This would be known as the Tet Offensive and would become a major turning point in the war. The alternative was to split the United States asunder. Again fighting outnumbered Texans, this time Santa Anna would lose the battle stunningly. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? His work as an observer during the Crimean War gave him insight into the importance of logistics for an industrialized army, and years spent as the chief of engineering for the Illinois Central Railroad made him aware of the transformative nature of rail transport. As a result, American military power and prestige took a dramatic downturn. The resulting Peninsular Campaign (AprilJuly 1862) was a marvel of planning but something of a farce in execution. The 1970s were scary times. 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. The enemy simply kept sending more and more replacements to make up his losses. Delivered Wednesday. His battlefield losses marked the end of the Persian Empire. In his single-minded pursuit of that objective, Westmoreland (despite his repeated claims to the contrary) essentially ignored two other crucial aspects of the war, improvement of South Vietnams armed forces and pacification. 7. Heres the inaugural class: 6. This week marks exactly one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Despite reports of the build-up of German forces and even knowing the date of the Germans attack, Gamelin did nothing, stating that he would await events. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from . Delivered Monday-Saturday. General William Westmoreland. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. There are a number of contenders for the top places on such a roster. This infuriated the Marines, who viewed it as evidence that Westmoreland lacked confidence in them. Not only is Sorley a third-generation graduate of West Point a Vietnam veteran and a historian, but he worked for Westmoreland as well. When all is said and done, it doesnt matter how nice, brave, courageous, gutsy, loyal, or brilliant commanders theyve been. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. World War I provided a forum for any number of truly horrible commanders to assert themselves. rs worth well over $400 billion. After occupying Jerusalem and crucifying 2,000 Jewish rebels in Judaea, Varus went off to govern Germania and tame barbarian tribes. Like it or not, the U.S. military would become the governing authority. After the Germans attacked, Gamelin was eventually removed from his post, but by then it was too late. There appeared to be little serious planning for what would happen the day after Saddam was gone. Advancing to the North Korean border with China also was a red flag for Mao-Tse Tung, who feared that American troops on his border were a prelude to U.S. invasion. Germanic tribes sacrificed Roman officers on altars to their gods. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him. DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/Contributor/Getty Images, Biden Proposal Puts Climate Agenda Above Americas Defense, Russias New START Breach Means U.S. Nuclear Weapons Modernization Is a Must. Following on from our list of the greatest and most successful military commanders, we are presenting this list of the worst. Hulls nerve was shattered. He still had his defenders, but they were in the last trench, barely holding on. The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the Legions maneuvers impossible. A more positive example is George Washington. Grant had encircled the fort. We ended up, he said, with no operational plan that had the slightest chance of ending the war favorably. Westmoreland could not or would not ever bring himself to acknowledge that reality. Having amassed roughly twice as many losses in a single day as Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington, had suffered during the entire Peninsular War, Haig saw no reason to change tactics. He couldnt. Assuming you believe the subtitle to be accurate, who were GEN Westmorelands biggest accomplices in the loss? in history from Michigan State University in 1995. 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. At the Battle of Gaugamela, he helped make Alexander great by losing half his army to the Macedonian upstart. 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. Gamelin made the mistake of viewing the Ardennes as impenetrable and chose to defend it with ten of his weakest, least well equipped and least well trained divisions. What defines Santa Anna is his utter failure to subdue the Texican rebels and block American expansion. He lacked the schooling and relevant experience to understand the war and devise a viable approach to prosecuting it. . Alexander went on to march halfway across Asia, creating an empire, albeit short-lived, that changed the history of three continentsnot bad for an ancient millennial. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. For the most accurate and up-to-date information, consult individual encyclopedia entries about the topics. (Photo: Warner Bros.) Roger Ebert called "Gods and Generals" a film "Trent Lott would enjoy," referring to the Senator's praise of segregationist Strom Thurmond. While British cannons shelled the fort from the Canadian side of the river, Tecumseh marched his warriors through a forest clearing in an endless parade. Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend The idiot who, seeking self aggrandisement, led his army, Force D, to disaster at Kut in WW1. And if they not only fail to deliver, but wind up sinking their own side in the process, and change history, they earn a spot in the Hall of Military Shame. Join in-depth conversations and interact with foreign-policy experts with. Somalia (1992-1994) 2. Finally, there was MacArthur's insubordination. There is no Carthage. You worked for GEN Westmoreland when he was Army Chief of Staff. At Brownstown, south of Detroit, two dozen warriors under Tecumseh routed more than 200 American militiamen escorting a supply column intended for Detroit. His bad luck didnt end at San Jacinto. In 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, the Vietnamese army had only 36 generals, but by 2018, peace-time Vietnam had 415 military officers holding general ranks. Answer (1 of 4): The former Cham general/leader Che Bong Nga was killed in the battle against the enemy Dai Viet (old Vietnam) but Che Bong Nga was LUCKY to be mentioned by the enemy Dai Viet historians to allow people to remember him. That dubious distinction falls to William Hull, the only general officer in American history to be ordered before a firing squad for cowardice and dereliction of duty. These Vietnam War photos taken by U.S. Army photographers reveal a side of the conflict that few people have ever seen. 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. Even if Moscow holds onto territory, the war has wrecked its future. They dramatically upped their game, pressing the U.S. worldwide. 8. Lyndon Johnson had no understanding of military affairs whatever, nor did Robert McNamara. According to a Time magazine reporter who wrote about the Dak Son massacre, Viet Cong guerrillas shouted "Sons of Americans!" as they launched their assault on the village. Starting with the battle of Long Island, he lost way more fights than he wonyet he managed to win the war. Thus it was under Darius rule that the Persian Empire fell and was conquered. Grachev has also been linked to corruption among the higher ranks of the military, specifically the assassination of journalist Dmitry Kholodov. 0. Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. Is your subtitle The General Who Lost Vietnam fair? Diem's family was one of the earliest to convert to Catholicism, a religion he took . Only FP subscribers can submit questions for FP Live interviews. Darius family would be captured and even lost the Battle of Gaugamela, where so many factors were in his favor. But beyond the goals of one leader in Moscow, it is also clear that Ukraine has suffered horrors of a historic nature. Villeneuve was then to return in secret and help establish naval dominance of the English Channel in preparation for a land invasion of Britain. However, not even they managed to get themselves court-martialed and sentenced to death for ineptitude on the battlefield. Hundreds of thousands died of disease. For many soldiers, a major tipping point happened when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, news of which reaches the soldiers in Da 5 Bloods during one particularly stirring scene . 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. Over time Westmoreland asked for and received large numbers of U.S. troops, eventually totaling well over half a million. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. 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. Alas, as a historian, he passed on the opportunity to answer Battlelands questions about what Vietnam should teach us about Afghanistan, and who, if anyone, is todays Westmoreland, during our email chat earlier this week: Whats the most important thing you learned writing Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam? Armchair historians often generalize that during the American Civil War, while the Union held a clear advantage in material, the Confederacy could field superior commanders. He worked under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich as a leading general and gained fame from his battles in North Africa. Napoleon. Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. Lewis Sorleys new book, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, is being published today by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Eschewing a direct overland march to the Confederate capital of Richmond, McClellan orchestrated an impressive amphibious landing of more than 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe, at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. He overestimated the American peoples patience and tolerance of friendly losses. Westmorelands strategy throughout the war was to win through Attrition Warfare (pounding the enemy through greater numbers and resources) which military strategists including Sun Tzu caution against using. Marcus Licinius Crassus was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who started a pointless war with the Parthians, and Publius Quinctilius Varus lost three legions at Teutoburg Forest, but Proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio manages to top them both with his actions at the Battle of Arausio. Hull withdrew after a series of harassing attacks by Tecumsehs highly mobile raiding parties. The inept Luigi Cadorna of Italy fought a dozen battles on the Isonzo before his army completely collapsed at Caporetto. He continued on to suffer defeats at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, almost letting the war slip away from the British. Gates thought otherwise, and fancied himself a better commander than George Washington. There were available better concepts of how to prosecute the war. - 1 Best: 1996 Chicago Bulls. Approaching his 60th birthday and exhibiting a timidity that had no place in a general about to lead an invasion, Hull also had the misfortune of facing two of the most gifted commanders ever to operate in North America. These operations were designed to seek out enemy forces and engage them in decisive battle. 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. 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 Wallace Greeneboth saw Westmorelands approach as fatally flawed and agreed on a viable alternative. The Worst Civil War Generals on the Confederacy Confederate Maj. Gen. Gideon Pillow. Argentina, Brazil, and the Brazilian puppet government in Uruguay formed an alliance, and on May 1, 1865, they declared war on Paraguay. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. All related (37) Sort Recommended Doug Szabo Author has 972 answers and 137.7K answer views Nov 27 My vote goes to adm Otto Zumwalt. 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. Because he never wanted to face a superior force, he refused to fight. Thus there was little internal capacity for debating or evaluating his chosen course of action. He was called the inevitable general. A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. He decided to conduct of a war of attrition, using search and destroy tactics, in which the measure of merit was body count. A curated selection of our very best long reads. To accomplish this goal, Vietnam employs repressive policies that often contravene international human rights law. To that Hollings responded, "Westy, the American people don't care about the ten. Under Westmorelands command, the Vietnam war began smoothly as the U.S. won every battle. But in 1968, when Westmoreland became Army Chief of Staff, Communist forces baited Westmoreland into committing nearly 40% of his strength to the military outpost at Khe Sanh, then attacked cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. A final humiliation came during Mexican-American War. What a Lovely War and then in the 1989 television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth. Overseas during World War II he had limited line duty (16 months of battalion command, then 13 months in staff positions) and of 14 months of command during the Korean War and its immediate aftermath he spent eight months in reserve in Japan and only six months in Korea, and that during the mostly static final months of the war. 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. 151. Frederick C. Weyand was a U.S. Army General who was the last commander of American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973. These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. Westmoreland established a headquarters known as MACV Forward in the northern provinces of South Vietnam and put his deputy, General Creighton Abrams, in charge, placing him over the Marines and also the Army forces in that region. 2. In the summer of 1967, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) initiated a series of attacks in western Kontum Province. General William Westmoreland. Fortunately, along came Reaganif not for that, Westmorelands military reversals could well have signaled the beginning of our end. He was also supremely gifted at overestimating the size of his opponents armies to a degree that beggared belief. Of course they raised this issue, leading Westmoreland to declare vehemently that establishing MACV Forward had not a damned thing to do with my confidence in General Cushman or the Marines, not a damned thing. That again was not only false but, given the existing paper trail, reckless as well. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. Jacob Zuma is a cherry on the top of the world's worst leader cake. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. The result of his manic commitment to the war of attrition was that Westmoreland squandered four years of his troops bravery and support by the public, the Congress, and even much of the news media for American involvement in the war. Opportunistic firms in Asia and Europe have already begun to relocate investments to the United States. Applications for the Gettysburg College-Gilder Lehrman MA program are open and considered on a rolling basis. 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. In a war that saw more than its share of unskilled politically appointed generals, Pillow was arguably the worst on either side. Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson put one forth in the PROVN Study, a Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam. That document held that Westmorelands approach was not working and could not work because it ignored the real war in South Vietnams hamlets and villages, where the covert enemy infrastructure was through coercion and terror dominating the rural populace. After gaining ground trying to cut an escape path for the Confederates during the February 1862 siege of Fort Donelson by Union forces led Brig. Saul David reviews a surprising study of military failure and names his own five most infamous generals Saul David Thursday February 17 2022, 12.00am , The Times [1] Unfortunately the fates of the former Republic Vietnam (Sout. But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. 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. How the North Vietnamese remember the conflict 40 years after the fall of Saigon. Pillow escaped during the night, leaving Simon B. Buckner to surrender the fort and 15,000 Confederate troops. The 20th century is the most violent century in history. What was the worst battle of Vietnam? Today's list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam By the way, here is the first review I have seen of Sorley's new biography of Westmoreland, which I read in galleys. As the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, he faced a two-front war, an insurgency in the South and an invading army from the North. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. 10. After an initial attack drove back Grants troops, Pillow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by retreating to the fort rather than breaking through Union lines to Nashville. Two years later, he lost a leg fighting the French. Gods and Generals (2003) Loss $61 million These are actually Civil War reenactors and probably the only people who paid to see the movie. The Persians had a mixed record against the Greeks. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he theoretically had some influence there, at least to the extent he could shape the collective viewpoint, but even then LBJ and McNamara were famously impervious to advice from the Joint Chiefs. And how might that be impacting the world? A more minor case, but one revealing of Westmorelands character, stemmed from his unwillingness to level with his senior Marine subordinate at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. After eight years at Foreign Policy, here are the ten most popular Best Defense posts. Delivered Wednesday. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. Grachev publicly promised to swiftly crush the Chechen separatist forces in a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment. He led the disastrous storming of Grozny while drunk after celebrating his birthday on January 1st. The Texans only suffered 2 casualties, as opposed to hundreds of Mexican casualties. He graduated second in his class at West Point (well ahead of classmates Stonewall Jackson, George H. Gordon, and George Pickett). But then MacArthur thrived on controversy like bread thrives on yeast. 15. Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) 24. Pillow faced a court-martial for stealing a Mexican cannon and attempting to spirit it home in his personal baggage, but Polk intervened to clear Pillows record. Listing MacArthur as one of America's worst generals will be controversial. Not one to let his own failings stand in the way of personal glory, Pillow submitted fanciful accounts of his actions at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco to various newspapers, incurring the wrath of overall American commander Winfield Scott.
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worst generals in vietnam