Worst Military Leaders

[Shooter]

Who are the worst military leaders in history?

There's been a lot of boneheaded clusterfucks in military history but here are my top four.

And one of my picks died in battle in a thick, swampy, shithole at the Battle of Teutoburg Forrest and lost THREE LEGIONS of Roman soldiers because he was stupid and trusted the man who tricked him and had him killed by suckering him into an ambush and then sent in massive hoards of barbaric, Germanic tribesmen to slaughter everyone in sight.

What a way to go, huh?

- General Robert Nivelle

- Darius III

- Santa Anna

- Pablius Varus

 

[Sunni Man]

Gen.Westmoreland in Vietnam

 

[JimP66]

MacArthur

Burnside

Cornwallis

Clarke

 

[KSigMason]

For those Crusade history lovers out there:

Gerard de Ridefort, Grand Master of the Knights Templar during the Battle of the Horns of Hattin. For those unfamiliiar with this battle, this battle is what turned the tides against the Crusaders and basically what caused Jerusalem to fall back to the Saracens under the command of Saladin. The Crusaders over such things as pride and ignorance pulled away from the few waters sources and walked into a slaughter. After that it was a domino affect.

Gerard also went against the long held Templar tradition of no ransom if caught, but was later re-captured at the Battle of Acre and then killed.

 

[whitehall]

General George B. McClellan appointed by Lincoln to command the Union Army during the Civil War. Little Mac was a brilliant tactition and a skilled paper pusher but he refused to fight. The famious Lincoln quote "General, if you are not using the Army can I borrow it for a while" says it all.

General MacArthur, another skilled strategist who was more at home behind a desk than the front lines. He was a hard charger during WW1 and rose to the highest rank in the Army and retired as Chief of Staff when for some reason he was sweet talked into going back on active duty by FDR as commander of the Philippine Army. After Pearl Harbor was attacked he refused to follow the War Plan and his planes were destroyed while they were parked wing to wing on the ground. He blamed subordinates. He subsequently abandoned his Army to surrender while he was successfully rescued. Harry Truman chose MacArthur to lead troops in Korea and Mac never spent a single night on the peninsula. He devised the brilliant Inchon Landing plan from a desk in Japan and the war was over in a year. Or not. Mac's ego got the best of him and he decided to send exhausted troops with weak supply lines at the worst time of the year in an area known for it's severe winters deep into North Korea. Under MacArthur's command American Troops were ordered into the biggest ambush in history. Mac blamed subordinates and his bluster about bombing China with nuclear weapons and his disrespect for the president caused him to be relieved of duty.

 

[Trajan]

Gaius Terentius Varro.Battle of Cannae.

 

[Trajan]

MacArthur

Burnside

Cornwallis

Clarke

Mark Clarke. yes agreed...

 

[whitehall]

General George Marshall was an ineffective paper pusher in the peacetime Army who somehow caught FDR's eye while he was supervising CCC workers. FDR appointed him to Chief of Staff over about a hundred more qualified generals. Under the Chief of Staff's leadership or the lack of it America was criminally unprepared for war. Marshall was one of the very few who knew about the existance of "magic" the decoding of the Japanese diplomatic transmissions. On the morning of December 7 1941 Marshall had the decoded message in his hand that indicated the imminent attack by Japan on US forces. Marshall read and reread and ...reread the decoded message until time was running out and the Military message system went down. He sent a Western Union telegram which arrived at Pearl Harbor the same time as the Zeroes did. He blamed subordinates.