Comments on: Top 10 Generals of Western History

By: angrypinkmenace

angrypinkmenace — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:39:48 +0000

It would be ridiculous… if this was the Top Ten Generals in “Eastern” History. He’s no more a Western general than Sun Tzu was.

By: hercules

hercules — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:00:38 +0000

ALEXANDER AT THE AGE OF 22 (NAPOLEON/CAESAR/HUN AND OTHERS HAVE BEEN BABIES AT THIS AGE ) HAD ALREADY WON SEVERAL IMPORTANT BATTLES,SUFFERING VERY FEW LOSSES AGAINST MASSIVE OPPONENT ARMIES -HE NEVER LOST A BATTLE-HIS TACTICS IN THE BATTLEFIELD HAVE BEEN EXTRAORDINARY AND CREATED ONE OF THE GREATEST EMPIRES OF THAT TIME—ITS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS NOT TO MENTION HIM ON THE ABOVE LIST

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:30:32 +0000

Terrible list!

Grant was a far better general than Lee. Don’t take my word on it:

“We all thought Richmond, protected as it was by our army of veterans, could not be taken. Yet Grant turned his face to our Capital, and never turned it away until we had surrendered. Now I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have NEVER found Grant’s superior as a general. I doubt that his superior can be found in all history” -Robert E. Lee

By: Fabio

Fabio — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:11:39 +0000

The numbers in Alexander’s campaign may be hard to measure, but by all acounts read the Persians could bring to bare a hundred thousand or so a battle and Alexander’s force from, what we can estimate, numbered in the 40,000s.
To include Hannibal but not Alexander is like slapping military history itself in it’s face, as Hannibal himself named Alexander as one of the greatest if not the greatest general of all time up until that point of course.
Besides, Hannibal’s battlefield superiority is just as muddled, who’s to say Scipio, the victor, wouldn’t play up Hannibal to secure his place in legend.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the most detailed account of Hannibal’s campaign comes from Polybius who was friend and counselor to Scipio.
Playing nice with a wealthy and powerful family has it’s perks.

By: paul

paul — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:49:52 +0000

You forgot Grant. I think Lee might have been a better tactician but Grant was a better strategist..Lee never co-ordinated all his armies at the same time.Lee’s master stroke was Chancelorville-credit of which he had to share with Jackson. Grant’s most brilliant campaign was Vicksburg. He used amphibious operations to transfer his army from the west bank of the Mississippi to the east bank and fought 5 battles ,winning them all. He was between 2 armies that would have outnumbered him 2 to 1. The 2 Generals Grant faced were Pemberton(not very good) and Johnston( very good).Grant fought Pemberton and destroyed the rail lines to Vicksburg so Johnston could not use them.Lee had Hooker.The more you study Vicksburg ,the more impressed you will be I promise you.It says something about Grant that Lee never tried what he did at Chancelorville with Grant.

By: Jalal

Jalal — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:59:46 +0000

Good list but it’s completly unbalance.For instance,how do assign patton on top of the list while he was the dumpest if not the noobest General in ww2,Von Manstein is better,Rommel,Monty as well,anybody could defeat patton in a 1on1 fair fight,he had no sufficent skills in the battlefield,he just ultilized the americans mass productions, and superior numbers to defeat the Axis.(there is no skill in defeating your enemies at such ways).And about Manstein why the fuck he aint mentioned on the list.He saved the entire west wing after the German6th army was surrounded and later annihlilated,able to push the soviet again at kharkov,and achieve some victories in 1943,regardless to hitler ignoring policy to Manstein.Dont Forget about guderian please for god sake,there is no German nor American or anybody else in the world who commander an armour division that dont read about the innovation of Heinz Guderian the brilliant of this age.People please FFS.Stop over rating Zhukov,I never saw a dump General who thraw his own men into a mine fields then passes his tank,this is the most idiot General the world have ever seen,regardless to the 10los to 1 German loss inww2,fought the Germans with ww1 tactics.nothing is special about this donkey.

By: Betsy

Betsy — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:29:34 +0000

As I’m an utter and complete amateur at military history I’m not really qualified to make my own list or bring up generals I think you ought to have included or left out. I’m just here to say that I’ve really enjoyed reading all the comments here. very interesting stuff.

By: Mike Chaly

Mike Chaly — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:07:29 +0000

I agree with Mr. Rehm – men wage war and not machines. Technology can play a crucial role in warfare (Martin Van Crevald and Max Boot wrote excellent works on that very subject) but all the greatest technology in the world is useless without the men employing it (and not as a can opener).

Take the Battle of France in World War II: The French possessed better tanks and more of them than the Germans but the latter adopted a new method for leveraging their tanks. In this case, the Germans successfully adapted their organizational philosophy in order to enable a collaboration though integrating radio communications with air power, tanks, and infantry. The irony is that during the prewar years the French and the English were the first to develop the ideas that would eventually become known as Blitzkrieg but they lacked the organizational flexibility to implement them. The new ideas could not find a receptive, comprehending audience among the Allies’ reactive, conservative leadership who were too focused on the Maginot line to consider departing from their established, outdated dogma.

The point is that technology is only as good as the men/organizations who use it.

By: Brenton Rehm

Brenton Rehm — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:02:57 +0000

Julius Caesar had yet to campaign against the Parthians, but I’m talking about people like Caesar and Khan and Alexander and Napoleon who set out to conquer and never were able to stop because they were so egocentric. I was just saying that they were bound to have failures because they would’ve continued on as long as possible. I understand US Grant and George Washington and others achieved an overall strategic victory but I was not referring to those individuals.

By: Brenton Rehm

Brenton Rehm — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:58:40 +0000

Yea, that’s a really good point but I’d also have to think that a man like Napoleon or Alexander or Hannibal would just have easily attained prominence in other generations before or after their time. I still think war is made by men, not machines, but other than that I must say that is some impeccable logic that makes me reflect more on the subject and whether a proper list can truly be arranged.