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The Russians must have had some real morons in charge early in WWII. It's ridiculous the amount of troops taken prisoner by the Germans in the first few weeks of the war.
The moron in charge was Stalin with his hold or die order and order that troops and officers who retreated would be executed.
Custer. Left the gatlins behind because "We won't need them..."
It was more that "they'll slow us down". Which, if you've ever seen the terrain in that area and the route he took, would have been true.
Custer used tactics that had been successful against the Indians time and time and time again. Faced with a pincers/hammer and anvil attack the Indians always fought a rearguard action while the village was struck and the families escaped (which was one thing that Custer was ordered to prevent). They did it every time. Except on June 25, 1876.
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon...as Commander in Chief they kept us in a ten year war that cost nearly 60K American casualties and at least 1.5 million Vietnamese casualties and an estimated 4 - 5 million Vietnamese civilian deaths. That's not counting those innocents who were killed in Cambodia and Laos. They tied the hands of their generals and turned the other way when innocent lives were being taken. They even lied to the American public about the reasons for the war and our involvement in Cambodia. The war also spawned Pol Pot who killed an estimated 2 million Cambodian citizens. For all of that death, what did these two failures accomplish as military "leaders"?
The moron in charge was Stalin with his hold or die order and order that troops and officers who retreated would be executed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richlord11
The worst military leaders???
Definitely Stalin= madman and killer
His soldiers can ran onward, but not come back!!! Crazy man!!
This is an oft repeated statement, but it is ultimately false. It has been discussed in several threads regarding WW2 and the Eastern Front and there is nothing to substantiate any of these claims. Stalin certainly issued statements and orders about not retreating under penalty of getting shot and said that "prisoners are traitors", etc. However, all of this was propaganda.
The "no retreat" order was given at the height of the German invasion and was intended to try and galvanize the troops in the field to continue to fight and buy the Soviets additional time to mobilize. Same thing with the statement about "prisoners being traitors".
In practice, Soviet units did withdrawal/retreat and there are no accounts of them being shot en masse for doing so. For instance, thousands of troops withdrew from the Smolensk pocket and were simply reorganized and used in the defense of Moscow.
People have the image of the Soviets machine gunning their own troops ala "Enemy at the Gates", but while things like this did occur, they were directed at penal batallions and the Germans used the same tactics/units in their own army. In fact, the Soviets modeled their use of penal batallions on what the Germans did.
In the case of prisoners, those who survived being a German POW and were liberated were not treated as traitors. They were sent back to Russia to convalesce and those capable of fighting rejoined the army. Many were no longer physically able to fight so they went to work in factories or were simply sent home if they had been severely wounded.
There are accounts of some POW's being executed or sent to gulags upon returning, but those accounts almost universally involve the accused having collaborated with the Germans while in prison. Less than 1% of liberated Russian POW's ever faced any kind of disciplinary action when they returned to Russia.
One really needs to make an effort to separate the propaganda spewed during desperate times from the actual reality.
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon...as Commander in Chief they kept us in a ten year war that cost nearly 60K American casualties and at least 1.5 million Vietnamese casualties and an estimated 4 - 5 million Vietnamese civilian deaths. That's not counting those innocents who were killed in Cambodia and Laos. They tied the hands of their generals and turned the other way when innocent lives were being taken. They even lied to the American public about the reasons for the war and our involvement in Cambodia. The war also spawned Pol Pot who killed an estimated 2 million Cambodian citizens. For all of that death, what did these two failures accomplish as military "leaders"?
I'm not sure how you can lump Richard Nixon in with Lyndon Johnson, given how he inherited the incredibly unpopular war in 1969. In fact, with Abrams as the commander rather than the execrable Westmoreland, the Americans were able to stabilize matters on the ground in Vietnam until some kind of withdrawal could take place. While it is certainly debatable whether or not the South Vietnamese government could have lasted with American material support had Congress not been so fickle, I don't think you can accuse Nixon of escalating the conflict.
Further, I don't think you make an entirely sound argument. First you argue against the United States getting into the war in the first place, then you decry the ravages of the Khmer Rouge that happened after the United States got out of the war.
In fact, while Tricky Dick had many manifest flaws as a president, foreign policy was certainly not one of them.
Thank you NJGoat - I was about to write something but you beat me to it.
The whole idea of Stalin being a moron and a madman is a little odd. By all accounts, he was at the head of an inferior army, which was caught completely unprepared at the start of the war. Nevertheless the USSR emerged victorious against what was probably the most fearsome war machine on the planet at that time. This presents quite a conundrum.
It is easy to believe convenient oversimplifications along the lines of "Stalin ordered his troops to die". Reality, of course, is far more complex than this. Moral judgement aside, I think Stalin was actually very shrewd and levelheaded as a leader.
When all is said and done, it is likely that the worst leader in military history, and probably the 100 worst and possibly the 1,000 worst, were people that none of us will ever hear about. Those that we have already cited above were the pretty good ones, who rose through the ranks on merit, were placed in a responsible position for a significant battle, got entangled in some bad intelligence or interpreted some badly, and the rest would have been comical if not so tragic.
My cousin took is degree from college in 1953, went straight to Korea with an automatic 2nd Lieutenant commission, and to hear him tell it, he might have been the worst military leader in history. He didn't try very hard not to be.
Bill Buckner and Ralph Branca and Fred Merkle were not the worst ball players in history, they were among the best, so good they were on a Major League team in a spot to win a championship, which is almost as good as it gets.
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