively ignorant underestimation, as that small contemptible army had a long and illustrious military tradition and a high position in Britain's culture, and comported itself with a level of professionalism and elan that well surpassed most potential opponents.

But in 1939 the US Army was in fact small and contemptible. Most of the American population held it in contempt, and foreign powers were rightfully dismissive. The US was a non-player among armies of the world. US Army equipment was of old design, often of foreign source, and it was hard to even imagine any foreign power using US military equipment. We seem to forget that now, because we have 70 years of thinking of the US as a military power. But in 1939 the US ranked well below Romania in it's military might, at least as far as ground forces go.

The examination of what it took to expand from a few hundred thousand to over 6 million men under arms in 2 1/2 years, and all that it took to provide those men with every sort of NEW equipment from boots to trucks to canned food, and the level of fore-thought and planning that it took to decide, in the summer of 1941, before the US was even IN the war, that if the US was to invade Europe in 1944, that a naval construction program the likes of which the world had never before seen would need to be funded and driven as a matter of national economic policy, should probably not be dismissed with just "the US was never bombed". The US was never bombed, and never had to move it's factories 1,000 miles in WW1 either, but when the US Army's expeditionary force entered the combat zone in WW1 they used artillery built by the French, fighter planes built by the French, tanks built by the French and the British, rifles built by the British, and had to be fed by the British and the French. Please imagine what would have happened if the US Army showed up in Jolly Ol' England in 1943 and with the same requirements and expectations.

As even you have noted, the UK was struggling to feed its own population. In fact American foodstuffs made a significant contribution to the diets of British and Russian civilian populations, and btw yes the US Army DID feed itself. Yes some portion of the diet may have been sourced locally as a matter of preference or even as a matter of friendly policy when and if food was available, but the US shipped more than 150% of the food needed to support it's own forces to ETO in WW2. Did the UK ship even 25% of the food needed for the 14th Army to India/Burma?

Please don't take this as a criticism of the British war effort. It isn't. The challenges that Britain faced were different than the challenges that the US faced. Yes, Britain maintained forces all around the world.

The RN, for all it's might, for all it's prowess … if we just look at the design of any class of RN cruisers from the late 1930s through 1945 it's just like the naval equivalent of Shermans compared to Panthers. Really, what wargamer wants to take a Leander or Town class cruiser up against a Hipper? But the RN developed cruisers to meet particular British requirements. They needed economical cruisers, because they needed MANY ships, with good sea keeping, and long range, and good multi-purpose capabilities, to police the sea lanes connecting a far-flung empire. If you ignore the decision making that led to the HMS Ajax, and compare it's guns, armor, and torpedoes with the Prinz Eugen, you might well say "They were daft -- what a scandal!" But it wasn't. They were entirely competent ships to Britain's needs.

There are cases of incompetence to be found in the history of WW2. There are numerous examples of "what were they thinking?" that don't get good, solid answers because, well, what WERE they thinking? But McNair isn't one of them. He was thinking, and thinking well, of the challenges that the US Army would face going from less than Portugal, to more than Germany, in 3 years. That's not the same challenge that the British or the Russians faced. Doesn't mean that they too didn't face challenges, and in some (many) cases not only meet their own challenges but even achieve remarkable results. It just means that the challenges were different.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

+many Fred

But in 1939 the US Army was in fact small and contemptible. Most of the American population held it in contempt, and foreign powers were rightfully dismissive. The US was a non-player among armies of the world. US Army equipment was of old design

Sad … but very true …

Mark, I think the years between WW1 and WW2 were more significant for the US than the UK. The industrial revolution was only half a dozen years old when WW1 started for the US, it was 70 years or more for the UK. By WW2 the US had built a large navy of its own and become a world leader in aviation, automotive and heavy engineering, and secured its own back yard in South America for US interests. Read US Marine General Smedley Butler's account of how that was done. It was a very different country to the one that sent the Doughboys to France in WW1. The situation for Britain was very different too. France was still in the fight and able to supply a lot to the US troops, Italy was on our side so the Med was safe for allied shipping and submarine warfare was still in its infancy. In 1941 it was very different for the UK. We had nearly lost our major field army and had lost all its equipment, France and the Low Countries were out of the fight, the UK was being bombed and the German U boats were beginning to extract an increasing toll on UK shipping which the Brits were struggling to contain. So it is hardly surprising that Britain couldn't sustain the same level of largesse to US forces that it did in WW1.
The bottom line is this had the boot been on the other foot and the UK had been called on to go to the aid of the US in 1941 from a standing start there is no way they could have produced the quantity of equipment that the US did or support as large a force. Not because they wouldn't have had the foresight or the smarts to plan so large a force, or so massive a production programme, it was the lack of the wherewithal to do it. I think we could have probably put a million men on US soil, providing there was no other call on the armed forces, ie no war with Japan and that would have required maximum effort. This is hypothetical, of course. I am not suggesting Mexico could have done a Blitzkrieg on the US. :-)

Oh and had the boot been on the other foot you would have had to put up with a load of c**p tanks. Sorry. Although you might have done ok. Can't see the Mexicans mass producing Tigers and Panthers. :-)

Comments -

[1] A quietly organized communication and interface relationship between the US armed services and American industry was maintained during the 1930's; it later bore great fruit, starting with the initial US expansion of military spending in 1938 and blossoming in the later explosive expansion of the US war industry.

[2] McNair had great talents as a military thinker, planner, organizer and navigator of the military bureaucracy, but he was not perfect.

B

Interesting. Most overrated Bradley for the many reasons mentioned. Most underrated Eisenhower. For many reasons including keeping the allies allied and for brilliant moves during the Bulge. As to the "side" arguments regarding overall quality of "generalship" consider this. The US put its geniuses in logistics and production. The Germans in field commands. Which worked better? Who won the war? QED

As to Macarthur's being overrated you must qualify "then or now"? I think his star has become tarnished in the harsh light of history but he was probably our most famous general when we entered the war. Why the Phillipine debacle didn't tarnish his star back then was probably because the details of our defeat were largely kept from the people so he became the victim rather than the cause. Cheers!

McNair may have had flaws, he never let his ego overrule better judgement. He's been accused of many things, that his artillery background made him biased against tanks and that he hated big gun tanks or came up with the "ridiculous Tank Destroyer doctrine™"

The development of a heavy tank was ongoing, not always helped by the mad scientists of the Ordnance Department and their fetish for novelty transmission and suspension systems.

McNair judged the various Pershing precursors as not suitable for service and his flawed Battle Need program didn't furnish him any info that might make him change his mind on the subject. It wasn't until Devers went directly to Marshall and hammered on the need to send as many 90mm gunned vehicles as soon as possible that the Pershing was reviewed. McNair dropped his opposition, later confirmed by the feedback from Zebra, saying that a big gun would be most appreciated by the troops in the field, but he would not release it until it was fully operational.

I probably cannot emphasize enough how much different procedures were between the US and Germany. US equipment was tested until it was deemed reliable and the supply system ensured that everything remained reliable. German tanks were essentially field trialed as soon as they rolled off the assembly line. A Sherman went through trials and training, clocking more miles than the total life expectancy of a Panther.

If the M26 had been released early as so many clamour in a shrill tone, then history books would be filled with lurid stories about the mechanically unreliable Pershing, hurled into battle long before it was operational, costing the life of so many brave soldiers.

McNair, flawed, sure, but not overrated.

Like I said before : Patton is the most overrated, he may have been a very capable commander, but he's become a cult figure incapable of doing wrong and I've yet to meet somebody who doesn't believe that if he had been given overall command of the armies in the ETO the US army would have fought so hard and so effectively under his near divine inspiration and skill they would have won WWII around 1921, maybe even sooner and he would have driven the last Germans into Siberia alongside all the Russians, Japanese and Chinese, solved world hunger, proved Fermat's Last Theorem and worked out the Higgs-Boson while plinking with his .357 revolver.

Oh and for those of the Belton Cooper persuasion, Patton stated to a visiting Ordnance officer, just after the Battle of the Bulge, "Ordnance takes too God Damn long seeking perfection at the expense of the fighting men, and you can tell that to anyone at Ordnance." The officer believed that Patton was expressing the feelings of the using arms.

I probably cannot emphasize enough how much different procedures were between the US and Germany. US equipment was tested until it was deemed reliable and the supply system ensured that everything remained reliable.

Pretty much the norm for everyone except the Americans I think you will find. Hence the string of unreliable cruiser tanks British tankers had to endure. Even the much praised T-34 had serious flaws when first introduced into service, with unreliable transmissions amongst other things. I would suggest the reason the Americans were able to do such thorough testing on the Sherman was they didn't need to have the tanks RIGHT NOW! They had time to perfect the design then ramp up production. How it would have turned out if they had needed a lot of tanks real soon remains speculation.

Until this thread came up I didn't know how much MacArthur screwed the pooch the first hours after the attack on Pearl. It's as he didn't know who he was working for. He went native and held back a response in case the Japanese would bypass the Philippines if they didn't fight them. This turned into a bad guess.
(He had been in employ of the Philippine President.)

As for being highly rated, he did receive the Medal of Honor for a defeat.

Lucas and Clark do not fit the category as they have never been rated high to begin with. This is about generals who have been rate so high, they are now overrated. This isn't about who is the worst general. That's a differnet poll.

Clark should not be knocked out of the running just because historians and the public since WWII have not ranked him high. I would argue that four star generals, theatre commanders, army group commanders and army commanders in the U.S. Army of WWII were sufficiently rare that they had to be highly rated among their contemporaries to get the job. I will still put MacArthur at the top of the list, but Clark is in the top three. In a different role Clark might have been OK, but he should not have been given the Fifth Army.

"McNair may have had flaws, he never let his ego overrule better judgment"

Perhaps … perhaps not. McNair's persistent bureaucratic obstructionism with respect to ad hoc modifications of tanks and his insistence upon incorporation of the (heavy and unwieldy) towed 3in AT gun into tank destroyer doctrine could be viewed either way.

B

One surely has to start with a list of generals who are rated to begin with, before deciding which of them are overrated.

US generals who've ever been held in much regard: Eisenhower, Bradley, Clark, Macarthur, Patton and I'd add Ridgway. Of those I'd dismiss, for the reasons given, all but Eisenhower and Ridgway. It's hard to say Eisenhower was overrated, because coalition warfare's a beyotch, but he wasn't a fighting general like Ridgway, who for me is definitely under-rated (I mean apart from us who's heard of him?) – plus, what's not to like about a bloke whose middle name is "Bunker".

Fred, what definition are you using to determine that the Industrial Revolution in the U.S. was half a dozen years old when the U.S. entered WWI? By the outbreak of the Great War Germany had passed the U.K. In steel production, but the U.S. was ahead of both. Oldsmobile began mass production of automobiles around the turn of the century. Newport News Shipbuilding launched the first U.S. built dreadnought around 1907. Textiles, coal production, railroad miles, by most standards of measuring industrialization the U.S. was in the mix before 1900.

Having studied the industrialization of the US economy during my university years (back when the earth was waste and void…), I would suggest that most historians place the pivot point of the US transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy as the 1870s. Pre-civil war, the economy of the North-East was already based on industry and trade. The South was almost entirely agricultural. The upper-mid-west was agricultural, but already starting to transition. In the west, what economy there was, was based initially on agriculture and hunting/trapping.

As results of the civil war, the economy of the south was crushed, and the upper-mid-west went through an industrial revolution with the expansion of the steel industry. As the west was developed in the immediate post-war period its economy progressively came to be based on mineral extraction (generally considered an industrial, rather than an agricultural, activity). As the refining of kerosene was perfected, petroleum began to replace whaling as the base of lighting homes, and suddenly a whole new mineral extraction and processing economy blossomed in Texas and later all along the gulf coast (and even later in California).

So yes, the US had already been on the world's industrial stage for more like 50 years, rather than a dozen years, by the time WW1 came around.

Or so I have read.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

General Colt.

In reality, he had no actual involvement in the breakthrough at Clermont.

Patton, from the cavalry sword he invented in his early days which was awful to his military operations. He did a good job at the battle of the Bulge in turning his divisions North, but that was it. In Normandy, the only reason he managed to drive across France was because Montgomery's plan for the British to drag all German reserves into their sector by constant attacks meant Patton was pushing against an open door. When he charged across France he demanded full logistics support at the expense of other units and even captured German fuel depots but did not reveal that to Eisenhower, just kept it for himself, serious ego issues. When he had to actually fight a prepared enemy for the first time in his career such at Metz his generalship consisted of making unrealistic demands of his troops and frontal attacks.

Patton. Major skill he did have was self promotion.

Lloyd Fredendall. I think Ben Davis with his tactics background would have made a better show of things in North Africa.

MacArthur

This seems set up to elicit the answer Patton.

Very highly rated by non-professionals, movies often mention him so he gets overrated in the public imagination.

His performance was often questionable and his mad dash across France possibly lengthened the war by a few weeks, by taking resources from the main thrust across NWE.

Many of his subordinates went on to positions of power and importance in the 50s-70s, so defended his reputation out of loyalty. Also he died before the analysis of his career could happen and so gets away with a lot.

We tend to think generals win wars by their brilliance but logistics and systems dominate the outcome. All that is required of generals is not to mess it up.

That was my vote earlier in this discussion Toy Soldier Green

MacArthur – yep he really was a failure. What with the fact that his troops actually repulsed a Corps sized Japanese attack into Bataan and gave the Japs a hiding. Compare that to how well the Aussies,Poms, Dutch and Indians were going against the Japanese at the same time. Then in 1943 he climbs the Soloman ladder whilst inflicting a 10 to 1 casualty ratio upon the Japanese whilst sustaining an advance of 1000km involving a dozen amphibious landings and 8 major battle engagements over six months. Clearly the man was a flop.

McNair – you reckon he's a genius do you, Mark 1? – what about the TOWED tank destroyer battalions established at McNair's insistence in 1943? A third of the US TD battalions in France in 1944 were towed – A huge waste of resources for units which on only two occasions fared well against the German armour they were designed to destroy. They spent most of the campaign being used as third rate conventional artillery. Generally a "genius" doesn't make this sort of blue.

Patton – he was the MacArthur of the NWE theatre. The same rules apply to him as to MacArthur. Only Patton's advance wasn't as far, didn't inflict as much damage to the enemy and his men took more than a few punches in face on their way through – not all of them inflicted by Patton…But the lack of a 'main thrust' through NWE wasn't Patton's fault as he was a mere army commander.

Which bring me to Bradley, the army group commander and the man who didn't close the Falaise Pocket, thereby letting 50,000 odd Germans out of the bag. And whose conduct of the September/October/November battles along the Westwall are open to criticisms of complete incompetence on a MacArthurian scale…

And overseeing this complete shambles was Eisenhower, a man who could hold a coalition together, but not someone who could make it fight together under a plan that could have given it an earlier victory. Taken by surprise in the Ardennes when he should not have been. For the second time in the war.

So, it is all really Marshall's fault as he was the boss of all these clowns.

While we may disagree on the names, the fact remains that the US could tolerate overated generals because we won the war with production and logistics. If my guys can consistently overwhelm your guys quality of leadership becomes of secondary import. Quantity has a quality all it's own. Cheers!

Hans,

Macarthur had his own public relations team. By the end of the war, he was one of the most popular Generals in American history. A military genus. He is still in the eyes of many of the public as one of our great generals. Did you not see the movie? Douglas Macarthur staring Douglas Macarthur.