Ranking the Best and Worst Commanders of WWII

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There we go. Yes. Jeez. But the first one would be Yamamoto and Nogumukat's
the easiest one of all of them for me.
All right. So are you ready? I'm good. Let's go.
Hello, everybody. This is Craig from the Pacific War Channel,
where we cover the entire history of the Asia-Pacific War from 1937 all the
way up to 1945 and all the major events led up to it. Joined yet again by my

(00:22):
co-host, Gaurav. How are you?
Hey, Craig. Wonderful to be back. I'm really excited for today's episode since
we are taking a bit of a change in what we are presenting.
Definitely. This is going to be very different from anything we've done in the past.
The best way to describe this, it's not like a tier list because I think,
I don't know what this title will be for this episode.

(00:43):
It's going to come off as a tier list, but this is a full podcast of us just
discussing who we generally think were the best commanders, whether it be admirals or generals.
And who are the worst for each nation during World War Two? And I mean,
not every nation. We're not going to touch like Thailand and stuff,
but, you know, for the big ones.
And it's the list that we came up with kind of splits it a little bit evenly

(01:07):
between Europe and the Pacific.
But stating all of that before we jump into it, I just want to let the audience
know that whether you're listening to this on any of the podcast platforms or
perhaps you're watching this as a YouTube video.
The best way to support me at this moment is to check out
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(01:28):
you get access to the exclusive patreon podcast over there
it's about 25 plus episodes and going one each
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make and you get voting rights for the subjects that i'll
tackle next and usually if you comment anything in there
about what you want to hear about i'll just simply do that as the
next episode i can just i

(01:49):
will just add this i kept pestering craig for
the podcast on the uss enterprise yeah yeah yeah yeah and he delivered and it
was a long one was that two part yeah i think yeah yeah it was too long yeah
it's way too long because i mean you choose he chose the ship that probably
has one of the longest histories and in the history of ships ships.

(02:09):
But that was an interesting one.
The enterprises are very, very, I mean, I guess it is the most impressive warship,
probably 20 battle, 20 battle stars, presidential unit citation,
Navy unit citation, the only ship to get to that level.
And on top of that, it took an incredible beating multiple times and still came back.

(02:34):
It's very impressive. But to I guess to explain not the rules,
but how we're going to go about this.
There's a long list of unique characters, we're going to try and do about five minutes per.
So and of course, there's honorable mentions, we had a hard time actually picking
and choosing, I admit, it's hard, it's much more difficult to choose who's the worst.

(02:54):
And that doesn't mean that they're bad generals, by the way,
this, we're just trying to find someone who people generally think is the worst.
And we're not trying to put no name really like small
commanders that nobody knows about because that would just be
obnoxious like you know we're not
putting a brigadier or equivalent we are
looking at grand commanders i guess for the lack of a better term but yeah just

(03:19):
so that we're we're clear we are not including anybody that's played a political
role yes we're not going to do chan kai shek churchill and all Hitler, Churchill.
Yeah, they're they're not considered here, even though these guys had a key
role to play in major strategic decisions.
And I think the same thing can be said for commanders who are just too large.

(03:44):
Like, for example, Admiral United States, Ernest King, it would be hard to put
him in this list because he controlled, you know, everything.
Everything vice versa for you know certain other commanders made some exceptions for,
commanders who still fit that kind of mold but still had such an impact so we'll
get to those i want to give away the list but we're going to tackle this i guess

(04:06):
nation by nation so gaurav what's the uh the first one we're going to hit so
it's starting off with the pacific war and,
we by our ranking the generator has come for three so we are just starting off
with the imperial real Japanese Navy.
We have two obvious choices who also detested each other. Let's not forget that.

(04:31):
Ironically, they did. I mean, I don't know from Yamamoto's side.
I don't know how much he would have hated him, but I've,
And I just gave away. So for the best Admiral, stereotypically,
I wanted to put Admiral Yamamoto. This is my pick.
We could have picked someone like Mikawa, but Mikawa made a lot of mistakes technically too.

(04:52):
And yeah, Yamamoto did also. I think I have to pick Yamamoto.
I would say I was really split between only Yamamoto and Admiral Ozawa.
Ozawa too, yeah. Well, Ozawa was also probably one of their best naval commanders.
He was not effective because we see him get defeated at the Philippine Sea, later Gulf.

(05:17):
But that's not completely his fault, given the state of...
For that, but I think he was probably the only competent naval air officer left
in Japan at that time. It's true.
But for those who probably already know the things that are going to be said,
why would Yamamoto be considered, on the part of Japan, the best admiral?

(05:42):
He was innovative. Innovative. Despite what people think, he was actually part of the Big Guns Club.
So even though he was the guy that destroyed the Big Guns Club,
and for those who don't know, that was this belief that battleships were the
most important naval vessel during early half of World War II,
and that their destruction would mean the destruction of the enemy's navy.
So if you take out the capital ships, those battleships, you can probably just

(06:06):
safely do surface engagements and then control whatever area of the sea you need to.
Admiral Yamamoto, however, was one of those who really pioneered the use of
aircraft carriers, and particularly offensively. While, you know,
pre-war doctrine, there was a lot of different ideas about what carriers were
actually going to do, how they would function.

(06:26):
There was a lot of people who believed they were only useful for transporting
aircraft over to an island.
So go figure on that. But of course, it was Admiral Yamamoto who took a little bit.
You can't say he took inspiration from the Battle of Toronto,
but when he was trying to pitch it to the general staff, his idea to attack
Pearl Harbor, the success the British had at the Battle of Toronto definitely tipped the scales.

(06:49):
There was a lot of hurdles that Yamamoto had to, you know, go over in order
to do the things that he did.
And I thought it was kind of funny. i almost wanted to
put him as both the best and the
worst admiral on this list because he was his
own enemy he was brilliant he
knew how to make plans thoroughly he although he

(07:11):
wanted people to follow them you know tooth and nail yeah but
they were overly complex as anybody knows more
units going in different places with timetables
you're asking for errors to happen and
one of those errors like dominoes can make everything crash and burn
it's great when it works out when it doesn't you get
midway and that's kind of like the story about yamamoto but you have to take

(07:37):
you know step back a minute for all the faults at the end of his tenure the
first six months of the pacific war was basically his baby he made most of that and he i'll just add.
One thing while we do see him as one of
the earliest proponents of using the
carriers aggressively so amongst nations

(07:58):
that had aircraft carriers the u.s
and japan ultimately headed what proved to be the correct decision
of carrier use in having the
maximum aircraft capacity british carriers were better armored
and protected at the cost
of you know capacity but yamamoto was
the first guy to not only go for naval aviation but he

(08:21):
also helped in the development of japan's medium bombers with long range and
the torpedo attack planes yeah he did push for that as well so you gotta give
it like a lot of japan's capable air strength where until towards the end of 1942 42, early 43.
They seemed the dominant force in the Pacific was thanks to him.

(08:45):
His, and again, another fault that he had on top of the complexity of the plans that he made was, well,
the grand finale of the entire war strategy of the Japanese was a decisive naval
battle that he had basically inherited kind of from, you would say, his,
his predecessor who had won the battle of Tashima, who had, I think,
a large impact on Yamamoto.

(09:07):
Admiral Tojo, right? Yeah. He never got over that idea that it was absolutely necessary.
And of course, it's logical, it made sense, but it was kind of like a curse upon him.
And then it was a curse upon the guy that would, you know, fill his boots after.
Kept chasing that decisive naval battle, and
it really hindered the way that they were doing their operations after the first

(09:28):
year of the war but for the first six months the way that he had planned out
every single operation it went pretty damn well i mean as complex as it was
and if you look at the planning of the first six months the pacific war it's
absolutely it's it's just chaos it's insane the scope but he pulled it off.
It's it's actually a testament not only to him but even the army i'll have to

(09:52):
say for the first six months you you're invading the very specific islands you're
invading hong kong Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, the Dutch Indies, and Philippines.
And as you will know the best, Japan still has kept like 70% of its committed armed forces in China.
So they're playing with a small hand.

(10:15):
Yeah, they had about right at the beginning of the onslaught,
they had about 52 divisions.
They had to keep at minimum 35 in China. and they were very limited with what
they could work with and they pulled it off.
And it was a huge gamble that ultimately didn't pay off.
But it goes without saying that as far as the Japanese admirals are concerned,

(10:38):
I would still put him as the top.
There are honorable mentions like I mentioned, Mikawa had a very, very...
Great success during the solomon
islands campaign and but unfortunately i
wouldn't put him i wouldn't put him at the top because later on
in his career he actually had a lot of mistakes and i really

(10:59):
think that they're kind of not very forgivable and i just don't think it would
be appropriate to put mikao at the top place but i think that yeah yeah and
i would just say ozawa would have come but given the hand that he was dealt
when he took command command of the the Kitabudai, the Combined Fleet's carriers,
there really wasn't any chance of victory.

(11:22):
Yeah. Now for everybody, I guess, who's not surprised, for the worst commander,
and this doesn't mean that he was a terrible admiral or anything.
I don't think anybody really on this list is terrible.
It's just we have to pick somebody. And I have to pick somebody that anybody
would kind of know them. It's, of course, Admiral Nagumo.
I'll just add one thing before you get into the details for the audience.

(11:42):
We're just ranking them relative to their peers achievements yeah yeah pretty like so.
So the american land force commanders of
europe are only traded to their own peers it's not
comparing it to the germans or
the british or soviets for example yeah it's

(12:03):
apples and oranges really is especially when you're dealing
with like let's say the united states marine corps versus army units
have fought in like france it's very different but for
admiral nagamo it's it go it's obvious to
say that he had a very extensive and
long career he was by no means
terrible but something that a lot of the people around him his colleagues would

(12:26):
say before the pacific war had hit he actually was quite old he seemed to be
kind of losing it a bit and this kind of plays into why why he was not a great
admiral for certain events of World War II.
Now, for the first six months, you know, he was part of some of the greatest
events. You know, there's the attack on Pearl Harbor.

(12:47):
There's Admiral Nagamo, who did the Indian Ocean Raid, which kind of stays a
little bit of a mixed bag, to be honest.
He raided Darwin. That was a very, very successful raid.
He didn't call for the third strike at Pearl Harbor, which is something a lot
of people blame him for, but that's actually not something I would blame him for.
It was actually the right call
at the time. There was a lot of variables that people aren't aware of.

(13:08):
He... Due to the fact that the Americans by now had completely woken up from
the shock and the casualties would have mounted heavily and there were not many
good targets left since the carriers were never at the harbor.
Yeah, and I already know that people are probably screaming into their headsets
about the oil oil tanks at Pearl Harbor, despite which you believe those oil

(13:28):
tanks could have never been destroyed by medium bombers.
So the type of bombers that were coming off of the, you know,
carrier borne bombers, excuse me, they didn't have the ability to take out any
of these oil tanks and the fire teams could have put out any fires that might
have erupted and they would not have spread from tank to tank.
These small bombs that they were carrying just wasn't capable of it.
Needless to say, just like you had brought up, the casualties in the second

(13:51):
wave were actually getting pretty bad.
And like you said, Pearl Harbor was waking up. It had a very formidable anti-aircraft
force like they weren't sitting ducks.
They had been caught by surprise, but they were now waking up.
There was also the issue of the American carriers that were hunting them down.
I actually I think if for some reason Nagamo did stay, probably would have destroyed those carriers.

(14:11):
So they might have played into his hand a bit, but he would have lost an incredible
amount of veteran pilots, more aircraft.
And there was a huge danger that they would be kind of stuck in the middle of
the sea without the ability to refuel and get out of there quickly.
And remember, Pearl Harbor was just a piece of the cog of many places that were going to be hit.

(14:31):
So his force was actually on its way to do other operations right after.
But the reason why he's on the list, I think it's not a surprise to anybody,
is the famous incident at the Battle of Midway.
The dilemma? Yeah. Now, it's actually not 100% his fault, by the way.
The situation he he was put in was bad, but to go into the history of Nagamo just a little bit, he was,

(14:54):
I don't know what you want to call it. It's very conservative,
very old fashioned commander.
He needed orders given to him and he felt he would just follow them to the T.
And if you had a manual on the doctrine of the day and exactly what you do,
he would follow it like a bureaucrat.
He was not the kind of guy that, you know, on the fly would make decisions that

(15:14):
were different or spontaneous.
He really just fit the mold of you have to do what doctrine is.
And ironically, his enemy did the opposite at Midway.
The americans chaotically began throwing
piecemeal formations at the japanese carriers
nagamo he wanted to do what was proper in the imperial japanese navy that was
full complement strike yeah exactly another mistake that he made unfortunately

(15:40):
was as much as he hated yamamoto and didn't believe it was a good idea the midway
operation he was very much against it it's kind
of ironic in a lot of ways, he made some errors when he was sending his spotters out.
He could have he actually could have done a lot more. And that's something that
a lot of historians would say afterwards.
He wasn't using like certain float spotting planes from certain amounts of his

(16:01):
warships for whatever reason he had chosen.
And he was extremely on edge when he was getting the first reports that there
seemed to be enemy carriers in the vicinity.
He you know he waited for clarification while
the men around him were kind of like we are currently equipped
for hitting land targets so they had their heavy

(16:22):
explosive bombs not their torpedoes for example what do
we do if we switch it's going to take this
amount of time we're going to be vulnerable should we keep things on deck as
like there was a lot of choices that could have been made and this is what unfortunately
unfortunately for him also the set the strike that was sent against midway was
also returning and these guys are at the end of their endurance.

(16:46):
In terms of flying time so they also
have to land and you cannot japanese aircraft
carriers could not do both takeoff
and landing operation at the same time nope though
at the same time it was a lot of landing faults
also at a grand level because there was

(17:06):
no way you could have taken midway with the first couple of
strikes that they said no of course not and then
i mean actually physically invading midway was
a joke the men that would have got off the ships they would have been butchered
there was no chance of actually taking the island i don't think yamamoto believe
either they could have bombarded the hell out of it made it a hellscape but
they weren't going to actually take the island itself probably dislodge the

(17:29):
americans eventually but for nagamo he he was He was indecisive for minutes.
And in that time span when he was, I mean, it cost him the key to putai in the end.
Mind you, the situation he was put in was a lose-lose situation regardless.
He kind of didn't have a...
There was not much he could do but he he made the situation he definitely made

(17:52):
the situation worse and it had a lot to do with his adherence to doctrine and
inability to really think on the fly,
and actually people will also tell you the the
physical situation where he was basically stuck in
this room with all of his colleagues like breathing down his neck
a lot of people historians have said this if he
could have just gone outside took a breather and came back in it might have

(18:14):
helped because he was it was a very tense situation but
uh i definitely yeah i definitely think that
puts him as the worst admiral for this one that's pretty
much all i have to say about it yeah and in
the end also he would command the the keto
butai the battle of the eastern solomons which was his last active

(18:34):
command and he was criticized for that too yeah yeah
wasn't really a successful raid or attack even though the US took a bigger beating
but it was not decisive enough and he was pretty much relegated from naval command
active naval command and yeah you don't see him commanding anything substantial.

(18:55):
For the rest of the war I know he dies on Saipan where he's posted as a commanding
officer but the IJA has command over there yeah his choice to kill himself self on Saipan.
I mean, of course, that is doctrine, ironically, for this guy.
But it also robbed Japan of another high-ranking, knowledgeable admiral who

(19:17):
could have, you know, done something for the last few naval battles, who knows.
So, I don't know, kind of bad on him again.
But stating all of that, are you going to punch out that randomizer machine
and tell us who we're targeting next?
Okay, so this is probably an interesting one. We still stay in the Pacific war
but we moved to the united kingdom oh so we're talking about so i'm looking

(19:44):
at the list as well two generals in question yeah okay i can see yeah so we want to start off with,
the best first yeah let's do it yeah i think first yeah it makes sense yeah
let's go for the best first so for the united kingdom in the pacific and i think
a lot of people are going to roll their eyes because he gets a lot of, you know, glamour now.

(20:06):
But of course, it's General William Slim, who was predominantly leading forces
in the CBI in the Burma campaign.
Who was somebody who had a very extensive career and I'd have to say kind of
looked over often as well.
And I guess in a lot of ways, he kind of pissed some of his superiors off because

(20:26):
he wasn't treated that well for a while.
Anyways, it seems like it was the case whenever I was reading about him.
But it's hard not to put him up because just from a character point of view,
He really increased morale for the men around him.
He was... I just saw this. Sorry to interrupt.
He joined the military in 1914, but only became a colonel just before the outbreak of World War II.

(20:54):
And he was commissioned as an officer. So it took him 25 years to just reach
the rank of colonel. Yeah, that's true.
And he starts off in World War II with the East African campaign,
which you know he dabbles in the middle east as well
and he uh he actually he brushes shoulders
with the uh the crazy onion man if anybody knows about

(21:16):
wingate he brushes shoulders first with
him he'll meet him in burma later too slim didn't actually say much bad stuff
about wingate he was one of the few guys who didn't talk shit about him but
slim you know he finds himself in command of the burma corps eventually and
even before that he has a lot of guys who are his superiors who make disastrous choices.

(21:38):
And there's actually interpersonal problems between Slim and some of these guys,
like Noel, for example, at the Arakan campaign. Noel Urban.
And I don't think Babel, for quite a while, did not even have a good opinion
of him when he took over at the comp.
It was mostly, if I'm not mistaken, it
was Alan Brooke that really kind of imposed forced or forced the arrivals of

(22:05):
alexander slim to burma in the middle of 1942 yeah i think laval didn't like
him specifically about some of the performance in east africa in the middle east,
which is weird because i don't slim didn't do a bad job by any means and it
was interesting to take somebody who had kind of specialized in desert warfare
and then threw them in burma was a bold I really babbled I don't like him because Slim was part of.

(22:33):
And they went over to iraq and
since all was the guy that replaced him yeah maybe
that that was it but yeah it was a strange thing having a desert expert come
into the jungles of burma yeah and northeast india and as anybody who understands
the burma campaign and it's a hell of a campaign it's very long knows the beginning

(22:57):
of the burma campaign is is just the japanese absolutely dominating.
And so Slim comes into a command where they're just always on the run.
It's it's absolutely insane.
And there's a huge blame game. And as I mentioned, the figure Noel Irwin,
they blame each other for a lot of the failures,
even though I think it's pretty unanimous to say that Noel Irwin had greatly

(23:19):
messed up and it was really his fault for a lot of it but uh slim did a lot
to kind of reinvigorate and retrain the troops and instills like.
Instill some beliefs in them that or actually break
some beliefs in them about the japanese because at some point in the early part
of the pacific war the japanese were actually seen as being kind of like superhuman

(23:42):
because they were quote jungle fighting experts that could fight at night and
of course they were training for such things but it was uh commanders like slim Slim that tried to,
you know, explain how you fight such an enemy like this,
how you make sure you don't get hooked around,
get scared because there's like a few Japanese to your rear.

(24:02):
Because, you know, the Japanese love to take small units, get around you to
scare you like like it's a big unit that's coming to encircle your forces.
And, you know, he taught he taught his men how to, like, fight that off a little bit.
Kind of like dispel the fog of myth.
Just making the storm up, you know, break the myth. I do remember reading this,

(24:24):
when Slim comes over and Ock is reappointed into India,
that then these guys lead the revamp of the British Indian Army,
such as, you know, increasing the pay, command structure to have more officers
promoted from within, and with the typical British doctrine that we saw throughout

(24:44):
World War II of weeding out bad generals.
Yeah, definitely. one thing I remember is really what the slim insisted,
your support personnel of the army also get basic combat training.
Yeah, exactly. So not only your frontline troops who are getting trained extra
to fight better in the jungle, even like your cooks,

(25:08):
the admin staff are told you better be prepared to fight in a fire line with
your rifles and grenades because the Japanese can hook around.
So you got to be able to at least hold off
till the proper reinforcements arrive yeah initially
not very popular with these soldiers or i call the military personnel if you

(25:28):
don't want to use soldier for a non-fighting army person yeah but it it helped
hold position yeah and as you said it reinvigorated the army the.
The belief came back the fighting gives
capacity increased and it's almost

(25:50):
as much as a psychological game as much
as it is real blood and guts yeah and
you know infamously the force that he led would
become known as the forgotten army and even
slim himself he didn't see much limelight until
quite a while when historians started to write some books about
his work but he oversaw some of

(26:11):
the most brutal parts of the second world war
i mean the burma campaign was horrendous and even
though the allies were being pushed back at the beginning half he managed
to do a good fighting withdrawal and retain as much
of the forces as possible so that they could be retrained in
india and such and he would not pioneer box

(26:31):
defense but he used defensive boxes quite.
Well and particularly you know when.
You see the battle like one of the later battles at impal impal.
It's uh i'd say it's kind of his highest
point was when he thwarted what was a monstrous attack
by mutaguchi who might
be on this list later mind you it was very impressive he

(26:54):
was able to do what he did and i'd say everybody has
a favorable view on slam very
few people have anything bad to say about him and that says a
lot i will have to acknowledge acknowledged
one thing and it kills me to say this i don't know
if you're aware of this by the way but while slim
was in i believe it was australia there's i

(27:16):
believe well the post-war career right
i actually think this was during world war ii but
there's accusation there's accusations that he might have
sexually assaulted boys and i've
looked this up because someone brought this to my attention actually like a
year ago and apparently a lot of

(27:37):
people came forward i think in the late 90s or something and they
have stories to tell i don't see why anybody would lie
about such a thing especially about a character who's really beloved
mind you so i think that does besmirch him
but that has nothing to do with his generalship so i'm going to treat it separate
because it's not quite something even i read about them but we here is just

(28:01):
let's just keep it that we are respecting what he accomplished as a military
commander for the 14th Army.
Yes, and I think that pretty much covers SLIM. Do you want to go on to the worst?
I think it's not really going to be a surprise as well who we take it for the
worst. I mean, there is a lot of choices.

(28:22):
Yeah, but I think it's not really going to shock anyone that we have taken General
Arthur Percival to be the Worst British commander in the Pacific theater. Oh, this poor guy.
Ever since the fall of Singapore, he gets dunked on for life. Yeah.

(28:42):
I'm not going to say it's really fully his fault.
But overall, one, Churchill's strategy of focusing on Europe was naturally meant
the diversion of resources.
So aid coming to the Middle East, the Far East, would be swallowed up first
by the Middle East and then come their way.

(29:05):
At the same time, I believe Robert Brooke Popham,
him the who was at the
time percival's boss for lack of a better term since he commanded all british
possessions in this area he did not really believe in the weaknesses of the
fortress of singapore so singapore was a very powerful fortress that the british possessed with,

(29:31):
malaysia under british control they believed any attack would come from the
sea where if it did Yeah, you know, the Japanese are going to take a really nasty beating.
However, that's exactly why Japan went via Thailand and came down from Malaysia from the north.
Because they realized the northern defenses of Singapore are exposed.

(29:53):
And Percival also would be very guilty of having, you know, that misfaith in
the fortress of Singapore.
But i guess we want to start off with
him is a lot of mismanagement when it came to the
malayan campaign he i mean
of course but what yamashita did was outstanding and they hit him hard they

(30:14):
hit them very quick and they're using mobility but especially with the reluctance
of the way that he went about defending or not defending the airfields in the
north you know he kept like for For the audience to try and understand,
if you're looking at a map of Malaysia at the time.
Percival just kind of gradually withdrew everything in the north and pulled

(30:38):
further and further south.
But this reduced the perimeter of which his aircraft could extend and attack.
And he did this, I would argue, a little bit too quickly. And he basically handed
the Japanese air supremacy from the offset.
And of course, the Japanese had much more aircraft than the British and the
British were going to lose it regardless.
Regardless but it didn't have to go away so fast he

(31:00):
was not mistaken he did like how
we saw with general neil ritchie he did not seem
to have full authority over his divisional
commanders no he didn't they as
as the army commander he can enforce that
authority to hold them down you see strong leaders

(31:22):
like say a pattern of montgomery who can force that authority down on their
divisional commanders brigade commanders well civil never really had that and
a lot of the time his commanders withdrew even before really informing him they
by the time the message reaches him they are already withdrawing.

(31:42):
And from what I remember of the Kings and Generals series in the week by week,
it's not that the Japanese have even come in a force larger than a couple of
battalions against the division.
He's already been like the division has been drawing. That's crazy.
I'm now realizing that we are going so over time.

(32:05):
We thought we were going to do five minutes per character, but I'm going to
kind of brutally summarize personally.
So he he continuously allows his
men to withdraw and he makes i don't want
to say he's defeatist but he would he withdrawed a
little too quickly in a lot of the main battles in malaysia and when they finally
pull back into singapore kind of and it's all it's actually a bit of a myth

(32:27):
yamashita famously performs this bluff where he has like one third the amount
of forces he actually doesn't have the artillery shells to be able to really take Singapore.
And he basically he demands that Percival surrenders. He gives off the appearance
that, you know, they're more than capable of taking Singapore at any time.

(32:47):
And he tries to like scare Singapore and put him into a corner.
He tries to scare Percival and put him into a corner.
And when Percival is overlooking the defense of Singapore itself,
his commanders kind of just a lot of them go renegade and screw things
up and he has no real control of it he retained this
reserve that he never really used in the end to mine
yes it was kind of weird how he did that and ultimately he played into yamashita's

(33:12):
hand and he did give up singapore to a force that was a lot smaller than him
i mean yamashita was running out of artillery shells because yamashita just
fired everything he could to try and make the enemy think that he was just like
he had as much shells as he needed and i mean it's one of the
most i is it the most embarrassing it's considered one of the definitely one

(33:32):
of the most embarrassing moments of british military history yes and it's rare you see an army.
Besiege another three times its size and successfully take the city but i would
i would also argue because there is a lot of there's some there's something
to the myth of yamashita's bluff but it's not as it's not as clean cut as people

(33:53):
would make it to believe but But the Gibraltar of the East, it was going to fall regardless.
Percival wasn't put in a great situation, but he mishandled it to be sure.
And I think that does place him in the worst for this category.
Yeah. All right. So I think let me hit the number generator.
All right. Let's see what.

(34:14):
OK, so. All right. We go down one step. So it came up to number seven.
So we actually are now switching theaters.
Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. So we start off with, I guess, I'll call it the most well-known
belligerent of World War II in general.
We just mentioned it's Germany because I can see on the list. Yeah.

(34:35):
Okay. It is. It's Nazi Germany. So I don't think anyone's gonna be surprised.
So I'll just start off. The best general of Nazi Germany was Erich von Manstein.
And I don't think it's even close. People might talk about Rommel, but he isn't.
He's a decent general, but he's the most overrated general.

(34:58):
Yes. You could definitely make arguments maybe for, say, Gert von Rundstedt.
But I think Manstein really is the best.
I've said it so much if all these generals of world war ii all had like say
equal resources i would see manstein as the guy that comes out on top the most

(35:18):
that's a very good way to put it yeah see ultimately we know that the axis never
could match the material superiority of the allies but,
so let's not forget that manstein was on
the chief of staff for the invasion of poland
so he wasn't army he
was the chief of staff of army group south of Gertrude Rundstedt

(35:39):
and he and Guderian are
the guys that you could say are the architects for the demise of
France so a lot of
people may not know this actually it's quite well known Germany did not want
to invade France in summer of 1940 barring Hitler so a lot of the generals they

(36:00):
present the old Schlieffen plan to Hitler And he's like, come on guys, you can't do this.
But that's probably the only way you can get Hitler to back down.
However, Manstein realized that if you can get the, he and Guderian realize,
Hey, we can get the armates with the forest.
Then we can just encircle them in like classic German military tactic. We'll win.

(36:22):
So the German high command, they actually shut down Manstein a lot,
but the problem is they've not do it on Guderian.
Was then able to get everything and
like you know get the audience and then hitler and
manchester like would no doubt meet and
then you they had to drop the invasion of france

(36:44):
which as we know was resounding success for the germans a huge gamble though
going through the ardennes ferris in a single column that could have been annihilated
and yeah which was detected by the french the The French three reconnaissance
flights confirmed it, but the French command was like,
you guys are just seeing things. It's not true.

(37:08):
But, you know, just in the interest of time, I'm not going to dwell on that
because that also deserves its own story.
The French high command of World War II.
So in Operation Barbarossa, he is...
Commanding the 11th army and you know that goes into the crimean peninsula,

(37:29):
so he takes the port of sevastopol in
a siege of eight months and we're
talking about siege that did net the germans sorry cost the soviets over 320
000 casualties for that one port city that's and then there was also this battle

(37:51):
of the kerch peninsula which which, if I'm not mistaken,
did secure the Crimea for the Axis.
And it is insane that, you know, Manstein has an army of about 300,000 against
a similar-sized Soviet force.
And if you consider the reinforcements, the Axis casualties were just 39,000 men.

(38:14):
And the Soviet force was 570,000 casualties. Yeah.
It's due to this he really is at the top of the list and again while in the,
Siege of Stalingrad he did command the relief army but we know Germany was literally

(38:38):
at its supplies limitations so he could not have punched through I thought Gorin
could have got the supplies over.
Gorin could have won the war we all know that yeah single-handedly yeah
yeah he did not need
to look far but he could have just gone and won the war but
even though and unfortunately Friedrich Paulus was going to be no I will obey

(39:02):
Hitler's orders even though the most sensible decision which he and his staff
did reach the conclusion was they need to break out and link up with Manstein's
army at least there is a force and strength that can cover them.
And ultimately, that is the start of the German reversals in the East.
You can't really say Manstein did anything too wrong.

(39:25):
It is just at the limit of Germany's capacity to wage war.
And he is then, I think there were two more major campaigns.
So there is the Third Battle of Kharkov.
That was an outstanding performance by him. That's, yeah.
Yeah, he takes on a force three times his size and inflicts a brutal beating on them again.

(39:52):
Probably why Hitler would have put him in charge of the Kursk operation or Operation
Citadel as we know it, which would be the biggest tank battle.
And it would also be his fall from grace to Hitler and the high command.
Yeah. so even though Kursk was
ultimately I would call it like the bait to get rid of the German armies.

(40:18):
Manstein probably had the best
idea of attacking ASAB he realized
that the Russians are building up defenses and if
you see the defenses on Kursk I don't know if there was ever any place more
fortified than what Zhukov made that stallion He wanted to attack ASAP and unfortunately

(40:39):
Hitler delayed the attack for almost two and a half months so that,
you know, the new Wunderwaffe,
the Leopard tanks are coming in force,
which ultimately they were not that great.
The tigers were better but he kind of gambled
on the leopards and by then stalin's cambridge
five spies had already supplied him the information from ultra because the british

(41:05):
were not feeding this to stalin and yeah manstein uh does what he can at the
battle of kursk but ultimately that was a battle that you know germany could
not have won i mean we still see
that the Germans give a brutal beating but they just cannot mount any offensive anymore.

(41:26):
And then he's just going to be attacked at the Dnieper and the Belgorod Kharkov offensives,
and unfortunately for him he is just going to be attacked with such overwhelming
force he just cannot he cannot win that by now the Soviets are attacking with
masses of tanks Hanks, infantry. I think he's,

(41:49):
one like the battle of the Dnieper, the Soviets are attacking with over 2.7
million soldiers, 51,000 guns, 2,800 aircraft, 2,500 tanks. You're not winning that.
Yeah. And because I think he and Hitler never really liked each other considering Manstein is like,

(42:10):
you know, the aristocracy from the old Prussian regime and Hitler's the upstart commoner to him,
he gets it's dismissed after this and doesn't have any active come on,
but I don't think any general could have had the same level of success as he did. Very true.
So, I guess just seven minutes on match time.

(42:33):
Sorry about that. I was going to say, your pick for worst, I'm looking at it.
I actually don't know this guy.
Yeah, so I've taken battle Ernest Bush as the field marshal.
Now, It was really a choice between him and General Paulus.
So Paulus, unfortunately, he does do a good battle.

(42:57):
It's just that his refusal to disobey Hitler was the only real negative to the
way he handled the battle. He fought to his style.
Naturally, we had General Chukyov who countered it. But Admiral,
sorry, General Marshall Bush, the reason he was commander of army group.

(43:22):
Center and he kind of played like a secondary role in Barbarossa and the battle
of invasions of Poland France so I'm not going to get too much into him because
it was just a supporting role but,
Operation Begratrion was one of the most decisive it was probably the battle that,
destroyed the center of the eastern front for good

(43:44):
so Zhukov is
going is going to muster a massive
force of millions as usual and we're
talking about this one having almost 4 000 tanks not even counting the self-propelled
guns 4 000 tanks and almost 8 000 aircraft by now we have the new soviet air

(44:08):
force coming and that is very capable and And ultimately, Bush isn't bad,
but he just refuses to withdraw quick enough.
And this is actually, I'll say, a problem with most of the Wehrmacht command.
They just listen to Hitler too often.

(44:30):
It's not like Rommel, who just at least realized it early enough.
Not at the right moment. he still there was a delay but compare if you see compared
to like what bush and paulus did,
you can't really say that they could
have withdrawn much sooner kept their forces intact but ultimately it's always

(44:54):
you know hitler wanted to keep the ground so what hitler wants hitler gets and
ultimately you're looking at army group center which did ultimately get up to a million people.
Almost 60% were taken casualties. Oof.
And let's not even try to get into the material losses that Germany cannot afford to replace.

(45:19):
They might have the quality, but the quantity ratio that the Allies have put
in tanks, it's easily trumping whatever the Germans have.
So, I guess that's the reason I do want to put him, but it is really,
like I said, it was a difficult choice for me between him and Paulus.

(45:40):
Paulus is kind of easy to scapegoat.
Port, this is also a massive defeat because after this, after Operation Begraduion,
Germany just had no offensive capability left in the East. It was completely finished.
And Paulus is kind of the stereotypical pick too. I mean, he's kind of,
it's overdone to shit on him. I find it's interesting that you pulled this guy out.

(46:03):
I had not even, never really heard of him. yeah I guess this is us on Germany
right now so should I hit the dice yeah sure okay so we go to we continue in
Europe we go to the United Kingdom Europe.
So do you want to introduce our boy Harold Alexander as the best British commander?

(46:26):
I agree. He is because we have been talking so much in our North African campaign series.
And of course, you know, he'd come in. I mean, he's going to be in there when
it comes to Sicily and Italy.
Yeah, he would. He definitely was a capable commander who also was capable of

(46:46):
doing everything that was necessary,
whether it be on the political front the actual generalship front and he got
to overlook a lot of i mean a lot of the greatest campaigns he even dabbled
in you know the burma campaign for you know the battle of france and dunkirk
oh yeah yeah of course dunkirk i didn't think about.
But uh i know he's your favorite so i'll leave

(47:08):
it to you i think one he
was a really good commander of men what i
really like is this was a guy that actually learned six
seven languages it seems so that all of his soldiers that
he that were in his command could approach him i remember uh i think in a book

(47:29):
when montgomery and him were appointed to take over you know the desert campaign
so montgomery is always known as monty to the troops you know with his beret and
everything you know that kind but kind
of alexander to his men they always saw
him as general alex general alexander always immaculate i think the greatest

(47:53):
trade that he showed which is i think a trade that only is matched by like the
only person that matches it is eisenhower yeah i was gonna say it's his it's
his ability to manage strong personalities.
So I think this is quite exemplified in the Sicily operation.
So he's put in command of Operation Husky, the overall commander.

(48:16):
Eisenhower's gone to plan for overlord. And his two army commanders are quite
talented, but very strong personalities in general pattern. And they work very well together.
Undoubtedly. Like peanut butter and jelly.
Yeah. You have General Patton commanding the U.S. First Army and Montgomery

(48:39):
taking command of the British Eighth Army.
And there were so many instances where he had to manage both of them and placate them.
And he does it quite effectively that no one really has any ill will towards each other.
I'm pretty sure Patton and a lot of other British and American commanders don't
really do many good things to say about Monty.

(49:01):
But i doubt anyone will say anything bad about harold alexander because he was
able to placate it and there were
some cultural differences in military doctrine that he had to overcome,
for example when he gave orders to continue on
an invasion plan of western sicily pattern was
quite furious about it and alexander was

(49:23):
quite shocked why he did not say anything in
the planning stage turns out the British you're expected as an officer even
as a junior to question your superior the orders at the planning stage when
it comes to execution then you have to do it if you've not questioned it yeah
whereas for the American military it was your general has said your commanding

(49:43):
officer has made a decision you follow through.
And from what I remember, Patton always tried to one-up Monty whenever they
visited each other's HQs on Sicily, but not really with Harold Alexander.
And I'll say this much. He got Monty to follow his orders by making it seem

(50:04):
like Montgomery came up with the plan.
But that is probably the only way it would work. And we no doubt see him lead
the charge against Kesselring.
That actually is one of the few theaters where you actually have a
good commander on both sides yes yes okay i
know kesselring was also a good bet for
the best german commander but still think

(50:27):
it's manstein's by a mile but kesselring utilized italy well and you know alexander
did do what he could unfortunately he did have general mark clark so that that
really no doubt annoyed him but But ultimately,
he was the first Allied commander to have an entire theater surrender to him

(50:50):
when Kesselring did surrender a few days before Nazi Germany's final surrender.
But again, you know, his immaculate planning skills, ability to extricate his
men from defensive positions.
So we see that in Dunkirk and Burma.
The way he, like in Burma, we know Slim and him are the guys that the British

(51:11):
Indian Army does not collapse completely.
Yeah and they withdraw mostly intact and management of strong personalities
it's to me it's a no-brainer that he should be the best it's definitely not Montgomery.
I think I find it
sad that he's remembered more fondly than
Harold Alexander when I do rate Harold much better because Montgomery is I think

(51:36):
just a marginal better than Yamamoto and expecting think then the plans to go
well if the enemy reacts how he wants yeah and uh yeah should know montgomery
is very popular right now to be fair he deserves quite a fair amount,
so for the british worst commander now while i did criticize montgomery he's not the worst,

(51:58):
he understands logistics and he can plan quite well but he just cannot strategize
on an instance and Mount Wick,
attacks or reactions it needs to be a coordinated slow assault and he's quite
good at it you know and he's very good at raising the morale of his men yes.

(52:19):
Unfortunately, the British worst commander I'm going to put is John Worker,
6th Viscount Gord, a.k.a. Lord Gord.
And this man is the commander of the British Expeditionary Force when Britain
and France were fighting for the Battle of France.

(52:40):
Now, Gord was quite a well-liked soldier from World War I.
And he even received the victoria cross
for individual valor however like
between the war he did you know
he got promoted rapidly and you

(53:02):
know no doubt becoming a commander like
i think he was made the chief of the
general staff like he was in the army and everything which is quite big honor
right yeah basically britain's military head it was on the outbreak of world
war ii he resigned his commission because he wanted to command in the field

(53:23):
and he does lead the bf and,
given the size of the british contribution i do agree that france having the
majority of the manpower thinking of like where 80 of the manpower was french
at the time of the battle of france.
You no doubt have to be subordinated to their plans of course and he actually

(53:48):
did believe in the french doctrine that we will go towards belgium link up with
the belgians and stop the sleep and plan invasion because the magic knot line
will stop everything else.
And here's the thing a lot of his friends including alan brooke who would become
cig the chief of the imperial general stark shortly later did say that this

(54:09):
plan is not going to work there is the possibility that the armor can come through
the ardence he brushed it aside and given.
1940 british and french military and key persons relations wasn't really the best having him,
as the head of the bf was probably not good

(54:31):
for that reason as well i mean it's not like the French were anything better
they also distrusted the British a lot just as much as the British distrusted
the French army except by probably Prime Minister Reynaud I think if I'm not mistaken,
The British war minister, Leslie Horribilisha, he described Gort as utterly

(54:58):
brainless and unable to grasp the simplest problem.
This is not really good when your own minister was criticizing you that well.
And he pretty much also removes his subordinates, his concerns about the planned
defense, especially after the German plans are captured.

(55:20):
Which is what actually forced the Germans to abandon their different plan type
assault and go to the Ardennes.
It actually reinforced the Allied commander's beliefs that, okay,
this is what they are definitely going to do.
They don't really consider that, oh, you know, maybe they might change the plans
now that they know it's been captured.

(55:41):
And as we know, the Battle of France is an utter disaster.
Disaster it's and i
think it was a fact of multiple things low morale
of the french army the british not fully armed yet for war and dunkirk was more
due to admiral ramsey more than any other person for its success than anyone

(56:06):
on the military i'll let me just state that,
So this is pretty much the last command Guard held In an active role Because
he was given command of the British Home Guard But,
We've seen a lot of guys get Command of various Units that are not going to see any,

(56:26):
Serious success I mean he was appointed General Governor of Malta In 1942,
But the real defense was not Was in the hands of the RAF Yeah that's true So
I guess that really is what I want to put because God ultimately just for these reasons,

(56:46):
I just chose him for Overnil Richie because he was a guy with experience and
had some command authority,
but never utilized it properly.
Richie, while was thrust into a role he never was prepared for,
I can give him the pass on that from being the worst British general in Europe.

(57:09):
All right so we're gonna hit the randomizer again.
Okay, so I think this goes back to you because we now go back to the Pacific.
It's the Japanese army now. All right.
So anybody who listens to the podcast I do, it's going to come to no surprise.
For the greatest Japanese general, I pick Tomiuki Yamashita.

(57:33):
There's various reasons why I would pick Yamashita. And he definitely was unique
when you look at the Japanese generalship scene.
The first thing I would point out is, after the disasters that were seen on
the border, skirmishes with the Soviet Union in Manchuria,
the two ones at Lake Hassan and Khalkin Gol, the IGA somewhat understood that

(57:57):
they were facing an enemy they really couldn't contest simply because of armored warfare.
They didn't have the armor, and they didn't know how to use armor properly. They understood that.
They never admitted, of course. but Yamashita was
the main guy that was sent out and abroad to
try and figure out how to learn how to use armor appropriately and
Yamashita of course went to Germany where might I add he had an affair with

(58:21):
an Austrian woman I believe and yeah there's a lot there's a big story about
that but anyways he got to kind of see firsthand the blitzkrieg and he got to
learn from the Germans and the other you know,
the British and that kind of what to expect and how to use combined arms warfare.
He would not be given a situation to really do this because Japan just simply

(58:45):
didn't see a battle that they could actually employ something at that scale.
But what he would do is he would be given command of the drive through Malaysia
to take Singapore and he would perform his own version of Blitzkrieg, I'd call it.
Famously, it was called the Bicycle Blitzkrieg. It wasn't actually his idea, mind you.
But it was ingenious nonetheless, and he went along with it, and he planned for it.

(59:09):
But they decided that to increase mobility and to really bull rush down Malaysia,
they would simply, and this is going to sound comical, just steal bicycles from the local population.
Because it just so happens the Malaysian population, you know,
everyone had bicycles, and they would literally just grab them as they could.
And they did bring over by the way a lot of bicycles when they were landing

(59:31):
but uh anybody who knows you know battalion of soldiers with their rifles that get back.
It is funny because they would put the rifles like where you would hold the handlebars,
yeah and they would drive and actually if they were caught by like a british

(59:53):
patrol or like you know the british like they had to run off the roads because
they're being chased if they attacked the Japanese, the Japanese would like
actually trip over themselves and not have their rifles ready and stuff.
It's actually pretty funny.
But what Yamashita did in Malaysia is he fought tooth and nail to have a certain amount of tanks.
And I mean, it's not like they weren't going to give it to him.
If you looked at all the places that were being that were seeing invasions,

(01:00:16):
it made sense that Yamashita would get like the lion's share of tanks because
the Japanese rightfully didn't believe that they would put a lot of tanks on
islands. It didn't really make sense.
So Janoshta, he was finally given this armor that he had specifically,
it was him who had gone out to Germany to learn how to use it.
And he used it wonderfully. His...

(01:00:39):
His tactics in Malaysia was just, I mean, it's simple, but it was superb.
He just never let up. He overran all the positions he could,
and he just continuously hooked around and took over the main roadways.
So the British were forced, most of these infantrymen, to leave the roadways
and to run through the jungles to continue going south.

(01:01:02):
But they would just be overtaken because Because obviously these guys who are
completely mobile on bicycles were outgunning them.
So he managed to trap and grab a lot of prisoners on his way to Singapore.
Are we about to say something? Yeah, I was just going to say that it seems like
he also capitalized on that confusion and fear factor.

(01:01:24):
Because a lot of the times the forces of his army,
the 25th Army, that when they attacked the British position in Malaysia,
they were quite like substantially
smaller it's like you know battalion is or
regiment is holding a place and just a couple of japanese companies attack
and they panic yeah then

(01:01:47):
as you say that relentlessness and not letting your opponents regroup that is
really the key here and something a lot of people might not know is he was given
a certain subordinate who really was actually just place there to watch over
him by one Hideki Tojo, and the man's name was Shoichi.
And Shoichi was literally there to spy on Yamashita.

(01:02:10):
So Hideki Tojo had a certain amount of rivals within the Navy and the army,
and he viewed Yamashita as his prime army rival. He actually thought that he
would steal his position.
So the entire time Yamashita is performing this campaign.
To be blunt, Hideki told you I was trying to can him. And he would be effective actually at doing this.

(01:02:31):
But I just want that to be in the background. So Yamashita then,
you know, he has chased the enemy all the way to the fortress of Singapore.
And he's actually ahead of schedule, by the way. He realizes he does not have
the amount of artillery shells to actually win a siege.
So he doesn't have the materials to properly besiege a fortress,
which is obviously what you would do in this case.

(01:02:51):
So he's not going to be able to starve them out properly. So what is he to do?
Is he going to call his commanders and then reluctantly be that one general
like, you know, you'd see with Kawaguchi or others calling and begging for more
resources and such? No, because this would end his career, basically.
So he ingeniously tries to bluff Percival, which we already talked about.
So he has a bunch of boats hidden off in a location kind of under the brush.

(01:03:17):
He's tried to basically trick the British into thinking he's going to land somewhere.
So he starts shooting this location with as much artillery shells as he can.
He's really putting a show of force, even though he can't even expend these
artillery shells like he doesn't have enough at all to really make it seem like
he's going to hit this place. And instead, he lands in another place.
Once he gets a foothold, he gradually makes his way into attacking the center of Singapore.

(01:03:44):
But by no means is he going to win this battle. In fact, he's pretty much terrified
because he knows the British are probably about three times larger than him.
They've got the resources. They actually have the food provisions.
They got everything they need to destroy his entire army. So what does he do?
He just keeps putting on this stone face and he demands that Percival surrenders.

(01:04:05):
Now, there are some other things going on at the same time. Percival actually
has these kind of renegade commanders who screw things up a bit more that allow
some more breaches. But by no means was Yamashita going to like win this easy.
And somehow he dragged Percival's ass to the table.
And when Percival was actually looking around his camp, apparently Percival
noticed some things that kind of indicated to him that Yamashita wasn't in a

(01:04:28):
good state resource wise.
But Yamashita just slammed his fist on the
table he was actually quite a character loved to fall asleep in meetings
too and he got Percival to sign the surrender
and that was that afterwards you know
Percival probably wanted to kill himself when he realized what a
dumb move he had made because they definitely could have held out
a lot longer but Yamashita was known as the

(01:04:50):
guy who took Singapore and took it
ahead of schedule it actually screwed up Japanese
planners for other areas because he had done it so quickly and
he rose to the top of i'm
guessing much to tojo's dislike exactly and
by doing so tojo went after him and

(01:05:10):
slit his throat basically so yamashita for almost the entire pacific war was
thrown into manchuria basically manchu quo and he was left there to rot hideki
tojo couldn't have him killed he wanted to and basically he would only drag
him back out to try and do a last-ditch effort to defend the Philippines.
Yamashita did as good as he possibly could. I know I'm taking too long with

(01:05:34):
this guy, so I'm going to make this quick. That's fine.
But his defense of the Philippines was not too bad. But General MacArthur had
way too much forces against him. There was no way he was going to be able to
defend the Philippines.
You're talking about an understaffed, undersupplied army against one that is
well-equipped and trained and...
Now outnumbering you. And just to finish off this character,

(01:05:58):
you're going to, for people who actually are aware of Yamashita,
he's of course the one general that some people argue,
shouldn't have been executed because he may or may not have been knowledgeable
about massacres done under units of his command.
Actually, again, it was Shoji, the guy that Hideki Tojo had put into his ranks
who was directly responsible for these orders.

(01:06:21):
But I do believe that Yamashita probably was aware of some things.
Definitely in the philippines he was aware so oh it's a tough call but no it's gray area but.
Let's just he's cleaner he's cleaner
of a group yeah of the dirtiest generals that's what it is you know okay i think
that's actually a very good way to say state that and uh say that he was innocent

(01:06:45):
yeah but so not to the worst so i would call them the greatest of the japanese
generals I know we're pressing for time,
so I'm going to go on to who I picked for the worst.
It was hard to pick a worst for the Japanese because arguably there's a lot to choose from.
But I decided to go with General Renemutoguchi, and I'm not going to dabble
too much into his career.

(01:07:05):
He, you know, he actually he was in Singapore on Malay as well.
And, you know, in the Battle of the Philippines and such. But Renemutoguchi
is actually going to be probably most known for I don't know how else to put this.
He was a complete asshole his colleagues hated him
because he was kind of a freaky he's

(01:07:25):
a bit of a psycho and he pulled like
he pulled tooth and nail and it's it's
incredible that he managed to do this but he had this fantastical idea
that he was going to lead the charge and invade
india and then somehow get
the indian population to go against the british which you know there's
was a lot of japanese commanders who thought this was possible but he

(01:07:47):
wanted to more or less
do a suicidal thrust in india he deceived his superiors into believing he was
doing a limited operation and he lied about numbers for example and a lot of
he lied about everything he could and then he didn't disclose all the information
to his subordinates and he performed you know the the,

(01:08:09):
what culminated in the battle of Kohima and Impala,
and it was an absolute disaster.
It was such an incredible loss of man and resources for the Japanese who were
dominating Burma by the way, who could have sat there.
I'm not mistaken if I remember his divisions had the best trained Japanese forces of Burma.

(01:08:33):
They could have easily defended against anything that was thrown at them for
the next year, maybe two years.
They were that formidable in Burma. And Burma is such a difficult terrain that
even with material superiority, like armor and all sorts of things,
it wouldn't have made the difference, really.
So he basically just wasted a lot that Japan had built over years,

(01:08:57):
years with this one disaster.
It's actually crazy. Like I was remembering, I was reading about his subordinate,
General Sato, who commanded the 31st Division.
Like the state that the guy's division was thrust into because of Mutaguchi's orders.
To the point that Sato, as a lieutenant general, directly disobeys an order

(01:09:21):
from Mutaguchi, his commander, to withdraw.
Draw i mean to me i know
it's like you know war but that was
a very brave general the very brave decision by
sato because he's now looking out for his men more than
anything yeah and if you read the private notes from some
of the generals that were involved the kohima and pal they literally wrote

(01:09:42):
muraguchi is a moron and they hated him
and they realized because he didn't work well with
others he was the kind of general that just he gave
orders and he just demanded you go through with them and he would
receive reports were like of units literally just
starving like there was no way that they could hold and he would just demand
they hold while he would redirect other forces to

(01:10:03):
still try and win with this thrust and i mean
it was embarrassing so i think it went without saying i think i'm just gonna
add two things about this the guy did not understand logistics no he had no
the four the four month battle of impal kohima the japanese soldiers just a
given three weeks worth of food. Yep.

(01:10:25):
And I think one novelist from Japan,
Takagi Toshiro, did claim that after the war, Mutaguchi distributed pamphlets
at veterans' funerals claiming he won the Battle of Imbalcoima.
God. Now, it's supposedly a fabrication.

(01:10:46):
You know, that's what it's being said. But I don't know, given those guys,
these crazy megalomaniac ideas,
i would have put it beyond him for
attempting that but to finish off you're
trying to look for the worst general and there's multiple places where the campaigns

(01:11:07):
are going disastrously especially in the pacific islands but the one place where
the japanese are doing very well is burma and this one guy he messes it up really
bad so that's that's why i picked them yeah yeah that's,
fair i think i'll ask our discord okay one second just repeated one of the,

(01:11:28):
okay now we're reaching the stage where i okay so it goes to number 10 so we flip back to,
europe soviets yeah so i think i'm gonna put it out there that the first person
i'm putting as my best general is not Marshall Zhukov.

(01:11:51):
Gasp from the audience. I mean,
he was good, but I still have always rated Marshall Ivan Kornev as better.
Especially because one thing I really like about Kornev, and this might just
be my own bias, is Kornev was a more aggressive commander.
He wasn't reckless, but just way more aggressive than Zhukov.

(01:12:13):
And that actually allowed him to liberate
way more i guess i don't know if
liberation the right term given the cold
war that followed to recapture more territory for the soviets than zukhov did
so you know konev was the commander of vitebsk and so that's kind of like you

(01:12:37):
know central to northern russia that's where he started
world war ii and you know
he played a key role in the defense of moscow
in 1941 winter and you know he kind of like you know led the soviet forces you
know because i was like oh you did well here's a promotion and he does initially

(01:13:02):
lead them to a defeat at the battle love Razev.
But you know, just losing a few hundred thousand men is not really going to
destroy you in Stalin's books. Yeah.
And he actually then takes over France.
So that's the Soviets. That's an army group commander. So.

(01:13:24):
From the summer of 1942 till the end, he commanded army groups. That's it.
So he was a guy that's already going to be commanding men at an unparalleled scale.
And he was also there at the Battle of Kursk, you know, the step front.

(01:13:45):
And curiously, he did a lot of deception and camouflage operations that the
Germans actually believed that the southern part of the Kursk salient was not
at all defended or very lightly defended.
When in fact, it was almost as fortified as any part of the Kursk salient.

(01:14:06):
And, you know, the defense lines and dummy units and supply points,
dummy air defenses were used that the Soviets not really, The Germans don't
really know the true extent of his forces then.
And considering this is a couple of armies at the very least, that's a big miss.

(01:14:28):
And it was said the commander of the 19th Panzer Division, General Schmidt,
he said, we do not assume there was even one-fourth of the Russian strength
of what we had to encounter in that region.
That is some seriously good camouflaging.
So, you know, His army is like, you know, we take Odessa, Kharkiv.

(01:14:52):
And, you know, he does play a key role in the back to the Dnieper and the various
offenses that, you know, destroy army groups south.
And though he was supposedly brutal, like some people say that,
you know, he openly boasted of shooting prisoners of war.
I don't know if it's true or not because we know that there are a lot of truths

(01:15:17):
and a lot of myths so not really going to dwell into that but given the aggressive
nature it's plausible I don't say that much,
and February 1944 he does now become Stalin's number one general and made the
marshal you know 1944 he takes back Poland, Ukraine,

(01:15:39):
Belarus and Czechoslovakia and he and you know Zhukov they kind of like you
know press into that winter offensive into western Poland,
which is called the Vistula Oder offensive that pretty much opened the doors to Berlin,
and it was also his army that also invaded Austria my dad yeah.

(01:16:02):
And, you know, captured that. And, you know, his troops, you know, they did.
So he was given the Ukrainian front, I think, at this time.
His troops were the ones that Stalin kind of pitted Zhukov and Konev to take over Berlin.
You know, he made them compete because it's still a massive army.

(01:16:25):
I think I remember reading somewhere that for every six feet of the,
50 miles from the Russians had one artillery gun.
But I think Ivan Konev did get one big advantage in that.
He got General Vesely Chukyov in his command.

(01:16:46):
He was the guy who commanded the defense of Stalingrad.
So I think this is why I would say Konev was good just because of his aggression.
Granted, both he and Sukhov were pretty much neck and neck.
Otherwise you wouldn't be a marshal commanding
an army for the battle of berlin stalin would not ensure would

(01:17:06):
not let you let that happen so i
think that is about the best
russian general now again the
worst i'm honestly i have
to mention two of them i could not flip them
so first for the

(01:17:26):
first soviet as the
worst general is marshall simon
budiamni i'm sorry i butchered that
name so he's a veteran so he was a guy who fought for imperial russia during
world war one then with stalin and leonard in the civil war and was quite brave

(01:17:49):
and a great soldier then and his close friendship with Stalin was the reason he,
was a marshal of the Soviet Union and from 1935 itself.
And he survived the military purges of Stalin unscathed.
Now, considering the extent of the purge, that's quite an achievement,

(01:18:10):
especially since the higher up you were, the more likely you would be shot.
But unfortunately, the guy was not a general. He was a brave soldier, but he was not a general.
So it was like during the Second World War, he was like at the Battle of Oman
and the Battle of Kiev was, you know, forces under his command.

(01:18:34):
And in the insuring encirclement like after Barbarossa started,
it's 1.5 million casualties that the Soviets incurred because of his ineptitude at command.
One and a half million, the largest encirclement in war history.
Yeah, so he was no doubt cape-goated and he never commanded combat troops again.

(01:18:58):
But luckily for him, Stalin still liked him.
The guy actually lives into the 70s
dies at the age of 90 so not
bad i'll say but this was like what
people thought of his command like this
was marshall conner told one yugoslavian communist he said this guy never knew

(01:19:20):
much and he never studied anything he showed himself to be completely incompetent
and permitted awful mistakes to be made so i think it's fairly.
Simple to see him and it's honestly because of the disaster at kiev and the
magnitude of it is why i put him here all right the other person is marshall gregory kulik.

(01:19:47):
So, first of all, in turn, he again was a great big friend of Stalin,
survived the military purges.
Now, the reason I put him here, his military disasters weren't as bad as Gurdjian's, Semyon's disaster.
Not even close to escape. He did falter in the defense of Leningrad that required,
that allowed the city to get besieged and Dukov had to be deployed to that front to stabilize the line.

(01:20:13):
And he had a poor command of the artillery in uh the invasion of finland which
we know was a disaster for the russians i mean they successfully occupied yeah
but at too high of a price yeah,
because i remember a lot of finnish soldiers would actually were casualties

(01:20:35):
because they felt horrified at killing so many russians.
But so that is you know
obviously like you know he did have a special blunders in
world war ii but the reason i put him in
the worst was the guy's
opposition to thinking on weapons

(01:20:56):
platforms and strategies that became soviet doctrine
so he was opposed
to the development of the t-34 and kv-1 tanks
like he did everything to try
to stop that all right now considering
we know what the t-34 one tanks became for
the soviet union it's quite a big thing and he had that rivalry with that with

(01:21:20):
this the marshall sorry what's his name marshall tuchewski mikhail tuchewski
who was the architect of the t-34 and that concept of building out these tanks.
He definitely opposed it and got him implicated which resulted in Tuchoyevsky's

(01:21:40):
execution in the purges.
But the idea never died, thankfully. Otherwise, I don't think Russia would have
been successful without its tanks.
He also opposed the creation of the Katyusha rocket barrage system. Jeez.
Said no you don't need rocket artillery truck or whatever you need a horse-drawn carriage okay so,

(01:22:05):
you this is like the kind of thinking that he had he was also minister of defense
and he did not believe in the use of minefields and defensive fortifications
so that's that's actually why at At the start of Barbarossa,
the Germans were like, you know, rampaging.
There were no defensive entrenchments. Yeah, I think this guy really is the worst. Oh my God.

(01:22:30):
Yeah, it's especially like if you see at the Kursk Stalient,
the Russians made extensive use of minefields, trenches and everything. And it worked.
But this guy didn't believe in it. And that's why you saw the start.
There were no stocks of anything to be used. and that's how you see like you
know the Soviet citizenry of Stalingrad Moscow being pressed into creating the

(01:22:54):
trenches and defense lines for the city they just don't have the equipment,
and also the last thing that he opposed the use of submachine guns said they're not effective oh my god,
yeah so you can see why even though in a military sense he never were commanded

(01:23:16):
with the same magnitude of defeat.
He did have his fair share of heavy defeats. But his opposing ideas that became
standard for no real reason in my view is why I'm putting him down here.
And unfortunately for him, he does not retain Stalin's favor.

(01:23:37):
1942, he stripped off his Marshal of the Soviet Union title and demoted to Major General.
Arrested in 1946, on charges of treason and executed four years later well he
i think he might actually win as the worst on this list probably well let's
just say the most unfortunate in terms of his.

(01:24:00):
Demise so yeah i guess that's for the soviets so let's and i'm just gonna say
now we're gonna have to cut all of the next ones down to maybe like three minutes
because we are definitely going
over time is really long sure enough
sorry about this no no maybe let's just combine the next two so i did get the

(01:24:21):
u.s land forces perhaps let's just take both u.s and army and navy together
and how about a brief thing i'll briefly do generals you briefly do admirals yeah i can do that,
So you want to start us with the land forces? And, you know,
if you were to Google right now, the top rated general in the Pacific War,

(01:24:43):
you'd probably get Douglas MacArthur.
And yeah, I wasn't going to be the guy to choose him to be on this list at all.
Shocking for some of you, maybe.
I wanted to actually kind of pick somebody outside the box.
And I wanted to pick someone who was directly involved because there's actually
a lot of American commanders like Walter Kruger is actually highly regarded.
But again, a lot of the troops were Australian under his command.

(01:25:05):
I think he definitely should have made this list. But I went with General Alexander
Vandegrift, which I know United States Marine Corps, but still,
he more than proved himself, I'd say, during the battle for Guadalcanal, Tulag and Gaba too.
He was actually in the thick of it a little bit too.
He raised the morale for the men on Guadalcanal. He kept them together.

(01:25:29):
It was a terrible situation.
They had been abandoned on the island almost. and i
think the only reason why he doesn't hit the top
10 lists is because afterwards his reward
for everything he did was a promotion but it
was basically a promotion to keep the marine corps alive because at the time
during world war ii the united states army was basically trying to get rid of

(01:25:51):
the marines they wanted to take it over and he was made commandant of the marine
corps and instead he kept it thriving he improved upon the marines he gave his
valuable experience to the
new generation and you know the marines
i don't think they'd be around today if it wasn't for him and it's
i think if i'm not mistaken he made a really defiant and
passionate speech in congress after world war

(01:26:13):
ii that even though
i think the truman and eisenhower administrations were kind of
for folding up the marines even because the
army wanted to absorb them the navy wanted them
but they were willing to compromise with the army as long
as they kept naval aviation yeah exactly but he
kept it in and to this very day the united

(01:26:33):
states is there so and if and
if i'm not mistaken in call of duties you're
the marines yeah and for for worst it was very hard to choose i wasn't going
to choose mcarthur because as much as i shit on mcarthur he's not the worst
general i mean he had faults there's a lot to pick from i don't think this guy

(01:26:56):
was a bad general, by the way.
But I think if I had to choose somebody in the Pacific Theater.
I'm going to go with Vinegar Joe. So that's General Joseph Stilwell.
I'm actually not going to go after him per se for his poor gentleman-ship.
And actually, and I know we said we wouldn't do this. It has to do a lot more with politics.
So we've talked about how Eisenhower or Alexander managed to keep people together.

(01:27:19):
Joseph Stilwell was the absolute opposite of this. He pissed off everybody he came into contact with.
And he had to deal with British commanders who already hated Americans.
But he hated them a lot more. He was a prolific hater of Britain.
Sometimes I just feel like, you know, after reading about him,
he probably hated every country on the planet.

(01:27:42):
Except for Slim. He likes Slim. Slim's the one guy.
Yeah, that I'm definitely going to have to call out.
Like slim catalog which is yep a shock because and you know let's also not let's also tell this,
he also did not get along with american subordinates oh
yeah or his colleagues so most famously his number one ally who probably would

(01:28:06):
have kept him in his position would have been chanel and again for people who
listen to the podcast it's very hard to say a french name like that it's chanel
but whatever chanel who was in command of you know the flying tigers the Air Forces in China.
So as everyone knows, Stilwell did not get along with Chiang Kai-shek.
He did everything to piss Chiang Kai-shek off.

(01:28:28):
Whether you think he was in the wrong or not, Chiang Kai-shek was clearly the
leader of his nation, clearly wanted to retain command over his army.
And Stilwell just kept pressing and pressing and pressing to just take the forces
and command them himself.
Despite the fact that might have been a smart move, might have been an easier
way to professionally train the army, whatever you want to say, it's not acceptable.

(01:28:51):
And it never made sense. I can really see it. Like, you know,
why there's reluctance from the Chinese on this, you know, I mean like at that.
And it's not just completely valid.
It's not just Chiang Kai-shek. This was, this was ridiculous.
Chiang Kai-shek, if, if he had gone through with that, he would have been kicked
out. He would have been taken down.
Oh yeah. I mean, I mean, I think every general in the Chinese armies of Chiang

(01:29:15):
Kai-shek hated Stilwell.
And I'll just say one thing.
The way he just let the Chindits brigades, after Onion Man dies.
He takes over the Chindits and Merrill's Marauders.
The appalling casualties those light-equipped troops have to suffer to take on.

(01:29:38):
On heavily fortified positions without much
support and then you know blaming them for
failure that's really to me
that is poor generalship he misused the troops
he ended up taking but it took a lot and he hampered efforts by not trusting

(01:29:59):
certain chinese forces and such he would he actually did praise certain chinese
commanders like sunni jan and stuff but But honestly,
he he he had a lot of experience in China and it doesn't show.
It's very it's actually really startling when you realize like how long he had
spent in China and he just didn't really mesh with the culture or know what he was doing.

(01:30:21):
And he made such a political maelstrom that he's kind of one of the guys they
say lost China and have it as you were.
I had to choose someone's white shirt. Someone's the worst. And we need to move
on because I know we're pressed.
Yeah, I know. I was just about to comment. so let's
quickly go through the navy so now we're
on the u.s navy's domain and while you

(01:30:42):
could have made a case for admiral limits i think you know great overall direction
he gave for the duration of the war i'm taking admiral spruance as the best
navy commander now spruance was not as aggressive as a guy like Halsey.
But he was aggressive enough where needed to be.

(01:31:04):
And he did utilize his carries quite well, made use of Mark Mitchell,
but he also, I think in the long run, ensured his operations never went out of control.
Like Halsey, because he falls for the bait at late golf, nearly sees an American catastrophe.
Right, and he had taken the big fleet. But I think that way Spruance was able

(01:31:28):
to keep his commanders in check.
You know, like in the Battle of the Philippines, he does not pursue because
his main job is to support the invasion of the Marianas, and he does that well.
And this is a man that commanded Task Force 16 at Midway.
That's where he first comes into the mainstream. Baptism in the fire.

(01:31:49):
And does very well because we see
the u.s really knock it out
and i'm not mistaken it was i think the enterprise which was
in his carrier group that did the first yeah did the first number on the japanese
kiro budai i'm not mistaken but you know ultimately he was the reason that the

(01:32:09):
u.s even launched fletcher i think was hesitating to launch because they were
at the extreme range of the aircraft,
he said, let's take the hit.
And, you know, started launching the pickets of fighters, which ultimately,
we know, turned the battle in America's favor.
But, see, he does take the risk when needed. And we see him,

(01:32:31):
you know, commanding the invasions of Tarawa, Saipan, Philippine Sea,
where he effectively destroys the Japanese carrier force.
Effectively because, you know, the ships are still there, mostly,
Even though one third of them were lost, they don't have aircraft.
So an aircraft carrier without aircraft is practically useless.

(01:32:51):
So I'd say he took out the carrier force.
And he did command the naval forces at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
And I got to say, since Okinawa does happen after the battle,
like after a victory in Europe, the US and Britain are releasing a lot of ships.

(01:33:17):
And they're all under his command. you know
a man that has a force of over 30
fleet and light and escort carriers over
20 battleships 40 cruisers 150
plus destroyers let's not even count the
ground forces because overall they were still under
him i don't know about you i would have felt like the most

(01:33:39):
powerful guy on the planet he was yeah yeah
i mean and the thing is he did keep
a good check in the battles in the the theaters where he
controlled and that's really why i put him high on my list he wasn't risk averse
and he knew when to manage his guys well because most of the time he did let

(01:33:59):
them do their things and stepped in when needed because he didn't have like
hot-headed sub-commanders like.
Admiral turner so the fact that he was able to manage them well and not prevent
bus stops is really the people management skills is quite important if you ask me.
And I'd say I would just put one point. A lot of people like to compare Spruance

(01:34:22):
and Halsey and like you had said,
Halsey was much more aggressive but he did make a few mistakes in the Pacific
War specifically because of that whereas what you get with Spruance is a bit
more still aggressive but more balanced and.
Kind of overall just very he was a great commander and it shows by the end of the Pacific War, yeah.

(01:34:43):
Well i mean he well he did not get the five-star admiral rank which personally
i felt he deserved it more than halsey that's just my view but both were meritorious of the rank.
Ultimately but hey he did get an entire destroyer line named after him yeah
i think if i'm not mistaken amongst navy personnels only him uh ali burke and

(01:35:09):
nimitz are the guys that have had,
tip classes named after them oh yeah from the navy
yeah i'm not so sure myself well i didn't
know these these three do have it for sure yeah i'm
not counting the ford class carries because you know classify
ford as the president so and yeah now i'll just switch over to the worst and

(01:35:31):
i'm looking at your worst picks and they're exactly who i would pick yeah yeah
so i think let's start off with the easiest one, Admiral Gormley.
Yeah. So, Gormley was given command of the South Pacific area when the US were
leading their counterattack to Japan in middle of 1942 after Midway.

(01:35:53):
And ultimately, as you said, him being a perfectionist, but also a pessimist
were a detrimental combination.
Yep. Because he spent so much time planning or just kind of complaining about
the problems or just hiding from it.
The Gordal Canal campaign, let's face it, got off to a really bad start.

(01:36:15):
Because as the area commander he was supposed to rectify issues between his
sub commanders so there was a lot of fights between Turner and.
Admiral Fletcher he was not there to do it and both were thereby freely interpreting

(01:36:36):
their versions of Nimitz's orders which conformed to their own bias the way
they interpreted it So that's why you see,
you know, Turner wanting to stay longer to help the Marines while Fletcher is like, yep, I'm out.
Gombley was not there. And he never even showed himself to his soldiers.

(01:36:58):
Nope. Hides in his cabin.
Which was actually directly disobeying Nimitz's orders because it was one of
the key parameters of his tasks set out to him that you got to show it.
But for whatever you want to say,
even guys like Douglas MacArthur did at least make a show time to time.

(01:37:18):
Gormley was never seen to his troops.
That's why if you see like when Halsey took over the South Pacific area,
when he was relieved of, when he takes, when Nimitz relieves Gormley,
there's an instant change practically in the morale of the US forces in the area.
So I think that's really why. And ultimately, since the U.S.

(01:37:41):
Then started gaining momentum, it's still kind of stagnating or I would dare
say even lose the momentum if Gormley remain in command.
It's not really a surprise to see him here.
And the last second is Admiral Fletcher.
So I feel bad for him also in

(01:38:01):
a way because he was also an experienced
carrier admiral at the time of his dismissal because
he did command the Coral Sea and he had
overall command for Midway but strategic command
and operational command I believe was in Spruance's hands
he liked he also liked to

(01:38:22):
give other people the tactical commands but ultimately Fletcher
what really went against him was he was
very risk averse yeah it's
like if you have like you know risk aversion
scale you'll have halsey on
one end and then you'll have fletcher at the

(01:38:44):
opposite end oh yeah and it was fletcher's decision like that really caused
the marines a really bad start deep the directive was for him to be there for
10 days he never opposed the plans even though he said it's not properly planned he never did anything,

(01:39:04):
withdraws after three days on sudden without on just which was practically sudden
notice to the other commanders and you have Savo Island which means the Marines
do not get their supplies.
And from what I remember reading he didn't really even turn back to go back
to try to assist he just continued steaming back towards I think it would have

(01:39:30):
been towards So it's New Caledonia or so where at that time,
Gormley wanted the fleet to be based so that they are far outside the reach
of the Japanese aircraft.
Yep. So this definitely tainted his...
Image with Nimitz and especially Nimitz's boss Ernest King because King is for

(01:39:53):
whatever you want to say is aggressive.
Yeah, definitely.
And he's fine with the British first, Europe first strategy but he's like,
okay, if something's going to be idle in the Atlantic for 20 days through it,
it's going to the Pacific for 20 days.
And then you do have the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, but But,

(01:40:16):
you know, again, Fletcher did kind
of, you know, he was too obsessed with refueling. He didn't chase. Yeah.
And even though the US intelligence picture did fail him, because,
again, they're not going to be perfect and they gave the wrong dates.
But he did. I would say he did release the Wasp group too early.

(01:40:39):
And he kind of ended up fighting with like you know one carrier behind his back
and gets injured in the battle and even though the japanese take a bigger beating it's still.
They still force the americans from the field yep like
fletcher's fletcher's task force is retreating and

(01:41:02):
that's pretty much the coffin in his career yeah
he's not given north pacific after and that was
just that was really in essence a demotion yeah
yeah even though he i guess gets promoted anyways to a four-star admiral but
it's just more symbolic rather than yeah but it's the old church you'll kick

(01:41:22):
him to the side you know make somebody viceroy of a colonial place call it a
promotion but you're trying to get rid of a commander that's basically what it was yeah,
yeah so but i guess that's why i would say you know he was there like just the lack of
aggression that caused him and i think at
that stage of the war you could not afford to be so passive

(01:41:44):
definitely i would suggest maybe
you go for china yeah i was gonna i was gonna say we'll speed thing up because
we have two more the last one will be another well it'll be the united states
and europe but i wanted to do china and damn i i really i did want to talk about
this guy a bit but i'll i'll summarize as quickly as i can when you're looking
for the greatest commander when it comes to China,

(01:42:06):
there's basically two names that come up.
And I actually had said one before. It was Sun Nijun, who was recognized by,
actually by Stilwell. Stilwell thought he was a pretty good commander.
But other than what, you know, I'm not choosing anybody from the CCP at this
point, even though the current China party will like, you know,
they'll talk about Peng Tugui and other people.

(01:42:28):
No, no, no. The best Chinese commander, in my opinion, during World War II who
fought for the NRA appropriately was Xu Yue.
And you can't talk about Chinese commanders at this time without talking about
politics, because a lot of the guys that were commanding forces in the Second
Sino-Japanese War had gone through China's warlord era.

(01:42:48):
And they either took huge political hits or they were going to soon take those
hits during that point in World War II.
And Shi Yue had a real shifty career because he had to manage through a lot
of different factions. But he was one of the guys that actually believed in Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
He actually personally was one of his leading his guards and he defended him.

(01:43:10):
Dr. Sun Yat-sen could have been killed if it wasn't for Shi Yue.
And he would go on to be the secondhand man almost of Chiang Kai-shek,
which is ironic because he would basically do everything to please everybody
that he needed to to continue. He never did anything.
I wouldn't say scumbag like, but at one point he was critical about Chiang Kai-shek

(01:43:34):
during the White Terror in the Shanghai Massacre situation.
And Chiang didn't like this. And then Chiang Kai-shek kind of kicked him out.
He had to go away for a bit, but he managed to come back and he still he managed
to get into the good graces under Chiang Kai-shek again.
And then he was one of the guys who actually kind of was involved in kidnapping

(01:43:56):
Chiang Ka-shek and forcing him to fight the Japanese because he was a patriot.
He didn't believe in just going after the communists like Chiang wanted to do.
He wanted to fight the Japanese.
And he was an aggressive commander. For those who don't know,
China's war against Japan, it was disastrous.
They were always on the defensive. They were almost always in a position where

(01:44:19):
they were defending a major city and having to give it up.
But the thing about Shu Yue is, and by the way, his nickname was like Patent of the East.
He was one of the few commanders who managed to really inflict severe damage
to Japanese forces, particularly in the four battles of Changsha.
But he also defended famously the battle of Wuhan, the battle of Chengdu.

(01:44:40):
But the most famous work on his behalf was annihilating by the same Japanese
commander four times for Changsha, which was a strategic city.
And it earned him a lot of of fame. And he was one of the commanders that increased
morale for Chinese forces. And this is something that was just not seen.
China was being devastated. It seemed like they were losing wherever they engage the enemy.

(01:45:04):
But Shi Yue, with very limited resources because he was crippled by Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek,
both of whom were withholding weapons from people like him because Chiang wanted
to save it for the communists and Stilwell because he wanted it for his own
forces and he didn't believe in Shi Yue.
Shi Yue proved himself and he would actually survive World War II and go on
to have an illustrious career afterwards.

(01:45:25):
He's one of the few who kind of, I don't know how else to say it, did the good things.
And that's very, I guess it could be controversial, but he definitely was the
best Chinese commander, I'd say.
For worst commander- Quite an impressive record. I'll just say that.
I can't even, because we're rushing, I can't do it justice.
But if you wanted to talk about him, you actually can't not

(01:45:46):
talk about china's warlord era because that's where the majority of
his career is and he he just
goes from promotion to promotion to promotion and he
somehow finds himself fighting for the top guys like he goes from dr sun yat-sen
he then goes to chen zhong ming and then to chen kai shek and like he he's just
he's with the badasses of the day i won't talk any more of it but he he definitely

(01:46:09):
is impressive it was hard to pick a bad commander hender for the Chinese because there's.
Lot to choose from, but I actually chose this guy simply because I think he
was an asshole. It's Tang Shengzhi.
Tang Shengzhi, again, not to go into an extensive history, he was the kind of

(01:46:29):
guy that flip-flopped with loyalty.
And during the warlord era, he was on the side of Chiang Kai-shek,
and then he betrayed him to join Wang Jingwei, and then betrayed Wang Jingwei
to just become a warlord to try and take out Chiang Kai-shek.
And in the process he ends up losing to everybody and he looks like an idiot so he gets exiled he.

(01:46:50):
Gets exiled twice actually should have been killed yeah but
he comes back and he's only put into a
commanding position because chankashek has like no one else really
to to place but he and by
the way he actually he betrayed another group which
was the old gongshi clique which was baichongshi and oh
god the other name anyways there's another guy who's involved

(01:47:13):
but baichongshi was more more well-known commander so he betrayed him
too this guy was a nice piece of shit but when
he's given command uh he's giving command at nanjing so
uh or nan king at the time would have been called
nan king he's put in an impossible situation basically
commanders like shiju shiju ua
who had fought at the battle of shanghai did such a good job

(01:47:35):
fighting the japanese that they had really and there's
no no other way to put this they pissed off the japanese and they
forced the escape route towards the the main capital
of nanjing so tang cheng ju was responsible
for defending nanjing and chen kai
shu gave him orders on how to do so and
it wasn't going to go well long story

(01:47:58):
short chen kai shu basically told them to start
shooting all of the commanders of the units if they
wouldn't fight because everyone was just retreating they were actually dressing
like civilians and running for their lives and basically yeah
you can't do that tang cheng didn't do that but i'd.
Say to add insult to injury he really didn't provide
a real defense of nanjing at all he didn't even

(01:48:20):
try to like talk to the japanese about retaining the civilian lives like there
was so much he could have done to thwart what we i think all know happened and
not that it's completely his fault but it's on his mantle that's kind of what
he was known for he He was the guy that led the defense of Nanjing,
and he made it even worse.
So he was, for me, I'd say he was the worst commander. Yeah.

(01:48:44):
I think comparing what we call the pattern of Asia to him.
Yeah, I think I can see the spectrum. Yeah, basically.
So I think now the only remaining major theater faction is the US and Europe.
So I think it's not really a surprise that our general Dwight D.

(01:49:06):
Eisenhower is the best general.
I'm kidding. kidding well if
pattern had better management skills of people definitely true
but it's simple if
you don't have really collaborative but also
decisive person like eisenhower leading yeah operation
overlord would not have been a success operation torch

(01:49:30):
it's the same situation husky he has to deal
with other commanders who are some of them are
big hotheads i mean he has pat montgomery working
together but he gets people come to the table
he had to deal even with macarthur a few times too so yeah
yeah but luckily he did have the backing of general marshall and kept that trust
so at least on the political front against roosevelt or at least at the start

(01:49:54):
you know because he was not that much favored by roosevelt at that time but
obviously later it improved but but he had Marshall's backing, which was key.
And he had Churchill after. And I think, yeah.
And I think, like, I do have to say, like, you know, he was collaborative,
but also decisive and could be hard.

(01:50:15):
So I think the best example is, maybe I'm just going to blow this because we
will be discussing this in the Pacific War.
I'm sorry, the North Africa podcast in Torch was just before the Torch landing.
He you know he and Mark Clark who's right now his chief of staff,
They have to try to get the Vichy French on board because America is on better

(01:50:40):
terms with the French than the British right now.
And then you have the entries.
So they have, you know, you have the Gaullers, then you have the French Liberation and the Pro Vichy.
So they try to get the French Liberations.
Henry Giraud, Giraud, sorry, I don't know how, if I'm mispronouncing it, my bad.

(01:51:05):
So he is
to be given command of French just the
French forces they get him to ship him over to Gibraltar in secret before torch
and you know that guy says nah I just want to command every allied soldier in

(01:51:25):
North Africa otherwise it's an insult to my honor,
and Clark Clark and
Ike are like what the hell but then
you know they just quickly say you know we don't need you and
since our countries are at war you're now a prisoner and jiro pretty much relents

(01:51:46):
so this is just where i want to say while he has a pleasing and cooperative
nature genuinely he is also decisive very decisive yes It's like,
it's even like when you had the bombing campaign over France in the build-up to Overlord,
Churchill and the British were kind of against it, that they said it would be too many casualties,

(01:52:10):
because you cannot pinpoint bombing, do pinpoint bombing back then.
So it was obviously like you know the mass raids of the Lancasters and the Flying Fortresses.
And Eisenhower stood his ground that we have to target and there will be casualties
I'm sorry but there's no other way I guess he also knows the value of people

(01:52:32):
because he did keep Patton,
after the Sicily incident. And, you know, when Patton is given command of the
armies after the Normandy breakout, we see how rapidly the US takes over, like liberates France.
And the Battle of the Bulge, you know, when Omar Bradley is taking it casually,

(01:52:54):
Eisenhower is quite serious in planning the counteroffenses with Montgomery
and Patton. Definitely.
So, you know, it's for these reasons. It just is,
he's decisive when needed, cooperative and a good planner that's why it's a
no-brainer to me no one would disagree with this one your choice for worst is

(01:53:14):
not someone I know very well General Lucas.
So okay General John P.
Lucas his only real combat command that was part of the Battle of Anzio also
known as Operation Shingle So this was supposed to be the decisive breakthrough of the Gustav Line,

(01:53:40):
which was a big German fortification south of Rome.
Yes. Because the Germans are maximizing on Italy's natural defense.
The idea was land behind, outflank, and then the line will automatically retreat
or they'll be attacked on two fronts.
But the problem was Lucas did not believe the operation was well planned but

(01:54:03):
did not really contribute much to the planning himself.
And ultimately he was too timid to be an officer which,
this is also like partly his fault for not refusing the command like for refusing
the command sorry like not refusing he agreed to take it but,
Mark Clark could have who was a guy who was

(01:54:25):
behind the appointment of the commander the operation
had the support of Churchill and Alexander but the
commander was pretty much I think if I'm not mistaken Mark Clark
was to choose he could
have chosen someone a bit more aggressive because Lucas was so concerned about
supplies that his forces land quite successfully in a kind of marshy area but

(01:54:49):
he spends days building up his supplies in a tiny beachhead yeah yeah and And
because, as I said, it's a marshland,
there's not much room to go forward.
The Germans, by the time, react very quickly because Kesselring is a very competent
commander in his own right.

(01:55:10):
And ultimately, you have, within a few days before the Allies start to even break out,
you have a couple of German divisions, you know, garrisoning the heights across
around Anzio, which ultimately is,
they do not have the opportunity to break out. They're contained.

(01:55:32):
And one military historian, John Keegan, said, had Lucas risked rushing Rome
the first day, his parents would probably have arrived, so they would have been crushed.
But he should have at least expanded the beachhead because I think one of the
most critical things of any operation, you take the high ground. Yep.

(01:55:54):
And ultimately, he was quite lackluster in the way he would do it.
And ultimately, you know, you have more divisions being... So initially,
just two divisions are landed.
End of the month, you have two more divisions coming in.
While he is tying down the German reinforcements, they are the reinforcements.

(01:56:18):
They are not the men on the Gustav line.
So ultimately, you know, he launches failed attacks.
It was a colossal race. he badly underestimates
resources and intelligence and is
eventually replaced and they kind
of get the germans to retreat in the long run from this campaign

(01:56:38):
but there's no thanks to him and it
just ends up kind of being a more of an attritional battle
rather than a decisive breakthrough yeah
i mean there was obviously see the choice i could go for general
feed and all but i'll go a bit different yeah
that's great and sorry to the audience this took a lot longer

(01:57:00):
than we said it would at the beginning sure that's just
a you know you you talk about one commander too long it's
a domino effect but i just wanted to reiterate to everyone
again the best way of course to support the
channel is to leave a like subscribe and comment if
you're watching us on youtube if you're listening to this on a podcast platform
i mean you could still go over to youtube and do so or you

(01:57:21):
can check out my patreon account at www.patreon.com slash
the pacific war channel over there for two dollars
a month you get access to the exclusive patreon podcast you also get access
to all the content i make probably about two weeks in advance and you get voting
rights for the subjects that i'll tackle next and all of that money is a hundred
percent going to a new animator who has just finished the first project we were doing.

(01:57:46):
By the time this podcast comes out, I think that episode will be out on YouTube. I can say it here.
It's the first episode in a new series covering Japan's invasion of North China.
This one is the Battle of Ruhe. So that's about 1933.
Impresses people it's definitely a step up in my my health
for my content but again looking forward to

(01:58:07):
seeing it yeah and thank you for being here gaurav this
has been a hell of an episode we should probably do something similar to this
next maybe a different era could be really looking forward to it yeah and i'll
probably even longer than this one but this was a lot of fun and i'll catch
you next time this has been the pacific war channel over and out.

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