Who Were the Greatest Military Commanders (Of All Time) ?

[Cyropaedia]

In light of the upcoming film Alexander (the Great), who in your opinion were actually the greatest military commanders our world has known...?

Mine are Genghis Khan, Alexander, and U.S. Grant.

[Tallguy]

He was a colonel at that time, not a general.

You are mistaken. MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff at the time of the Bonus March. As such he was a full 4-star general.

[kajingawd]

he never led armies...but was the direct vein to quite a few rulers...that used his strats

[Semper Paratus]

I really think if Lee had done as Washington did in the Revolution, he would have been successful -- that was to make the enemy come to you,

Problem was the Union was coming to him, trying to capture Richmond early and Lee was successful in defense. By 1863 Lee knew the South would soon be overwhelmed in the West and was staring to suffocate from the blockade. He was looking for a quick knockout by engaging the Army of the Potomac in the open where his ability to manouevre was unmatched. But he got drawn into a set piece battle with inferior lines and poor topography.

As it was he was able to hold out for 20 more months against overwhelming odds.

[luvbach1]

Re Bonus march: You're right, of course, didn't realize that Mac had such a high rank that long ago. He was involved in another protest years earlier, when he was a colonel, was he not, with which I think I was was confused.

[wagglebee]

While everything you say is correct, I still think that Lee's campaign into the North helped turn northern opinion toward winning the war, where in the past many (quite probably the majority) of Northerners wanted to quit the war.

[Semper Paratus]

North helped turn northern opinion toward winning the war

I saw Lee's move North causing a reaction like "HOLY S***" we could lose this thing and starting to consider the consequences of what that loss could mean.

[Tallguy]

If he was, I don't recall. MacArthur made rank very young --- possibly due to the fact that his father, Arthur, was a high ranking general officer. Douglas MacArthur was a full colonel at the outset of WW1 serving as chief of staff, then deputy commander of the 42 (Rainbow) Infantry Division. He got his first star when he took over the division.

While many other officers were reverting to lower ranks in the peacetime army, MacArthur continued to advance rapidly. He was retired & living in the Philippines (Chief of Staff of the Filipino Army) until FDR called him out of retirement just before WW2.

When you throw Korea into the mix, MacArthur had an incredibly long career. Imagine that he grew up on frontier army posts during the Indian Wars and served until the dawn of the nuclear age. How many of the officers on this list can come close to mastering the technological changes that came to warfare during his career?

[MikefromOhio]

LOL

nice

[MikefromOhio]

Patton and McArthur were good generals.

Patton never got a chance to truly go after the Germans. 3rd ARmy did some great things, but it would have been in Germany pre-Battle of the Bulge if not for Montgomery's screw up in the Netherlands.....

MacArthur did some great things, but I don't know. I don't know or think he did it intentionally, but he took more credit for luck than anything else. He was a great leader though.

[KC Burke]

Luvbach,

I think you are remembering the Bonus March involvement of Eisenhower and Patton, both of whom were Majors at the time serving under MacArthur. Eisenhower was the liason with the overwhelmed capital police and Patton led the calvary that day.

Not a glorious moment for either.

[indcons]

Thanks for that clarification

[MikefromOhio]

no problem :)

My dad was actually on Patton's son's staff in Germany as a staff officer....but that was before I was born....

[doctor noe]

Pete Carroll - best commander...Matt Leinart - best field commander

[Vicomte13]

Seems to me that to decide who were "The Greatest", you have to establish some criteria.

There were many, many decisive battles fought over the course of history and many great commanders, so if we're really going to pick the GREATEST, we've got to settle on what constitutes that.

The results that flowed from a given engagement are a criteria for the MOST IMPORTANT commanders in history, but that does not necessarily mean the best commanders in a military sense.
One of the most important battles in all of history was fought on the Plains of Abraham beside Quebec City in 1759. The armies were tiny. It was a battle of liliputians for the prize of a continent. Few battles have had as many dramatic long-term results. What was written sometime in the 1800s by a great historian is true: With the fall of Quebec begins the history of the United States, and few things in history have had such dramatic results as the establishment of the American Republic.
However, I don't think that we would want to call either Montcalm or Wolfe the greatest military commanders in history. They were both competent military men, but both also made some ghastly mistakes.

I would propose that the criteria for military greatness need to be focused on military capacity itself, in a professional sense. And I think that we must limit ourselves to higher command. There have been some absolutely brilliant soldiers and sailors, whose single-handed actions changed the course of battles. But that is not command.

So, I would propose the following criteria for establishing who were truly the greatest military commanders of all time.
(1) They had to be in high command, either on the land or on the sea (or in the air). Unit command can establish a great tactician, but the greatest military commanders OF ALL TIME must be master tacticians AND master strategists.
This eliminates the Stuarts and Forrests (and Custers?) from the list.
(2) They had to win every battle they ever commanded.
This seems like a shocking requirement, but it is an important one. We are sifting through history here to try and determine those men actually in high command, whose tactical and strategic brilliance is unmatched in history.
There are generals and admirals in their age who changed the face of the world who won every battle they ever fought, demonstrating that NOBODY in their epoch had mastered the military art of their age greater than they.

One single defeat does not mean that a commander was not great, but it's just like football scores. At the end of the season, the team with an unbeaten record is BETTER than the team with one loss and one tie (assuming they're playing in the same league).

So, when we sift through history to find UNBEATEN high commanders, the list dramatically shortens.

Gengis Khan drops off of it. He sent a fleet unprepared into a hurricane and lost the Japanese campaign. The GREATEST commanders mastered both the land and supply by sea.

Every American general or admiral drops off of it (Eisenhower lost Market-Garden). They were all defeated at one point except for him. Patton was defeated at the first Kasserine Pass.

Hannibal and Napoleon lost in the end. They went far, but in the end they were bested, which means they were not the greatest: there were men in their times who were as good or better, obviously: they got beaten, after all.

Alexander the Great was never defeated. He is one of the greatest.
It is debatable whether or not Julius Caesar was defeated by the Celts in Britain. I personally believe that he made peace with Casselvelanus because he was unable to defeat him.
Charlemagne was repulsed in Spain. He falls off the list.
Attila the Hun was beaten at Chalons-sur-Marne. He falls off the list.

Marlborough held high command and beat large professional armies, and was never defeated. He is on the list.

Lord Admiral Nelson was the greatest naval commander in history. Like Jellicoe, he defeated a mortal threat. Unlike Jellicoe, he did so DECISIVELY. Merely winning is not the mark of a great commander. Winning every battle, and winning an overall decisive victory in the great battles: that is the mark of military genius.

Clive of India is an interesting candidate, although the forces under his command, and those of his enemies, were not so redoubtable as to be able to compare him with men commanding great armies and navies in the face of other world-class armies and navies. Beating up on ill-organized native levies is victory, but it is not the same thing as defeating the French Army under Napoleon.
This, incidentally, is why there is nothing in the medieval period that stands out among the greatest. The armies were very small, and the results were very inconclusive in almost every case, Tours being perhaps the one exception. I do not know enough about the rest of Charles Martel's MILITARY career to be able to say much. Nobody who won one battle or one short campaign is among "the greatest military commanders of all time". A professional life of military victory is required.

Wellington is an interesting case. I don't know if he suffered any reverses or fought battles in Spain to a draw.
Marlborough and Nelson and Alexander did not fight to draws. And that is an important distinction between them.

So, Wellington's a maybe, depending on details of the Spanish campaign that I don't know.

Was Zhukov ever defeated? I don't think he was. He would qualify.

I don't believe that Guderian or Von Manstein were ever defeated either. The Russian winter slowed them, but they were not defeated. Hitler fired them and didn't bring either of them back, if I recall. Up until that point, I believe they had an unbroken series of the most amazing victories in history.

So, using those criteria, here is the very short list of the truly greatest military commanders of all time: professional full-time military men, who possessed high command, who showed both tactical and strategic brilliance of such a surpassing quality that they were never once defeated by any of their peers over long careers:

CERTAINLY:
Alexander
Marlborough
Nelson

MAYBE:
Caesar
Wellington
Zhukov
Guderian
Von Manstein

There have been many greats, but they all fall short of perfection in high command. To be the greatest, you have to be perfect.

[society-by-contract]

Bedford Forrest is my favorite character of the War. Brian Steel Wills' biography is excellent.

"Tell Bell to move up fast and fetch all he's got."

Forrest's order to Tyree Bell prior to Brice's Crossroads ~

[Lady Heron]

What about Napoleon?

The answer to that is Wellington.

[indcons]

"Gengis Khan drops off of it. He sent a fleet unprepared into a hurricane and lost the Japanese campaign. The GREATEST commanders mastered both the land and supply by sea."

That was Kublai Khan and not Genghiz Khan. Genghiz never lost a war in his glorious military career that spanned over 50 years.

[investigateworld]

I'd prolly cut Patton some slack as to North Africa. FDR was under a lot of pressure from the "Second Front Now" crowd, still a major component of the Democrat party.

[luvbach1]

Yep, I was remembering Eisenhower re bonus march.

[luvbach1]

With the length of this thread, easy to see we have mucho retired military, and military buffs, at the keyboard.