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A key plank in the Democratic platform that year was, appropriately, not fighting, and McClellan lost in a rout. Pillow faced a court-martial for stealing a Mexican cannon and attempting to spirit it home in his personal baggage, but Polk intervened to clear Pillows record. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. 5. Westmorelands devotion to advancing his own interests, even when necessary by misrepresentation, was fundamentally at odds with what Scouting is all about. 1. While serving in Vietnam . By the way, here is the first review I have seen of Sorley's new biography of Westmoreland, which I read in galleys last summer, and enjoyed. Westmoreland held a press conference in which he categorically denied any such loss of confidence. Weekly update on whats driving U.S. national security policy. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. Would he be upset if he were alive to read this book today? During the darkest days of the rebellion, when Washington's army had been kicked out of New York and King George's star seemed ascendant, the "Conway cabal" of disgruntled officers and politicians unsuccessfully schemed to out Washington and appoint Gates. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Pillow pulled the troops back to the fort to resupply them. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. While British cannons shelled the fort from the Canadian side of the river, Tecumseh marched his warriors through a forest clearing in an endless parade. Despite fresh salvos of Western sanctions, Tehran and Moscow are buddying up on defense ties. Sure, they ganged up on the Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae. T he Civil War was America's bloodiest conflict. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch. He need not be concerned, soothed Wheeler, because the weight of judgment was that the enemy cant match us on a buildup. That turned out to be one of the classic misjudgments of the war, comparable in magnitude and consequence to General MacArthurs assurances to President Truman that Chinese forces would not enter the Korean War. 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. Russias war is receiving critical assistance from authoritarian regimes around the world. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. According to a Time magazine reporter who wrote about the Dak Son massacre, Viet Cong guerrillas shouted "Sons of Americans!" as they launched their assault on the village. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. 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. All rights reserved. Arminius cut off his head and sent it to another Germanic leader as a present. Instead the enemy proved willing to absorb horrifying losses and keep fighting. Sorley skillfully uses Westmoreland's own words to show time and again his duplicity at worst and his lack of touch with reality at best. Francisco Solano Lpez managed to stumble into a war with pretty much all of that. DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/Contributor/Getty Images, Biden Proposal Puts Climate Agenda Above Americas Defense, Russias New START Breach Means U.S. Nuclear Weapons Modernization Is a Must. His senior staff lacked diversity of experience and professional outlook, consisting mostly of people with backgrounds similar to his own, especially airborne. Grant left politics to the politicians and did what had to be done. What is the standard of shame for induction? Woefully inexperienced U.S. soldiers found themselves against Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps veterans. Darius never showed up for the first battle and defeat (Battle of Granicus) because he didnt see Alexander as much of a threat to his empire. He was certainly nave, but the Boy Scouts need to be defended here. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. The Russian president got many things wrong about invading Ukrainebut not everything. 1. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on But he was overly cautious by nature. Military A more minor case, but one revealing of Westmorelands character, stemmed from his unwillingness to level with his senior Marine subordinate at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. Vietnam War. Gen. Charles Cornwallis. British Gen. Isaac Brock possessed a remarkable ability to anticipate his opponents moves and reactions, and it was not long before he had taken full measure of Hull. Yes, the landing at Inchon unhinged the initial North Korean offensive. I flew into Vietnam in June 1968 as a young . Grachev has also been linked to corruption among the higher ranks of the military, specifically the assassination of journalist Dmitry Kholodov. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. McClellan and Burnside in particular. Michael Peck is a contributing writer at Foreign Policy and a writer for War Is Boring. Varus was stationed with three of his legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th when news arrived of a revolt growing in the Rhine area. But the rash advance into North Korea was a blunder of strategic proportions. He denied senior civilian officials accurate data on enemy strength and composition, during development of a 1967 Special National Intelligence Estimate imposing a ceiling on the number of enemy forces his intelligence officers could report or agree to and personally removing from the order of battle entire categories that had long been included, thus falsely portraying progress in reducing enemy strength. However, Ludendorff and German General Staff chief Helmuth von Moltke had altered the Schlieffen PlanGermanys overall battle plan for fighting a two-front warin a way that had weakened the attacking army on the Western Front. Pillow escaped during the night, leaving Simon B. Buckner to surrender the fort and 15,000 Confederate troops. He was responsible for coming up with the idea of using force to restore constitutional order in Chechnya. And once again, at the Battle of Antietam, McClellans terminal case of the slows (as Lincoln called it) prevented the exploitation of a possible war-ending vulnerability in Confederate defenses. Horacio Gates of the American Revolution was pretty bad. After only an eight-day siege, he surrendered his entire armya third of all British forces in America. Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute. His bad luck didnt end at San Jacinto. Contrarily, I would not so stigmatize another important player often criticized by others, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. He was uninterested in other viewpoints on how the war might be prosecuted, dismissing the PROVN Study sponsored by Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson (which concluded that Westmorelands way of war was not working and could not work) and basic disagreements with Westmorelands organization and approach voiced by his brilliant classmate General Bruce Palmer Jr. 7. Lyndon Johnson had no understanding of military affairs whatever, nor did Robert McNamara. His work as an observer during the Crimean War gave him insight into the importance of logistics for an industrialized army, and years spent as the chief of engineering for the Illinois Central Railroad made him aware of the transformative nature of rail transport. In order, from most culpable down. 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. Men and material the Union could provide its armies. He would eventually be betrayed and killed by a friend. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam. General Harold K. Johnson was an authentic battlefield hero, and as noted above was fundamentally at odds with Westmorelands approach, but he was not in the chain of command. 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. 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. As a military commander, Napoleon may have thebest batting averageof all time. The last king of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, Darius was not quite as qualified to rule a mighty empire as his predecessors were. What defines Santa Anna is his utter failure to subdue the Texican rebels and block American expansion. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. He continued to view attrition as the most effective strategy for defeating Germany; the British lost some 420,000 men at the Somme. 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. Caepio reportedly lived out the remainder of his life in luxury, however. With the Little Corporal running everything, Europe might have become a very different place. 10. So unused to being challenged, the United States has become so filled with anxiety over China that sober responses are becoming nearly impossible. Feel free to mention any others you may know of in the comments. 7. Gods and Generals (2003) Loss $61 million These are actually Civil War reenactors and probably the only people who paid to see the movie. The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the Legions maneuvers impossible. 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. Cornwallis later did redeem himself militarily. Villeneuve was then to return in secret and help establish naval dominance of the English Channel in preparation for a land invasion of Britain. Darius quickly lost everything and became nothing but a fugitive. Their orientation, indeed the core of Scoutings values, is selflessness and service to others. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. Westmorelands strategy throughout the war was to win through Attrition Warfare (pounding the enemy through greater numbers and resources) which military strategists including Sun Tzu caution against using. George McClellan is one of those generals who really looks great on paper. 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. Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced his fateful decision to double the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam. He was an artilleryman who missed out on the Armys great schools system, never attending the Command & General Staff College or the Army War College. They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at. Gamelin made the mistake of viewing the Ardennes as impenetrable and chose to defend it with ten of his weakest, least well equipped and least well trained divisions. Exactly. Stay updated on the topics you care about with email alerts. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. Yet Fredendall's solution was to order an Army engineer company to build a giant bunker a hundred miles from the front lines. He couldnt. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. At the height of the Cold War, he dealt decisively with neither. HANOI, VIETNAMForty years ago, on April 30, 1975, Nguyen Dang Phat experienced the happiest day of his life . While there are plenty of books that analyze the keys to success, The Worst Military Leaders in History offers lessons of failure to avoid. After early success in the Mexican War for Independence, the rest of his career didnt pan out the way he would have liked. Yes, eminently. The Western Front was a much bigger stage upon which to fail, however, and British commander Douglas Haig made the most of the opportunity. The rise of American-made chatbots has kicked off a flurry of Chinese activity. Necessarily, more is lost to time than is remembered. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. Instead of sweeping around the French defenses in a massive flanking movement, the Germans were checked at the First Battle of the Marne. What he did not divulge publicly was that the United States. 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. And, to further demonstrate progress in reducing enemy strength, Westmoreland arbitrarily and entirely on his own removed from the order of battle several categories of enemy forces that had long been carried there, including during the three years Westmoreland had already been in command of U.S. forces in Vietnam. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Some staff officers who briefed him one-on-one at deskside were dismayed when Westmoreland occupied himself by signing photographs of himself, one after another, during their presentations. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. Here are five of America's worst generals: Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. 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. Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. (You May Also Like: 5 Israeli Weapons of War ISIS Should Fear). Consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was Caepios superior officer, but Caepio refused to obey Maximus or even put his forces into a shared camp with him. His was one of just two French ships of the line to escape the destruction of the French fleet there. How the North Vietnamese remember the conflict 40 years after the fall of Saigon. Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. What was your impression of the man when you were working for him? So what is the standard of shame for induction? 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. - 1 Best: 1996 Chicago Bulls. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces. Who was the worst general in history? 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. Whatever its military wisdom or lack thereof, it was a decision that should not have been made by generals under the American political system. 8. In reality, it is a collection of ideas, images, and information that enough people have chosen to preserve and disseminate. There is no Carthage. On March 24, 1976, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1 st Viscount of Alamein, hero of World War II, died at home in England. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777, The Five Best U.S. In the end, Chiang sacrificed more than a million Chinese soldiers and well over ten million Chinese civilians in his bid to stay in power. Although he managed to escape the battle unharmed, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship and exiled. Eschewing a direct overland march to the Confederate capital of Richmond, McClellan orchestrated an impressive amphibious landing of more than 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe, at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. Even if Moscow holds onto territory, the war has wrecked its future. Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. Finally, there was MacArthur's insubordination. Fighter Aircraft of All Time). Many historians credit Benedict Arnold and others with being the real victors of Saratoga. 1968 takes the cake for me. Publication of the PROVN Study, whose precepts were later implemented with great success by Westmorelands successor, illustrated a matter of fundamental importance. Opportunistic firms in Asia and Europe have already begun to relocate investments to the United States. The enemy simply kept sending more and more replacements to make up his losses. Somalia (1992-1994) 2. Hulls nerve was shattered. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 3. Grachev played a key role in initiating and leading the First Chechen War. Not good, Hannibal. He graduated second in his class at West Point (well ahead of classmates Stonewall Jackson, George H. Gordon, and George Pickett). Delivered Wednesday. Although Westmoreland denied it, he imposed a ceiling on the reported number of enemy by instructing his intelligence officers to adhere to a command position of not more than 300,000, even though newly acquired and more accurate data developed in his own headquarters then indicated a much higher figure. Gamelin also chose not to disperse Frances vast number of superior tanks. A very influential visitor, Senator "Fritz" Hollings from Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina, had warned him about reliance on such ratios. He bears a lot of responsibility for one the greatest reversals of military fortune ever experienced by a super power. The Romans marched right into the ambush that Arminius laid thus leading to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. General and presidential candidate Douglas MacArthur (1880 - 1964) at his headquarters in Yokohama, Japan with US Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright (1883 - 1953) (right), and British Lieutenant-General A E Percival (1887 - 1966) (left) who were taken prisoner by the Japanese after the US retreat in the Bataan peninsula and released in 1945. A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. General Earle Wheeler was essentially a staff officer with virtually no troop leading experience, much less combat acumen. - 3 Best: 1987 Los Angeles Lakers. Join in-depth conversations and interact with foreign-policy experts with. He decided to conduct of a war of attrition, using search and destroy tactics, in which the measure of merit was body count. Following on from our list of the greatest and most successful military commanders, we are presenting this list of the worst. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. Thats an automatic disqualification from Hall membership. To that Hollings responded, "Westy, the American people don't care about the ten. FPsRavi Agrawalsat down with U.S. Trade RepresentativeKatherine Tai, the Biden administrations top official tasked with mapping out and implementing the White Houses trade policy. After an initial attack drove back Grants troops, Pillow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by retreating to the fort rather than breaking through Union lines to Nashville. There is now little doubt that Putin failed in his initial goals: Kyiv is still Show morestanding, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. Although he outnumbered Magruders Army of the Peninsula 10-to-1, McClellan settled in for a monthlong siege. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE. 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. He overestimated the American peoples patience and tolerance of friendly losses. They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at county fairs. standing, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. Delivered Monday-Friday. Varus himself, seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide. At the Battle of Gaugamela, he helped make Alexander great by losing half his army to the Macedonian upstart. Among them are, of course, Lyndon Johnson himself, Robert McNamara, and General Earle Wheeler. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. Military. History: Military History. The 1970s were scary times. After eight years at Foreign Policy, here are the ten most popular Best Defense posts. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. A very significant instance was his determination to arbitrarily hold down the estimate of enemy strength during a 1967 order of battle controversy.