But the rash advance into North Korea was a blunder of strategic proportions. Westmoreland is often described as a Boy Scout, usually implying, it appears, that he was well-intentioned but nave. Dispatched to India, he led campaigns to help subdue the subcontinent, replacing the crown jewel he had lost. Stay updated on the topics you care about with email alerts. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Some would say that failure on the battlefield warrants censure. Diem's family was one of the earliest to convert to Catholicism, a religion he took . The suppression of drug consumption and trade is high on the Government of Vietnam's agenda. After only 10 weeks into the Pacific War, Percival became responsible for the largest surrender of British-led forces in history. Yet backstabbing your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war is taking ambition a little too far. Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security. The next major British offensive came at Passchendaele (July 31November 6, 1917), where Haig lost another 275,000 troops in a battle whose name became synonymous with pointless slaughter. By the way, here is the first review I have seen of Sorley's new biography of Westmoreland, which I read in galleys last summer, and enjoyed. [i] However, the list is subjective, and open to debate, as top 10 lists tend to be. 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. Top 10 Worst Military Leaders in History - Toptenz.net They dramatically upped their game, pressing the U.S. worldwide. Not that Fredendall didn't have real issues that would have tried any commander. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. He worked under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich as a leading general and gained fame from his battles in North Africa. Ludendorff is one of historys greatest examples of a general who can win battles but still loses the war. Men and material the Union could provide its armies. 151. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces. When it came to military command, Westmoreland was everybody's all-Americanuntil he met his Waterloo. Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. Despite Lincoln's pleas for aggressive action, his Army of the Potomac moved hesitantly, its commander McClellan convinced himself that the Southern armies vastly outnumbered him when logic should have told him that it was the North that enjoyed an abundance of resources. By the end of May 1862, Confederate commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had withdrawn his forces to Richmond, and McClellan was close enough to the Confederate capital to hear its church bells ringing. up as tough on Beijing, even seeking to contain the rise of the worlds second-biggest economy. A more positive example is George Washington. He would eventually be betrayed and killed by a friend. Hull was taken prisoner by the British and was court-martialed upon his return to the United States. Where is Carthage you ask? But in a contemporaneous cable to General Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Westmoreland complained that the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. Muammar Al-Gaddafi. Black Vietnam Veterans on Injustices They Faced: Da 5 Bloods - Time The Legion numbers XVII, XVIII and XIX never again appeared in the Roman Armys order of battle due to the shame and ill luck they carried. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. Needs to Talk About the Risk of War With China, Putin Has Assembled an Axis of Autocrats Against Ukraine, The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart. He thought he could take over the war from the South Vietnamese, bring it to a successful conclusion, and then hand their country back to them and go home in triumph. Tortured in notorious 'Hanoi Hilton,' 11 GIs were unbreakable 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. 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. Pillow escaped during the night, leaving Simon B. Buckner to surrender the fort and 15,000 Confederate troops. The deplorable conduct of Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmouth has been immortalized by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Benedict Arnolds name is synonymous with traitorous behavior. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. Best Defense: He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870. His senior staff lacked diversity of experience and professional outlook, consisting mostly of people with backgrounds similar to his own, especially airborne. His invasion of Canada came to an abrupt halt when he failed to capture Fort Malden, a British position that was a laughably short distance from Hulls headquarters at Fort Detroit. Abraham Lincoln. As a result, American military power and prestige took a dramatic downturn. How the North Vietnamese remember the conflict 40 years after the fall of Saigon. General Earle Wheeler was essentially a staff officer with virtually no troop leading experience, much less combat acumen. standing, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. Darius again was the first to flee the battle, abandoning all of his soldiers and his property to be taken by Alexander. Tom Ricks, on his "Best Defense" blog has discussed the top 10 worst generals in U.S. history. Hannibal. Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. His was one of just two French ships of the line to escape the destruction of the French fleet there. All the enemys losses were quickly made up. 4. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. Who Were the Worst Generals in History? Of course, that is what they did when Ludendorff pushed for the use of unrestricted submarine warfare against Allied shipping. General Failure - The Atlantic The pandemics outbreak brought rare reporting freedoms. McClellan and Burnside in particular. Your guide to the most important world stories of the day. So long Fort Bragg, welcome Fort Liberty: The Pentagon's naming This proved possible only with enemy cooperation, since they could break contact and limit casualties as they wished by withdrawing into sanctuaries across the border. 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.. Concurrently with hi. 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. In the end, Chiang sacrificed more than a million Chinese soldiers and well over ten million Chinese civilians in his bid to stay in power. Many historians credit Benedict Arnold and others with being the real victors of Saratoga. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him. 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.. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. Top Ten Reasons Field Marshal Montgomery is Not so Great Who were the most feared soldiers in Vietnam? - 2023 The Soviets saw the American humiliation in Vietnam as a turning point. Born in 1901 in Quang Binh Province (part of North Vietnam), Diem was the son of a well-educated mandarin (Vietnamese civil servant who took part in running the country) who served as the Minister of Rites and Grand Chamberlain to Emperor Thanh-Thai (1889-1907). When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. In 1940, after increasing pressure from dictator Benito Mussolini and facing demotion, Graziani followed orders and invaded Egypt with his Tenth Army. In other words, this book is a "how-not-to" guide to leadership. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. 9. (You May Also Like: 5 Israeli Weapons of War ISIS Should Fear). 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. 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. A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. 15. 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. He continued to view attrition as the most effective strategy for defeating Germany; the British lost some 420,000 men at the Somme. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch. He was called the "inevitable general." A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. He was an artilleryman who missed out on the Armys great schools system, never attending the Command & General Staff College or the Army War College. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam. When two able and progressive Nationalist generals, Pai Chunghsi and Li Tsung-jen, begged the generalissimo to adopt similar methods, Chiang rejected them outright. Feel free to mention any others you may know of in the comments. The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. Simultaneously, he contacted Maximilian to offer the young emperor his services. Seared into all who fought it and many who merely lived through it that conflict remains a bitter stew of second-guessing and recriminations. 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. Necessarily, more is lost to time than is remembered. A dull, unfeeling, unimaginative, smug "Colonel Blimp" of the worst sort. 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. 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. And once again, at the Battle of Antietam, McClellans terminal case of the slows (as Lincoln called it) prevented the exploitation of a possible war-ending vulnerability in Confederate defenses. Jacob Zuma is a cherry on the top of the world's worst leader cake. Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute. Turncoats and Traitors - Seven Americans Who Defected to the Enemy in He is the dumb ass who gave the order to exfoliate the jungles with agent orange. 5. Why our generals were more successful in World War II than in - YouTube There's an entire myriad of generals from the American Civil War that fought for the Union that were incredibly inept. Delivered Thursday. But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? That may have been true in the east (the worst of the Union generals in that theater rates his own entry on this list), but in the west it was a much different affair. To accomplish this goal, Vietnam employs repressive policies that often contravene international human rights law. How well that would have worked can be seen when Gates was sent to command American troops in the South. Varus was stationed with three of his legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th when news arrived of a revolt growing in the Rhine area. After months of inactivity, McClellan was finally spurred to action by Pres. However, Ludendorff and German General Staff chief Helmuth von Moltke had altered the Schlieffen PlanGermanys overall battle plan for fighting a two-front warin a way that had weakened the attacking army on the Western Front. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Read More. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. These two instances are illustrative of many, many more, ranging from his actions or lack of action in combat situations to his determination to take over the war and win it with U.S. forces to his resultant failure to build up South Vietnamese forces to the validity of body count to the decision to close Khe Sanh to his actions when Lang Vei was overrun to denying predictions he had made of an early end to the war to claims of not being surprised at Tet 1968 to denying a post-Tet request for many additional U.S. forces. He first demonstrated his ineptitude during the Mexican-American War, where he had received an appointment to the rank of major general from his friend Pres. But he was overly cautious by nature. 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. He continued on to suffer defeats at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, almost letting the war slip away from the British. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. 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. 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. Seriously, who represents The British Empire; had the worlds greatest navy, enough cash to hire half the mercenaries of Europe, and the advantage of having a pretty pathetic-looking foe: a rag-tag army of ill-equipped rebels. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. Watchthe conversation onFP Live, the magazines forum for live journalism, orreada condensed transcript. At the Battle of Gaugamela, he helped make Alexander great by losing half his army to the Macedonian upstart. 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. 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. At the height of the Cold War, he dealt decisively with neither. Worst US General of all time? | O-T Lounge - TigerDroppings They kept it as a war trophy, exhibiting the leg at. Corruption is the Worst Enemy of the Vietnamese Army He was responsible for coming up with the idea of using force to restore constitutional order in Chechnya. 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. 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. See the vast swaths of land to the north and south that arent Paraguay? Vietnam War - Encyclopedia Britannica | Britannica The Vietnam War, as Seen by the Victors - The Atlantic Johnston was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Seven Pines, six miles east of Richmond, and he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. 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. What does that mean for trade and globalization? War is an extension of politics, and if commanders dont help secure the desired political ends, they get a failing grade. Still, he choked in the big game. Thus it was under Darius rule that the Persian Empire fell and was conquered. A very influential visitor, Senator "Fritz" Hollings from Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina, had warned him about reliance on such ratios. (The leg did get a state funeral). There were available better concepts of how to prosecute the war. 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. General Westmoreland had complete freedom of action in deciding how to prosecute the war within South Vietnam. He denied senior civilian officials accurate data on enemy strength and composition, during development of a 1967 Special National Intelligence Estimate imposing a ceiling on the number of enemy forces his intelligence officers could report or agree to and personally removing from the order of battle entire categories that had long been included, thus falsely portraying progress in reducing enemy strength. Westmorelands own book about himself gives some indication of how he would react to this more recent one. He was a teacher in the Chicago suburbs and Seoul, Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Download the new FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. - 3 Best: 1987 Los Angeles Lakers. Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, This Photo Of A 94-Year-Old Widow Receiving Her Husbands Remains Will Break Your Heart, From Messiah to Hitler, What You Can and Cannot Name Your Child. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Again fighting outnumbered Texans, this time Santa Anna would lose the battle stunningly. In fact, he did a lot to ensure that Germany would find itself in another war that it couldnt win, but, since he died in 1937, he gets extra credit for being a bad World War II general from beyond the grave. Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. After making a laughingstock of himself by ordering his men to entrench on the wrong side of fortifications at Camargo, Pillow bungled his role at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, making himself the low point of a resounding American victory. This is, obviously, a problematic quality when ones title is general-in-chief of the entire Union army. In order, from most culpable down. Assuming you believe the subtitle to be accurate, who were GEN Westmorelands biggest accomplices in the loss? Along with Communist China and other Communist movements in the region, who were fighting to reunite the Vietnams under the red banner, there were other belligerent, free countries in the region who had an interest in keeping South Vietnam away from the Commies.

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