Favourite WW2 General or Field Marshall

So who would be your top 10 generals and admirals of World War 2? Put them in order if you can (it’s quite tough). If you could also make a top 5, that would be appreciated. This list also includes all naval, army, and air force commanders regardless of rank.

Personally my picks would be (in no particular order, I just can’t decide):

Erwin Rommel

Jisaburo Ozawa

Takeo Kurita

Walther Model

Erich Von Manstein

William “Bull” Halsey

Raymond Spurance

Tamechi Hara

Chester Nimitz

Georgy Zhukov

Writing this out, there is not enough space for all the generals I want to put, such as Bernard Montgomery, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ernest King, and many Soviet generals.

@cernel

And based on your updated question, I would put Rommel with Patton. Too very aggressive generals greatly liked by troops, and masters of armoured warfare.

I actually collect bolt-actions as a hobby. I have in my collection a Canadian made Enfield (Mk III type 4 I think) from 1944, I have a French MAS-36 both of which are in amazing condition (which is suprising and not suprising when you think about it  :lol: ). I own 3 Mosin-Nagant rifles, two are full sized rifles from 1942 and 1936 (the 36 has a hex shaped reciever intrestingly) and one is an M38 Nagant carbine (my pride and joy the first gun I ever bought). I have 2 K98’s from 1941 and 1943 respectively. I also have a Chinese made Mauser copy from 1937(ish) that looks like an intresting hybrid of the Gewher88 of WW1 and the K98, bit of an oddity but a fun gun to have all the same.

@CWO:

@Gargantua:

I would have sent assassins or whatever I could have, after the top leadership of the army of my opponent

Considering how incompetent most of the Union generals commanding the Army of the Potomac were before they finally put Grant in charge, it would have been less productive for the Confederacy to assassinate them than to leave them in comand.

McClellan was a poor field general, but an excellent ‘builder’ of an army. The AoP was McClellan’s army, he built it, he trained it, the only thing he couldn’t do was lead it in the field, because McClellan continually managed to convince himself the South had far larger armies than they did. Also, Meade at Gettysburg had Lee pretty well sussed out and predicted the outcome. Only his failure to pursue Lee more vigorously (I believe he still had a whole corps in reserve) which could have been done I think, cost him effectively his job (he was allowed to stay at the AoP, but Grant as the new General in Chief was the effective commander of the AoP). Grant just decided to make it a battle of attrition which he knew he would win. Grant also promoted the idea of coordinated attacks all over the South, attacking with all armies at the same time so reinforcement could not be sent by the Confeds from one to another theatre.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

What is the topic, who will pick strawberries or something?

That was a different thread.

1. USA
2. USSR
3. UK
4. Canada
5. China
6. France
7. Australia
8. Turkey
9. India
10. ???

aequitas et veritas wrote:

As you can clearly read, I wrote that timeover will not response to this as a member.

You are right. And that merely reinforces my theory. After eight straight years of checking this thread, awaiting my response, he finally grew disillusioned and disappointed. So much so that he canceled his membership to this forum. :(

Now, one could reasonably ask, “Why would he have been awaiting my response for eight straight years when I haven’t even been here that long?” Well you see, on some level he sensed that I should be here, and that I’d be showing up here sooner or later. He evidently felt that “sooner” was more likely than “later,” so that I could respond to his thread. Which, let the record reflect, I did. Eventually. Better late than never, right? :)

This topic will submerge like a Tanker hit by a German Submarine.

Ah, but like a Type XXI U-boat, this topic emerged after having been submerged eight straight years! :o Maybe it will submerge again, only to surface in another eight years. :D

Wow, this one is even better than the civil war one.  Nice find Jermo!

KurtGodel7, very good post, thank you.

I’m still not convinced however, I’ll reply to a few of your points below further:

Germany desperately needed the Russian oil by 1943 (as well as Russian grain which I will discuss further below).  That they failed to take the Caucasus during this time was their last realistic chance at victory, IMO.  However, had they taken the oil wells, but with the Russians destroying them in the process as was quite likely, would the Germans be able to restore the flow of oil in sufficient time? It might take months, even years to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in the best of circumstances, let alone during a brutal war.  The German industry was already hard pressed to supply the necessary armaments and did not have a great deal of experience with oil industry in the first place.  I think they would not have been able to do this.

The same idea goes for the chromium, vanadium, etc., though this would be less difficult for the Germans to accomplish (or mitigate as you also suggest) than the oil problem.

While Germany might have been able to supply an equivalent amount of money, material and engineers to work on their atomic program, there simply were much fewer top nuclear physicists in all Europe than existed in the US.  Consequently, it would have probably cost more and taken longer than the US program for this reason alone.  I have no doubt they could have eventually done it, but I don’t see how they develop nuclear weapons before the allies developed a delivery system that could get through their defenses.

The German V-2 was a technological marvel, but other than size, no more advanced than the rockets being built by Dr. Goddard.  After the war, when Dr. Goddard was able to examine a captured V-2, he was convinced the Germans had stolen his work.  And the Germans might have because most of his designs were on file in the US patent office, available for public viewing (which the Germans did prior to the war).  I think had the Americans wanted to (and Dr. Goddard certainly did) they could have built a superior rocket in a couple months and have it mass-produced in six.  As the A-bombs designs at that time were quite heavy, it might have taken longer than that to build a nuclear capable rocket…but how much longer?

Alternatively, the Allies could have either copied the German jets to enable a delivery system, or devise other means (boats/submarines? special ops?) to deliver these weapons.

In addition, I consider the German attack on Russia to be about food as well as oil  The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, and helped the Germans tremendously in 1943.  But food was scarce in 1944 and onward.  Partly this was due to Russian recovery of territory.  But it was also because the Ukraine was normally not sufficient by itself to feed Germany (the year of the capture of Ukraine by the Germans was one of the best years for Ukrainian agriculture as the weather was nearly perfect).  Of course, the poor treatment of the Ukrainians by the Germans did not lend itself to helping this problem either. In order to assure itself of adequate food, I think the Caucasus (the next logical food source) was needed.