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like star wars episode 3 famous moving text in the beginning said: There are heroes on both sides of the war.
half of what Acertos said rubbish but I will say later Hitler's control in WW2 in the beginning was something to look at because of the astonishingly rapid time in which France was defeated. At the time regarded as possessing the world’s largest and most powerful army, France was crushed in a brilliantly quick campaign that took them totally by surprise. It’s one thing to do this with an army of 50,000 musket-wielding troops wearing red uniforms, but it’s another thing when hundreds of thousands of men armed with machine guns and tanks are involved. Possessing gifted field generals such as Guderian, Rommel, and von Manstein, Hitler overruled his general staff and led a surprise attack, spearheaded by tanks through the heavily wooded Ardennes forest. Taken completely by surprise, the British and French were thrown into total panic. They didn’t think tanks would be able to penetrate the thickly-wooded forest. Within a couple of weeks, the Allied armies had been split in two, Paris was captured, France capitulated, and the British were forced to drop all their weapons and flee across the Channel. Not only this, but the fall of France was merely the highlight of a very successful major campaign which saw Germany occupy most of the rest of Europe, west of the Soviet Union.
of course this early tactics by hitler made him believe he was a genius and ignored all other commanding officers' consul in the later years of the war which caused his downfall which included breaking one of the miltary leaders rule book... Never start a land war in Asia. was a great military campaign in the beginning though, not saying i was or am supporting Hitler/Nazi Germany
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On February 24 2012 03:49 ShatterZer0 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 22:27 StorkHwaiting wrote:On February 23 2012 22:21 Kontys wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 23 2012 17:19 forgottendreams wrote:
Frederick the Great, Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great.... all these men owe their position to their fathers before them.
Show me a man who rose and sparked a great fire from nothing? Maybe Philip of Macedon? Maybe Napoleon? Maybe my standards are too high but maybe you can enlighten me. Great fires don't spark from nothing. Let's not get into the argument about "conditions". You can argue that Nelson is overrated because the british fleet was more experienced and better trained. You can argue that Yi Sun-sin didn't achieve anything because he was in command of technology far ahead of his opponents. You can even argue that Genghis Khan was in many ways unfairly advantaged over his opponents. It's just the way things are. Some people rise to greatness from a pedestal, others rise anyway. Any pedestal is so insignificant in comparison to the achievements of the men we are talking about that I would totally disregard the whole notion of there being a pedestal. Alexander the Great owed his achievements to his father? Please.. It's a nice footnote that you came from nothingness, but that overwhelmingly denotes accident. Unless you believe in things like divine fate, or other nonsense like that. ...Genghis Khan was unfairly advantaged? What? Unfair advantage of having a genetically and culturally select super race of horse riding archers? In the words of my elder cousin, the Mongols were speed upgraded Vultures while the rest of the world's standing armies were unupgraded Zealots... SURE, the Zealots would win in a straight up fight, but the Vultures never need to fight straight up! Yi Soon Shin's achievements as a ground general were also quite insane... Oh, they have guns? It's fine, we'll just charge them anyways then just kill them while they reload.... More importantly, Yi Soon Shin had no training and little to no funding for his navy... even just 80 years ago anyone who set foot on a non-leisure boat in Korea was considered of the lowest of lower classes... His conscientiousness in training his army and understanding naval strategy, that's still taught in premier US Naval academies, in less than a few months is what sets him apart. I generally agree with everything else Contys said though 
Did you even read my follow up post? And Jesus Christ, it's appalling how god awful ignorant people are about the Mongols. It's like everyone read out of the same shitty Hollywood history textbook and are trying to pass it on as truth.
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On February 23 2012 23:01 Acertos wrote:
I think Hitler even though the horrors he did was general that lead his army to victory. In WW1 he lead a char division which never got defeated. He invented the Blitzkrieg the association of planes, tanks and infantry. The strategy used in WW2 was to break the defense line in 1 point with at first the bombers then the tanks then the infantry which cleaned the whole line of defense by coming from behind. But he had bad decision making, trying to attack URSS at the time was not of the greatest idea
War between the USSR and Germany was inevitable. The two world's most militarily powerful nations bordering each other, with hugely conflicting political ideologies, political/strategic interests, ages old bad history, great enmity, and much more. Both nations knew there was going to be war sooner or later. The timing at which the European Axis attacked was the most opportune, as the Soviets were still doing tons of reorganization and mobilizing. However, it didn't even work then.
Hitler's greatest mistake was trying to play general too often. Never let a corporal lead the military. Plain and simple.
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![[image loading]](https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKH6qPqaK5cFbgMOZZGIGmT-JzJfFjXjkYb1t-wj6G4lEnRN25)
Robert E Lee outclasses a lot.
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Erich Von Manstein was probably the best operational mind of the twentieth century. He was one of the main proponents of sending the bulk of the German armor through the Ardennes during the invasion of France. Von Manstein was constantly at odds with Hitler, who eventually dismissed him in March of 1944.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_Manstein
I would HIGHLY recommend his memoir Lost Victories (Verlorene Siege in its original German). I'm a full-on WWII nerd, have read extensively, and this is the single best book (memoir or otherwise) I have read about the war.
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What I love is how this thread continues to produce legends, while the OP is --nuked-- . So awesome. I loves me my military history, and feel I ought to add someone, whom I haven't seen mentioned once (forgive me if I missed a page or two).
Shaka Zulu
This dude rose up from basically nothingness, turning the Zulus from just another tribe to a dominant force (for the region). He enforced strict discipline amongst his troops, forcing them to run barefoot for kilometres and conquering many neighbouring tribes with his elite fighters and tactics. He fought against superiorly armed opponents in the British with nothing but spear men (and won a few times, too) in a truly "Zerg" fashion, using numbers and flanks with a zero armour, mobile force.
They put him in Deadliest Warrior (William Wallace OP) and many of the Civilization games. For his time, and given his circumstances, this guy achieved a fuckton. Check the link.
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On February 24 2012 06:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:What I love is how this thread continues to produce legends, while the OP is --nuked-- . So awesome. I loves me my military history, and feel I ought to add someone, whom I haven't seen mentioned once (forgive me if I missed a page or two). Shaka ZuluThis dude rose up from basically nothingness, turning the Zulus from just another tribe to a dominant force (for the region). He enforced strict discipline amongst his troops, forcing them to run barefoot for kilometres and conquering many neighbouring tribes with his elite fighters and tactics. He fought against superiorly armed opponents in the British with nothing but spear men (and won a few times, too) in a truly "Zerg" fashion, using numbers and flanks with a zero armour, mobile force. They put him in Deadliest Warrior (William Wallace OP) and many of the Civilization games. For his time, and given his circumstances, this guy achieved a fuckton. Check the link.
Yeah Shaka's awesome. When his mom died, he made all his woman warriors strip naked and dance around real sexy. Then he had all his men warriors stand naked and watch the women dancing. Any man who got an erection was killed. Shaka's reasoning was that a man who was so disrespectful to his mother that he would pop a boner during her funeral did not deserve to live. Shaka; an epic individual.
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On February 24 2012 00:29 StorkHwaiting wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 22:39 Kontys wrote:
Horseman armies with traditional tactics that worked well. Enemies that didn't have the army units to combat those tactics or didn't know how to. Granted, not at all a good example, as much of his success was in chief due to innovations he himself made. Might want to just disregard that, I just threw it in there.
When the mongol raids reached europe, the knights who fought them lost on the battlefield due to the feigned retreat tactic. One may argue that they got off easy essentially by a historical accident. Not a major thing, but that was what I was thinking when I put it up. Oh that makes total sense! Especially considering Genghis Khan didn't lead any campaigns against W. European armies. Let's see who Genghis Khan actually fought... Western Xia - A Turko-Mongol people who fought in exactly the same manner as Genghis Khan. Jin Dynasty - Manchurian people... same as above. Kara-Khitan - Turko-Mongol people... same as above. Khwarezmian Empire - A Persian Turko-Mongol people... same as above. Cumin-Kipchaks - A Turkic people... same as above. Exactly which one of these enemies are you talking about when you say Genghis' "enemies" didn't have the army units to combat those tactics or didn't know how to? Pretty much the ENTIRETY of Genghis Khan's enemies were his own people or related tribes who fought with the exact same sort of tactics and organization that the Mongols did. Grew up in a similar culture and lifestyle with similar armament. This isn't even taking into account the entire first half of Genghis Khan's career was spent on the Mongolian steppe fighting the Naimans, Merkits, Tanguts, Tatars etc.
Except this is what every steppe unifier has had to do, from Modun to Tamerlane to Nurhaci. All of these leaders have had to fight other steppe nomads and emerge victorious. Genghis is not special in this regard.
What sets Genghis apart in these discussions is almost always the same thing - he conquered half of the known world, by which what is really meant is that he conquered more sedentary civilizations than the other steppe rulers.
But was that the result of Genghis's singular military genius, or was it a product of the circumstances of the time? To answer this question, you have to first say what exactly Genghis did that set him apart. It wasn't just military victories over his fellow nomads, because every steppe leader had those, and it wasn't just the ability to defeat sedentary neighbors, because again every steppe leader could do that.
Personally, what set Genghis apart from his peers was his political ability - his success in welding the disparate tribes of the Eursian steppes into an entity called the Mongols, to which he gave a purpose and an identity.
Whether he was a better general than the others is not something that can be argued simply from how big his empire was or how many peoples he defeated, as there are many other reasons for why the Mongols were as successful as they were. You have to show that his military tactics and strategies were really better than those you rank below him.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yme7o.jpg)
from wiki
" Tiny Tim was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Tillie (Staff), a garment worker, and a Lebanese Catholic father, Butros Khaury, a textile worker.[1][2][3][4] He displayed musical talent at a very young age. In a 1968 interview on the Tonight Show, Khaury described the discovery of his ability to sing in an upper register in 1952: "I was listening to the radio and singing along as I was singing I said 'Gee, it's strange. I can go up high as well.'" He then entered a local talent show and sang "You Are My Sunshine" in his newly discovered falsetto. He started using the stage name Tiny Tim in 1962 when his manager at the time, George King, booked him at a club that favored acts by performers short in stature.
John Wayne and Tiny Tim help celebrate the 100th Laugh-In episode, 1971.
Tiny Tim appeared in Jack Smith's Normal Love, as well as the independent feature film You Are What You Eat (his appearance in this film featured him singing the old Ronettes hit, "Be My Baby" in his falsetto range); also featured was a rendition of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe", with Tim singing the Cher parts in his falsetto voice, along with Eleanor Barooshian reprising Sonny Bono's baritone part. These tracks were recorded with Robbie Robertson and the other members of what was going to become known as The Band. The latter performance led to a booking on the massively popular Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, an unpredictable American television comedy-variety show. Dan Rowan announced that Laugh-In believed in showcasing new talent, and introduced Tiny Tim. The singer entered carrying a shopping bag, pulled his soprano ukulele from it, and sang a medley of "A Tisket A Tasket" and "On the The Good Ship Lollipop" with a dumbfounded Dick Martin standing near.[5] In his third performance on Laugh-In, Tiny Tim entered, blowing kisses, preceded by an elaborate procession of the cast, and after a short interview, sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips".[6]
In 1968, his first album, God Bless Tiny Tim, was released. It contained an orchestrated version of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", which became a hit after being released as a single. 'For All My Little Friends', 1969, a collection of children's songs was nominated for a Grammy Award.
On December 17, 1969, with 21.4 million viewers watching, Tiny Tim married Victoria Mae Budinger (aka "Miss Vicki") on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. During their marriage, Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki mostly lived apart, and divorced eight years later.[7] When Tiny Tim first became well-known to the American public, pundits and journalists debated whether or not this character being presented was just an orchestrated act, or the real thing. "It quickly became clear that he was genuine" however; and that he could probably be best described as "a lonely outcast intoxicated by fame," and "a romantic" always in pursuit of his ideal dream.[8] "
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Tsao Tsao and Lui Bei, the men who dominated most of China during the Three Kingdoms Period and shaped the course of Chinese history for the next few hundred years. These guys were fielding armies of 75,000+ way before the Europeans were, and were political and military geniuses, on both the micro and macro level.
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On February 24 2012 07:38 StorkHwaiting wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2012 06:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:What I love is how this thread continues to produce legends, while the OP is --nuked-- . So awesome. I loves me my military history, and feel I ought to add someone, whom I haven't seen mentioned once (forgive me if I missed a page or two). Shaka ZuluThis dude rose up from basically nothingness, turning the Zulus from just another tribe to a dominant force (for the region). He enforced strict discipline amongst his troops, forcing them to run barefoot for kilometres and conquering many neighbouring tribes with his elite fighters and tactics. He fought against superiorly armed opponents in the British with nothing but spear men (and won a few times, too) in a truly "Zerg" fashion, using numbers and flanks with a zero armour, mobile force. They put him in Deadliest Warrior (William Wallace OP) and many of the Civilization games. For his time, and given his circumstances, this guy achieved a fuckton. Check the link. Yeah Shaka's awesome. When his mom died, he made all his woman warriors strip naked and dance around real sexy. Then he had all his men warriors stand naked and watch the women dancing. Any man who got an erection was killed. Shaka's reasoning was that a man who was so disrespectful to his mother that he would pop a boner during her funeral did not deserve to live. Shaka; an epic individual. His woman warriors?
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Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov
![[image loading]](http://russiapedia.rt.com/files/prominent-russians/military/aleksandr-suvorov/aleksandr-suvorov_4-t.jpg)
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On February 24 2012 15:22 Timurid wrote:Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov
based on your nickname I thought you'd post Timur the Slow
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On February 24 2012 15:21 qrs wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2012 07:38 StorkHwaiting wrote:On February 24 2012 06:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:What I love is how this thread continues to produce legends, while the OP is --nuked-- . So awesome. I loves me my military history, and feel I ought to add someone, whom I haven't seen mentioned once (forgive me if I missed a page or two). Shaka ZuluThis dude rose up from basically nothingness, turning the Zulus from just another tribe to a dominant force (for the region). He enforced strict discipline amongst his troops, forcing them to run barefoot for kilometres and conquering many neighbouring tribes with his elite fighters and tactics. He fought against superiorly armed opponents in the British with nothing but spear men (and won a few times, too) in a truly "Zerg" fashion, using numbers and flanks with a zero armour, mobile force. They put him in Deadliest Warrior (William Wallace OP) and many of the Civilization games. For his time, and given his circumstances, this guy achieved a fuckton. Check the link. Yeah Shaka's awesome. When his mom died, he made all his woman warriors strip naked and dance around real sexy. Then he had all his men warriors stand naked and watch the women dancing. Any man who got an erection was killed. Shaka's reasoning was that a man who was so disrespectful to his mother that he would pop a boner during her funeral did not deserve to live. Shaka; an epic individual. His woman warriors?
I'm not sure what you mean by this question... It's well established that Zulu women fought in Shaka's armies and he even had an all-women's brigade.
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On February 24 2012 15:12 NationInArms wrote:
Tsao Tsao and Lui Bei, the men who dominated most of China during the Three Kingdoms Period and shaped the course of Chinese history for the next few hundred years. These guys were fielding armies of 75,000+ way before the Europeans were, and were political and military geniuses, on both the micro and macro level.
Lui Bei is a decent politician but had little competency in the art of war. He spend most of his time running around before finally founding his own kingdom in the South west. Even though he had respect, his Shu kingdom is by far the smallest and the weakest of the 3. Without Zhu Ge Lian or his generals he wouldn't even get that far. Cao Cao on the otherhand has been smeared too much in the Romance of the Three kingdoms, an idealized tale that put the Liu-Zhang-Guan brothers and the Shu Han kingdom on a pedestal.
I'd go as far to say that Liu Bei was a complete coward who relied on his ability to take advantage of other people's pity. He's just wanted to repeat the tale of the first Emperor of the Han, Liu Bang (who also rose to power by using others before killing them in order to ensure stability), but couldn't quite do so because Cao Cao was a far greater opponent than Xiang Liang.
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On February 24 2012 14:52 Azarkon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2012 00:29 StorkHwaiting wrote:On February 23 2012 22:39 Kontys wrote:
Horseman armies with traditional tactics that worked well. Enemies that didn't have the army units to combat those tactics or didn't know how to. Granted, not at all a good example, as much of his success was in chief due to innovations he himself made. Might want to just disregard that, I just threw it in there.
When the mongol raids reached europe, the knights who fought them lost on the battlefield due to the feigned retreat tactic. One may argue that they got off easy essentially by a historical accident. Not a major thing, but that was what I was thinking when I put it up. Oh that makes total sense! Especially considering Genghis Khan didn't lead any campaigns against W. European armies. Let's see who Genghis Khan actually fought... Western Xia - A Turko-Mongol people who fought in exactly the same manner as Genghis Khan. Jin Dynasty - Manchurian people... same as above. Kara-Khitan - Turko-Mongol people... same as above. Khwarezmian Empire - A Persian Turko-Mongol people... same as above. Cumin-Kipchaks - A Turkic people... same as above. Exactly which one of these enemies are you talking about when you say Genghis' "enemies" didn't have the army units to combat those tactics or didn't know how to? Pretty much the ENTIRETY of Genghis Khan's enemies were his own people or related tribes who fought with the exact same sort of tactics and organization that the Mongols did. Grew up in a similar culture and lifestyle with similar armament. This isn't even taking into account the entire first half of Genghis Khan's career was spent on the Mongolian steppe fighting the Naimans, Merkits, Tanguts, Tatars etc. Except this is what every steppe unifier has had to do, from Modun to Tamerlane to Nurhaci. All of these leaders have had to fight other steppe nomads and emerge victorious. Genghis is not special in this regard. What sets Genghis apart in these discussions is almost always the same thing - he conquered half of the known world, by which what is really meant is that he conquered more sedentary civilizations than the other steppe rulers. But was that the result of Genghis's singular military genius, or was it a product of the circumstances of the time? To answer this question, you have to first say what exactly Genghis did that set him apart. It wasn't just military victories over his fellow nomads, because every steppe leader had those, and it wasn't just the ability to defeat sedentary neighbors, because again every steppe leader could do that. Personally, what set Genghis apart from his peers was his political ability - his success in welding the disparate tribes of the Eursian steppes into an entity called the Mongols, to which he gave a purpose and an identity. Whether he was a better general than the others is not something that can be argued simply from how big his empire was or how many peoples he defeated, as there are many other reasons for why the Mongols were as successful as they were. You have to show that his military tactics and strategies were really better than those you rank below him.
I have no clue where you came up with the premise that conquering "more sedentary" civilizations is what made Genghis stand out, especially considering he did not conquer more sedentary civilizations. He did conquer the vast majority of the Eurasian steppe though.
Also, you talk about Modun, Tamerlane, and Nurhaci as if they're not ridiculously bad ass generals. All of these guys revolutionized the way their people fought and the way their armies were organized and all of them established massive empires.
I also don't understand your conclusion that Genghis' political ability is what sets him apart from Nurhaci, Timurlane, and Modun. All three of these guys welded disparate tribes into single entities like the Qing Dynasty, the Mughal Empire, and the Xiong Nu Empire.
And the original point of discussing Genghis is NOT to debate what makes Genghis a worthy general. The point is to establish that Genghis did not have any ridiculous "unfair advantage" in terms of troop quality and style of warfare over his contemporaries. So, in general, aside from making nonsensical points, you also completely missed the point of the entire discussion.
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All the older leaders from say before 1600-1700 are way overrated.
They might have been the best of their time but they come nowhere close to modern military leaders.
War in ancient times was of such a small scale compared to war in modern times,your country could be at war while 99% of the people would not notice a thing
communication and movement was terribly slow,armies where small, strategic and tactic options to choose from limited and so on.
The skillcap was just to low
Dont know that much about modern leaders though i do value von manstein and zjukov verry highly, as well as the japanese general(s) that engineerd pearl harbour attack
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On February 25 2012 04:49 Rassy wrote:All the older leaders from say before 1600-1700 are way overrated. They might have been the best of their time but they come nowhere close to modern military leaders. War in ancient times was of such a small scale compared to war in modern times,your country could be at war while 99% of the people would not notice a thing communication and movement was terribly slow,armies where small, strategic and tactic options to choose from limited and so on. The skillcap was just to low Dont know that much about modern leaders though i do value von manstein and zjukov verry highly, as well as the japanese general(s) that engineerd pearl harbour attack
What the hell are you talking about? Do you know anything?
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EPT
