Some suggestions for the Japanese:

General Tomoyuki Yamashita - conquered Singapore by striking from beaches that required the crossing of a vast jungle thought to be non-negotiable by a large force. When Singapore fell his army was actually down to their last ammunition and supplies.

Lieutenant-General Masaharu Honma - conquered the Phillipines by grinding down American and Filipino forces until surrender was inevitable.

General Tadamichi Kuribayashi - as Zucchini mentioned, the defender of Iwo Jima.

General Mitsuru Ushijima - Japanese commander at Okinawa which was the largest air, land, sea battle in history. It was a battle twice the size of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima combined.

I voted Hienz Gudarien, because of the reasons alredy stated by others. But Rommel also a master strategist and tactician. He could turn defeat into victory. His desert campaigns out foxed the allied forces, however, the failure of the Luftwaffe turned the desert war in favour of Montgomery.

Originally Posted by Charge_7

General Mitsuru Ushijima -

Ushijima and Cho are the two Generals in the story I posted up above.

If Rommel was Commander in Chief we'd all be speaking German.

I've said it several times before, there are only two Axis commanders that truly qualify IMHO. Erich von Manstein and Heinz Guderian. Nobody else comes close, though there were many that were truly great.

My vote goes to Guderian. Inventer and best implementor of Blitzkrieg and mobile warfare. For all intents and purposes, he built and trained Germany's Panzergruppen at a time when nobody believe the tank was a truly effective battlefield weapon. He was always a extremely brilliant success on the battlefield. He led from the front and was equally capable as any of his men, a rarity in modern warfare. Wherever Germany had achieved the deepest penetration of the enemy lines, you almost inevitably found him right there.

Rommel owes all of his best ideas to Guderian. It is quite interesting that Rommel was right there with all the Wehrmacht in regard to Guderian's theories: Completely against them. Only after those theories were thoroughly proven did Rommel and many other German commanders modify their own thinking and adopt Blitzkrieg as their own. Manstein is the protege that surpassed Guderian at the Strategic level of command.

In all fairness, shouldn't there be some Japanese commanders listed? They were extremely successful in their own sphere of influence.

Well I'm unable to add new names to the poll as you know. I suggest that if people want to vote for a Japanese commander they do so in their post giving reasons why. I can then tally those votes up as well as the ones in the official poll.

Well, you did forget Mannerheim.

Originally Posted by godofthunder9010

Well, you did forget Mannerheim.

I left him out for 2 reasons:

1) He had already been voted on in the Greatest Allied Commanders Poll and

2) Although the Finnish did take part in Operation Barbarossa they did so primarily to regain territory they had lost in the Winter War with the USSR. So because of this, you could not really consider Finland as a full Axis partner.

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

I left him out for 2 reasons:

1) He had already been voted on in the Greatest Allied Commanders Poll and

2) Although the Finnish did take part in Operation Barbarossa they did so primarily to regain territory they had lost in the Winter War with the USSR. So because of this, you could not really consider Finland as a full Axis partner.

I threw him out when I redid that poll because there were so many people stating the obvious: "He's not an allied commander."

Well if you're not going to include the Japanese you can't really title this "the best Axis commander" can you? The mods can change topics for you. I would suggest asking them to either re-title the topic "best German commander" or have them add the Japanese to your poll.