Great Military leaders of History? - Page 42

On September 05 2011 19:25 laszmosis wrote:

The greatest General of all time, by far.

On September 05 2011 19:07 Romantic wrote:


Don't forget his brilliance after the disaster at Stalingrad; especially his counter stroke that culminated in the Third Battle of Kharkov and set the stage for Kursk. The Wehrmact was nearly routed before his counterattack - much by choice, the officers were overly timid in committing the panzer armies - but nearly nonetheless.

On September 05 2011 19:00 KasdaTheEmperor wrote:
It's hard to define the greatest. As all the candidates lived in different ages, different places, and so on. However, for me, note that this is subjective, the greatest general of all times would be Khalid ibn al Waleed.
That man, it is said, has never lost a battle in his life and he took part in more than hundred. He managed to defeat the biggest powers at that time, the Persian and Byzantine Empire, with an army that was poorly equipped and were few in numbers. He was the one who brought and end to the first, while the latter has never managed to retake its lost territories in the Middle East.
He is known for this saying: ''When I am in the battlefield, I love it more then when I am in my house.''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid

However i bet the majority of you never heard of him, because as usual these kinds of threads treat only the West and Far East generals, rarely the Arab and Islamic ones.

On September 05 2011 19:38 oldgregg wrote:


this guy was insane. defeating two of the worlds most powerful empires whilst being outnumbered the whole time? legend.
fuck all this euro centrism!

On September 05 2011 19:51 KwarK wrote:

This is akin to calling a necrophiliac the greatest seducer of all time. If you actually knew your history you'd know the Byzantine and Persian empires had just fought each other to mutual destruction and the area had been pillaged, enslaved and burned to the ground so many times after the last hundred years there was nothing left to fight for and no will left to fight for it.

On September 05 2011 19:57 oldgregg wrote:


ok fair point but the byzantines were still pretty strong and they outnumbered him a shitload. plus the guy fought over 100 battles and never lost one

On September 05 2011 20:22 KwarK wrote:

How were the Byzantines still pretty strong? In 613 Damascus fell. 614, Jerusalem. In 616, Egypt. The richest parts of the Byzantine Empire changed hands a dozen times. Constantinople itself was besieged in 626 and the Emperor was forced to accept a humiliating tribute to the Persian king. The Western Empire had fallen long ago (except Carthage), with the East reduced to a single city just three years before the first confrontation with Islam how exactly did you expect them to win? On paper Byzantium still looked impressive at the start of the conflict with Islam as they won the war with Persia and retook the lost territories two years before. In reality though, it was just colours shaded on the map. The lands were despoiled and Byzantium broken.

On September 05 2011 18:06 anycolourfloyd wrote:
Don't really see how you can go past Genghis Khan. Napolean is basically a pindick compared to big Temujin.

Genghis was left to die in the harsh Mongolian wilderness, and almost did. He started from absolutely nothing, not even shelter and I'm not sure if he was even a teenager yet? He then took systematically united all of the tribes of Mongolia, starting from not even having one. That beats Napolean off the bat.

Then despite the enormous knowledge gap in both technology and tactics and resource gap in simply.. population and equipment, he managed to roflstomp both China and Persia, the two biggest empires out. Then his generals, son and grandsons just continued smashing anything they came into contact with..

On September 05 2011 20:35 KasdaTheEmperor wrote:


It may be true that they weren't at the height of their power, but they still were the strongest nation at that time along with Persia. They had infinitely more wealth, weapons, and armies and then a bunch of people from desert come and humiliate them battle after battle. Not to mention that the Arabs fought both Byzantium and Persia simultaneously, just a few years after establishing the Caliphate. Nothing short of impressive.

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.

On August 05 2011 03:10 sanya wrote:
whats with all the blasphemy in this thread ...

On September 05 2011 20:53 KwarK wrote:

Completely short of impressive. In 626 Byzantium was reduced to a single city by Persia and barbarians from the north. In 627 the complete collapse of Persia allowed Byzantium to begin recovery and retake the lost territories but weren't productive. It's no use having five bases if you only have one probe and no minerals, it'll still take you a long time to recover. A strong breeze would have overrun Persia in the wake of the defeat of 627 (the peace treaty with Byzantium represented a total collapse of the empire), it was already dead. The war was almost as ruinous to the Byzantine Empire, bringing them to the brink of collapse and only surviving because Persia collapsed first, they were in no state to defend themselves against the new, energetic threat posed by the Muslim Arabs.