I wanted to do this as a poll and place several choices, but I knew yanni, f_alk, and cystic (at least) would find some other obscure commander and throw off my whole study. besides I don’t know of any famous canadian commanders to be fair to our northern neighbors. these are my tops
my favorites are
i must admit, Manstein was a beast. the one thing he didn’t do is take Leningrad. i’m pretty sure he was up by leningrad up unitil stalingrad or a little bit before that, but i may be wrong about that. but why couldn’t he take it? did the russians just have so many troops there that he couldn’t do it? and why didn’t the Finns attack Leningrad from behind through that 12 miles or whatever that separates Leningrad and the Finnish border? Or did Hitler tell Manstein to just siege the city and not try to assualt it? these are questions i have long thought about.
i like Zhukov, mainly just beacuse he was the general of the ragtag russians, and somehow he managed to push the germans back to Berlin (wouldn’t have happened without US and UK, or if the russian winter of '41 wasn’t so bad, but whatever)
actually I believe genaeral leeb was in charge of army group north - and that hoth’s 4th panzer army had the best last chance at capturing lenningrad.
the finns did attack from the north, but both the germans and the finns found they had difficulty assaulting zhukov’s city defenses.
leeb gave it one last shot in sept or october of 41, but all of his armor was subsequently stripped to help capture kiev. hitler decieded to (and rightly so ) just to starve the city.
manstein was always attacked to army group south, although I don’t think he actually was in command of the whole army group until after stalingrad. his army gruops objective’s were all met, taking oddessa, the crimea, sevstapol, rostov, and he even moved on grosney. but over extension doomed his army group.
there was I believe a finnish commander named MANNERHEIM though, and I’ll wager that’s who you are thinking of. nice of a youngster to show some interest though. I figured you’d probably go for rommel. I liked and or admired him greatly- but after el alamein he realized that the war was lost, and no longer fought with his previuos vigor.
Rommel all the way. I have issues with German Commanders in Russia due to their dealings with SS policy. Patton next, you gotta love him! Zhukov, you have to admire a guy who launches major offenses in blizzards and sub-zero temperatures! Lastly, Auchenlick. He did alot of good in Africa, Monty stole alot of his credit…
actually when I said auchenlich I meant ritchie, both were decent and both were stripped of troops- ritchie for greece and auchenlich for the far east.
but who do you think were the WORST generals? (this might be harder, since nobody talks about the bad generals)
maybe some would be
i don’t know about too many bad generals, but how many can you think of?
the us commander from anzio (italy) was clark- and I think if D-Day hadn’t over shadowed his taking rome, many would think differently of him. I put him at #10. it wasn’t really that he sucked so much as kesselring was just that much better.
paulus was definately down there though. let’s look at some Italian generals (early in the african campaign) when they outnumbered and out gunned the british and still lost. or some of the french high command. during the first few weeks of the war. or how about the american commander at the kasserine pass- obviously IKE but I think alexander actually commanded this group of troops. if it wasn’t for german infighting the americans would likely have reconsidered helping the british.
yeah, the italian/french (for the first few weeks; they weren’t bad near the end considering their troops had lost all interest in defending their country) commanders were awful. here’s a startling statitic: right after the fall of france, there were 350,000 italians in africa opposing 21,500 british, and the british DESTROYED the italians, hence the germans sending troops to north africa
I definately admire Patton. He saved a lot of lives during the Battle of the Bulge.
yes, but he had a huge ego, and he was a little bit insane; he thought that he was a re-incarnation of caesar and achilles and some other heroes of antiquity.
Field Marshal Walther Model, the Fuhrer’s fireman (a damn good general). Rommel is good but in my opinion he is a bit overrated.
My favorite general would have to be Patton (you can’t beat what he did during the Bulge and across the Siegfried line (he sustained the lowest number of causalities of an army of his size, while inflicted nearly a million German losses).
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my sister’s favorite general is General of Fighters, Aldolf Galland. Pretty obvious why.
Could it be the Mustache?
I know very little about WW2 commanders.
I think we had this discution once before. I remember that I was one of the few that liked MacArthur.
I have a hard time ranking who I think was the best. I don’t think it is possible to realy say definatively “he is the best”. But since it is an oppinion I will go ahead. First, I like offencive generals they are just more interesting to me. I like boldness, and I think a good general should be arogant, but only if he has the stuff to back it up with. I nevercared for Russian Generals, I don’t know why I guess I’m just a child of the cold war. ;)
I like Patton, Mac Arthur, and Rommel, not in any order. I like the fact that Patton would claim unatainable objectives and then make them obtainable. I like MacArthur’s Island campains and his methods of cutting off enemy supplys. I think he saved alot of lives in the Pacific by fighting smart. The thing I like most about Rommel is what he did in WWI. That guy had balls of steel, and he didn’t get to be a General by sucking up to hitler like some did. I know Hitler liked him but everyone did, he was a badass.
As for least liked Generals, I can not stand Bernard Montgomery. I think he was a blow hard, and I think that his arogance cost way to many lives durring Market Garden. I think he risked his men’s and other men’s lives just to try to stroke his ego. Patton risked mens lives, but I think he was a driven warrior. He as arogent, but it was deserved.
I know these are probably not very original oppinions but the old standard are the old standards for a reason.
By the way my all time favorite General is Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson Different era though. :)
Hahaha, I don’t think anybody could ever disagree of Stone Wall Jackson. Smashing three Union armies with just one during the Valley Campaign. ;)
yea Good old Stone wall is going to be played by Stephan Lang in the movie Civil War movie Gods and Generals. which i find amussing for it was Stephan Lang who was Picket in GettysBurg. so he is 2 confed Generals in his acting career. most interesting.
-1) Peiper. -1 = highest.
Peiper???
Are you serious???
I guess you are, but Peiper was successful not because of his military genius, but only because of his total lack of respect to human lives. And that is what he became infamous for.
