Rommel or Guderian?

[Lancer]

Which is the better general?

Rommel whipped Patton it the recent poll, now he takes on his fellow countryman, Guderian! WooHoo!

[Imran Siddiqui]

I picked Guderian.

Who's up for the winner after this, Lancer? Zhukov? Eisenhower?

[The Mad Monk]

MacArthur.

[techumseh]

Zhukov.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
MacArthur.

Dugout Doug MacArthur lies ashakin' on the Rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock
Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.


Dugout Doug, come out from hiding
Dugout Doug, come out from hiding
Send to Franklin the glad tidings
That his troops go starving on!

[Mr. Harley]

Guderian - he did the training and reorganization, plus he was an excellent field commander. He had the guts in the winter of 1941, when he realized how hideously overextended and overexposed Army Group South was, as well as undersupplied and unprepared for the Soviet winter, to withdraw over Hitler's idiotic no-retreat order. He got relieved, which is why he was available to do the reorganizaiton in 1943. Not only was he brilliant, he put his career in line for his troops, and refused orders from a maniac, which he had to know wasn't exactly the safest move in the world.

[POTUS]

All Eisenhower did was get the English to fight for America, start NATO, and become President.

Maybe if he could have gotten the Red Army to take orders from the US Army he'd be the best.

[techumseh]

Maybe list the victories as a more objective measure.

Zhukov: Khalkin Gol, Counterattack at Moscow, Siege of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, Operation Bagration, Fall of Berlin.

Who knows Guderian's? What about MacArthur's?

[Ancyrean]

Guderian . After all, the man's the father of modern armoured warfare. IIRC, even before the WWII started he authored two (?) books about armoured tactics and his innovations were greatly influential in the formulation of the Blitzkrieg.

[MichaeltheGreat]

That the two are even compared is amazing. Guderian went far beyond just armored warfare doctrine to really creating the whole three-dimensional combined arms concept that defines modern heavy warfare. From a doctrinal standpoint, he was the greatest and most successful innovator in warfighting since the development of firearms as standard fighting weapons for the infantry.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Dugout Doug MacArthur lies ashakin' on the Rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock
Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.


Dugout Doug, come out from hiding
Dugout Doug, come out from hiding
Send to Franklin the glad tidings
That his troops go starving on!

That wasn't near the biggest of Dugout Doug's WW2 foibles, though.

[KrazyHorse]

An illustrious start, I'm sure you'll agree, though...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Pretty fair, but my loathing for that rabid, ego bloated p***k goes back to the bonus marchers in DC during the depression.

So when are are we gonna have a poll about real generals for real soldiers? I want to see Gavin vs. Ridgway (WW2 only for Ridgway, he owned everyone's ass in Korea)

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Pretty fair, but my loathing for that rabid, ego bloated ***** goes back to the bonus marchers in DC during the depression.

Yup. Don't know any ditties about that one, though.

[MichaeltheGreat]

There wasn't much to sing about, but for the semi-uneducated who don't know what we're talking about...

MacArthur and Patton both had their asses deep in that one. The bonus marchers were unemployed WWI vets (many disabled) and their families, and they showed up en masse in DC to petition Congress to accelerate payment of bonuses that had been promised to them on their discharge at the end of WWI. The trick with those "bonuses" is that they were to be paid in the form of a bond payable in 1945, so when the depression hit, these poor sods who'd fought for the US thought "hey, why can't they just pay us early when we really need the money, after all, we've already waited 13 years?"

The powers that be in DC got pissed because the rabble was spoiling their view by existing, and even worse, since they had no place to stay (funny how a depression does that), they stayed in abandoned buildings, parks, etc. Even though they were orderly, self-disciplined to a great degree, and no real threat to public safety, the DC cops didn't want to get in their faces because they stuck up for each other, and when the DC cops started wailing on a few for no reason, then a bunch more showed up and scared the DC cops off.

Off goes the call to the Army to "do something" and Dugout Doug was the chief of staff. Georgie Patton was a Major over at Belvoir or Lee or one of the other Virginia polo-set bases, so Dugout Doug calls Georgie and tells him to get his tankers and some infantry and go roust that communist rabble out trying to threaten our glorious government. MacArthur insisted, despite these guys having personnel records and proof of service that "there were no actual veterans" and that the group was nothing but communists, union types, subversives and agitators, and that they were doing all sorts of stuff they weren't (vandalism, robberies, assaults, drunk and disorderly, etc.) Patton was senior enough to know what was going on, but his blue blood and guts career officer self was offended by uppity peasants to, so he led six tanks, and bunch of saber swingin' cavalry, and infantry with fixed bayonets against an almost universally unarmed group of old veterans, crippled veterans, and hungry homeless veterans and their families. Several dozen were killed, including women and kids, and once they were routed and intimidated by the Army, the DC police went after them with a vengeance and beat the **** out of hundreds more.

One of the most disgraceful events of US history.