Post the generals throughout history that you admire and why
Erwin Rommel: General badass and ballsy Lieutenant in the First World War, one of the only generals in modern history to lead from the front and was planning on assassinating Hitler. Also those who fought against him described him as an enemy but not a 'bad guy' like many Nazi leader were
>mentions HIM on Veeky Forums
(sigh) here we go again..
I'm fairly new to Veeky Forums so whats the reason for the impending shitstorm that is probably about to happen?
> was planning on assassinating Hitler
No evidence for this, except hearsay.
Heinz Guderian. Like Rommel, but not a Jew.
Not that guy, but Rommel just wasn't that good of a general, certainly not in proportion to his fame.
>called his top general a monkey
>rises from irrelevance to conquer Japan
>completely fucks monk rebellions
>doesn't afraid of anything
How so? I haven't really read into the Second World War and up until recently I was like everyone else who was taught 'Everything and everyone to do with the Nazis and ww2 Germany is evil and if you disagree your just as bad'
Is that basically the Captain Mad Jack of Japan then?
I'm not talking about his ethics (which is a seperate issue I'll address later in the post), I was talking about his pure military record.
His main campaign was a see-saw affair where he lost as many battles as he won, and lost the big ones, achieving none of his strategic aims. He then went on to a number of pretty minor commands, and probably his biggest impact in the war was when he talked himself out of believing the invasion of France would happen in Normandy, instead shifting his guess to Pas de Calais.
But on the moral side, don't believe that he was no saint. Not that he was ideologically a Nazi, but he was very much a militarist, and was very supportive of the Nazi party when it first came to power because of their enlargement of the military policies. He would repeatedly volunteer to head Hitler's bodyguard when the latter would travel outside Germany, and during the war, he spent most of the close of 1940 shooting Nazi propaganda films.
It was only when things started going badly that he was suddenly all anti-Nazi.
The guy was an opportunist, little more.
Is there any question?
youtu.be
>His boy waifu was actually pretty based
en.m.wikipedia.org
>en.m.wikipedia.org
Your general was a faggot.
Michel Ney
Absolute madman who actually took part in cavalry charges and musket combat
>Napoleon left Moscow on October 19th with roughly 100, 000 men. On November 3 it began to snow, and Napoleon gave Ney command of the 6,000 man rearguard.
>Throughout the retreat, Ney’s energy and courage were equaled by his tactical ingenuity. Musket in hand, he led countless charges. On one night march, a wagon went through the ice and a survivor could be seen clinging to the wreckage. Ney himself crawled along the ice to pull him out of the icy water.
>The retreat went on and on, and eventually, Ney had only 100 men left. With these, Ney and General Gerard held the bridge at Kovno while it was being destroyed. Imperial Guardsman Jean Coignet described what happened. “Marshal Ney kept the enemy at bay by his own bravery. I saw him take a musket and five men and hold the bridge at Kovno. The country should be glad it has such a man.
>At Waterloo Ney again commanded the left wing of the army.
>Ney was seen [11] during one of the charges beating his sword against the side of a British cannon in furious frustration. During the battle he had five horses killed under him;[12] and at the end of the day, Ney led one of the last infantry charges, shouting to his men: "Come and see how a marshal of France meets his death!".[13
>tortured for years by the his own government
>survives the purges
>goes onto save thousands of troops during the battle of Smolensk
>create operation little saturn
>completely crushed operation Winter storm and seal the fate of the 6th army
>The mastermind behind Operation Bagration
Best soviet general
He's more of the japanese Oliver Cromwell like a century before Cromwell
>The guy was an opportunist, little more.
This.
And he was a decent General, his exploits in France commanding the 7th Panzer Div were exceptional. This lead him (understandably) to be promoted, but proved in Africa that he was in over his head. He won many victories, and also many defeats. A good summarization is that he was a great tactician, but not a strategist which is required on a level such as commanding the Afrika Korps.
Manstein was worlds above Rommel.
you were actually considered wierd if you didn't, back then..
>implying you wouldn't
look at those hands, user..
His military record in WW1 was GOAT. He was a great commander on the field, was shit when it came to logistics and grand battle planning.
The best generals were
m.youtube.com
Ayyyyyy
This, Zhukov is overrated.
You have no idea of what you've just caused
Zhukov was good on the tactical level (Winter 1941 counterattack, Uranus) don't get me wrong, but he was more of a Strategic manager, a Soviet Eisenhower if you will. I've found that Vatutin, Konev and Konstantin were just better at the tactical level and were more innovative then Zhukov.
I'd say the are both great generals, easily the best in the war. I just prefer Rokossovsky because he went through more hardship to get where he was.
how did he rehabilitate himself?
Like Rommel he was promoted above his level of competency; and was PTSD as fuck, so while understandable, actually praising him for throwing Waterloo for a grandiose suicide is a bit like thinking the Germanwings co-pilot that crashed the plane into the alps is a breddy gool guy.
>how did he rehabilitate himself?
he reportedly carried around a pistol and said they would never take him alive if they tried arresting him again. Apparently he didn't speak much about his torture and what he endured, most accounts come from his cellmates.
This is true. Should've levelled off at captain or major.
Also:
-Subutai
-Alexander Suvorov
-Alexander THE GREAT
-Sargon of Akkad ( The king, not the E- Celebrity.)
-Scipio Africanus
-Epaminondas of Thebes.
>Like Rommel he was promoted above his level of competency
He was bad in big battles but he could be pretty based in smaller scale engagements
Pretty much. Kesselring had it right, Rommel was an excellent field leader but he just didn't have the mind or patience for high command.
To be fair he was poorly utilized. He wasn't a defensive fighter, that was obvious. Yet he was only stuck on defensive fronts.
Is Wellington the original meme general?
Yes
He's Irish when he loses and British when he (and his allies) wins
That doesn't explain why they released him in the first place.
>( The king, not the E- Celebrity. )
We live in the best possible timeline.
Sorry, misunderstood your question.
They released him because he never actually confessed. After the winter war with Finland the Red army needed officers to fill roles. The Red army was growing exponentially and experienced officers were hard to come by after the purges. Semyon Timoshenko vouched for him and he was allowed to come back as a mid-level officer, and he slowly went up the ranks from there.
So he was more of a Marc Antony in the field than a Caesar?
Rommel is only that famous because the British public loved the Africa campaign. Right through the 20th century.
I remember when I was a kid it was fairly regular to find portraits of Monty and Rommel people would have their living rooms and studies.
I still think he willingly got himself killed at Wagram.
I mean, he saw bad omens in his luggage, still insisted to charge despite not being ordered to, was separated from his unit, took command of the first cavalry he found, got wounded, decided to keep up and finally got killed.
Too often he could have chosen to stop there for the battle but kept going.
Georgy 'send in more men' Zhukov
Georgy 'have we hit our daily casualty quota already?' Zhukov
Are we talking about Georgy "Don't worry comrade Stalin, we have more men than the Germans have bullets." Zhukov?
I take it Zhukov was taught at the same school of war as Douglas 'Walk slowly in straight lines over open fields' Haig
I have to disagree. Rommel managed more than what could ever be possibly expected of him in North Africa. A lot is made of him fighting beyond his supply lines but people forget that this was standard practice in Nazi germany and in the initial stages of the war it usually worked out great. Even in the later stages of the war, offensives were planned with the idea of capturing supplies as you went along with mind (see Battle of the Bulge for instance).
Thus Rommel actually went above and beyond his call of duty and achieved more than anyone else could have. An eventual victory in North Africa was nigh impossible to achieve but he got as close to it as anyone possibly could have.
Furthermore, his eventual failure in North Africa might not have been so grim had the Germans put more resources into the Mediteranean, altough I can understand how they felt that the italians should handle that part.
> An eventual victory in North Africa was nigh impossible to achieve
Had he been a good strategist he would have seen this and followed his orders to defend Libya
>have to disagree. Rommel managed more than what could ever be possibly expected of him in North Africa.
What? He quite literally ignored his orders and went on pointless offensives that went against his strategic goals. He could have done a lot better if he kept his pursuits on a short leash.
> A lot is made of him fighting beyond his supply lines but people forget that this was standard practice in Nazi germany and in the initial stages of the war it usually worked out great.
It worked out great in one instance, in France, where the French surrendered. Given a non-possibility of that happening in North Africa, it was stupid.
>Even in the later stages of the war, offensives were planned with the idea of capturing supplies as you went along with mind (see Battle of the Bulge for instance).
And Wacht Am Rein failed. It was a stupid idea based on desperation. I would point out that operations like Barbarossa and Case Blue or the invasions of Crete and Yugoslavia, you know, ones that actually worked, didn't rely on stealing shit from the enemy.
>Thus Rommel actually went above and beyond his call of duty and achieved more than anyone else could have. An eventual victory in North Africa was nigh impossible to achieve but he got as close to it as anyone possibly could have.
He got nowhere close. His orders weren't to "achieve total victory in North Africa" they were to "preserve a presence in Cyrenica for as long as possible and as cheaply as possible." He disobeyed orders and prudence because he was a glory hound.
>Furthermore, his eventual failure in North Africa might not have been so grim had the Germans put more resources into the Mediteranean, altough I can understand how they felt that the italians should handle that part.
They couldn't put more resources in the Mediterranean. What the fuck do you think the importance of supply movement was all about? Rommel quite literally couldn't transport the 1.8 million tons of shit he had hanging around in Tripoli to where he put the front line fast enough to matter. You give him more troops, and they just starve and run out of fuel faster. The limiting factor was transport, and more commitment doesn't give you more transport.
>What? He quite literally ignored his orders and went on pointless offensives that went against his strategic goals. He could have done a lot better if he kept his pursuits on a short leash.
He saw the bigger picture. Rommel, like a lot of people back then, knew that the key to defeating the British lay in taking Malta and the Suez canal. Defending Libya would only prolong Germany's defeat.
>It worked out great in one instance, in France, where the French surrendered.
It was tried many times more throughout the war and while I agree it's retarded the Germans had no other option. It was either that or starve to death - they did not have the industry to sustain a world war.
>I would point out that operations like Barbarossa and Case Blue or the invasions of Crete and Yugoslavia, you know, ones that actually worked, didn't rely on stealing shit from the enemy.
The aim of Barbarossa was to capture Moscow, thus it failed.
>He got nowhere close. His orders weren't to "achieve total victory in North Africa" they were to "preserve a presence in Cyrenica for as long as possible and as cheaply as possible."
As I said already, Rommel went above and beyond those orders because he saw the bigger picture - visions other germans lacked (see; The Entire War)
>They couldn't put more resources in the Mediterranean.
False. There is plenty they could have done. More trucks, more ships, aerial drops, etc. etc.
The krauts just didn't see the bigger picture.
>He saw the bigger picture. Rommel, like a lot of people back then, knew that the key to defeating the British lay in taking Malta and the Suez canal. Defending Libya would only prolong Germany's defeat.
Idiots believed that, because
A) Malta only had operational value for stuff in the Mediterranean itself (Rommel, by the way, was opposed to taking out the time to secure Malta)
B) Suez is far out of reach and quite honestly worthless for the Germans in a positive sense, only valuable insofar as it denies the British access.
C) That the key to winning the war was knocking out Russia, which is why they had about 600 times the German troops committed to it that they did to North Africa.
>It was tried many times more throughout the war and while I agree it's retarded the Germans had no other option. It was either that or starve to death - they did not have the industry to sustain a world war.
They only had enough industry to churn out almost 100,000 planes and 46,000 tanks. Were they outbuilt? Sure, they were. But they were fucking able to build supplies for their own forces.
>The aim of Barbarossa was to capture Moscow, thus it failed.
No it wasn't.
>As I said already, Rommel went above and beyond those orders because he saw the bigger picture - visions other germans lacked (see; The Entire War)
The "entire war" in 1941 is Russia and planning for it. Rommel's job is to keep Italy from collapsing in Cyrenica while freeing as much as possible to hit the Russians with. He did not do this, because almost immediately, he started demanding more support.
>False. There is plenty they could have done. More trucks, more ships, aerial drops, etc. etc.
dtic.mil
You're an idiot. More trucks means more fuel and spare parts necessary to keep the trucks going. More ships are meaningless without more harbor space to unload cargo at. A Ju-52 can't make it from Taranto, or wherever your base in Italy is to the frontline near Tobruk. So that means dragging it over to North Africa, where it again means that it starts consuming fuel, and spare parts, and people to fix things, and adds to your logistical tail, not shortens it.
>The krauts just didn't see the bigger picture.
They did, actually. Guys like Halder saw the bigger picture, and fucking told it to Rommel. Rommel, either because he was an idiot or a vainglorious bastard who put his own career ahead of the war, didn't listen and didn't care.
We've already had this discussion a million times on Veeky Forums. I'm providing an alternate point of view on Rommel. Rommel saw that the only chance of complete victory was aggression and he took it. To defend would be to prolong defeat.
Yes, and the Rommelaboos are wrong, no matter how many times they keep crying thier nonsense.
Rommel saw that the only opportunity in a tertiary theater was to embark on a number of shockingly low odds offensives instead of realizing that he's fighting in a tertiary front in a multi-front war and his job isn't to try to be the spearhead, which should be obvious since all the operational advantages belong to his enemy, not him.
He wasn't some visionary. He was a moron when it came to strategy. He was quite literally told about the flaws in his plans and just shrugged them off, saying it was someone else's problem.
...
>Yes, and the Rommelaboos are wrong, no matter how many times they keep crying thier nonsense.
I've already pointed out why I think he's unjustly hated on Veeky Forums. People seem to have little grasp upon which facts his decisions were made and instead judge everything from Hindsight, as is evident with your views.
He saw the bigger picture. Nobody else did.
>I've already pointed out why I think he's unjustly hated on Veeky Forums.
Yes, because you think that it could have worked and was worth trying.
>People seem to have little grasp upon which facts his decisions were made and instead judge everything from Hindsight, as is evident with your views.
No, I am working with the facts that he had at the moment.
He has no means of successfully driving the British to Suez. When told of this by Halder, he brushes it off as "someone else's pigeon".
He knows that there is a massive, massive campaign coming up in Russia before he's shipped out, and will start soon after his own campaign does. He knows that this, the one with almost 4 million men, will decide the war, not 2 German and a handful of Italian divisions dueling in the desert. He ought to know that his job is to prevent a collapse so that the war can be won on the main front, like they taught him in school, rather than trying to win the war on a tertiary front.
He knows, or should know, that even if he does somehow take Suez, he has no political leverage to force that victory, as improbable as it is, into forcing a British surrender, he knows (or should know) that he doesn't have the naval forces to break out of the Suez Canal in the case that they do in fact take it, and he knows, or should know, that the Middle-East can be reinforced by India and British possessions in Asia, meaning he has to do more campaigning along even worse supply lines to secure anything that his forces can actually use.
>He saw the bigger picture. Nobody else did.
He ignored the actual bigger picture, which was to try to win the war in Europe, so that he could play glory hog and go off on impossible offensives.
>Yes, because you think that it could have worked and was worth trying.
Don't be an idiot, I know how stupid people are on Veeky Forums but OP didn't.
>No, I am working with the facts that he had at the moment.
No.
So bad. Hitler's leadership from Barbarossa until the end of the war made everything easier for the Soviets.
>Don't be an idiot, I know how stupid people are on Veeky Forums but OP didn't.
Are you OP? I was under the impression the guy who wrote posts was not.
>No.
So what? Halder didn't tell him that he didn't have the logistical capability to sustain an offensive? Because I'm pretty sure you can find that exact comment in the abovementioned link, page 7 of the PDF.
Did he or did he not know about the war in Russia?
Did he or did he not know about the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean?
Did he, or did he not know that as he advanced further east, the British kept having more and more men, because they actually had the means to supply them nearer to their own nodes of support, meaning that as he tried to go further still, it would get worse and worse?
None of that shit is hindsight.
>So what? Halder didn't tell him that he didn't have the logistical capability to sustain an offensive?
As said, this could have been overcome.
What he does know is that securing Suez and Cairo will cripple the British. Doing nothing will secure German defeat. He knew what we know today; Germany could not win a war of attrition.
What he did not know was how incapable the italians and germans would be in securing him supplies and winning him battles.
Nathan Bedford Forrest. Enlisted as a private and rose through the ranks during the war. Mobile warfare get there the firstest with the mostest
>As said, this could have been overcome.
No it could not have. You can't just make railroads appear, or new ports, not in the timeframe that you have before the Brits build up to insurmountable proportions. No matter how much you send, the Brits can send more. There is no victory.
>What he does know is that securing Suez and Cairo will cripple the British.
Really? What value is Cairo? What value is Suez except insofar as to supply Egypt which would necessarily have fallen come you taking Suez?
>What he did not know was how incapable the italians and germans would be in securing him supplies and winning him battles.
They sent him hundreds of thousands of tons of supply that he never used, because he couldn't haul it out of Tripoli. Which is again, something he knew from the outset, that there weren't railroads or sufficient infrastructure.
And those "incapable italians" did better than his Germans when it came to actually attacking Tobruk. When things were going well, he couldn't stop singing their praises.
>No it could not have. You can't just make railroads appear, or new ports, n
See above.
>They sent him hundreds of thousands of tons of supply that he never used, because he couldn't haul it out of Tripoli.
See above.
>See above.
What above? You keep insisting "it could be done" while not providing any actual support to that idea. Yes, you could send Rommel more trucks and planes. Those trucks and planes would need to be supplied, they don't fix his long term problems, which are again going to get worse as he heads towards the Nile and to Suez.
Exactly, there are ways around these logistical problems.
Then why'd he spend time fucking around in North Africa, if there's always a way around logistical issues?
Because the British beat him back.
Why did he bother fighting them there at all? Why not attack India directly? Or the United States? Or the Moon?
Can you read?
Sending him more ancillary equipment wouldn't help his logistical problems because said ancillary equipment starts consuming supply.
To really solve his problems, you need to either win the naval war (which wasn't happening any time soon) so you can send supplies to forward ports assuming the British don't blow them all up, or to build a railroad, which takes about 6 years you don't have.
Exactly, as I said there are ways.
I agree, especially because he was pursuing a routing enemy. He really just wanted to get his sword bloody at the end of the battle, despite the omens.
Although the wound you are describing was a gunshot wound to the chest, the survival rates for that during that time were very low
Salty Rommelboos incoming.
Not practical ones. Certainly not ones in which it is Rommel's power to perform. And definitely not ones he tried to do before launching his offensives and deciding someone else will deal with his mess.
>how did he rehabilitate himself?
By the german rmy pushing Stalin's shit in and big Jossif needed men. He saw that Roskossovsky never ever broke down during is interrogations and at no point admitted the made up charges brought against him.
He literally made a name for himself rresh out of the gulag. The guy deserves all the credit he gets.
Yes, he was THAT good as a general. His problem was that he lacked support from high command. If he had gotten what he wanted/needed, things would have gotten very interesting.
What's that? could it be? It's the sandy prima-donna!
>His problem was that he lacked support from high command. If he had gotten what he wanted/needed, things would have gotten very interesting.
You mean, if he got what he wanted, there'd be even more supplies piled up in Tripoli while his forces went without food, fuel, and ammo.
Muh nigger.
>Calls Monty a prima-donna
>Posts an image of the worlds biggest attention whore
Nonsense. Patton was nowhere near the level of attentionwhore that Mark Clark was.
I'll give you that one. Clark was literally "notice me senpai" personified.
Shit taste
Rommel was an incompetent who couldn't win against drunkard and loony Montgomery
Fuck off
Based
Mosby
>youngest Lord's Commander of the Night's Watch
>Valyrian steel sword
>noble af blood
>defended the Wall from the wildlings
>singlehandedly brokered peace with the Freefolk
>captured Ramsay Bolton
Now that I think about it though, Hardhome could probably be called a loss and he definitely would've lost the Battle of the Bastards if he wasn't rescued.
...
Nothing is practical to those that will not try. Truth is Rommel came closer to defeating the brits than any other.
...
get all that feel good bullshit out of here. Rommel's orders were to hold the line in libya, not to knock out the brits in a place where they had better supplies and far more troops, but rather to conduct a defensive war.
he was the only person who ever tried to stop ww2.
Sick maymay redditfriend!
him
>had a subpar army compared to Rome, composed of various nations, Carthagians, allies and Iberian/Celtic barbarian mercenaries
>succesfully crossed the Alpes with his African army, a move never have been done before
>cunning and genious tactician, beat the Romans, the best of his time in spite of inferior numbers and quality (Lake Trasimenus, Cannae)
>Scipio Africanus
If you mentioned one Roman, then it should be Julius Caesar, not that Hannibal copycat.
t. Hasdrubal
This.
>Used Wagons to stop cavalry charges
>Troops use handguns
>Undefeated
Why do fucking cancerous Redditors always accuse me, someone who's never visited reddit, of being a Redditor?
>I have no answers so I'll shout slogans.
He came nowhere close to defeating the British. Hell, he took more losses in his see-saw battles than he inflicted.
He certainly didn't efficiently use his forces, and his offensive posture demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the wider war. No, it wasn't practical.
Why do you suck his dick so hard?
Don't forget Rommel lost as many troops as Paulus, with none of the difficulties Paulus was facing.
To be fair, he was facing his own set of difficulties; if you're talking about the fall of Tunis and the mass capture there, he even recommended that his position not be reinforced and that they pull out by that point, as the Allied position in North Africa was overwhelming. That one I have trouble blaming on him.