Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists

kenl511 wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:
Churchill was more of a "oops i did it again" fumbler.
Superb for rallying people together, but letting him plan strategy(or just about anything) is a BIG mistake.

My take on him was he was the PM the UK needed. His Minister of War was truly a fumbler and should have been fired.

Um. While I happen to think Churchill deserves a bit more credit than he gets, I believe he was his "minister of defense." He combined that with the premiership, IIRC.

kenl511 wrote:My take on him was he was the PM the UK needed.

Oh yes, as i said he was superb at rallying people together.

kenl511 wrote:His Minister of War was truly a fumbler and should have been fired.

Well, thats one way to say it considering he was his own minister of defence.

Unless you meant the post Secretary of state for war? Which would point at either Eden, Margesson or Grigg?

My point is that Churchill was taking on two jobs where he should have just done one. Britain needed his skills in rallying the people for the conflict. He had literally hundreds of better choices for the other post and not exhausted himself with two killing jobs.

It is rather entertaining to list which Head of Government/Heads of State chose to head their national war ministries during WWII.


To topic:

I think Samantha, Roger III and Elizabeth III are all top notch Grand Strategists, but which gets credit for which part of the Grand Strategy?

kenl511 wrote:My point is that Churchill was taking on two jobs where he should have just done one. Britain needed his skills in rallying the people for the conflict. He had literally hundreds of better choices for the other post and not exhausted himself with two killing jobs.

Quite so. Though it should be mentioned that the post of "Minister of Defence" was specifically created by Churchill when he became prime minister, due to previous lack of a political head of the military so the position isn´t a normaly ministry as such.

Also to be noted is that both Attlee in 1945 and again Churchill in 1951, upon becoming prime ministers, held the "Minister of Defence" for about 18 and 6 months respectively.

I came to this thread late but I have a few quibbles with previous posters:-

First the guy who said Bedford Forrest's "Get there first with the most men" was out of date misses the point entirely. In Forrest's day, generally "most men" equated to strongest force which is what he is really saying.
Get there first with most force is still the basic operation tatic, strategy, grand strategy of any conflict, war, campaign, battle or skirmish.

Native talent is no substitute for experience, no matter who you are,

Umm.Really. I am sure the highly experienced and SUCCESSFUL Austrian generals in Italy up against a new upstart young French general named Napoleon would have agreed with you. Their replacements probably would have too. The generals who replaced them would have been too busy trying to keep Napoleon out of Vienna to comment.

I won't say the odds weren't heavily stacked in the North's favor, because they were. I strongly suspect, however, that the inevitability of the North's victory because of its industrial and manpower advantages has been substantially overstated and that to a very large extent this is, indeed, the product of historical hindsight.

This whole post was quite excellent.
It did not cover the key points clearly. The key points are the victory conditions. What was the North's victory conditions and what were the Souths?

Most people have a very poor understanding of 'victory conditions' as a concept from what I have seen over the wargames table/map/game board/computer screen and from the study of military history I have made over the the last 50 odd years.
Scheer at Jutland for instance. Tactical brilliance, stategic failure.

Any rationale mind looking at the overall sit rep in May, 1941 would have said the British were going down for good.

Um, did you mean 1940? By May 1941 the Germans had missed the bus, badly.

Churchill was more of a "oops i did it again" fumbler.

Churchill gets a bad rap. Considering he was in charge of one of the winners in WW2 this seems harsh. Much of goes back to WW1 and Gallipoli. A valid strategic idea spoilt by the incompetent British generals on the spot.
AS an Aussie ANZAC is close to the chest but Churchill was not to blame. The idiots commanding the invasion were. I am not saying it would have done what Churchill hoped but it had promise of knocking Turkey out of the war quickly. Huge gain for little loss. The casualties at Gallipoli were pretty tame compared to say the Somme or Verdun or Paschendale etc.

octavian30 wrote:I came to this thread late but I have a few quibbles with previous posters:-

First the guy who said Bedford Forrest's "Get there first with the most men" was out of date misses the point entirely. In Forrest's day, generally "most men" equated to strongest force which is what he is really saying.
Get there first with most force is still the basic operation tatic, strategy, grand strategy of any conflict, war, campaign, battle or skirmish.

Native talent is no substitute for experience, no matter who you are,

Umm.Really. I am sure the highly experienced and SUCCESSFUL Austrian generals in Italy up against a new upstart young French general named Napoleon would have agreed with you. Their replacements probably would have too. The generals who replaced them would have been too busy trying to keep Napoleon out of Vienna to comment.

I won't say the odds weren't heavily stacked in the North's favor, because they were. I strongly suspect, however, that the inevitability of the North's victory because of its industrial and manpower advantages has been substantially overstated and that to a very large extent this is, indeed, the product of historical hindsight.

This whole post was quite excellent.
It did not cover the key points clearly. The key points are the victory conditions. What was the North's victory conditions and what were the Souths?

Most people have a very poor understanding of 'victory conditions' as a concept from what I have seen over the wargames table/map/game board/computer screen and from the study of military history I have made over the the last 50 odd years.
Scheer at Jutland for instance. Tactical brilliance, stategic failure.

Any rationale mind looking at the overall sit rep in May, 1941 would have said the British were going down for good.

Um, did you mean 1940? By May 1941 the Germans had missed the bus, badly.

Churchill was more of a "oops i did it again" fumbler.

Churchill gets a bad rap. Considering he was in charge of one of the winners in WW2 this seems harsh. Much of goes back to WW1 and Gallipoli. A valid strategic idea spoilt by the incompetent British generals on the spot.
AS an Aussie ANZAC is close to the chest but Churchill was not to blame. The idiots commanding the invasion were. I am not saying it would have done what Churchill hoped but it had promise of knocking Turkey out of the war quickly. Huge gain for little loss. The casualties at Gallipoli were pretty tame compared to say the Somme or Verdun or Paschendale etc.

+
No, I meant 1941. March, April 1941 saw German Victories everywhere they faced the British. The only victories the British had at the time were Palmyra and Ethiopia. In both cases they relied heavily on soldiers from the Empire (Arab Legion in Palmyra and the Indian British Army in Ethiopia).

Churchill put himself in the Military chain of command unnecessarily and interfered with Theater Commands frequently negatively. In November, 1940, he allowed the firing of Dowding and transferred Parks to Training by the RAF staff. The only successful command team he had.

My favorite quote regarding WSC during WWII comes from the official Royal Navy history, "There was not one single Flag officer Churchill did not either fire or threaten to fire,"

octavian30 wrote:Churchill gets a bad rap. Considering he was in charge of one of the winners in WW2 this seems harsh. Much of goes back to WW1 and Gallipoli.

You need to look at just how much foolishness he did during WWII. For one thing, his focus on the Mediterranean caused no end of issues for most of the war. The Greek campaign, the Italian campaign, the massive fuckup that was the Norwegian campaign?

Churchill can be blamed for a lot because of how he interfered where he shouldn´t have.

octavian30 wrote:

I won't say the odds weren't heavily stacked in the North's favor, because they were. I strongly suspect, however, that the inevitability of the North's victory because of its industrial and manpower advantages has been substantially overstated and that to a very large extent this is, indeed, the product of historical hindsight.

This whole post was quite excellent.
It did not cover the key points clearly. The key points are the victory conditions. What was the North's victory conditions and what were the Souths?

Most people have a very poor understanding of 'victory conditions' as a concept from what I have seen over the wargames table/map/game board/computer screen and from the study of military history I have made over the the last 50 odd years.
Scheer at Jutland for instance. Tactical brilliance, stategic failure.

The South's victory condition was to inflict enough damage on the Union that the North decided conquering the South wasn't worth the price they would pay.

Helen Zilwiki, Sr.

(Not least because of who led the opposition.)

dreamrider

octavian30 wrote:Most people have a very poor understanding of 'victory conditions' as a concept from what I have seen over the wargames table/map/game board/computer screen and from the study of military history I have made over the the last 50 odd years.
Scheer at Jutland for instance. Tactical brilliance, stategic failure.

Would probably agree with you on the poor understanding of "victory conditions" beyond very basic stuff, but Scheer at Jutland wasn't tactical brilliance at all -- the man got his "T" capped TWICE, and what saved him was lousy British shell quality and faulty British intelligence handling.