Largest army ever commanded by one man?

B

BULLMCCABE

New Member
A Friend of mine believes the largest army ever commanded by one man in a war situation was the Adolf Hitler and the German army during the second world war (dont know if it counts romanian, hungarian and italian soldiersfighting on the axis side),
I disagree and think that the Russian army of WW2 was bigger. I've looked on the net quite a bit but cannot get statistics for either armies.
Can anyone help?
Statistics would be brilliant but opinions are very welcome.
Thanks.
 
I do not exactly understand what u mean commanded by one man. Do u mean at the battlefield? or at a war.

If war, i must say maybe Stalin. The men who died were about 13 million, these are only the ones who died, and all were headed by Stalin.
 
First thanks for replying.

I meant having command over the most number of troops. Not necessarily on the battlefield, or in one battle. And not the available manpower but the amount of soldiers enlisted in the army during a war setting. My friend quotes a figure of 18million for the german army(ww2).
 
You see, there's no confirmation of this number and my friend could be spoofing. I'd love to find a link to a statistic page for it.
 
It looks like Russia had fielded 20,000,000 soldiers. The German Heer or Army was at about 13,000,000.

http://www.feldgrau.com/main1.php?ID=2

Between 1939 and 1945 close to 13 million served in the Heer. Over 1.6 million were killed and over 4.1 million were wounded. Of the 7361 men awarded the initial grade of the highest German combat honor of WWII, the Knights Cross, 4777 were from the Heer making up 65% of the total awarded.

http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/programs/livinghistory/SovietExperienceww2.htm

The populations of the United States and the USSR were about the same, 130,000,000, when both nations went to war within six months of each other in 1941.
Looking only at Anglo-American forces engaged against German soldiers on our two fronts, northwest Europe and Italy, the United States lost 139,380 soldiers (killed and missing) during the conflict. General Eisenhower had just over 3,000,000 men under his command, with about a third of them safely in England, and faced a German Army of less than 1,500,000 of which our forces killed 834,314. At the same time, Soviet armies in excess of 20,000,000 soldiers were fighting German armies totaling 5,700,000 at their strongest and killed 2,415,690 of them as they fought their way out of Russia and on to Berlin.
 
do you consider Stalin to be the unified command?

I consider unified command to be a millitary command, not a political one.

I.E. Eisenhower (WW2) or Schwartzkoff (Desert Storm)

Hitler, in a way, transends being a political figure because he went into detail and changed even small details in plans. Hitler did act as a millitary commander as oposed to a political one; a political one being more on the order of "Take back Kuwait" as 1991 George Bush's role was.
 
Hitler, in a way, transends being a political figure because he went into detail and changed even small details in plans.
Click to expand...

Every Lance Corporals dream to chest poke and correct a General 8)
 
strange..

u only call Stalin a political figure? well, he named himself Genarilissimo for a reason..but I mean still, he had the power..
 
Stalin did indeed take direct command of troops just as Hitler did. MacBeth is correct also in that he did name himself a "generalisimo" so that he would have a higher rank than his marshals. Unlike, Hitler, however, he was wise enough to eventually realize that he had no talent for military command and surrended direct control to his marshals.
 
2 things.

1) The U.S. President is Commander in Chief, effectively he is the highest general in the Army. Do you think he qualifies as a commander as far as this discussion is concerned? I don't, I think presidents are mostly just politicians who make some broad decisions and leave the actual commanding to the generals like Eisenhower and Schwatzkopff.

So I guess to answer this question you have to answer what do you mean by "commanded by one man"? Who is a commander and who is not? Is it the guy at the top of the food chain (almost always a politician) or is it the commander who ACTUALLY does the real commanding?

2) Charge - This isn't a referendum on whether Stalin was a good millitary commander or not.

The truth about the russian army is that the fighting was largely left up to the theater commanders while Stalin drew the lines so to where each general could go.
 
but the commanders u mean whispering death, also follow he commands of the top, ex Bush or Stalin..

This depends on the topic starter
 
Uh, Whispering, I hardly thought it was a referendum on whether Stalin was a good millitary commander or not. I was pointing out that he did indeed command troops but gave that up. Evidently you didn't care for that or you wouldn't have made that comment.
 
Charge 7 said:
Uh, Whispering, I hardly thought it was a referendum on whether Stalin was a good millitary commander or not. I was pointing out that he did indeed command troops but gave that up. Evidently you didn't care for that or you wouldn't have made that comment.
Click to expand...

That's cool, it just came off as 'defensive' when I was reading it.

"unlike Hitler he was wise enough..."

That sounded to me a lot more like a judgement call on hitler vs. stalin command styles than it did a step towards determining who commanded the largest army.
 
lol, take it easy dudes..thats not what the topic starter wanted.. Besides, it was just a comment, a thought given by charge whispering..
 
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