|
On February 23 2011 20:45 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 20:35 Sm3agol wrote:On February 23 2011 19:04 SaiyAN wrote:
Zukov of the USSR during WW2 I'm pretty sure having an inexhaustible supply of soldiers and equipment doesn't make you one of the greatest generals of all time. Nice untrue cliche, but he was pretty good general. I would not put him into list of greatest generals though.
It's not really untrue. Russia's main problem in the war was not fighting, it was getting enough men and supplies to the front lines. Zhukov was just one of the only early Russian generals with any real idea of how to fight a modern war, and so was vastly more successful than his fellow generals. Just look at the KNOWN death totals for both sides during the war, and it's pretty obvious Russia really had no idea what they were doing other than just throwing men and tanks at the front lines.
Indeed, if not for Hitler's idiocy, the Eastern Front might have been dominated by the Germans well into 1944.
|
On February 16 2011 02:52 Bartuc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 02:32 StorkHwaiting wrote:On February 16 2011 02:12 WhiteDog wrote:On February 16 2011 01:21 StorkHwaiting wrote:On February 16 2011 00:52 WhiteDog wrote:On February 16 2011 00:03 fabiano wrote:On February 15 2011 23:54 WhiteDog wrote:Haha, thanks, I'm so tired of this idea that French always lost. In fact everybody is flaming us because we have "the most interesting war history than any other country in the world". China is 5000 years old, no way France could have the most interesting war history than any other country in the world. I hope I am romanianing here I missed a possible sarcasm in that website. lol (<-- no, thats not a french with his hands up  ) Read china's history, read again. Then post. Or read some chapter of Guns, Germs and Steel from Jared Diamond. There is a chapter entirely dedicated on China where he try to understand why china never had been the superpower it should have. (Basically, not enough competition). Yes because Jared Diamond is the supreme authority on history lol... Of course China never had any competition... Not like the Mongols, Tanguts, Manchus, Jurchens, Khitans, Khitais, Xiongnu, Huns, Tibetans, Xianbei, Abbasids, ad infinitum weren't some of the most feared warriors in the world and went on to conquer almost the entire rest of the known world whenever they took a break from attacking China. It's pretty hilarious when you look at some of China's perennial foes and then look at how well they did when they turned their hordes westwards rather than to the south. Diamond is not an authority on history, his book goes from the eden to nowadays, he is a troll in this regard. But his analysis on the rise and fall of nation is respected at least. If you consider "Europe" as a country (with comparable size to china and also comparable demography) it's rather easy to understand that there always was a disparity in competition. Just take a look at the number of names the french people takes: gauls, celts, gallo-romans, franks, normans, french. Now note that it is almost the same for Germany. All those change in names are historic "beaccon" for differents change in the economy of powers of each of these nation. They prove how harsh the competition was in this (small) part of the globe. White-dog, you must be unfamiliar with the number of ethnicities residing in China alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_ethnic_groupsThere are 56 recognized right now. And I'm sure you can extrapolate how many other names and "beacons" the land of East Asia has had over the past 4,000 years. You also must be unfamiliar with the many names of Chinese dynasties that have existed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_historySo, while you may claim Gaul, Celt, Gallo-Roman (which is really just Gaullic-Romans and hence not really a new name, nor is Franks and French any different, and Normans is just named after the northern province of France that dominated the area for awhile), prove France's diversity, but I would be hard-pressed to agree with your claims that Europe has experienced more upheaval, turmoil, and competition among peoples than East Asia. I hope you understand you're holding an extremely Euro-centric viewpoint which seems brought about by your absolute ignorance of the history of Asia. Otherwise, I couldn't understand how you would claim France's different names over the years are proof of their supposedly superior amount of struggles. If you compare Ethnic maps though, you can clearly see the result of several thousand years of heavy competition between different peoples much stronger than in China, where most of them are minorities: ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ethnolinguistic_map_of_China_1983.jpg) (not fully sure if this map is accurate, correct me if wrong) ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/Languages_en3.PNG)
Well, there can be no doubt europe was much more fragmented than China for several millenia. A ruler in europe had much more peers than an emperor of China, who had basically none. The internal struggles can not be underestimated though and chinese historical figures are certainly underrated in this thread (as are indian).
However, as I perceive it, the success of China is much less based on military exploits than on cultural domination, and invasions by outsiders had no lasting effect on China because they were swiftly assimilated. Wasn't China ruled by outsiders from the north for several centuries in the last millenium?
|
Robert E. Lee #1
Napoleon #2.
Hannibal #3.
|
Mannerheim
![[image loading]](http://eduwww.mikkeli.fi/opetus/paamajakoulu/mannerhe/kuvat/risti.jpg)
|
Netherlands45349 Posts
On February 23 2011 21:06 Sm3agol wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 20:45 mcc wrote:On February 23 2011 20:35 Sm3agol wrote:On February 23 2011 19:04 SaiyAN wrote:
Zukov of the USSR during WW2 I'm pretty sure having an inexhaustible supply of soldiers and equipment doesn't make you one of the greatest generals of all time. Nice untrue cliche, but he was pretty good general. I would not put him into list of greatest generals though. It's not really untrue. Russia's main problem in the war was not fighting, it was getting enough men and supplies to the front lines. Zhukov was just one of the only early Russian generals with any real idea of how to fight a modern war, and so was vastly more successful than his fellow generals. Just look at the KNOWN death totals for both sides during the war, and it's pretty obvious Russia really had no idea what they were doing other than just throwing men and tanks at the front lines. Indeed, if not for Hitler's idiocy, the Eastern Front might have been dominated by the Germans well into 1944.
As far as I know, Zhukov came up with a rather obvious tactic, Fight in the streets, fight for each square feet of the cities. He knew that he would not be able to win an all in assault on the open fields(yet) due to the Germans vast superiority in terms of tanks and equipment in general. However this advantage for the Germans ceases to exist when the fight is taken to the streets. I remember watching this documentary where entire flat apartments would be, first floor Germans, second floor Russians and third floor Germans etc. Fighting in the streets is different for the Germans, they barely had to do it before(correct me on this if needed). They won their battles out in the open with air support and Blitzkrieg, with the use of(superior) armored vehicles and (artillery) firepower.
|
On February 15 2011 13:53 Shrinky Dink wrote:
Seriously though, if you look past the horrors he did, he was actually an excellent speaker, with his war machine being responsible for some of the greatest advances in technology and science, and recovered his country's extreme deficit in its economy at the time (following the Treaty of Versailles).
I know it's obviously that he wasn't the greatest of all time, but IMO he is very underrated as a leader for his country since everyone looks at his cons.
The question was not 'who is a good leader' which Hitler was certainly not unless you like fascism. The question was "who is the greatest General of all time. That clearly was not Hitler as he was not a general, and the time at which did intervene in planning Germany military affairs were marred by his complete lack of touch with reality and low intelligence.
|
On February 23 2011 21:06 Sm3agol wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 20:45 mcc wrote:On February 23 2011 20:35 Sm3agol wrote:On February 23 2011 19:04 SaiyAN wrote:
Zukov of the USSR during WW2 I'm pretty sure having an inexhaustible supply of soldiers and equipment doesn't make you one of the greatest generals of all time. Nice untrue cliche, but he was pretty good general. I would not put him into list of greatest generals though. It's not really untrue. Russia's main problem in the war was not fighting, it was getting enough men and supplies to the front lines. Zhukov was just one of the only early Russian generals with any real idea of how to fight a modern war, and so was vastly more successful than his fellow generals. Just look at the KNOWN death totals for both sides during the war, and it's pretty obvious Russia really had no idea what they were doing other than just throwing men and tanks at the front lines. Indeed, if not for Hitler's idiocy, the Eastern Front might have been dominated by the Germans well into 1944.
Everyone knows that Russia lost shitloads of people just because of the idiocy behind Stalin and hes crew. Every general in USSR did what Stalin told them to do. In Zukov's case he almost got himself killed because he kinda refused to follow the orders,even though he did it anyway and his units got killed by wehrmacht despite the huge differences between the army sizes.
Zukov was by far the best USSR general and one of the best in WW2. Pretty much saved Moscow and leningrad, in stalingrad he defeated the german army not to forget battle of kursk. And then 'captured' berlin.
|
Gustav II Adolf of Sweden
- Well he was king but also a brilliant commander!
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/cO4kE.jpg)
|
|
|
On February 23 2011 21:50 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 21:06 Sm3agol wrote:On February 23 2011 20:45 mcc wrote:On February 23 2011 20:35 Sm3agol wrote:On February 23 2011 19:04 SaiyAN wrote:
Zukov of the USSR during WW2 I'm pretty sure having an inexhaustible supply of soldiers and equipment doesn't make you one of the greatest generals of all time. Nice untrue cliche, but he was pretty good general. I would not put him into list of greatest generals though. It's not really untrue. Russia's main problem in the war was not fighting, it was getting enough men and supplies to the front lines. Zhukov was just one of the only early Russian generals with any real idea of how to fight a modern war, and so was vastly more successful than his fellow generals. Just look at the KNOWN death totals for both sides during the war, and it's pretty obvious Russia really had no idea what they were doing other than just throwing men and tanks at the front lines. Indeed, if not for Hitler's idiocy, the Eastern Front might have been dominated by the Germans well into 1944. Everyone knows that Russia lost shitloads of people just because of the idiocy behind Stalin and hes crew. Every general in USSR did what Stalin told them to do. In Zukov's case he almost got himself killed because he kinda refused to follow the orders,even though he did it anyway and his units got killed by wehrmacht despite the huge differences between the army sizes. Zukov was by far the best USSR general and one of the best in WW2. Pretty much saved Moscow and leningrad, in stalingrad he defeated the german army not to forget battle of kursk. And then 'captured' berlin.
Let's not get carried away here.
If you'll notice, his most famous "victories" are all sieges/aka, house to house fighting. The German army was not built for that kind of combat AT all, so every time they had to take a large city from the Russians, they pretty much failed. Moscow....Leningrad....Stalingrad. Same thing. Not as much Moscow, but that was clearly ended by winter, not amazing Russian tactics/strategy. If you'll notice, every single one of those "battles" really started in the late fall, and basically came to a complete standstill because of the Russian winter, allowing the Soviets to mass huge numbers of troops due to their superior winter supply capabilities. The battle of Kursk he wasn't even that involved in to begin with, and again, despite having over a million more troops than the Germans, managed to lose 4 times as many. The accepted casualty figures for that battle are mind-blowing, I suggest you look it up just in case you somehow think that the Russians won ANY battle by doing anything not involving throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponents, and relying on winter.
Russian "strategy" basically was this. In summer, throw every man you could at the front lines, trying to slow the Germans down. When winter fell, the German's supply capabilities dropped off drastically, while the Russian's were almost unaffected. So then they could build up their armies, and attack, again relying on their inexhaustable supply of troops to overpower the Germans, who couldn't reinforce fast enough.
I will completely agree he was Russia's best general by far, and towards the end of the war, he finally started to get away from just throwing millions of men at the Germans, but, imo, he was pretty much outclassed by every German general he faced in the pure strategy aspect. As I said earlier, if not for Hitler's complete idiocy, the Germans might have stalemated the Russians deep in Russia until 1944 at the least.
His orders to never give up ground for any reason themselves basically resulted in the annihilation of 3 perfectly good German armies.
|
i gotta vote for this guy : Arthur Currie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Currie
was the leader of the Canadian Corps in ww1, and made the corps into what was conserdered the shock troopers of ww1, it was said if the war lasted one more year, he wouldve been made generl of the whole entente forces
|
If accepted casualty figures for that battle are mind-blowing, I suggest you look it up just in case you somehow think that the Russians won ANY battle by doing anything not involving throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponents, and relying on winter.
I do know that, maybe because i live in Finland and i've read our history about winter war. And that is pretty good example of that.
And as said before, everyone knew that russians killed massive numbers of troops in the war by throwing them at their opponents. But more could've died if zukov wasn't in charge. Compared to other generals of course.
But yes, that is that.
|
On February 23 2011 22:22 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +
If accepted casualty figures for that battle are mind-blowing, I suggest you look it up just in case you somehow think that the Russians won ANY battle by doing anything not involving throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponents, and relying on winter.
I do know that, maybe because i live in Finland and i've read our history about winter war. And as said before, everyone knew that russians killed massive numbers of troops in the war. But more could've died if zukov wasn't in charge. Compared to other generals of course. But yes, that is that.
Lol, yeah, you would know about Russian tactics then.
|
On February 16 2011 02:19 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I'm not seeing anything here that shows field armies ever surpassed 100k. And rarely even got past 60-80k.
On the other hand, China and the steppe tribes around them regularly fielded armies of over 100k.
During the Battle of Philippi the numbers on each side reached more then 100,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Philippi
Just wanted to quickly throw it out there. =)
|
On February 23 2011 22:24 Sm3agol wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 22:22 Grettin wrote:
If accepted casualty figures for that battle are mind-blowing, I suggest you look it up just in case you somehow think that the Russians won ANY battle by doing anything not involving throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponents, and relying on winter.
I do know that, maybe because i live in Finland and i've read our history about winter war. And as said before, everyone knew that russians killed massive numbers of troops in the war. But more could've died if zukov wasn't in charge. Compared to other generals of course. But yes, that is that. Lol, yeah, you would know about Russian tactics then.
I completely lost you now. Winter war is a good example of russians throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponent.
|
General Tso of course, for his amazing chicken.
|
I'd have to go with Napoleon for sure. The man was brilliant for his time, and even after getting exiled he was still able to come back from it and take control of his army again.
|
+ Show Spoiler + On February 23 2011 22:12 Sm3agol wrote:
Let's not get carried away here.
If you'll notice, his most famous "victories" are all sieges/aka, house to house fighting. The German army was not built for that kind of combat AT all, so every time they had to take a large city from the Russians, they pretty much failed. Moscow....Leningrad....Stalingrad. Same thing. Not as much Moscow, but that was clearly ended by winter, not amazing Russian tactics/strategy. If you'll notice, every single one of those "battles" really started in the late fall, and basically came to a complete standstill because of the Russian winter, allowing the Soviets to mass huge numbers of troops due to their superior winter supply capabilities. The battle of Kursk he wasn't even that involved in to begin with, and again, despite having over a million more troops than the Germans, managed to lose 4 times as many. The accepted casualty figures for that battle are mind-blowing, I suggest you look it up just in case you somehow think that the Russians won ANY battle by doing anything not involving throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponents, and relying on winter.
Russian "strategy" basically was this. In summer, throw every man you could at the front lines, trying to slow the Germans down. When winter fell, the German's supply capabilities dropped off drastically, while the Russian's were almost unaffected. So then they could build up their armies, and attack, again relying on their inexhaustable supply of troops to overpower the Germans, who couldn't reinforce fast enough.
I will completely agree he was Russia's best general by far, and towards the end of the war, he finally started to get away from just throwing millions of men at the Germans, but, imo, he was pretty much outclassed by every German general he faced in the pure strategy aspect. As I said earlier, if not for Hitler's complete idiocy, the Germans might have stalemated the Russians deep in Russia until 1944 at the least.
His orders to never give up ground for any reason themselves basically resulted in the annihilation of 3 perfectly good German armies.
That is a very solid assessment of the Eastern Front. The Wermacht was arguably the single best military force the world has ever seen; how Hitler managed to undermine his own juggernaut time-after-time without fail....the most mind-boggling (and fortunate) thing of the past millennium (possibly ever).
On February 23 2011 22:29 Grettin wrote:
I completely lost you now. Winter war is a good example of russians throwing massive numbers of troops at their opponent.
That's what he meant. He was basically saying: "If you know about that war, then I don't need to explain Russian strategy to you".
|
On February 15 2011 19:20 icyF wrote:At first I was not gonna post anything, but seeming as more and more people bring up the heroes of their own countries, I shall as well. Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was the Commander-in-Chief of Finland's Defence Forces, Marshal of Finland and a politician. He was Regent of Finland and the sixth President of Finland. ![[image loading]](http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i45/Jaesun999/lulz/finland.jpg)
Isnt this a little bit misleading ? As I recall there were norwegian voluntary troops there .. maybe not that much, but there were !
And I never understood where those pictures came from, as this is the wikipedia page on the winter war ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
|
On February 23 2011 23:13 Tufas wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 19:20 icyF wrote:At first I was not gonna post anything, but seeming as more and more people bring up the heroes of their own countries, I shall as well. Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was the Commander-in-Chief of Finland's Defence Forces, Marshal of Finland and a politician. He was Regent of Finland and the sixth President of Finland. Isnt this a little bit misleading ? As I recall there were norwegian voluntary troops there .. maybe not that much, but there were !
11,600 and mostly swedish volunteers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://faq.macedonia.org/images/alexander.mosaic.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.biographyshelf.com/Templates/images/Art/alexander_the_great/alexander_the_great_empire_map.jpg)
