The worst decisions of military leaders in history

In war, there are winners and losers. Sometimes, an army may be defeated simply because it faced a more potent and larger enemy than itself; other times, it may lose as a result of a set of strange circumstances that no one could have foreseen, or simply because a cunning opponent deceived it. On rare occasions, an army may be defeated as a result of bad weather, as happened with the Mongol fleet led by "Qobli Khan" in 1281, which was destroyed by a typhoon when it tried to cross the narrow passage between Korea and Japan. But, there are those battles in which one of the parties failed only because of the absolute incompetence of a commander in them.

In this article, we will talk about the most overrated commanders, but they lack the degree of competence that entitles them to the title of an outstanding military commander. Finally, this is not just a list of generals, but about men, some of whom did not even wear a military uniform and yet made decisions that led their armies into disasters. This is a list of the eleven most incompetent, overrated and overrated military commanders of history.

1. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Germany.

Simply put, this may be the most controversial choice, since many people look at the" desert fox " with a lot of appreciation. We are not claiming that Rommel was a bad leader; taking into account the circumstances he had to deal with from the constant lack of supplies and harsh conditions all the time, the man did a great job. It can be said that he is the most successful German, or at least, the most famous general, besides the fact that he was a party to the ploy that led to the death of "Hitler", albeit a little late, it only made him a hero for both parties.

But when actual achievements are counted, the man does not live up to the reputation he enjoyed as a fierce and brilliant leader. He tended to be rough, intolerant, difficult, and thoughtless, which explains his defeat by the British in North Africa not once but twice. The first time he was defeated was at the hands of the British general Orsinin Lake, and the second by Montgomery, where he was finally routed from the black continent. After that, he was entrusted with the task of securing the French coastal strip from the Allied invasion.

Then he supervised the construction of the" Atlantic Wall", an impenetrable barrier of shelters and armories that prevented the allies from controlling the beaches at the Normandy landings on June 6, 1,944, for half an hour or so. This battle was a lesson, which the Germans did not take advantage of, in the futility of relying on static defensive fortifications, that useless plan adopted by France with the creation of the "Maginot Line" in 1940.

All this cannot be blamed on Rommel's shoulders, since he acted according to the limits imposed on him by the "furor". But when one takes into account the legendary reputation that surrounded him, the forecasts assume that he was able to do more and more brilliantly than that to repel the Allied invasion of France.

2. Admiral ginichi Mikawa, Japan

In this case, we have a successful commander who enjoyed his great victory to squander, almost immediately, an invaluable opportunity to make him the greatest Japanese military commander. Admiral Mikawa was a promising Japanese naval commander known for his intelligence and wisdom, which justified his choice to take command of the Japanese VIII Corps during the 1942 "Battle of Raopal". Just a month later, he was entrusted with the command of the Corps himself to achieve one of the greatest naval victories of Japan in World War II. During the night of the eighth and ninth of August 1942, Mikawa and his corps slipped into the waters outside the "Goodall channel" and sank four Allied warships in less than an hour. In doing so, he left the Naval Forces anchored in the "Goodall" channel without naval protection, making the Naval cutters anchored in open waters an easy target for him.

However, when the Japanese army was on the way to victory, and the American troops were too far from the canal, the Admiral, inexplicably, stopped the attack and headed back home, thereby sparing the American naval forces another humiliation and protecting them from destruction. If the man had shown a little sternness in the face of those Naval cutters, the United States would have been forced to evacuate from the "salmon Islands", and the war would have dragged on for many months or even a year. After this incident, McCaw was criticized by his superiors for a serious mistake at a critical time, so he was assigned limited and inferior tasks for the remainder of the war until he was finally forced to retire by the Japanese Navy in June 1945, three months before the end of the war. Mikawa was not a bad officer, but he certainly made one of the worst decisions in the history of his country.

3. Saddam Hussein, Iraq.

The people of Iraq usually don't think of the"Butcher of Baghdad" as a military leader, although he certainly liked to wear tuxedos, but for 24 years he was the boss in Iraq, and that's exactly why he resembled Hitler in his dictatorship. He overspent on every military operation to the smallest detail, although, also like Hitler, he left the normal tactical operations to a select group of incompetent people, known more for their loyalty to him than for their prowess on the battlefield. Considering that during his reign, Saddam waged three major wars with his neighbors, the Iraqi invasion of Iran, as well as the first and second Gulf wars, and he lost all those battles, although the Iranian war lasted for eight years, before he was finally forced to bow to peace.

His foolish defense during the "liberation of Kuwait" war in 1991 against the United States and coalition forces cost him almost his entire army, not to mention his lifestyle and Rule 11 years later, until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Perhaps his best idea was to convince the world that he had "weapons of mass destruction" to discourage any invasion attempt, but the result was the opposite, as America and coalition forces invaded his country. Worst of all, he did not tell his generals that weapons of mass destruction were a figment of his imagination, to stop their illusion, because they were counting on those weapons to slow down the American advance towards Baghdad. That is why it arose to say that there was no better ally for any American military leader than those crazy people from "Tikrit".

4. General George McClellan, United States of America

During the American Civil War, there existed a group of generals who worked for the benefit of the conflicting parties, unionists and separatists. One of those generals credited with prolonging the war was Union General George McClellan. McClellan was not the worst general in the Union Army, this title belongs to Joey hooker or Ambrose Burnside, but he was the most reserved and indecisive during the war, which can be as dangerous and bad as being a reckless man. During his command of the Union Army from November of 1861 until his services were terminated by Lincoln after the bloody and inconclusive Battle of Antietam in September of 1862.

McClellan was known for his slow approach to things, which led to countless delays and missed the opportunity to hit the rebels hard, thereby shortening the duration of the war. Some of his biographers came to his defense, claiming that clellan was reluctant to give the order of battle to preserve the lives of his men, which is considered admirable, but missed opportunities for the possibility of inflicting a severe defeat on the smaller Confederate Army on several occasions, perhaps inadvertently contributing to prolonging the war for years leading to a greater loss of life, which could have happened if he had been more strict about the safety of his men.

Even his attitude towards President Lincoln was reckless. On one occasion, he refused to see the president when he visited him at his home in Washington, claiming that he had gone to bed and did not want anyone to disturb him. Moreover, his political ambition to run against Lincoln in the presidential election of 1864 made him more of a fame seeker than a competent commander needed by the Union Army. McClellan is arguably not a failed general, but he was the wrong choice for the critical mission.

5. General Robert George Neville, France.

Robert Neville was the commander of the Artillery Corps in France, who took command of the French Second Army in December 1916, succeeding General Philippe Petain, who was promoted to the post of Commander of the French central army. And Neville, having taken up his new post, did nothing but sit back and watch his men and the Gazans tear each other apart to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine.

During the Battle of Verdun, which lasted from February 12 to December 18 in 1916, his decisions caused half a million casualties before everything was over. But what made him a foolish commander was his ill-considered plan of a counterattack against the Germans in the spring of 1917. To achieve this, Neville sent more than a million French soldiers to confront a German army half their size, where the French were defeated in a terrible proverbial way, and by the time the French government finally ended the offensive, three weeks later, there were more than a quarter of a million French killed or wounded, and the army was on its way to a mass mutiny.

The decision to dismiss Mevel was made quickly to avoid the mutiny of the French soldiers in the face of their officers, and to prevent the collapse of the allies, naturally giving victory to the Germans. If Neville had not made his disastrous decisions, or the Germans had not won in the summer of 1917, we might not have seen Hitler, and the Second World War would not have happened, and history would have taken a very different turn. Neville did not return to his country as a hero, but was sent away to a French outpost in Africa, an ending wthatrthatned of his service. Neville died in 1924 and was buried with a full military ceremony, and was quickly forgotten after his death.

6. General Sir Douglas Haig, United Kingdom.

Robert Hague is the commander of the British forces in France during the disastrous Battle of the "Battle oe Somme in 1916. His name has been associated with leading the army to the worst day in British history in terms of loss of life. On the morning of the first of July 1916, sixty thousand British troops, or twenty percent of the total British force engaged, had been killed or wounded. To imagine the horror of the disaster, only 68 men out of the total 801 manpower of the "first Newfoundland" Regiment survived during a British Army attack that failed to win even one of its objectives.

Haig was optimistic; he did not think about the enormous scale of losses and casualties. He even wrote in his diary the next day: ” The total toll of losses cannot be taken into account in comparison with the numbers engaged and the duration of the direct attack“. Of course, such a kind of disqualification would have led to immediate dismissal in our days, but things were different then. Haig continued to lead the British troops until the end of the war; he was even promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in recognition of his “brilliant” achievements, but almost eight hundred thousand British soldiers died under his command.

Haig returned to his country as a hero after the war, and he is still considered a competent military leader by many, mostly people who did not serve under him. While there was no leader, on either side, in that war who did anything good about the casualties that occurred during the battles, what made Haig stand out was his indifference to the massacre he caused, and his stubbornness in not learning from the hard lessons that a leader needs to fight a war in the twentieth century. Of course, he had moments of brilliance, but mostly he was not the one who was needed for the task.

7. George Armstrong Custer, United States of America.

George Custer did a great job as a war hero in the West during the Forties of the twentieth century, but in real life, he was the kind of military leader that recruits hated; he was a reckless person, but smart and brave at the same time. His worst quality was his indifference to the comfort and well-being of his men or their safety. He was one of the youngest generals in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and his cavalry unit had the largest casualty rate of any other regiment in the army. He was also a savage when it came to fighting the Indians, and he slaughtered them without the slightest pity.

His recklessness eventually led him to death, when he led the Seventh Cavalry to disaster in the "Battle of the Little Big Horn". In June 1876, he lost almost his entire army within hours of an attack on an Indian camp, in which there were several thousand fighters of the northern tribes and"Cheyenne"," Lakota" and"Arapaho".

But, somehow, the guy became a legend as a result of his defeat in this battle. Perhaps this is due to the tireless efforts of his widow (Libby), who continued to talk about her late husband for the rest of her life, consolidating the adage that Americans tend to honor their defeats more than their victories, and in the "Little Bighorn", "Alamo", "Pearl Harbor", the events of the eleventh of September the biggest example of this.

While Custer was considered by generations to be a martyr to millions of Americans, historians have a completely different opinion about him;m, many of them considered him a fame-seeking person and a hater of Indians, which was largely true regardless of his glamorous reputation.

8. Douglas MacArthur, United States of America.

What did Douglas MacArthur, the hero of the battles of the Pacific and the mastermind of the "Battle of Incheon", do to be on the list of the Ten Worst!? Regardless of his achievements, his incoherent strategy in the defense of the Philippines ended with the disastrous surrender in "Bataan" in April of 1942, which is considered the largest surrender of American troops in history.

This was caused by a hostile ego that made him, many times, unable to work with the Australians in their defense of "New Guinea", and the unwise decision to "invade Peleliu", a Japanese fortress of no direct strategic value, which cost 10,000 casualties in the ranks of the United States Army, and what they needed two months to make up for the shortage of troops. Then it was his insistence on President Roosevelt to invade the Philippines, even though the archipelago had no actual strategic value, just to fulfill his promise to the Filipino people that he would return, even though the Filipinos didn't care about MacArthur. The operation in the Gulf consumed a lot in terms of military supplies and ammunition, which prolonged the war for months.

McArthur was the mastermind behind the "Incheon landing", which broke the back of the North Korean army and almost completely secured victory on the peninsula. Despite this, considering that "Incheon" was defended by only a small garrison of Korean troops, the rest of which had been engaged in the battle with international troops near "Buzan", it was not easy and was punctuated by a lot of wrong decisions.

The problem arose later, when Douglas showed his true nature, ignoring intelligence reports of a million Chinese troops stationed along the Korean border and ready to invade. Suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the better and smarter "Mao" troops, and was forced to withdraw beyond the "38th line" between North and South Korea. The timing of MacArthur's firing by President Truman, as well as the tactical prowess of his replacement General Ridge Wise, saved Korea from becoming a Soviet state.

MacArthur was a brilliant military governor of Japan after their surrender. Ere kept the Russians out of Japan, but behind all this, there are not many positive things to be said about him, neither as a general nor even in terms of his personal qualities. McArthur sought to lobby the "U.S. Senate" and urged them to reward him with the Medal of Honor for his foolish defense of the Philippines in 1942.

9. Antoniol Lopez dos Santa Ana, Mexico.

This interesting character should not have been given a Mexican military suit or even any other suit. And whenever he did bad, he always attributed it to his unhappy Army. True, he won the "Battle of El Alamo" in 1836, but lost twice as many men as the Texans, however, he lost his entire army and was captured in the "Battle of San Jacinto" only a few weeks later, in a battle that lasted only 15 minutes.

Santa Anna is still famous in Mexico to this day, and he liked to be referred to as the "Napoleon of the West". After a short exile, he returned to his homeland to be assigned the task of commanding the Mexican army again, as well as the task of driving a small French force out of Veracruz. He lost the battle along with his foot, which forced the Mexicans to yield to the French, but Santa Anna returned to his country dragging a prosthetic leg, and more famous than before.

Santa Anna worked in several leadership positions during his illustrious career. And again he found himself at the head of the Mexican army, which was repeatedly defeated by American troops during the "Mexican-American War" of 1846. During this war, his prosthetic leg was picked up by American troops and put on public display. By the time he returned to Mexico after another ill-fated invasion, Santa Anna had taken over the government, spending the ensuing years filling his pockets, before people got tired of him and sent him into exile in Cuba in 1855. The people of Mexico had a disastrous man both politically and militarily, but Santa Anna was able, somehow, to keep his popularity among millions of Mexicans as he is today.

10. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt.

Another Arab leader is on the list. Gamal Abdel Nasser is perhaps one of the most divisive leaders on the Arab Street between supporters of his ideas and opponents of his positions and decisions, and this may be due to the many positions and decisions he took during his political career. As an example of this, we find the Syrian-Egyptian unity, as Nasser was a party to the establishment of the United Arab state after strong opposition from him for making new arguments at the beginning, and made himself a hero among the Arab masses. However, his actions and policy after the establishment of unity, especially about the Sarawat and the freedom of Syria, caused great discontent among the people in the Arab world towards Nasser.

What matters most militarily is the wars that this leader fought and lost all of them, from the war of triple aggression in 56, to the 62nd war in Yemen to the most important and certainly the most influential; the Arab setback that occurred after the Israeli forces harassed Syria in May 1967, Egypt quickly announced the state of general mobilization in its armed forces. But perhaps the spark that triggered the war was Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran in the Red Sea to Israeli navigation, Israel launched its violent attack on June 5, 1967, inflicting a major defeat on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, as a result of which it occupied Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank and east Jerusalem and destroyed the Arab armies, Nasser announced that he took responsibility for the defeat of the Egyptian Armed Forces and the loss of Sinai and announced his resignation.

However, the Egyptian masses came out in demonstrations demanding that he resign and prepare the country to erase the effects of the defeat, and he returned, already one day later, to take office. The popular rejection of his resignation was not limited to Egypt alone, but also included Lebanon, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Algeria, and Jordan; even the Arab communities in the diaspora demonstrated their rejection of the decision to resign (Nasser). The irony is that the Egyptian people, who came out demanding Nasser to stay after the defeat, are the same ones who came out in huge demonstrations against Nasser in February and November 1968, demanding him to hold those responsible for the defeat accountable, and democracy.

11. Adolf Hitler, Germany.

Many may be surprised to see Hitler on the list of failed military leaders, since he was not primarily a military officer, but given his role in confirming Germany's long-time defeat in World War II, that's what makes him at the top of the list.

While it can be said that Hitler never led his soldiers on the battlefield, during the last three years of the war, he controlled every detail of his army, giving orders to his commanders when and where to attack, preventing them from withdrawing or surrendering even when defeat was inevitable. Convinced to leave the tactical details of the command of armies to his generals, he set strategic goals, supervised the distribution of resources, did everything but command his army from the battlefield after 1943, and made decisions that ensured that, no matter how hard the Germans fought, they were doomed to defeat.

The position taken by Hitler not to intervene in the war and leave the military command to his generals prevented the world from seeing the terrible consequences of the Nazis ' domination of Europe. This was the main difference between Hitler and his rival Joseph Stalin, who knew in his mind that he was not a military strategist, so he left the command of his army and the conduct of battles to his generals. As for Hitler, he believed that the time he spent in the trenches of France in the First World War made him a military expert, which prompted him to make many Western military decisions that negatively affected the German people.