Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Who was the worst American general in the 20th century?

My choice, without question, would be LTG Edward Almond.

His command of the 92nd Infantry Division in Italy during WWII was surely incompetent but his subsequent command of X Corps in Korea revealed incompetence on a grand scale.

Many American servicemen died because of his ego, his blindness, and his sycophancy. The Marines of X Corps only survived because a much better Marine general, O.P. Smith, defied and disregarded ridiculous orders from Almond.

Do any of you other military history aficionadoes have any other general you feel deserves this dubious honor?

McFarland ain't held in high regard...

Wesley Clark. My choice may be too personal as i worked for him. Nothing but a pretty boy, and when given a real job in Europe screwed it up big time. The pretty boy did write a book, about how great and wonderful he was, which was wonderful fiction.

Yeah... He got fired from his command at Ft.Hood and we still don't know why...

Colin Powell - a nightmare of emotionalism and political correctness.

You guys may disagree politically with Clark and Powell but neither one of them came close to being responsible for the numbers of American deaths as was General Almond.
If not for General Smith the entire X Corps would likely have been wiped out.
I guess I measure a generals worth not by their politics but instead by their results with the American lives entrusted to them.

Generals have always been hamstrung by politics.

No question but some perform spectacularly while hamstrung and some perform incredibly poorly.

Ned Almond is most assuredly in the latter group.

Lyndon Johnson, if you're counting people who THOUGHT they were generals...

General Motors?


Sycamore

No, General Motors played a huge part in winning both WWII and the Korean War.
They saved a bunch of American soldiers.

According to Ruark, General John C. H. Lee is worthy of consideration.

Need to converse with George Patton, pretty sure he has an opinion. OTOH, it might have been the one I told to go eff himself in front of a lot of witnesses. Treed by a CW2 is sad reference for a General....

I don't know of anyone who did work for him that holds him in high regard.

Mark Clark is at the top of my list. Incompetent and vane, who's reach for recognition and glory in Italy during WWII got a lot of our soldiers killed uselessly. History hasn't been all that kind to him and rightfully so.

Wes Clark, the butcher of Waco. Used the military against American civilians.

Honorable (?!) mention must be made of General Short for his inept preparatory work at pearl harbor before Dec. 7, 1941. FAIL!

Gen. Braxton Bragg of the CSA.

Nincompoop.

Not a 20th century General, but worth mentioning.

Mark Clark surely merits consideration but the Commanding General of Operation Shingle, the assault on Anzio, General John Lucas, eclipsed Clarks incompetence by sitting his force on an exposed beachhead and failing to take the Alban Hills which dominated that beachhead while it was still relatively easy to do so.
Churchill hated him and is quoted as saying "I had hoped that we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale."

Mark Clark was just trying to do a MONTY impersonation.
I just finished reading a book titled"General Patton,A Solder's Life by Stanley P.Hirshson.It was published in 2003.
While Generals are tasked to to many things at one time,they are no better than their staff.

there were a slew of bad ones who were cashiered and we barely hear of them now....Mark Clark would certainly be in the running of those who survived the initial wave of dismissals as a worst general.

a more controversial pick would be MacArthur....who was both occasionally a great general, and often a very bad one.....as well as a self-aggrandizing ego maniac. certainly, with Churchill, one of the most interesting people of that century.

his decision to invade the Phillipines to redeem his personal pledge to return cost 60,000 US casualties, hundreds of thousands of Filipino deaths, the destruction of Manila....and accomplished nothing that bombing, blockading and bypassing the islands would not have done. The 350K or so Japanese on the islands were in effect in a giant prison camp feeding themselves.....once the Imperial fleet and the air arm ceased to exist, and US subs strangled the garrison.

Formosa would have been a much easier and more logical next step, but it didn't fit with MacArthurs self created legend, or his political ambitions.

But he was a powerful symbol of defiance when the US was losing everywhere and desperately needed one.....and his stroke at Inchon was worthy of Stonewall Jackson.