But its not just the United States. The problem begins with the fact that nobody in the chain of command was really competent to critique Westmorelands performance. It would be nice if all American generals were great. 7 Of The Worst Military Leaders In History, That You Didn't Know About By the way, here is the first review I have seen of Sorleys new biography of Westmoreland, which I read in galleys last summer, and enjoyed. Courses: Summer 2023 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History 10. Grant left politics to the politicians and did what had to be done. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. Alas, as a historian, he passed on the opportunity to answer Battlelands questions about what Vietnam should teach us about Afghanistan, and who, if anyone, is todays Westmoreland, during our email chat earlier this week: Whats the most important thing you learned writing Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam? On the other side of the trenches in World War I was Erich Ludendorff, commanding the armies of Germany. Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security. Some would say that failure on the battlefield warrants censure. Known as Reverse Buller by his troops during the Second Boer War, the Englishman was first defeated at the Battle of Colenso and subsequently lost his position as overall commander. Follow him on Twitter:@Mipeck1. Here are five of America's worst generals: Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. Many historians have said Bragg was one of the worst generals of the Civil War, having lost most of his battles. Having amassed roughly twice as many losses in a single day as Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, had suffered during the entire Peninsular War, Haig saw no reason to change tactics. (You May Also Like: 5 Israeli Weapons of War ISIS Should Fear). He lacked the schooling and relevant experience to understand the war and devise a viable approach to prosecuting it. Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War? Ulysses S. Grant, who replaced McClellan, understood this. 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. How theyve practiced the art of war is immaterial, too. Brock, sensing an opportunity, advised an immediate march on Fort Detroit. Starting with the battle of Long Island, he lost way more fights than he wonyet he managed to win the war. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a frank discussion about the Biden administrations China policy and alternatives that it ought to consider. bar is to mention Vietnam. A dull, unfeeling, unimaginative, smug "Colonel Blimp" of the worst sort. (The leg did get a state funeral). But Gates could have doomed the American Revolution. After early success in the Mexican War for Independence, the rest of his career didnt pan out the way he would have liked. 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. 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. Although he eventually disavowed Hitler, by that point Ludendorff had become so deeply involved with mysticism that few took him seriously. 88,594. 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. Antonio de Padua Mara Severino Lpez de Santa Anna. What will another year of war look like? How might Vietnam or Iraq have turned out if a George Washington, a Ulysses Grant or a George Patton had been in command? Delivered Monday-Friday. Top 10 Utterly Useless Military Commanders - Listverse 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. The initial assault resulted in very high casualties for the Russians and an almost complete breakdown of morale in the Russian forces. Lebanon (1982-1984) 240. How do you measure military leaders? Once again, McClellan worked his organizational magic, restoring the morale of a shattered Union army. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln and the Union expected great things. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. Some captured Romans were placed in wicker cages and burned alive, others were enslaved or ransomed. 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. Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced his fateful decision to double the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam. He couldnt. Fortunately, along came Reaganif not for that, Westmorelands military reversals could well have signaled the beginning of our end. Operational Culture General Training LREC SME Support Training Course Catalog Cognitive Dimension Training Additional Resources . As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he theoretically had some influence there, at least to the extent he could shape the collective viewpoint, but even then LBJ and McNamara were famously impervious to advice from the Joint Chiefs. Francisco Solano Lpez managed to stumble into a war with pretty much all of that. In the end, the Romans leveled Carthage and salted the earth. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. 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. A more positive example is George Washington. In other words, this book is a "how-not-to" guide to leadership. How the North Vietnamese remember the conflict 40 years after the fall of Saigon. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. His 1812 campaign against Russia ended in complete disaster. Arminius cut off his head and sent it to another Germanic leader as a present. Over time Westmoreland asked for and received large numbers of U.S. troops, eventually totaling well over half a million. (You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. Allied with Brock was the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was head of the most formidable pan-Indian military force the continent had ever seen. 15. It is probably not a coincidence that corruption in the military appears to have escalated since 2006, when the number of military generals started to jump sharply. Reviews - Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. Darius again was the first to flee the battle, abandoning all of his soldiers and his property to be taken by Alexander. Woefully inexperienced U.S. soldiers found themselves against Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps veterans. To accomplish this goal, Vietnam employs repressive policies that often contravene international human rights law. And what then? Delivered Monday-Saturday. 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. 3. Innumerable battlefield commanders have had disastrous days at the office. Hull was thoroughly outclassed. Westmorelands devotion to advancing his own interests, even when necessary by misrepresentation, was fundamentally at odds with what Scouting is all about. 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. He overestimated the American peoples patience and tolerance of friendly losses. Westmoreland held a press conference in which he categorically denied any such loss of confidence. All rights reserved. A common view holds that 138,708 Allied personnel surrendered or were killed by fewer than 30,000 Japanese. Instead he simply sent more and more replacements to make up his losses. Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. Following on from our list of the greatest and most successful military commanders, we are presenting this list of the worst. He retreated to Malta but was captured when that island fell to the British. He decided to conduct of a war of attrition, using search and destroy tactics, in which the measure of merit was body count. 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. Some 15,000 talents of gold (the so-called Gold of Tolosa) had vanished under his watch, never to be recovered. Some historians are a little more sympathetic towards Percivals legacy nowadays arguing that Percival had been dealt an unusually bad hand. Westmoreland told him, "We're killing these people at a ratio of 10 to 1.". The Top Ten. He is the dumb ass who gave the order to exfoliate the jungles with agent orange. Haig was cruelly mocked, first in the satirical musical Oh! 6. Elmo Zumwalt was a U.S. admiral and commander of American naval forces in Vietnam. Not later than the autumn of 1966 the leaders of both services involved in fighting the ground war in VietnamArmy Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson and Marine Commandant General. 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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The Cimbri destroyed Caepios force and, emboldened by their success, marched on Maximuss camp. 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. Nor is being a bad battlefield commander, by itself, sufficient to make the cut. Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air. Feel free to mention any others you may know of in the comments. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. 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. A curated selection of our very best long reads. A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. A very influential visitor, Senator "Fritz" Hollings from Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina, had warned him about reliance on such ratios. Watchthe conversation onFP Live, the magazines forum for live journalism, orreada condensed transcript. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. Yet, Hannibal nevertheless ranks as one of the worlds epic fails. This would be known as the Tet Offensive and would become a major turning point in the war. Vietnam War body count controversy - Wikipedia Watchthe conversation onFP Live, the magazines forum for live journalism, orreada condensed transcript. Saul David reviews a surprising study of military failure and names his own five most infamous generals Saul David Thursday February 17 2022, 12.00am , The Times 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. He was found guilty of 11 counts, and only the intervention by Pres. There were available better concepts of how to prosecute the war. 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. The elder Lpez had bequeathed to his son a relatively powerful military by regional standards but had cautioned Francisco against using it to settle diplomatic issues. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. 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. The 1970s were scary times. But all that remains of his would-be empire today is a flaky French pastry. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. In the autumn of 1804 he was placed in charge of the French fleet at Toulon and tasked with drawing the British fleet under Horatio Nelson to the Caribbean. For many soldiers, a major tipping point happened when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, news of which reaches the soldiers in Da 5 Bloods during one particularly stirring scene .