Best Axis Army Commander of WW2

Best Axis Army Commander of WW2

  • Walther Model

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hasso von Manteuffel

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Frederick Paulus

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Paul Hausser

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hermann Hoth

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Albert Kesselring

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • General Tomoyuki Yamashita

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Lieutenant-General Masaharu Honma

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • General Mitsuru Ushijima

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    12
Agreed, there are several Japanese commanders that should be added. I don't know all of their names because my American brain has a hard time sorting through them. The victories over China as well as successful invasion of Burma merit mentioning. I will do some digging to see what I can turn up. Most sources never bother with naming the Generals. Those that do often focus on attrocities, which makes it difficult to sort out what commander pulled off X certain brilliant victory.
 
Kuribayashi or Homma would be good choices for the Japenese side of the argument. Of the two Homma would probably be my choice as he led an invading/ occupation force. While Kuribayshi lead a garrison/defensive force.
 
Doppleganger told me via PM he's asked the mods to add the Japanese I listed to the poll. If anybody has any other suggestions, now's the time.

Good point about Honma, 03USMC. Still I would rather pick Yamashita. When he conquered Singapore he struck from beaches that required the crossing of a vast jungle thought to be non-negotiable by a large force and certainly not one with armor. Yamashita not only brought through the force he did so with tanks. When Singapore fell his army was actually down to their last ammunition and supplies and when Percieval requested surrender negotiations, Yamashita at first thought the British had found out about his lack of ammo and were requesting _his_ surrender. He bluffed his way through getting Percieval's surrender when they met at the Ford factory.

Still, I voted for Guderian as the father of the air/land battle. True it was General J. F. C. Fuller of the British Army who first postulated it, but it was Guderian who actually put it into action for the first time.
 
strategic level...i like Manstein

tactical level of fighing..i like Rommel the best...


if he just had eough supply and maye a couple more armored division........i bet he could win...
 
Yamashita, for his efforts against the odds in Malaya and Singapore with the Japanese 25th Army [just 3 divisions] that routed a force twice its size and seized the "impregnable" fortress of Singapore in about 70 days. Plus, he was still unbeaten and fighting in the Philippines until the end of the war.

Wonder if he deserved to be executed as a war criminal?

It's amazing that the Japanese Blitzkrieg of South East Asia was done with just 11 of it's 50+ divisions, the rest were lined up against the Chinese and guarding Manchuria against a possible Soviet attack.

Amongst the Germans, Manstein was a great strategist, Guderian and Rommel great with Panzers.
Kesselring did well in Italy, although he had ideal country to fight a defensive campaign.

Wondering why have some of you seem to have it in for Rommel?
I know he was made a Legend, partly by the British themselves, but he proved in France and North Africa how good he was, I think he may have been deadly on the Eastern front.

Hauser was probably the best of a fairly average bunch of Waffen SS commanders.

Doppleganger gave his reasons for not including Mannerheim, although not part of the tripartite pact, he fought on the side of the axis powers, and would probably fit into this thread more then the Allied thread.

Where would you rate him amongst the Axis Commanders?
 
Ashes said:
Wondering why have some of you seem to have it in for Rommel? I know he was made a Legend, partly by the British themselves, but he proved in France and North Africa how good he was, I think he may have been deadly on the Eastern front.

Doppleganger gave his reasons for not including Mannerheim, although not part of the tripartite pact, he fought on the side of the axis powers, and would probably fit into this thread more then the Allied thread.

Where would you rate him amongst the Axis Commanders?

Personally I don't have anything against Rommel and regard him as a very able practitioner of mobile warfare. At the operational and strategic level he was untested but through no real fault of his own. He has been accused of ignoring logistics but part of the reason for that is the nature of mobile warfare itself, especially in North Africa where the front line was extremely fluid and constantly shifting. My only problem with Rommel is that people who rate him as best German commander of WW2 usually have no idea who Manstein or Guderian are. Truth of the matter is that had either the aforementioned been active on the Western Front we'd all be singing their praises instead.

As for Mannerheim I'd rate him highly, up there with the best of the German commanders although not on the same level as Manstein or Guderian.
 
Mannerheim definitely did more with less, moreso than any other Axis Commander. He ends up becoming an Axis commander by default for the interests of his nation. I doubt Finland would have bothered to join the war on Germany's side had the Winter War never happened. Because of the Winter War, Finland can hardly be faulted for taking the opportunity to strike back.
 
Ashes said:
Hauser was probably the best of a fairly average bunch of Waffen SS commanders.

Hauser was more than just average - he was a very good Panzer Korps commander. His II SS Panzer Korps did the best out of any formations at Kursk, not because they had better men and equipment (which they didn't although the 3 SS Panzer divisions attached were excellent formations) but because Hauser came up with a tactical plan that was far better than the plans of any of the other Korps Commanders in the 4th Panzerarmee and indeed the entire Heersgruppe.
 
well my two favorite generals are on that list. it was a hard choice between guderian and rommel for me because they mirror eachother so much. i picked guderian because he came up with so many of the strategies that rommel took up and that are still a major part of warfare, especially tank warfare, today. as exalted as rommel was, he could have been a greater asset on the eastern front instead of in africa.
 
Well, very hard choice between Rommel and Manstein. Guderian was also brilliant panzer leader but his true talents were in theorical side. Rommel was master of tactics, Manstein was master of strategy.

Well, I think that Rommel was still better than Manstein. Brilliant victories in Africa in both defensive and offensive means were showing his true talents. And those most crucial defeats happened when Rommel was elsewhere.
 
Yamashita again(different poll)

I voted for Gen Yamashita again and for the reasons given in several other posts. As much as I like von Manstein, his idea that Ciatadel should have been continued as a battle of attritionputs him as far detached from reality as Hitler. I mentioned elsewhere that von Mellenthin considered Herman Balck the finest German tactician in the war,but the fact that Yamashita was still in the field and undefeated at the end of the war is amazing,given the Japanese proclivity for getting wiped out in defensive struugles.
 
In the end I voted Manstein for much the same reason others have stated however it was a toss up between him and Mitsuru Ushijima however my knowledge of Ushijima is rather too recent and as yet incomplete to place him in the number one spot.
 
Re: Yamashita again(different poll)

melkor the first said:
I mentioned elsewhere that von Mellenthin considered Herman Balck the finest German tactician in the war

Seeing as von Mellenthin served as Balck's Chief of Staff that's not surprising. :p Balck was very good though and Guderian was another who thought very highly of him (he was under Guderian's command in the Battle for France). In retrospect I probably should have added him to the choices.
 
i voted for Rommel becuase of his brilliant campaign in Africa, and because i dont know much about the other commanders, but Guderian was the other one i considered
 
I voted for Rommel for a few reasons. Yes he did learn the tricks of the trade from the other two generals but his tenacity was unmatched by any of them. He only had two divisions when he was in africa...his best unites being the Panzer 15th and 21st. He was drastically outnumbered and British tanks were number in the 900 hundreds with a few Grant regiments to Rommels 500 with Mark 2's and crappy Italian tanks. He had two italian infantry regimets with the 90th Light group and a Mt. Brigade. Since he only had limited tanks, he did have one thing in his possession and that was 88 mm AA guns. He used these guns as lethal tank busters and these 88's helped make things a little even. But that was dismal, he had nothing to work with and Hitler did nothing for him. There is no way ever he should have smashed the british that bad. And yet he still won and had he taken over egypt the war would have been very different.
 
If Rommel would have had been gasoline and more than his left 50 tanks he would have beaten Mongomery with his 700+ tanks. He only lost of the broken german supply!

In my mind he was and will be the cluest general all the times! ;)
 
lemontree said:
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.

I also voted for Rommel because his battles were fought with many more disadvantages than the other German generals mentioned.
 
tomtom22 said:
lemontree said:
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.

I also voted for Rommel because his battles were fought with many more disadvantages than the other German generals mentioned.

This isn't really true at all. And it depends on when you mean. In the last 2 years of war hardly any German commander fought with either their allotted level of forces or with air superiority.
 
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