10 Greatest Military Leaders

Started by fsn, 18 October 2014, 02:37:07 PM

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Hertsblue

I would also champion Subedai - conquered everything from Asia to the middle east and might well have done the same to Europe. 

And the point about Slim was that he took over a broken, demoralised army that had done nothing but retreat, retrained it, convinced it that it could fight in bad terrain and then used it to utterly rout a rampaging enemy. Monty's efforts pale beside that.
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Subedai

A point about the modern 'greats'. If you think about it none of them that I can think off of the top of my head -but I can feel the corrections  pouring in even as I write this- were really innovators, they studied the old masters like Hannibal, Caesar and then adapted to suit. Fred the Great with his echelons -Epaminondas and his Thebans plus young Alex with his Macedonians; Nappy and his 'march divided, fight united' -Chinggis Khan in nearly every campaign he undertook. The ones who did it first should be given the title Great Innovators, the others should be called something like Great Copiers or Great Adaptors. I'm sure the more learned of you could find more but that'll do to start.
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haupt

Thomas Jonathon [STONEWALL] Jackson ,just for the Valley campaign.

mollinary

Quote from: haupt on 19 October 2014, 09:23:10 PM
Thomas Jonathon [STONEWALL] Jackson ,just for the Valley campaign.

Just for the Valley campaign, where he won against a collection of generals who would be strong contenders for the 10 most incompetent list? :-\.

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haupt


Dave Fielder

The 10 guys at our wargames club are on the list.
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SerialLoser

Simon Bolivar - systematically removed the Spanish from most of South America. Ok, Napoleonic Spanish troops don't have the greatest reputation, but it's a bloody big continent!

fsn

On Subedai's point, I wonder if the great modern generals were actually the thinkers of the 1920s  and 30's like Liddle-Hart and Guderian who looked to the new technology and pondered its uses?    :-\
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Sandinista

Quote from: fsn on 20 October 2014, 08:20:44 AM
On Subedai's point, I wonder if the great modern generals were actually the thinkers of the 1920s  and 30's like Liddle-Hart and Guderian who looked to the new technology and pondered its uses?    :-\

And Tukhachevsky

slugbalancer

The more I read about Bill Slim, the more I'm impressed with his performance.  The best British general of WW2 by far.

How about Khalid ibn al-Walid for the top 10?