A Brief History
On August 16, 1812, General William Hull of the U.S. Army surrendered Fort Detroit to an inferior English force. American forces numbered about 2,100, while the combined English and Native American forces only numbered just over 1,300. Hull was court-martialed, convicted and sentenced to death. Luckily President Madison gave him a reprieve. History is full of military blunders and dunderheads, and here we list 10 (in no particular order) of those unfortunate men who found themselves in a position to prove just what lousy tacticians they were.
Digging Deeper
10. William Hull, U.S. Army.
As described above, Hull got himself tricked into believing the British forces were larger than his own, even though they were substantially smaller. Some recent historians have sometimes taken his side and have claimed he was unfairly stained by this blunder, however, he was simply an old man who did not belong in command anymore. Giving up Detroit came right after a failed foray into Canada that had had every chance of success had a more capable leader been in charge.
9. Maurice Gamelin, France.
This genius was in charge of defending France at the start of World War II, and he stubbornly kept his troops at the Maginot Line while the Nazi troops poured into France through Belgium. Gamelin thought the main German attack was actually a diversion, and this mistake brought France a quick defeat.
8. Sir Ian Hamilton, Great Britain.
This poetry-writing, anti-conscription British General was not considered ruthless enough for the high-stakes Western Front during World War I. Instead Hamilton was left in charge of the Mediterranean and given the task of invading Turkey and seizing Constantinople (now Istanbul). At first he tried to take the Dardenelles with ships alone, but the ships got battered. He then had troops land at Gallipoli, which was such a sad disaster that it is remembered today as one of the worst military snafus of all time, even costing Winston Churchill his job as First Lord of the Admiralty. Of the 568,000 Allied troops involved in the Gallipoli campaign, 252,000 became casualties, an astounding number. Allied forces finally gave up after months of continued failure, and Hamilton was fired.
7. Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
This man is the guy that assured the U.S. that the Iraq war would be over in a matter of weeks, not months, and the damn war lasted 10 years and is still not settled. In the meantime the U.S. has been just about bankrupted! To top it off, he pulled U.S. forces and effort out of Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq. This move cost the U.S. a golden opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden and to finish off the Taliban. His mismanagement of the military during these 2 wars has been catastrophic for the U.S. and will haunt the country for years to come. Also under his charge, a ridiculous amount of female service members were raped an sexually assaulted, without proper resolution of the cases. GIs were electrocuted in shower facilities and numerous other disasters, such as losing pallets of $100 dollar bills, amounting to over a billion bucks (seriously, no kidding!), also happened under his watch.
6. Arthur Percival, United Kingdom.
This Lt. General is responsible for losing the Malayan Campaign early in World War II. Despite having more numerous forces, his troops kept getting mowed over by the smaller Japanese forces who only numbered about 30,000. Having lost a total of 138,000 men who had been killed or captured, Percival then disobeyed a direct order from Winston Churchill to continue the resistance and gave up the island fortress of Singapore, a place so heavily defended that it was called “The Gibraltar of the Pacific.” His surrender of Singapore was the largest capitulation in British history and involved hardly a fight. Recent historians have been kinder to Percival, but now it seems obvious that he could have done better, especially since already in 1936 he personally had been tasked with coming up with plans for defending Malaya and Singapore.
5. Field Marshall John French, Great Britain.
Despite his “French-sounding” name, French was actually in charge of the British forces in Europe during World War I and, in 1914, would have been fired were it not for the intervention of French General Foch. Obviously, the war was not going well while French was in command of the British army. As it so often happens, French blamed others, such as his own allied troops and politicians back home, for his lack of success. Eventually French was given the choice to resign his field command rather than get publicly relieved of it. He chose the former and was reassigned to non-combat duties in his homeland.
4. George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army.
Despite at 23 having been promoted to the temporary rank of Brigadier General during the Civil War, one the youngest generals in the Union Army, things did not go so well for Custer out west fighting Native Americans. Having already massacred women and children, he thought that he and his men could do the same thing to a large Sioux village near the Little Bighorn River. He famously declined to bring his Gatling guns which may have saved the day. As it was, he managed to get himself and his entire immediate command wiped out to the man, a feat that even the others on this list failed to pull off.
3. Ambrose Burnside, U.S. Army.
Although he did invent the “Burnside Carbine,” his leadership during the Civil War was a mess. Repeated failures should have told him, better yet the President, that he should turn down Lincoln’s offer of command of the Army of the Potomac after both Maj. Gen. McClellan and Maj. Gen. Pope had been sacked. Burnside continued to serve as a corps commander and made a mess of Antietam, repeatedly trying to get his troops across a heavily defended bridge, when they could simply have moved a short distance up or down the river and crossed on foot. This resulted in his troops being slaughtered, and when at Fredericksburg he got his men slaughtered again, he earned himself the name “The Butcher of Fredericksburg.” When his officers rose up against him, he threatened to have them court-martialed. He was finally relieved of duty in 1863 ,following a failed offensive known as the “mud march. ” Still, he was not kicked out of the army and was instead given a non-combat command of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Under his new command, he made it a crime to speak against the war, jailing an Ohio congressman and shutting down the Chicago Times. Burnside was then allowed back into battle but experienced neither success nor failure, until the Battle of the Crater in which a last-minute order did not allow him to use African American troops that had been specially trained for the task, and the Union forces ended up losing the battle. Burnside got relieved of command but was later exonerated by Congress, however, the war was finally over for him. On an interesting note, sideburns are named after him as he wore a healthy pair himself. (Honorable mention to Confederate General Braxton Bragg.)
2. Marshall Joseph Joffre, France.
The French had the misfortune of having this guy in charge at the start of World War I. For some inexplicable reason, Joffre got command of the Army even though he had commanded an army (usually 2 to 4 corps) neither in real life nor at least on map exercises. His poor planning, disdain for allies, underestimation of the Germans and reliance on the Russians nearly cost France the war. For every problem he faced, he came up with an imaginary, self-serving solution. For example, when it did not seem likely that France would win a long war, he said the war would be extremely short. His ridiculous reliance on the offensive, his vague orders and ambiguous plans, his belief that valor and esprit would somehow overcome superior numbers and weapons were the recipe for disaster. Only the ineptitude of almost all of the other generals on all sides at the start of the war prevented a quick French loss. Joffre was replaced in 1916 but still ceremoniously promoted to Marshall. He never commanded troops again. (Honorable mention to General John Haig.)
1. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexico.
This guy had delusions of grandeur, calling himself “The Napoleon of the West.” While fooling around with the Alamo in 1836, Santa Anna got his 600 of his 3,1000 troops killed or wounded by 189 Americans who were all killed. Afterwards 910 other American troops defeated his 1,360 troops at the Battle of San Jacinto, costing Mexico Texas. As the icing on his cake, Santa Anna lost every battle he fought during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). While living in exile on Staten Island, New York (no kidding), the 74-year-old, peg-legged soldier introduced Americans to chewing gum. He had imported chicle to the U.S. to be used as a substitute for rubber. As a rubber substitute, chicle was a failure (like Santa Anna), but it became the basis for chewing gum.
Question for students (and subscribers): Who would you add to the list? (Hint: There are a stunning number of really bad military leaders throughout history.) Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Regan, Geoffrey. Great Military Blunders: History’s Worst Battlefield Decisions from Ancient Times to the Present Day. Andre Deutsch, 2012.
Withington, John. Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters: From the Roman Conquest to the Fall of Singapore. Spellmount, 2012.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="3838 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=3838">25 Comments
Let’s not forget the biggest delusional idiot to ever give a command… Adolf Hitler (the Austrian Corporal that couldn’t)
Dear KLD, “the Austrian Corporal that couldn’t” sounds so cute. It falls right in line with the song, “Hitler has only got one ball.” But to address your point, please refer to my response to John Michna.
Agree with KLD, Hitler ought to be on this list… his insistence on invading Russia and fighting the war on two fronts, while ignoring recommendations & advice from his Wehrmacht generals, arguably cost Germany the war. Gen. McClellan was a much worse, more ineffective military leader than Burnside, and if Burnside makes the list, McClellan certainly belongs. Not sure about Rumsfeld on this list, as he was infinitely more politician rather than “military” leader… probably belongs on a different “!0 Really Bad…” list.
Hitler’s invasion failed because he used on Russia the same blitzkrieg attack that he used on europe. In blitz, the attackers sent a huge amount of tanks and assault vehicles and basically push forward as hard as they can while the remaining soldiers were several hours behind and would follow along to secure the area after the tanks took it. But with Russia, there was just so much land that the gap between the assault group and support groups got so large (in some areas several weeks) that the Russians had time to reinforce the area again, stopping the advance and splitting up the German army. Just so you know lol
Dear John, You are entirely correct in saying that the inclusion of Donald Rumsfeld in this lists warrants the addition of Adolf Hitler as well. I am less familiar than Burnside, though, as War History is not my forte. The author did, however, ask his readers to name anyone they felt belonged in the list. These suggestions will surely be incorporated into the follow-up article. Please stick around for that.
Jesus, this is a terrible list.
Gamelin’s major blunder was (ironically) throwing away France’s strategic reserve in a massed counter-offensive under the Breda variant of the Dyle Plan to prevent the German armoured columns breaking through the Low Countries. This meant that Guderian’s surprise breakthrough from the ‘impenetrable’ Ardennes forest a hundred miles to the south was able to cut off and encircle the attacking force, with no significant Allied armour formations available to intercept them. The famous exchange between Churchill and Gamelin went like this:
Churchill: “Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?” (Where is the strategic reserve?)
Gamelin: “Aucune…” (there is none)
Joffre wasn’t a great commander, but was instrumental in orchestrating the French counter-attack on the Marne that threw back the German formations and stabilised the Western Front. He also had to foresight to identify talented officers like d’Esperey and Foch, who went on to become two of the war’s greatest generals.
As far as bad military leaders go, a classic example would be Stillwell in Burma. He was an utterly incompetent sociopath who was universally hated by the men under his command as he needlessly threw away the lives of thousands of British and American raiders by forcing them to make bloody frontal assaults which they weren’t equipped for. He also continually demanded vital resources for the Ledo road, with the promise that it would enable the raising of 20 Chinese infantry divisions for Burma…except the British conquest of Mandalay made the road redundant and the phantom divisions never materialised,
Another one would be Westmoreland in Vietnam. One of the few modern military leaders where you honestly have to ask “is he retarded?”.
Gamelin was in charge of losing the whole country in just a few weeks, and that is pretty bad. The brevity of the paragraph or so about each mandates an oversimplified explanations. Your observations are correct. Remember, there is no claim that these are the worst leaders, just some bad ones that we hope you find interesting. Most of our readers are not historians. Stillwell and Westmoreland may well deserve to be on the list, as do many others, but the arbitrary limit was 10. Some obvious ones that appear on other lists were purposely overlooked to give a fresher look. Thanks for your observations, we appreciate this type of discussion.
Sure, Gamelin was a poor leader, but claiming that he sat timidly in the Maginot Line is absurd.
It’s all good and well creating an entertaining list, but it should at least make an attempt at historical accuracy.
How about Pearl Harbor? Has anyone seen the movie ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ it does a pretty good job of depicting how Pearl Harbor could have been avoided.
Dear Mark,
Have you seen the Director’s Cut version of Pearl Harbor? It is superior to the much maligned theatrical version. In any event, Tora! Tora! Tora! made our list at https://www.historyandheadlines.com/10-best-world-war-ii-movies-based-real-events-march-7-1945-bridge-remagen-still-standing/ which I also encourage you to read! Thanks!
Sincerely,
Dr. Zarzeczny
With Rumsfeld on the list one could argue for the inclusion of Saddam Hussein as well. His government was crushed while under his command within about a month ,if I am not mistaken, and he was captured within a year. Rumsfeld was unaware of the power vacuum that would be created in the absence of Hussein, which contributes to the turmoil of the region today.
Interesting list! I know very little military history and whether are not these choices are the best of the best is beyond me, but I think between the interesting comments and the actual list, you really get a feel for the impact of incompetent military leaders on history. Modern examples and past examples together help to explain how situations get out of hand, and we end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It must have been embarrassing for the leaders who have these military leaders under them. For example, Joseph Joffre’s misinterpretation of how long the battle might be one small mistake, but will result in the morale of the troops dropping.
This was funny to read because its hard to believe how these people lead their military. I just don’t know how these people became leaders.
All of these show just how important leadership is in the military. Having served under Rumsfeld I can attest to just how bad he was. I wonder if he knows just how bad others know the job he did.
I have a hard time blaming the loss or problems with a war on one person. I feel there are many other factors that can go into it.
The reason for the blame to fall on one person is the organization, strategy, etc. That is why sport coaches get a lot of credit/blame even though they aren’t the ones actually playing.
I’m really surprised I haven’t heard of any of these people before.
Sad to see how much harm Rumsfeld has done compared to anything good. Sometimes you just have to wonder what people are thinking, especially people with so much power.
I have heard of most of these people, but never really paid too much attention to what they did. The negative effects their decisions had are crazy to think about, seeing that they were thought to be high up and in charge.
Santa Anna may have lost every battle of that war, but at least he showed us chewing gum. And for that we must thank him.
Primarily American, British, and French military leaders.
At least the worst military leader of all time can hang his hat on something rather than never winning one battle. Thanks for introducing us to gum!
Custer did not massacre anybody. His troops ended up shooting some innocents in the chaos of battle, but that’s about it. Also, gatling guns would’ve been useless on that terrain.
Custer’s men killed women and children prior to the battle. You are right, the Gatling Guns may not have helped win the battle, but they might have. It is hard to say how the Native Americans would have reacted to being “machine gunned.” Often in battle, the psychological effects of a weapon are more than the physical effects.