Who are the great generals?

[Tom Odom]

Why don't we have these sorts now? Please dont attack me for saying this but we dont have big battles to fight anymore or major coalition warfare that allows generals to succeed brilliantly or fail.

No disagreement at all. Last time was Desert Storm and as a member of the research and wrtiting team for Certain Victory, that was very much a minefield. At the operational level on Arny forces, I would put forth then LTG Fred Franks and the left hook into the RGFC. At the division level, it was 1st Armor MG Griffith and then 2ACR. Some would and I see their point would add the 101st under MG Peay because of the aiir assault. And of course, the 24th has its lobby; but neither the 101st nor the 24th ran into what the 1st Tanks and 2nd ACR did.

But above VII Corps, it got really dismal, especially when it came to the issue of synchronizing air and land power. Stormin Norman routinely changed the targeting at the 24 hour brief and then roasted folks because target lists were not perfect. Coalition was spotty and by default; we put the Arabs together into Kuwait. We kept the Brits close (but not too close). And we stuck the French way out on the flank after their first commander was sent home.

Best

Tom

[stanleywinthrop]

Don't forget, either, that one of MacArthur's tactics was to declare regions "secure" and haul out US troops, replacing them with Australian and New Zealand forces. Of course in most Pacific campaigns there were many pockets of resistance that remained after an island was "secure," so losses continued even though press coverage and command attention slipped away. It also held down the number of casualties reported during the initial operation...keeping his totals low.

Yet the casualtiy comparison I made above applies for post-war figures as well. All casualties in his theatre would have been considered under his command, beacause he was the southwest pacific's "supreme" commander, whether those casualties occured on Austrailian or American troops.

MacArthur could also have the success he did thanks to the parallel campaign in the Central Pacific conducted by Nimitz and the massive US submarine campaign that practically destroyed the Japanese ability to move troops and supplies. Nimitz' moves kept the Japanese high command constantly guessing as to where a blow might fall, and the submarine campaign crippled their ability to respond to any shift on the part of the allies.

One could also make the same argument in reverse, that Nimitz was given freedom because of MacArthur's moves in New Guinea and further north. A more balanced review would conclude that the two drives were complimentary (which they were designed to be, by the way) and each derived benefits from the other.

[Steve Blair]

MacArthur still has more downsides than he does upsides. You could use the same combined operations yardstick to rank many of Nimitz' planners (Spruance, Kelly, and so on) in the same league as MacArthur, and they had fewer liabilities (as did Nimitz himself).

[stanleywinthrop]

MacArthur still has more downsides than he does upsides. You could use the same combined operations yardstick to rank many of Nimitz' planners (Spruance, Kelly, and so on) in the same league as MacArthur, and they had fewer liabilities (as did Nimitz himself).

For me, the casualties taken compared to the effect upon the enemy is an important way to examine a commander, and in that category MacAurther outweighed the Central Pacific commanders. I absolutly do not blame you for not overlooking MacArthur's extreme egotism, and his political aspirations were most definatly his fatal achilles heel.

[wm]

For me, the casualties taken compared to the effect upon the enemy is an important way to examine a commander, and in that category MacAurther outweighed the Central Pacific commanders. I absolutly do not blame you for not overlooking MacArthur's extreme egotism, and his political aspirations were most definatly his fatal achilles heel.

Caualties sustained need to be looked at in the context of the stiffness of the defense. I'd be interested in hearing opinions about how the Japanese defense compared in the two parts of the Pacific under discussion. (I have my own opinion on the matter, but it is not as well informed as others in this forum expect.)

[Steve Blair]

MacArthur was attacking targets that were less fortified on average than those targeted by Nimitz and his staff. This is especially true when considering the island battles. The nature of the campaign in the Central Pacific, and the need for airbases to launch attacks against Japan (without the vulnerability that the bases in China faced), called for some (but not all) of those assaults. I don't think forces under MacArthur's command ever assaulted a target with the defenses of Iwo Jima, Peleliu, or Saipan.

[stanleywinthrop]

Caualties sustained need to be looked at in the context of the stiffness of the defense. I'd be interested in hearing opinions about how the Japanese defense compared in the two parts of the Pacific under discussion. (I have my own opinion on the matter, but it is not as well informed as others in this forum expect.)

The boyd school of thought (of which I am unabashadly a fan) tells us that the "stiffness of the enemies defense" depends, in large part, on the actions of friendly forces, and I'm talking about all levels of warfare.

[Rob Thornton]

"Bob, I want you to go out there and take Buna, or don't come back alive" to Eichelberger during WWII, but at the same time had the self confidence and courage to push hard for Inchon in Korea. Tom' point about Yin and Yang may not have a better example.
Best regards, Rob

[stanleywinthrop]

"Bob, I want you to go out there and take Buna, or don't come back alive" to Eichelberger during WWII, but at the same time had the self confidence and courage to push hard for Inchon in Korea. Tom' point about Yin and Yang may not have a better example.
Best regards, Rob

MacArthur was desperate to take Buna to serve as a foothold on the north coast of New Guinea for further operations. He was unsatisfied with the performance of U.S. troops up to that point, and in his vanity this is how he chose to express that unsatisfaction. From that point forward MacArthur leapfrogged northwest up the Guinea coast, avoiding other Japanese strongholds.

Unfortunatly I have to disagree with you on this being a prime example of MacArthur's "yin and yang", Mr. Odom's examples of his ignorance of chinese intentions and indecision in the first few days after pearl harbor are much better examples.

[wm]

The boyd school of thought (of which I am unabashadly a fan) tells us that the "stiffness of the enemies defense" depends, in large part, on the actions of friendly forces, and I'm talking about all levels of warfare.

The "actions of friendly forces" needs further discussion. I believe that the Boyd school of thought presupposes that the stiffness of the defense is directly related to how much pre-attack prep (AKA aerial bombardment) has occurred. I suspect that the same amount of prep against, for example, the 1940 French Maginot Line and the 1942 British Gazala-Bir Hacheim Line in the Western Desert would have produced extremely different results in reducing the stiffness of those two defensive systems.

[Rob Thornton]

we've been known to do that here. For me it goes deeper then how things play out (although that is a good way to measure things), but it also goes to personality, character and will. I had two relatives who served in the Pacific theater - both had incredibly contrasting opinions about MacArthur and both were based on different reasons based on what they valued in a general. To me, that is very interesting- it brings it alive, and makes for good thinking about leadership.

Best regards, Rob

[stanleywinthrop]

The "actions of friendly forces" needs further discussion. I believe that the Boyd school of thought presupposes that the stiffness of the defense is directly related to how much pre-attack prep (AKA aerial bombardment) has occurred. I suspect that the same amount of prep against, for example, the 1940 French Maginot Line and the 1942 British Gazala-Bir Hacheim Line in the Western Desert would have produced extremely different results in reducing the stiffness of those two defensive systems.

I'm afraid I'm speaking much broader terms than your example (although I'm not sure how you can boil Boyd down simply to prepatory fires).

Here's a quote from Boyd that better illustrates the point I'm driving at:

Observe-orient-decide-act more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity as basis to keep or gain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort: to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort or other effort(s) that tie-up, divert, or drain-away adversary attention (and strength) elsewhere.

[stanleywinthrop]

we've been known to do that here. For me it goes deeper then how things play out (although that is a good way to measure things), but it also goes to personality, character and will. I had two relatives who served in the Pacific theater - both had incredibly contrasting opinions about MacArthur and both were based on different reasons based on what they valued in a general. To me, that is very interesting- it brings it alive, and makes for good thinking about leadership.

Best regards, Rob

Most of, if not all, the troops on Bataan disliked MacArthur because he remained reclusive on corregidor--they called him "dugout Doug". This starkly contrasts with latter battles in the war and even in Korea where he repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire. One anectdote from New Guinea, I beleive, is that shortly after a landing MacArthur landed to inspect the front lines. One soldier urged the general to take cover because they had killed a Japanese sniper a short time ago, and he repsonded "good, that's the best thing to do to them" and continued walking down the path.

This is more evidence of the "yin and yang" previously referred to and I suspect that his vanity was the reason MacArthur remained hidden on Corrigedor--he was ashamed that he had been bested and could not face the troops he had failed.

[wm]

I'm afraid I'm speaking much broader terms than your example (although I'm not sure how you can boil Boyd down simply to prepatory fires).

Here's a quote from Boyd that better illustrates the point I'm driving at:
Observe-orient-decide-act more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity as basis to keep or gain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort: to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort or other effort(s) that tie-up, divert, or drain-away adversary attention (and strength) elsewhere.

Prep fires are merely one way to cause confusion in your opponents and thereby get inside their decision loops. Executing Boyd's OODA loop is not a panacea. Being able to achieve the unbalancing of an oppponent at the tactical level does not guarantee sucesses at the operational and strategic levels. A good example of this is to be found in the German operations in the Ardennes in 1944 as well as the follow on operation (Nordwind) in the Vosges in 1945. Similalry, consider what happened to the Germans in North Africa during WWII and the Western Front throughout WWI. They routinely did a much better job of executing the steps of Boyd's loop yet still came up on the short end of victory.

Lest you think this is just a 20th Century phenomemon, I point you to Hannibal's similar inability to defeat Rome in the Punic Wars despite his significant tactical successes at Lake Trasimene and Cannae. He won those battles using methods to achieve just what Boyd specifies in you quotation above.

Fabian delaying tactics throw a monkey wrench into Boyd's theory, as Hannibal discovered. This realization also came to Napoleon's forces in the attack of Russia in 1812. I think the lesson applies (but was not learned) to the US in Viet Nam and the Japanese in China during WWII as well.

Here's an interesting twist to what most post about how to succed in SWA. Most say we need to get better at getting inside the insurgent/terrorist decision loop in our operations in SWA. They argue we will succeed by getting better intel to operators faster. This is the the OODA loop paradigm par excellance. What I think we need to do is figure out how we get our oppponents to lose their willngness to wait us out. Sometimes the Bionic Man/Women solution (be "better, stronger, faster") is not the right one. And applying it in COIN is just such a place, IMHO.

[stanleywinthrop]

Prep fires are merely one way to cause confusion in your opponents and thereby get inside their decision loops.

You are thinking in one dimension here. Trust me, Boyd can be accused of many things, but not thinking in one dimension is not one of them.

Executing Boyd's OODA loop is not a panacea. Being able to achieve the unbalancing of an oppponent at the tactical level does not guarantee sucesses at the operational and strategic levels.

You are falling into the same trap that many who make a precursory study of Boyd do--you boil him down to the OODA loop, and can't get past the tactical level in its application.

A good example of this is to be found in the German operations in the Ardennes in 1944 as well as the follow on operation (Nordwind) in the Vosges in 1945.

Who was more unbalanced in the Ardennes? Was the quick deployment of the Airborne in Bastogne or Patton's 90 degree turn indicitive of a "tactically unbalanced force"? Boyd points to the complete siezure of the French command and control system in 1940 as an example of true success. The Germans never came close to replicating this success in the operational or strategic level in North Africa or post Normandy.
We could go on forever about this tactical stuff, but as I've already pointed out Boyd's theories were meant for and should be applied to all levels of war, including the political spectrum.

Lest you think this is just a 20th Century phenomemon, I point you to Hannibal's similar inability to defeat Rome in the Punic Wars despite his significant tactical successes at Lake Trasimene and Cannae. He won those battles using methods to achieve just what Boyd specifies in you quotation above.

Again at the risk of overly repeating myself Boyd would be the first to point out that the application of his theories at the tactical level would be meaningless if not weaved into a "grand strategy". Here is another quote from Boyd:

"The art of success
•Appear to be an unsolvable cryptogram while operating in a directed way to penetrate adversary vulnerabilities and weaknesses in order to isolate him from his allies, pull him apart, and collapse his will to resist.
yet
•Shape or influence events so that we not only magnify our spiritand strength but also influence potential adversaries as well asthe uncommitted so that they are drawn toward our philosophy and are empathetic toward our success."

Do you really think that Hannibal was thinking in those terms?

What I think we need to do is figure out how we get our oppponents to lose their willngness to wait us out.

Another Boyd statement:

"Amplify our spirit and strength, drain-away adversaries’and attract the uncommitted."

[Ken White]

implement them and finds that one has a large unwieldy bureaucracy (that's reality) to fight with and that everyone involved is not a John Boyd (that's also reality), that other government agencies who must be involved have a vastly different worldview and approach than does DoD (reality again) and that a helpful Congress will intrude to show the American voter they're on top of things and that the Executive Branch cannot push them around (yet another reality).

Then things really get messy because one finds that one has to deal with other people and organizations who have different ideas, not necessarily wrong ideas, just different...

On top of that, there's the pesky enemy, bad guys or whatever one wants to call them who do not always cooperate as they should. Why, sometimes, the enemy du jour doesn't even have an OODA loop; they can be so crass as to simply have a DA loop. Occasionally, they do include the first 'O' and the second is omitted because they Oriented on AND Decided what they wanted to do months or years before they even started observing. Thus one is occasionally confronted with only an 'A unless one catches them at that first 'O.'.

That on tactical, operational and strategic levels...

"Amplify our spirit and strength, drain-away adversaries’ and attract the uncommitted."

I particularly like that one; given the divisions in the nation's body politic today, I'm not at all sure on the spirit angle; our strength is technology based destruction which is not always germane; our adversaries have no infrastructure and little strength yet a great deal of 'spirit' and surprising staying power and the uncommitted apparently really don't want to play with either side.

What do you suppose Ol' John would recommend?

Not being snarky or derisory, it's a very serious question.

[wm]

Ken's post about the need to get everyone reading and playing from the same sheet of music is key I suspect. I, too, wonder how one could use Boyd's paradigm to make that happen.

[stanleywinthrop]

implement them and finds that one has a large unwieldy bureaucracy (that's reality)

Boyd was a theoritician he was giving us a pedestel to strive for; indeed he spent most of his later years fighting these realities. This does not mean that we should give up and accept the status quo in perpetuitity.

to fight with and that everyone involved is not a John Boyd (that's also reality), that other government agencies who must be involved have a vastly different worldview and approach than does DoD (reality again) and that a helpful Congress will intrude to show the American voter they're on top of things and that the Executive Branch cannot push them around (yet another reality).

Believe it or not, Boyd spent almost 2 decades inside these bureaucracies, and he understood them probably better than most of us. But his successes in the fights for the F-16 and F-15 are examples that the occasionally the system can be bucked. Boyd would argue that the necessary changes would need to take place at the leadership levels first (from CINC to Fire Team leader.) Can everyone understand the full breadth and depth of Boyd? Of course not. Does it give us an ideal to strive for? I believe so. mcdp 1incorporates many of Boyd's ideas. Boyd argued time and time again that we must focus on the enemy, not his weapons and not the terrain. This lesson was painfully learned again in Iraq as we only recently began focusing on entire IED networks and not the IED itself (at least if the Washington Post is to be believed). Merely complaining about the realities of the system does not give us the right to accept them as is without the efforts to change it. I am being hypocritical here, as I have done very little to change things.

On top of that, there's the pesky enemy, bad guys or whatever one wants to call them who do not always cooperate as they should. Why, sometimes, the enemy du jour doesn't even have an OODA loop; they can be so crass as to simply have a DA loop. Occasionally, they do include the first 'O' and the second is omitted because they Oriented on AND Decided what they wanted to do months or years before they even started observing. Thus one is occasionally confronted with only an 'A unless one catches them at that first 'O.'.

I do not wish to give offense but your lack of complete understanding of Boyd is apparent here. You are still thinking in reactive terms--Boyd argued that we must make the enemy reactive, not us. In your example above, in the case where an enemy "decided" years ago, our job would be to change the reality today to something different than what the enemy was expecting when he 'decided'. If the enemy (as in your example) is not activly observing the current situation, our job is to exploit that oppurtunity to continue to change the reality beyond what his mind expects. The lynch pin is to have the ability to do it quicker than our enemy can react. I am not saying (nor was Boyd) that the current DoD is set up to run this system with panecea, but again, Boyd was arguing for change, not that the current system could incorporate his theories writ large. I am puzzled about how you and others somehow think Boyd didn't realize that the enemy gets a vote. Quite the contrary, Boyd is counting on the enemies vote. The key for us is to ensure that the enemy makes the wrong vote, and to have the adapdability to flex as the situation changes.

I particularly like that one; given the divisions in the nation's body politic today, I'm not at all sure on the spirit angle; our strength is technology based destruction which is not always germane; our adversaries have no infrastructure and little strength yet a great deal of 'spirit' and surprising staying power and the uncommitted apparently really don't want to play with either side.

What do you suppose Ol' John would recommend?

This is a question I have been struggling to answer these days. Boyd recognized that in COIN (or counter guerilla warfare as he called it) the most important spectrum was Political in nature. This of course is not a new concept and has been repeated many times before and after Boyd.

Another Boyd quote:

"Break guerrillas’ moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort."

Boyd recognized that the most important element in COIN is to seperate the insurgency from the poplulation, and make them distinguishable as such, and that the political spectrum was the only way to do this. None of these are novel ideas and offer no further insight than current COIN doctrine. Boyd would tell us thatwe cannot treat an insurgency's mental and physical OODA loops as a single rational actor, however the moral is the critical dimension in an insurgency and to a certain degree different actors in an insurgency do have a cohesive moral OODA loop, and that is where we must concentrate our efforts. This is as far as my thinking has taken me, and is not very helpful to current conflicts.

I apologize to the members as we have strayed far from the intent of this thread and suggest that we carry on ths conversation in another place or form.

[Ken White]

Boyd has merit. No one has all the answers -- which was my only point.

As you say we're off thread; another time and place.

Take care,
Ken

[Norfolk]

I recently read with interest the article 'A Failure in Generalship' posted on this website. It expresses the beleif that there is a crisis in the upper levels of the military leadership. It rasies the question who are the great generals, why were they great and why are we not producing their equivalents today?

I would be interested to hear from the wider forum and not just about the most well known but others like the Duke of Marlborough or Alfred the Great who may not be so well know outside Europe.

Comments?

JD

1. The Great Generals:

First Tier: Tiglath-Pileser III, Cyrus the Great, Qin Shi Huangdi, Sala' al-Din, Ghenghis Khan, Subutai, Tamerlane, Wellington, von Moltke, Slim.

- Second Tier: Hattusili, Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Arminius, Diocletian, Belisarius, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Basil II, Henry V, Mehmet II, Ivan the Terrible, Gustavus Adolphus, Marlborough, Napoleon, Davout, Sherman, Kirby-Smith, von Manstein, Kesselring, Liu Bocheng, Templar, Dayan.

-Third Tier: Sargon the Great, Thothmoses III, Hannibal, Attila, Kutusov, Toussant L'Ouverture, Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Grant, Nathan Bedford Forest, Byng, Monash, Currie, Wavell, Freyberg, any number of WWII German generals, Patton, Ridgeway, Giap, Sharon.

- The Great Enablers: Sunzi, Marius, Emperor Maurice, Berthier, Clausewitz, von Schlieffen, von Seekt, Tuckachevsky, Guderian, Marshall, Morgan, Eisenhower, Zhu De, DePuy.

This is somewhat subjective, but the first tier is composed of generals who were more or less undefeated and achieved victories with long-term historic consequences, and often with a relative paucity of resources compared to their opponents. The second tier is composed of those who also achieved great victories with long-term historic consequences, or achieved stunning successes in the face of overwhelming odds; in either case, either they achieved their victories only to lose in the end, or those successes either did not long outlast them or were confined in their consequences (at least so far). The third tier is composed of those who achieved great battlefield victories, but with only very temporary or local historical consequences, or not enough time has elapsed for those consequences to be made fully felt.

Finally, the Great Enablers is a list of those who may have performed little or nothing in the way of battlefield command in the great victories for which they worked, but without whose organizational skills or strategic grasp, victory would have been much less likely.

I think that a few things stand out about the great generals:

1. Most of them are fine long-term thinkers and planners (who spend a great deal of time in detailed study, contemplation (even meditation might be a better word here), and testing and planning), yet they conversely are able to make clear and instaneous judgements and decisions on the spot (improvisional genius), which on the surface at least, would appear to be contrdictory traits, but in the great generals, they are completely complementary;

2. They tend to be either self-contained, even loners on the one hand, or brooding, even unstable personalities on the other, or both, and they usually experinced great or exceptional adversity in their lives, especially before achieving greatness. Sargon the Great was a foundling abandoned in a floating basket on a river, and rescued by an old peasant who raised him as his own. Diolcetian went from Illyrian peasant to Roman Emperor (and restored it with his own generalship after it collapsed in 284 AD). Wellington, unlike Diocletian, was born into aristocracy, but like Diocletian, he had to learn to build and army almost from scratch himself, and then beat all comers, regardless of the odds against him. Grant and Sherman are classic examples of personal hardship before greatness. Sherman, in addition, was a classic dual personality, and so probably was Aleander the Great. Alexander the Great may have been born to greatness, but his life was no picnic - a lot of suffering and anguish; Ivan the Terrible could have related perfectly to him. A Marshall and a Patton are not so different as they might appear on the surface - they probably understood each other very well, in a way that other, more stable persons might not have. Some, like Marius and DePuy, were men on a mission, to reform broken Armies, and to re-invigorate and to excell at the profession of arms, and forging anew implements of "Imperial" power.

3. Hand-in-glove with 2., perseverance in adversity and the indomitable will-to-win.

Why Aren't We Producing Great Generals Today?

1. Our culture: We don't want them, so we in one way or other divert those would-be great generals from the profession of arms early in life and prejudice their minds against it. We live in a selfish culture that is about Me, Myselk, and I.

2. The service culture, in large degree doesn't want them, because that culture is about careers first, and the rest second. Incidently, the least selfish of the great generals tend to be the most successful, while the most egotistical of them tend to be the ones who meet the most tragic ends, even if they won in the end (and most didn't).

3. Those would-be great generals who do enter the profession of arms are often driven out by the careerists, as many of them realize that the service culture, the higher you go, will not, cannot, change enough to make sufficient room for both careerists and professionals, without the former almost always dominating the latter.

4. The lack of adversity in our culture, both in our civilization and in the armed forces. The profession of arms is all about facing moral, intellectual and physical stress and challenge and overcoming it. Almost everything about the way we live tries to do away with such challenges, so we are raised to abhor them.

My best guess.