Finally, when it comes to bad generals, let us remember Truman's immortal words about firing MacArthur: I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. At Yorktown, he allowed himself to be taken by surprise and outmaneuvered by Washington and the French fleet. Westmoreland held a press conference in which he categorically denied any such loss of confidence. Dispatched to India, he led campaigns to help subdue the subcontinent, replacing the crown jewel he had lost. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch. Still, it is his world-changing defeat at Yorktown that merits memorializing. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. Two years later, he lost a leg fighting the French. This did not, however, achieve the postulated outcome. Persian Gulf (1988) (Oil Platforms) 2. Frederick C. Weyand was a U.S. Army General who was the last commander of American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. After months of inactivity, McClellan was finally spurred to action by Pres. Thus the progress Westmoreland claimed in racking up huge body counts did nothing to win the war. As the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles crippled Germany, Ludendorff effectively sabotaged the Weimar Republic by propagating the belief that he and his armies had been undefeated on the battlefield. He continued to view attrition as the most effective strategy for defeating Germany; the British lost some 420,000 men at the Somme. Considering some militants as instruments of regional influence while fighting others has had disastrous consequences. Concurrently with hi. The Romans marched right into the ambush that Arminius laid thus leading to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. In the autumn of 1804 he was placed in charge of the French fleet at Toulon and tasked with drawing the British fleet under Horatio Nelson to the Caribbean. Ulysses S. Grant, who replaced McClellan, understood this. Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security. Thus, on July 1, 1916, Haig ordered his men to go over the top at the First Battle of the Somme, and 20,000 of them had the audacity to die almost immediately (there were 60,000 total British casualties on the first day of the attack). 6. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777. 1968 takes the cake for me. Santa Anna, a lifetime gambler, was known for his risk taking in battle, but also his brutality. Quintus Servilius Caepio takes the cake amongst the worst Roman generals ever to take command of a legion though. Armchair historians often generalize that during the American Civil War, while the Union held a clear advantage in material, the Confederacy could field superior commanders. By December 1864 Paraguay was at war with Brazil, and, when Argentina denied a request for the transit of a Paraguayan army across its territory, Lpez declared war on that country as well. 1. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. While this century witnessed many great leaders, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi . 10. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. See the vast swaths of land to the north and south that arent Paraguay? They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. What was your impression of the man when you were working for him? There was no warmth, no apparent interest in his associates as people. Born in 1901 in Quang Binh Province (part of North Vietnam), Diem was the son of a well-educated mandarin (Vietnamese civil servant who took part in running the country) who served as the Minister of Rites and Grand Chamberlain to Emperor Thanh-Thai (1889-1907). Varus trust in Arminius was an obvious and terrible misjudgment. But beyond the goals of one leader in Moscow, it is also clear that Ukraine has suffered horrors of a historic nature. Some would say that failure on the battlefield warrants censure. Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, This Photo Of A 94-Year-Old Widow Receiving Her Husbands Remains Will Break Your Heart, From Messiah to Hitler, What You Can and Cannot Name Your Child. He overestimated the American peoples patience and tolerance of friendly losses. Panama (1989) 2. He decided to conduct of a war of attrition, using search and destroy tactics, in which the measure of merit was body count. Delivered Wednesday & Sunday. Because he never wanted to face a superior force, he refused to fight. The deplorable conduct of Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmouth has been immortalized by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Benedict Arnolds name is synonymous with traitorous behavior. This entire list could be populated with Roman commanders, but one manages to rise above the rest with an ineptitude that defies logic. His war of attrition, search and destroy tactics, and emphasis on body count did nothing to affect the war in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam, where the enemys covert infrastructure was left free to continue using coercion and terror to dominate the rural populace. What myths or misperceptions surround Westmoreland that you would like to clear up, if any? General William Westmoreland. This would be known as the Tet Offensive and would become a major turning point in the war. Many of the charges leveled against him have also been laid at the feet of . Delivered Monday-Friday. 1. Grenada (1983) 3. He deprived the South Vietnamese of modern weaponry, giving U.S. and other allied forces priority for issue of the new M-16 rifle and other advanced military wherewithal. Santa Anna liked to call himself the Napoleon of the West. And, like Napoleon, he squandered it all in one grand campaign. If there was a saving grace for America, it was that he wasn't commanding an army. The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. General William Childs Westmoreland (1914- 2005) with President Johnson in South Vietnam #1. It would be nice if all American generals were great. They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at county fairs. Although he eventually disavowed Hitler, by that point Ludendorff had become so deeply involved with mysticism that few took him seriously. Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. Again fighting outnumbered Texans, this time Santa Anna would lose the battle stunningly. Westmorelands own book about himself gives some indication of how he would react to this more recent one. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him. Casey was an Army insidera four-star general and the son of the highest-ranking American casualty of the Vietnam War, a division commander who was killed in a July 1970 helicopter crash. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. Although he managed to escape the battle unharmed, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship and exiled. Varus himself, seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide. After only 10 weeks into the Pacific War, Percival became responsible for the largest surrender of British-led forces in history. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at. 3. Officially labelled a defector by the Pentagon, many suspected Nolan, an African American, changed sides after suffering a lifetime of racial discrimination. Thus it was under Darius rule that the Persian Empire fell and was conquered. 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. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. What is a bad general? Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson put one forth in the PROVN Study, a Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam. That document held that Westmorelands approach was not working and could not work because it ignored the real war in South Vietnams hamlets and villages, where the covert enemy infrastructure was through coercion and terror dominating the rural populace. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. rs worth well over $400 billion. Soon after declaring himself dictator of Mexico, rebels who opposed the Mexican dictatorship created three new republics, one of them being the Republic of Texas. Read More. 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. Unfortunately the fates of the former Republic Vietnam (Sout. We ended up, he said, with no operational plan that had the slightest chance of ending the war favorably. Westmoreland could not or would not ever bring himself to acknowledge that reality. By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. On the other hand, there was that bad day at the Battle of Salamis when most of the Persian fleet went to the bottom. But the inducements encourage U.S. companies to invest only at homenot elsewhere. He lacked the schooling and relevant experience to understand the war and devise a viable approach to prosecuting it. Publication of the PROVN Study, whose precepts were later implemented with great success by Westmorelands successor, illustrated a matter of fundamental importance. It was anotherhistory-changingevent, the birth of a truly exceptional nation. In 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire. Starting with the battle of Long Island, he lost way more fights than he wonyet he managed to win the war. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. Yet Fredendall's solution was to order an Army engineer company to build a giant bunker a hundred miles from the front lines. Somalia (1992-1994) 2. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. History: Military History. Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. The curation of this content is at the discretion of the author, and not necessarily reflective of the views of Encyclopaedia Britannica or its editorial staff. He thought he could take over the war from the South Vietnamese, bring it to a successful conclusion, and then hand their country back to them and go home in triumph. There is no Carthage. All the enemys losses were quickly made up. 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. Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? Varus placed his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germanic Cherusci tribesman maximized. His forces outnumbered Alexanders men by at least a 2 to 1 ratio, but Darius was still outflanked, defeated and forced to flee. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln. Perhaps Mao would have intervened anyway. Known as Reverse Buller by his troops during the Second Boer War, the Englishman was first defeated at the Battle of Colenso and subsequently lost his position as overall commander. How well that would have worked can be seen when Gates was sent to command American troops in the South. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges. It doesnt matter if theyve won more often than theyve lost. Opportunistic firms in Asia and Europe have already begun to relocate investments to the United States. Nelsons victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was so complete that it established British supremacy on the high seas for more than a century. 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. Had Lincoln retained McClellan in command of the Union armies, many former Americans might still be whistling "Dixie.". A common view holds that 138,708 Allied personnel surrendered or were killed by fewer than 30,000 Japanese. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. Not good, Hannibal. 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. Darius III. His poor tactical decisions resulted in his army being routed by a smaller force of Redcoats and Loyalists at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina in 1780. Rommel is by far the greatest military general of the . The man who appealed for Varus help was Arminius, a Romanized Germanic prince. In fifteen thought-provoking essays, each written by a professional military historian, readers are introduced . Mexican general Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna probably wished that everyone really did remember the Alamo, because: (1) he actually did win that battle (he outnumbered his opponents between 10- and 30-to-1); and (2) during the 13-day siege, he somehow resisted the urge to betray all his allegiances and change sides. Sure, he was the greatest commander of the Second Punic War, a titanic contest between Carthage and Rome. Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend The idiot who, seeking self aggrandisement, led his army, Force D, to disaster at Kut in WW1. While Hull dithered, Brock captured Fort Michilimackinac, establishing British control of the Straits of Mackinac. Under Westmorelands command, the Vietnam war began smoothly as the U.S. won every battle. But in 1968, when Westmoreland became Army Chief of Staff, Communist forces baited Westmoreland into committing nearly 40% of his strength to the military outpost at Khe Sanh, then attacked cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. Loyalty to himself and himself alone would be something of a running theme in the narrative of Santa Annas life, and his rise to power in Mexico was characterized by near-constant vacillation and betrayal of his allies. America, the Middle East and the rest of the world are still reaping the consequences of those omissions. On September 2, 1945, hours after the Japanese signed their unconditional surrender in World War II, communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, hoping. This is, obviously, a problematic quality when ones title is general-in-chief of the entire Union army. Caepio reportedly lived out the remainder of his life in luxury, however. He was called the inevitable general. A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. He retreated to Malta but was captured when that island fell to the British. Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air. Whatever its military wisdom or lack thereof, it was a decision that should not have been made by generals under the American political system. He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870. In order, from most culpable down. He was soon released, however, and, as more capable French admirals either died or somehow incurred Napoleons disfavor, a path to the top echelons of command was opened for Villeneuve. 3. Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. On September 9, 1965, Navy Cmdr. Even now, the easiest way to get into an argument at a V.F.W. 15. 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. 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. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. 10 Redvers Buller The 1970s were scary times. Alexander, Napoleon, Rommel. Fort Bragg was named in 1918 during the Jim Crow era. In 1940, after increasing pressure from dictator Benito Mussolini and facing demotion, Graziani followed orders and invaded Egypt with his Tenth Army. Implementing the attrition strategy, Westmoreland typically employed a series of large unit sweeps conducted in the deep jungle regions along South Vietnams western borders. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. Grachev once said that only an incompetent commander would order tanks into the streets of central Grozny, where they would be vulnerable. Yet near the end of the war he did exactly that. He bears a lot of responsibility for one the greatest reversals of military fortune ever experienced by a super power. Contrarily, I would not so stigmatize another important player often criticized by others, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. His bad luck didnt end at San Jacinto. It was a humiliating baptism of fire for the U.S. Army in Europe, and more important, caused British commanders to dismiss their Yank allies as amateur soldiers for the rest of the war. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. Grant had encircled the fort. What does that mean for trade and globalization? For the most accurate and up-to-date information, consult individual encyclopedia entries about the topics. A more positive example is George Washington. up as tough on Beijing, even seeking to contain the rise of the worlds second-biggest economy. After the war, the phrase lions led by donkeys came to be associated with the British army for what should be obvious reasons. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he theoretically had some influence there, at least to the extent he could shape the collective viewpoint, but even then LBJ and McNamara were famously impervious to advice from the Joint Chiefs. These two instances are illustrative of many, many more, ranging from his actions or lack of action in combat situations to his determination to take over the war and win it with U.S. forces to his resultant failure to build up South Vietnamese forces to the validity of body count to the decision to close Khe Sanh to his actions when Lang Vei was overrun to denying predictions he had made of an early end to the war to claims of not being surprised at Tet 1968 to denying a post-Tet request for many additional U.S. forces. This might have ended okay for Germany, provided they didnt do something like provoke a previously neutral country with Allied sympathies and an effectively bottomless war chest. Along with Communist China and other Communist movements in the region, who were fighting to reunite the Vietnams under the red banner, there were other belligerent, free countries in the region who had an interest in keeping South Vietnam away from the Commies. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces.