Favorite Military Leader...

[stealthattack1]

altogether a good guy on the wrong side

[Cranialwizard]

Rommel is a guy I have the utmost respect for. He was military genius and made off with the constant promise of supplies from high command yet to not recieved them because of eastern front redirections.

Rommel was the first general to use the Flak88 as an anti-tank weapon. Low on PaK ammunition and desperately waiting on supplies, Rommel ordered that Flak88s be cranked down and target enemy armor, which worked extremely well.

This was from a book I read a good while ago.

[Otto Halfhand]

Many of you have remarked on the Desert Fox's independent spirit. Much of the Success of the DAK can be attributed to this but you may not know why. The Brits and Amis, with the able assistance of the Poles were masters of intellegencing. Both the Heer and Naval codes were cracked by the Allies and virtually every sailing and move order generated in Berlin was known to them. In Africa the Brits relied on this information to a large degree. Rommel frequently ignored orders or placed himself outside of the line of communications in order to achieve his military goals. May 1940, June 1940, April 1941, June 1942, October 1942 and on other occasions this was so. In North Africa he achieved his greatest successes when the British planned on him following orders from Berlin and he didn't. The build-up that led to the Gazala battles and the fall of Tobruk was in great part due to Arrangements Rommel made with Kesslering and Commando Supremo during a stopover in Rome en route from Berlin. Without the intel communications intercepts the Royal Navy was unable to intercept men and material. It happened again after Torch when the 10th Panzer Division with its Tiger battalion landed in Africa.

[Pac-Fish]

Which is why they nicknamed him Ghost Battalion IIRC

[Otto Halfhand]

I'm not totally certain but the 7th Panzer division was the "GHost Division" THe Ghost battalion may have been its rcce battalion. For some reason I associate the ghost battalion with Guderian. Maybe Lord Rommel can weigh-in on this.

[Pac-Fish]

No I think you are right. I didn't actually remember what came after "ghost"

[Otto Halfhand]

Memory is a great Betrayer. What say we expand this discussion to include Guderian. I'll leave the nitty gritty to others, but for Starts:
Heinz Guderian is considered by many to be the founder of the Panzer Truppen. Technically he wasn't because he didn't have sufficient rank at the time. A student of the theories of Basil-Liddell Hart, he certainly was a driving force in the development of combined arms, blitzkrieg and Schwerpunkt philosophy. One of the more successful "Panzer Leader"s he lost Hitler's confidence by not adhering strictly to orders, much like Rommel. He ended up as Panzertruppen inspector general, (or some such title), as a result. In this role he advocated anti-tank measures rather than tanks to counter the T34 threat and increase production. He ridiculed the notion of super heavy tanks like the Maus. He was a prolific writer. My favorites are the operations manuals for Panther and Tiger crews, which contained suggestive pictures to arouse the interest of the troopers. Apparently it worked. You can find some examples of these manuals on the Web.

[Otto Halfhand]

How about enlightening us on the career of von Brauchitsch?

[WLENIN]

In my opinion, Marshall Shukov was the best military leader of WWII.Because of him, the Soviet Union managed to win World War 2.I know that Rommel and Guderian are also very good leaders but remember who really won WWII and that was the USSR!
Sorry for bad English.

[delmar77]

Great Khan  ( Genghis Khan)
Julius Caesar
Cyrus the Great ( Cyrs II)
Timur
Francisco Pizarro González
AND
Napoleon Bonaparte

[Otto Halfhand]

Your choice of Pizzzaro is a most interesting one.  Anyone who could bring down an empire the size of the Inca's and running the length of South America with 170 men and 25 horses certainly is worthy of consideration. Do you think that if a civil war was not on going and the assasination/murders of the two rival leaders yielding a leadership vacuum was the real reason the conquest suceeded? (granted that Pizzaro did capture and kill Atahualpa.

[IEatBolsheviks]

My favorite military leaders:

• Frederick the Great, mostly for daring the impossible when he saw his chance
• General Suworow for leading troops into battle for more than 40 years and never losing!

[Tehcumseh]

My Favorite Leaders

• Stonewall Jackson(Confederate[American Civil War])
• Robert Lee(Confederate[American Civil War])
• Ulysses S. Grant(Union[American Civil War])
• William Sherman(Union[American Civil War])
• George Patton(American[World War 2])
• Dwight Eisenhower(American[World War 2])
• Julius Caeser
• George Washington

[Otto Halfhand]

One of my personal favorites is Colonel John Singleton Mosby. He Fought At First Manassas at the outset of the US Civil war as a private soldier in the Washington Guards Company of the 1st VA Cavalry. He soon became disenchanted with this sort of regular army work and Came to the Attention of J.E.B. Stuart. It is thought by some that Stuart's Famous Ride around McClellan's Army was the Brainchild of John Mosby. In early 1863 Mosby was given command of the 43 VA Cavalry Battalion of Irregular Partizan Rangers. He launched a campaign of guerilla warfare in a six county area of Northern Virginia that soon became known as "Mosby's Confederacy. Working with small groups of 5 to 23 men he conducted raids in occupied and soon to be heavily garrisoned areas. His men would not generally engage in open battle but would ride in, create havoc and then "Skedaddle". The local population did much to aid and abet Mosby and his men in bedeviling the "Damn Yankees" Among his operations were included Train Wrecking, Bridge blowing operations, Hijacking of wagon trains and even kidnapping. One night he and 8(?) men rode into Fairfax County Courthouse and captured Union General Stoughton in his bed. Some of Mosby's raids penetrated into the Washington DC itself. Generals Grant and Sheridan had so much trouble with Mosby that they put a price on his head, Hanged his men as terrorists and put Southern Civilians on trains as hostages to keep Mosy's Raiders on good behaviour. It didn't work. Mosby surrendered his command shortly after Appomatox. His operations had diverted thousands of Union Soldiers and caused over a Million dollars of damages in a extended 27 month campaign. He had shown that effective partizan activities could be undertaken to great sucess with very limited means. After the War was over Mosby held several government positions in the Grant Administration.

[delmar77]

About Pizarro I think it could be easily crushed and still persevered in the face of great challenge and the overwhelming force of numbers. And everyone here on the forum know that an overwhelming amount of quality wins. About infighting, history is full of civil war in states that do not allow themselves to conquer.
The military leader is not only good in tactics, strategy and it needs Pizarro in my opinion had the opportunity and boldness.