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In war, there are winners and losers. Sometimes an army is defeated because they simply faced a larger and more powerful foe. Other times they lose because of some bizarre set of circumstances no one could have foreseen, or because they were simply outwitted by a cunning adversary. Sometimes an army is even dealt a defeat because of bad weather (as happened to the Mongol fleet of Kublai Khan in 1281 AD, which was destroyed by a typhoon as it tried to cross the narrow strait between Korea and Japan.) However, there are also those battles that were lost due to the sheer incompetency of a leader, which is the source for this list.

Of course, even a good military leader can have a bad day. As such, this list is not about leaders who simply lost a battle, but those who either snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory or were classic incompetents that somehow managed to be given command of entire armies. A few are on this list because they are perceived as being far more capable than history demonstrates them to have been; in other words, besides the worst leaders, this list also contains the most overrated leaders who, while competent to a degree, do not rightly deserve the level of credit given to them by history. Finally, this is not a list of Generals only, but of men—some of whom may not even have been in uniform—that made the decisions that ultimately led their armies to utter catastrophe. And so, without further ado, here is my list for the top ten most incompetent, overrated, or just plain unlucky military leaders in history.

10. (Tie)  Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, U.K.
Okay, not really a bad field commander. In fact, a pretty fair one. The only reason he’s on the list is that, like a British version of Macarthur, he too may be one of the most overrated commanders of World War II. While Monty is credited—and rightfully so—for his victory at El Alamein, Egypt in October of 1942, it must be remembered he was fighting an exhausted and over-extended German Afrika Korps that lacked significant air support and was running on fumes. The British and their allies, in contrast, massively outnumbered Rommel in almost every category, making victory—pending some remarkable chain of events—eventually inevitable. Unfortunately, unlike his predecessors, Monty choose not to follow up on his victory by pushing the Germans out of Africa immediately, waiting until May of 1943 to finally accomplish what should have been done months earlier. But Egypt wasn’t Monty’s real problem. That came later, first with the over-planned and under-executed landings in Sicily (Patton’s forces beat Monty’s British Army to Messina even though they had twice as far to go), followed by his dismal attempt to capture Caen, France on D-Day. (The city was not taken until July 18, 1944, six weeks after the initial landing.) Then there was Operation Markey Garden in September, 1944, the attempt to take three key bridges in Holland that would make a breakout into the Ruhr Valley possible. Great idea; just poorly implemented, the result being the surrender of 6,000 British paratroopers at Arnhem and  a temporary stalemate that was to last until that next spring. Monty had good intentions; it’s just that he tended to be too timid when aggressiveness was called for, and too aggressive when caution would have been more advisable.

10. (Tie) Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Germany
This is easily my most controversial pick, and I do it with some reluctance only because of the esteem the “Desert Fox” is looked upon with today. In my defense, I do not maintain that Rommel was a bad General. In fact, considering the circumstances he had to deal with—lack of supplies, harsh conditions, being perpetually outnumbered—he did a remarkable job as arguably Germany’s most successful—or, at very least, most popular—general. Plus, the fact that he was implicated in the plot to kill Hitler—though pretty late in the game—makes him a hero to both sides. However, in terms of actual accomplishments, the man may not quite live up to his reputation. While an aggressive and capable commander, he tended to be abrasive, intolerant, unteachable and rash to the point of foolhardiness, which might be one of the reasons he was defeated by the British in North Africa not once, but twice (the first time at the hands of British General Auchinleck, the second time by Montgomery) and finally pushed off the continent. Afterwards given the task of securing the French coastline from allied invasion (the Atlantic Wall) he oversaw the construction of a formidable barrier of bunkers and gun emplacements that prevented the allies from taking the beaches at Normandy on June 6, 1944 for about half an hour or so, thereby demonstrating the futility of depending on fixed defenses to stop invasions (a lesson the Germans should have remembered from France’s futile efforts to hold the Maginot Line in 1940). Obviously, not all of this could be laid at Rommel’s doorstep as he did have to work under the limitations imposed upon him by der fuehrer, but when one considers his almost legendary reputation, it seems he should have been able to do more to stop the allied advance in France.

9. Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, Japan
This is a case in which a successful commander enjoyed an overwhelming victory, only to almost immediately squander the priceless opportunity it afforded him. Admiral Mikawa was an up-and-coming Japanese admiral known for his intelligence and sound judgment when he assumed command of the Japanese 8th fleet at Rabaul in July of 1942. Just a month later, he was to lead this same fleet to one of Japan’s greatest naval victories of World War Two when, during the night of August 8-9, 1942, he slipped into the waters off Guadalcanal and sent four allied cruisers to the bottom in a little under one hour. In doing so, he left the Marines on Guadalcanal without sea protection and rendered the transports anchored off shore sitting ducks. However, just as complete victory—and the routing of the American forces on Guadalcanal—was all but imminent, the Admiral inexplicably broke off the attack and headed for home, thereby saving the U.S. Navy from further humiliation and destruction. Had the man shown a bit more aggressiveness and sank the hapless transports, very likely the U.S. would have been forced to evacuate the Solomon Islands and the war would have been extended by months or, possibly, as long as a year. Rightfully criticized by his superiors for his timely blunder, he was given increasingly smaller and more isolated commands throughout the remainder of the war until being forcefully retired by the Japanese Navy in June of 1945, three months before the war ended. Not a bad officer, but an officer with bad timing.

8. Saddam Hussein, Iraq
People don’t normally think of the Butcher of Baghdad as a military leader (though he liked to wear uniforms), but for the twenty-four years he called the shots in Iraq, that’s exactly what he was. Like Hitler, every military operation was overseen by him personally and in great detail, though, again like Hitler, he left the day-to-day tactical operations to a group of hand-picked incompetents known more for their loyalty to him than for their battlefield prowess. Consider that during his reign, Saddam oversaw three major conflicts (the invasion of Iran and Persian Gulf I & II) all of which he lost soundly (although the Iranian conflict dragged on for 8 long years before Saddam finally sued for peace.) His inept defense of Kuwait in 1991 against U.S. and coalition forces almost cost him his entire army—not to mention his head—while the follow-up war just eleven years later (the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003) cost him both. Perhaps his best idea was convincing the world he had WMD in an effort to discourage an invasion, thereby encouraging the very conquest he was trying to avoid. Worst, he forgot to tell his own generals his WMDs were merely a figment of his imagination, much to their consternation as they were counting on using them to slow the American march on Baghdad. Truly it could be said that no American military commander ever had a better ally than the madman from Tikrit.

7. General George McClellan, USA
While there were a host of bad generals serving on both sides during the American Civil War—mostly on the Union side unfortunately—the one that usually gets the most credit for dragging out the war as long as he did is Union General George McClellan. McClellan wasn’t the worst general in the Union army—that title probably belongs to men like Joe Hooker or Ambrose Burnside—but he was the most cautious which, in war, can be as dangerous as being too bold. In command of the Union Army from November, 1861 until he was dismissed by Lincoln after the bloody and inconclusive Battle of Antietam in September, 1862, McClellan was famous for his take it slow approach that resulted in interminable delays and missed opportunities to hit the rebels hard and potentially shorten the war. To his credit, some of his biographers write that McClellan was hesitant to commit to battle out of concern for the lives of his men—which is admirable—but missing opportunities to potentially and soundly defeat the smaller Confederate Army on several occasions may have inadvertently extended the war by years, actually resulting in an even greater loss of life than might have been experienced had he simply been more aggressive. The man’s personal contempt for Lincoln was also unwise (he once refused to see the president when he visited his home in Washington, claiming he had gone to bed and could not be disturbed) while his political ambitions—he ran against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election—made him more of a publicity-hound than the type of quality commander the Union Army needed. Again, not a terrible general—just the wrong man for the job.

6. General Robert Georges Nivelle, France
What Douglas Haig was for the British Expeditionary Force in France during the First World War (see no. 5), Robert Nivelle was for France. A French artillery officer who took command of the French Army in December of 1916, he immediately set about doing very little but sit by and watch his men and the Huns slaughter each other on an unimaginable scale. At the Battle of Verdun (21 February to 18 December, 1916) Nivelle went through French troops like pork through a sausage factory, racking up an impressive half a million casualties before it was all over. But it was his ill-fated and poorly planned “Nivelle Offensive” in the spring of 1917 that was his undoing. Promising a quick and decisive victory over the Germans, in April of 1917 Nivelle sent over a million French soldiers against a German army half its size and got his proverbial butt kicked. By the time the French government finally pulled the plug on the thing three weeks later, over a quarter million French had been killed or wounded and the army was on the verge of wholesale mutiny. It was only his quick sacking that prevented the French soldiers from turning on their own officers and the whole allied front from collapsing, handing victory to the Germans by default. (On the other hand, had the Germans won in the summer of 1917, there would have been no Hitler and no Second World War and history would have taken a much different track. Oh well…) Unlike his British counterpart, Sir Douglas Haig, Nivelle did not return home a hero but slinked off to some outpost in Africa—the French equivalent of being sent to Siberia—to finish out what little was left of his career. He died in 1924 and was buried with full military honors…and then promptly forgotten.



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