worst generals in vietnam

Have your boss report to the French gentleman whose name begins with J at a place which begins with D which is five grid squares to the left of M. The Kasserine disaster had repercussions. Westmorelands own book about himself gives some indication of how he would react to this more recent one. Even now, the easiest way to get into an argument at a V.F.W. He overestimated the American peoples patience and tolerance of friendly losses. He retreated to Malta but was captured when that island fell to the British. But the inducements encourage U.S. companies to invest only at homenot elsewhere. Grant left politics to the politicians and did what had to be done. Best Defense: 4. General William Westmoreland. Westmoreland held a press conference in which he categorically denied any such loss of confidence. Here's What You Need To Remember:The Soviets saw the American humiliation in Vietnam as a turning point. up as tough on Beijing, even seeking to contain the rise of the worlds second-biggest economy. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. The most important, and also the saddest, is that in Vietnam and thereafter Westmoreland was willing to shade or misremember or deny or invent the record when his perceived interests were at stake. Sun Wu Sun Zi, or Sun Tzu, was a prominent military general during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) who is always regarded as one of the greatest military strategists in China and even the World. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. What does that mean for trade and globalization? At the Battle of Gaugamela, he helped make Alexander great by losing half his army to the Macedonian upstart. This week marks exactly one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Grachev publicly promised to swiftly crush the Chechen separatist forces in a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment. He led the disastrous storming of Grozny while drunk after celebrating his birthday on January 1st. The British gained control of the fort, dozens of cannons, the brig USS Adams (recommissioned the HMS Detroit), and virtually the entire Michigan Territory. Where is Carthage you ask? But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln. He is the dumb ass who gave the order to exfoliate the jungles with agent orange. Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, by Lewis Sorley, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. . His 1812 campaign against Russia ended in complete disaster. Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute. Yet Fredendall's solution was to order an Army engineer company to build a giant bunker a hundred miles from the front lines. Darius quickly lost everything and became nothing but a fugitive. George McClellan is one of those generals who really looks great on paper. These battlefield bumblers serve to provide that contrast. Gates thought otherwise, and fancied himself a better commander than George Washington. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. Is Weiss correct? James K. Polk upon the outbreak of war between Mexico and the U.S. and offered to become an agent for the U.S. (again). Want to read more on this topic or region? The Summer 2023 term begins June 1, 2023 and ends August 24, 2023. Today's list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war 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. Many historians have said Bragg was one of the worst generals of the Civil War, having lost most of his battles. Pillow suffered slightly more casualties than Grant in the engagement, which possibly makes the Battle of Belmont the high point of Pillows military career. Delivered Monday-Saturday. 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. 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. But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. Hull was thoroughly outclassed. Thus there was little internal capacity for debating or evaluating his chosen course of action. Their orientation, indeed the core of Scoutings values, is selflessness and service to others. Varus himself, seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges. This might have ended okay for Germany, provided they didnt do something like provoke a previously neutral country with Allied sympathies and an effectively bottomless war chest. Fortunately, along came Reaganif not for that, Westmorelands military reversals could well have signaled the beginning of our end. Westmorelands first resort in claiming progress in the war was always body count, but in fact this was meaningless. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. The result of his manic commitment to the war of attrition was that Westmoreland squandered four years of his troops bravery and support by the public, the Congress, and even much of the news media for American involvement in the war. In 1941, Graziani resigned his commission after the British counterattacked and the Tenth Army was completely defeated during Operation Compass. Is your subtitle The General Who Lost Vietnam fair? As the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, he faced a two-front war, an insurgency in the South and an invading army from the North. While serving in Vietnam . Instead of sweeping around the French defenses in a massive flanking movement, the Germans were checked at the First Battle of the Marne. After the Germans attacked, Gamelin was eventually removed from his post, but by then it was too late. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on. Not one to let his own failings stand in the way of personal glory, Pillow submitted fanciful accounts of his actions at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco to various newspapers, incurring the wrath of overall American commander Winfield Scott. Grachev once said that only an incompetent commander would order tanks into the streets of central Grozny, where they would be vulnerable. Yet near the end of the war he did exactly that. Indeed they are brave and proud, but their standards, tactics, and lack of command supervision throughout their ranks requires improvement in the national interest. And, he added, I would be less than frank if I did not say that I feel somewhat insecure with the situation in Quang Tri province, in view of my knowledge of their shortcomings. If it couldn't or wouldn't govern the country, who would? What is the standard of shame for induction? Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on The alternative was to split the United States asunder. Westmorelands general mistake: severely underestimating the Communists. General William Westmoreland. Military After his performance at Belmonta spectacular success by Pillow standardshe was tasked with the defense of Fort Donelson, a key strongpoint on the Mississippi River. As a military commander, Napoleon may have thebest batting averageof all time. 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. 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. The South Vietnamese thus went for years equipped with castoff WWII-vintage U.S. equipment while outgunned by the communists, who were armed with the AK-47 assault rifle and other top of the line equipment. 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. When major U.S. ground force deployments were under consideration in July 1965, for example, LBJ worried that North Vietnam would respond by pouring in more men of its own. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. Hull was taken prisoner by the British and was court-martialed upon his return to the United States. 4. We ended up, he said, with no operational plan that had the slightest chance of ending the war favorably. Westmoreland could not or would not ever bring himself to acknowledge that reality. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. Two of the more prominent of these mistakes, both with wide and sweeping results, were the June 22, 1941 invasion of the USSROperation Barbarossaand the December 11, 1941 unprovoked and unwarranted declaration of war on the United Statesagainst the advice of Hitler's Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Jessica Chen Weiss, formerly a senior advisor for policy planning at the State Department under the Biden administration, makes the case that the United States is becoming consumed by competition with China, a strategy that could lead to dangerous conflict. The United States entered the war, forcing Ludendorff to accelerate his time line for a conclusive battle against the Allies on the Western Front. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. Historian Lewis Sorley author of 1999s well-regarded A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of Americans Last Years in Vietnam now zeroes in on General William Westmoreland. Percival surrendered Malaya to Japanese forces in early 1942, defying Winston Churchills own instructions for prolonged resistance. History: Military History. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from . The pandemics outbreak brought rare reporting freedoms. He spoke up in Honolulu, during an important U.S. planning conference in February 1966, observing that we can beat up North Vietnamese regiments in the high plateau for the next twenty years and it will not end the war. Westmorelands later dismissive comment was that Ambassador Lodge does not have a deep feel of military tactics and strategy.. The Worst Military Leaders in History is meant to be thought-provoking, and it surely is that." ARMY Magazine "Few subjects get military historians and history buffs talking like a debate over the best military leaders in history. To accomplish this goal, Vietnam employs repressive policies that often contravene international human rights law. But the argument is unbalanced. Some 15,000 talents of gold (the so-called Gold of Tolosa) had vanished under his watch, never to be recovered. As a result, American military power and prestige took a dramatic downturn. Among them are, of course, Lyndon Johnson himself, Robert McNamara, and General Earle Wheeler. Thats an automatic disqualification from Hall membership. Explore the benefits included in your subscription. 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. All related (37) Sort Recommended Doug Szabo Author has 972 answers and 137.7K answer views Nov 27 My vote goes to adm Otto Zumwalt. These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. Many of these generals had their worst defeats when their countries were least prepared for conflict, such as the hapless Soviet generals who faced the German infiltration of Russia in 1941. When it came to military command, Westmoreland was everybody's all-Americanuntil he met his Waterloo. 10. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. Many of the charges leveled against him have also been laid at the feet of . Again fighting outnumbered Texans, this time Santa Anna would lose the battle stunningly. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. 1. - 2 Worst: 2007 Washington Wizards. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture. He worked under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich as a leading general and gained fame from his battles in North Africa. Hull withdrew after a series of harassing attacks by Tecumsehs highly mobile raiding parties. Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors. Youre on the list! Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. Some historians are a little more sympathetic towards Percivals legacy nowadays arguing that Percival had been dealt an unusually bad hand. The resulting Peninsular Campaign (AprilJuly 1862) was a marvel of planning but something of a farce in execution. Necessarily, more is lost to time than is remembered. But his crowning achievement was bad generalship in Korea. It would be nice if all American generals were great. His senior staff lacked diversity of experience and professional outlook, consisting mostly of people with backgrounds similar to his own, especially airborne. General Westmoreland had complete freedom of action in deciding how to prosecute the war within South Vietnam. James Bond Stockdale was flying his A-4 Skyhawk on a mission over North Vietnam, just days after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when his plane took fire and hurtled d Scott claimed that Pillow was ''the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood. When talk of secession reached Pillows home state of Tennessee, he helped organize the state militia and was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army. Registration for summer courses begins March 18, 2023 and ends June 7, 2023. Would he be upset if he were alive to read this book today? When two able and progressive Nationalist generals, Pai Chunghsi and Li Tsung-jen, begged the generalissimo to adopt similar methods, Chiang rejected them outright. On the night of August 15, 1812, Tecumseh led his forces across the Detroit River, and Brock followed the next morning. In considering who should receive such a dubious honor, Ive consciously excluded bad leaders. (Photo: Warner Bros.) Roger Ebert called "Gods and Generals" a film "Trent Lott would enjoy," referring to the Senator's praise of segregationist Strom Thurmond. Allied with Brock was the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was head of the most formidable pan-Indian military force the continent had ever seen. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam. Ulysses S. Grant made his Civil War debut at the Battle of Belmont against Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow. The Russian president got many things wrong about invading Ukrainebut not everything. 3. A curated selection of our very best long reads. Creighton Abrams was an U.S. Army General who commanded American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. He was soon released, however, and, as more capable French admirals either died or somehow incurred Napoleons disfavor, a path to the top echelons of command was opened for Villeneuve. The Roman Empire has a long, proud tradition of producing some of the finest generals in human history- and just as many of the worst. Applications for the Gettysburg College-Gilder Lehrman MA program are open and considered on a rolling basis. He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870. The British blockaded the port at Cdiz with a numerically inferior force, and Villeneuve, upon learning that he was to be relieved of command, rashly struck out at Nelsons fleet. Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. The man who appealed for Varus help was Arminius, a Romanized Germanic prince. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Thuong, 52, is the youngest member of the party's Politburo, the country's top decision-making body, and is widely regarded as being close to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's most . 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. He was also supremely gifted at overestimating the size of his opponents armies to a degree that beggared belief. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. After occupying Jerusalem and crucifying 2,000 Jewish rebels in Judaea, Varus went off to govern Germania and tame barbarian tribes. Alexander, Napoleon, Rommel. Simultaneously, he contacted Maximilian to offer the young emperor his services. Only FP subscribers can submit questions for FP Live interviews. After months of inactivity, McClellan was finally spurred to action by Pres. He ran as a Democrat against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election. The curation of this content is at the discretion of the author, and not necessarily reflective of the views of Encyclopaedia Britannica or its editorial staff. The War of the Triple Alliance devastated Paraguay. What does that mean for trade and globalization? On the other hand, there was that bad day at the Battle of Salamis when most of the Persian fleet went to the bottom. Download the new FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. On September 2, 1945, hours after the Japanese signed their unconditional surrender in World War II, communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, hoping. You may opt out at any time. 10. 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. Read More. Top 10 Most Underrated Military Generals. He was called the "inevitable general." A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. 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. After the war, the phrase lions led by donkeys came to be associated with the British army for what should be obvious reasons. A common view holds that 138,708 Allied personnel surrendered or were killed by fewer than 30,000 Japanese. After his defeat by the Texans at the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna was captured. George Custer at the Little Big Horn and Lord Chelmsford at the Battle of Isandlwana leap to mind. It wouldn't take a large force to slice through the ramshackle Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein, but securing a country the size of Iraq required a larger force. (You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. This was heeded about as well as any piece of parental advice, anywhere ever. McClellan was removed from command immediately after. The Biden administration has passed landmark legislations such as theInflation Reduction Act(IRA) and theCHIPS and Science Act, which provide subsidies in clean energy and semiconductoShow morers worth well over $400 billion. He still had his defenders, but they were in the last trench, barely holding on. Assuming you believe the subtitle to be accurate, who were GEN Westmorelands biggest accomplices in the loss? 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. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. Jacob Zuma is a cherry on the top of the world's worst leader cake. World War I provided a forum for any number of truly horrible commanders to assert themselves. Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. Even a string of bad days does not guarantee entry. Men and material the Union could provide its armies. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln. They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at county fairs. Starting with the battle of Long Island, he lost way more fights than he wonyet he managed to win the war. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. If there was a saving grace for America, it was that he wasn't commanding an army. Darius was a different sort of game-changer. Finally, there was MacArthur's insubordination. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. - 1 Best: 1996 Chicago Bulls. Yes, Westmoreland was the general who lost Vietnam. Over time Westmoreland asked for and received large numbers of U.S. troops, eventually totaling well over half a million. How do you measure military leaders? Grachev played a key role in initiating and leading the First Chechen War. Disobeying orders, he sailed for Cdiz instead of the Channel, allowing Nelsons fleet time to return and effectively scuttling Napoleons plans for a cross-Channel invasion. Military. Wrote Kevin Buckley in a scathing review, From the beginning Westmoreland probably expected to write a memoir of victory similar to Crusade in Europeand the defeat in Vietnam has not deterred him from this.. A Texan with the U.S. Army's 1 st Infantry Division, Nolan reportedly slipped away from his basecamp in Tay Ninh Province on Nov. 22, 1967 and turned himself over to the Viet Cong. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. Thus it was under Darius rule that the Persian Empire fell and was conquered. James K. Polk. In 1940, after increasing pressure from dictator Benito Mussolini and facing demotion, Graziani followed orders and invaded Egypt with his Tenth Army. Nor is being a bad battlefield commander, by itself, sufficient to make the cut. FPs Ravi Agrawal spoke with two of the very best Russia experts:Angela Stent, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author ofPutins World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, and Michael Kofman, the research program director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses. His was one of just two French ships of the line to escape the destruction of the French fleet there. Argentina, Brazil, and the Brazilian puppet government in Uruguay formed an alliance, and on May 1, 1865, they declared war on Paraguay. Thus, on July 1, 1916, Haig ordered his men to go over the top at the First Battle of the Somme, and 20,000 of them had the audacity to die almost immediately (there were 60,000 total British casualties on the first day of the attack). Thus, almost by default, Westmoreland was left to go his own way, year after bloody year. Alexander went on to march halfway across Asia, creating an empire, albeit short-lived, that changed the history of three continentsnot bad for an ancient millennial. Explore the benefits of your FP subscription. It would be nice if all American generals were great. With high hopes set upon his shoulders at the beginning of the American Civil war, quickly becoming General-in-Chief of the Union Army, McClellan would earn the distinction as a general of little action. Seldom included in. With a few relatively minor changes, thats just about where they stayed for the next four years. While there is much to criticize LBJ for in his conduct of the war, one cannot help having some sympathy for the dilemma posed by the often wildly conflicting advice he was getting from his senior aides and advisors, including those in uniform. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? He served as a National Socialist member of the German parliament before authoring a book about how humanity exists in a state of perpetual war and why that is a good thing. 9. He continued to view attrition as the most effective strategy for defeating Germany; the British lost some 420,000 men at the Somme. Gods and Generals (2003) Loss $61 million These are actually Civil War reenactors and probably the only people who paid to see the movie. Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. At Brownstown, south of Detroit, two dozen warriors under Tecumseh routed more than 200 American militiamen escorting a supply column intended for Detroit. Brock, sensing an opportunity, advised an immediate march on Fort Detroit. The premise was that, if he could kill enough of the enemy, they would lose heart and cease their aggression against the South Vietnamese. recent deaths in antioch, ca, maryland state board of dental examiners license renewal,

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