Comments on: Top 10 Utterly Useless Military Commanders

By: Civil War buff

Civil War buff — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:58:57 +0000

McClellan should be swapped with Burnside. Just my opinion

By: Levi Aldebol

Levi Aldebol — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:11:31 +0000

I’ve read some about some of the generals on Bill’s list, and man, these guys were totally incompetent. Marcus Crassus was #1 on the Book of Lists 10 Worst Generals in History, and Philip VI, Winder, Santa Anna, Burnside, Nivelle, and Gamelin all made the list. A few that were on that list as well were the above mentioned Horatio Gates, Sir Ian Hamilton (why this guy was knighted, I’ll never know), and Aleksander Samsonov.

By: Bill Meadows

Bill Meadows — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:58:55 +0000

MY List

1.Marcus Crassus

2.Philip 6th

3.John Burgoyne

4.William Winder

5.Santa Anna

6.Ambrose Burnside

7.Braxton Bragg

8.Robert Nivelle

9.Maurice Gamelin

10.Lloyd Fredendall

By: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:56:20 +0000

REad some damn history. Gallipoli was not exactly Churchill’s fault. He gets the blame for it, but the commanders in the field are the ones who are at fault. Had the French not waited, had the navy moved up the coast quicker and had the forces on the ground advanced, Gallipoli would have been a success.

By: VJ63

VJ63 — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:32:53 +0000

then hitler should be on this list too

By: VJ63

VJ63 — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:05:18 +0000

How about Macauthur. Losing the entire Phillipines and the american face to the Japs during WW2. Not to mention 300,00 Chinese troops obliterating the american’s the day after the told Truman the Chinese won’t act during the Korean war. However he does seem very fluent in flooding a homeless camp and forbidding the victims from leaving and resulting in the deaths of innocent children when he was chief of staff for Hoover. COWARD

By: IllogicallySane

IllogicallySane — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:10:05 +0000

Liu Shan of Shu Han should have been on this list.

By: kiwiboy94

kiwiboy94 — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 03:59:32 +0000

Yeah, Herodotus wrote about it in his Histories as the creation of the Persian empire, and the rise of Cyrus. Croesus, the king of Lydia, asked the oracle at Delphi what he should do, and the oracle replied "Attack and a great empire will be destroyed". Croesus attacked, and Cyrus destroyed absorbed Lydia after defeating Croesus in a series of battles.
Croesus, somehow, gained the respect of Cyrus and served as an adviser to Cyrus until his death of old age.

By: mordechaimordechai

mordechaimordechai — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 23:18:43 +0000

Hey i just stumbled here.
Varus was betrayed by Arminius. No shame here, just a rotten bit of luck.
Graziani was a war criminal but was also a very decent strategist. He conquered Ethiopia before losing it.
Fighting against Ethiopians was no easy peasy. They were a real nation, united, numerous and armed with french and british rifles and machineguns. not naked guys with knobkerries.

By: I_Damian

I_Damian — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:49:26 +0000

Why is Varus on the list? He wasn't necessarily a useless military commander, he mobilized his legions and marched to where trouble was brewing, and got ambushed on the way.

You said yourself in the article that in the Teutoberg forest in Germania the Roman legions were useless. Varus couldn't exactly gallop along a 6 mile long line of his soldiers, whilst under relentless missile fire, in the rain and mud, giving orders to 3 legions which were in marching formation, could he?

If you really wanted to put a Roman on this list, there are a great many who were useless military leaders, especially since in Rome men weren't given command of an army based on merit, but based on who they knew and how much money they could give in "gifts" to the right people. How about Crassus? Marched a Roman army, which was famously reliant on heavy infantry as its core, into the Parthian desert, and got massacred by a number of horse archers and armoured lancers a quarter of the size of his own army, then tried to flee, got captured and had molten gold poured down his throat.