Most controversial general or incident in history

Y

Young 1

New Member
I'm thinking Patton, because while he was very good militarily, there were several incidents, including him slapping a soldier, which caused people to want him kicked out. Anyone who has seen the movie 'Patton' knows how he didn't get to participate in the Normandy landing because of such an incident.
 
Do you mean the one who was the hardest to deal with? Or the one that is the hardest to understand.

I think the worst General in history is William T. Sherman
 
Id have to say AF General Curtis LeMay. This man was very contraversial..effective at establishing the US as a global super power with his formation of the Strategic Air Forces...but very hard on the way he did it.

Look at some of this mans quotes in the AF quotes group..and you'll see how he stated what he believed in.
 
The thing that makes me feel the way I feel about Sherman is just like you said about LeMay. Sherman was told that the Union needed to end the war quickly. So he went throughout the South, burning everyone home and town he came across, taking all the food and supplies. Now the thing about this was that there were no Confederate troops in majority of these towns. This left the women and children without homes just as winter came along. Cowardice I think
 
"Sherman was told that the Union needed to end the war quickly. So he went throughout the South, burning everyone home and town he came across, taking all the food and supplies. Now the thing about this was that there were no Confederate troops in majority of these towns. This left the women and children without homes just as winter came along. Cowardice I think"
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Irishwizard, you are welcome to your opinion, but MINE is: you need to hit the books. Sherman was hardly a coward. Nor was he a bad general. In fact, didn't he WIN most of his campaigns? Didn't he defeat most of the southern Generals he came up against? Didn't the North win the war?
Your biggest problem with him is that he burned houses and displaced civilians? Boo hoo. He brought the war to their doorstep, made them know what war was, that it was barbarism and cruelty, and that, though the north hadn't started the war, it would surely end it. Until the south felt the pain of loss and defeat, until their overbearing pride and self confidence was shaken, the war would go on.
As far as leaving women and children homeless, take a look at the way he handled the evacuation of Atlanta. He called a truce to allow the Rebels to transport their civilians to safe areas. Admittedly he made them ALL leave, but that was for sound military reasons: He didn't have the manpower to garrison so large a town, and couldn't afford a rebel presence at his rear in such a strategic position.
During his march to the Sea, Sherman gave distinct orders that only areas in which his troops met armed resistance where to be burned, and most authorities agree he tried to enforce these orders. So he should be nice to the people destroying the United States? Would I be nice to a traitor to the United States, or his partisan supporters? WOULD YOU?
 
Well, the reason he won most of his campaigns is because he swept through the South from west to east. He served in the Western Theatre but he is better known for his time conquering the South. Its just the means he took to conquer them. You say he gave them proper time to evacuate, ok thats fine. But then burning the city of Atlanta down to the ground and moving on is not what I call the conduct of a General. He allowed them to go to other cities, even though majority of them (The major ones) had been burned already or were on the road to be. I don't see how he can be held so highly by bringing the war to civilians. Many Generals tried to avoid doing this, he didn't. I don't understand how he can be held so high by forcing women and children who, yes they did contribute to the war, but they did not go and kill the men. They were forced out of there homes and left for the worst. He did not leave them supplies, or even possible homes. Refering to the South as having over bearing pride and self confidence is a rather bit harsh. They loved there state just as the Union loved theres. They fought for there homeland since it was the Union who invaded the South. So please don't try to school me. I dont want a flame war, but don't refer to the South during the Civil War in that way.
 
Sherman was carrying out orders (as was Sheridan, no one has mentioned him yet). The North's military strategy of "total war" towards the end of the Civil War was to toally ravage everything and bring the war to the people. The Southerners had very high spirits. Who knows what they could have done in 40-50 years had they still the spirit to go on.

My 2 cents.
 
How could the Union invade it's own country? Which the South WAS, because the people there had REBELLED against the Union. Perhaps you are forgetting Fort Sumter, in which South Carolinians fired upon Union Troops?
http://www.civilwarhome.com/ftsumterevents.htm
If you feel that his march was barbaric, wasteful of civilian lives and property, and that it's purpose of preventing casualties by shocking the south into submission was not a valid one, I have two words for you:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
Of course, anything I say will not change your opinion, so I will leave it at this: Read a biography or two of Sherman, I don't care which, with an eye towards the actual man behind the story. Try to see who and what he was, before the war, and try to understand what could have led him to the policy he adopted. I don't have anything further to say on this topic.
 
States had the right to secede back then. Its funny how a President must invade his own country to keep control of it. I know plenty of what happened at Fort Sumter. South Carolina seceded and Beauregard gave the leading officer inside the Fort plenty of time to leave but he would not. It's just as if there was a enemy embassy in a state and we told them to leave and they said no. We would make them leave by force, just as PGT Beauregard did at Fort Sumter. Also just in case you didn't know, it was a bloodless battle. I don't see how telling me about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is going to change my mind. 2 totally different eras, and ways of fighting. So dont try to use that as a poll to lean on. I have read a biography on Sherman a year or 2 ago and thats when my views on him came about. He is remebered most for the burning of Atlanta and the march to the sea. What a brave brave general- making women and children by the thousands leave there homes. When the South had done nothing like this to the Union to my knowledge? Or did Lee or even Jackson in his time go town to town burning and taking all the supplys and leaving women and children 'for dead' basically on such a huge scale? I know I can not change your opinion because many of the people today automatically assume that the Union was right, and that the South were just a bunch of rednecks who wanted slavery. Well there wrong. Some people down here, who seriously know Shermans history, don't even say his name. Its that bad. People in the north honestly don't know what he did to the South. Not in a good way, but how he abandoned morals and decency, to achieve the win.
 
well

Ariel Sharon was a comlete loose cannon, but a great General...In 1973 he ignored all orders and went on attack, dragging the rest of the IDF behind him. In 1982 as Minister of Defence he invaded Lebanon and basically kept going, ignoring the Govronmnts decisions....
 
Just want to say that many people in the South were left homeless, temporarily. After the war the Federal Government rebuilt the South. And in NOT killing very many people Sherman, and Sheridan to a degree, ended the war and SAVED thousands of lives.
 
IrishWizard, much of my family (including Jesse James, hooah :lol: ) fought for the South, but the South WAS wrong, and those who seceded WERE traitors. It was of course a different world back then, and a different country, where state loyalties far outran national unity, but the Confederates did indeed commit treason. I believe that they did have several legitimate complaints, most notably the high tariffs on Southern agricultural good shipped through the dominant Northern ports, but these were not justifiable reasons to try to destroy our Union. Sherman's "March to the Sea," although brutal, was justifiable, and as Jamoni said, it very likely saved lives by forcing the surrender of the Confederacy, which was inevitable anyway, only a matter of how many more deaths it would cause. Just to throw in a trite saying, ever heard "mess with the bull, get the horns?"
Another note, if that farmland was left intact, it very likely would have become at one point or another a true battleground, like much of the rest of the South, and have been destroyed both by warfare and looting by both sides during the fighting, as well as swallowing up even more lives, both military and civilian.
And on the subject of "did the South do anything similar," my "Robin Hood" ancestor and other landlocked privateers ransacked, raped, and pillaged their way through areas sympathetic to the Union throughout the course of the war.


By the way, there will be no "flame wars" here, Irish, so don't worry about anyone starting any, because we will finish it.
 
See when talking about treason I just don't know. I know in a way they were wrong for seceding but as you said there views on state loyalty was far different than it is now. It is both sides fault that the Confederacy seceded. The North basically acted like they were there own nation because of the slave states and this is what drew the line between the two. I know they were a nation, but when I think about it they really weren't. They were controversial with each other in so many ways that it really was 2 different nations under 1 name. And it seems that many peoples view is the common one, "Does the end justify the means?" Which from what has been said, it does. I understand his mission was to make the South submit but the means of doing it was just not right I believe. Thats why I have a problem with people thinking he was a great General. I classify someone as a great General if they are a master in strategy or just a fine military man. Sherman didn't hold anything back, which makes me not respect him, because he would do anything to win the war even if it was wrong. No compassion. No mercy. This should be shown to enemy soldiers not women and children. The South weren't training women and children to fight and kill themselves to take out some Union soldiers as the Vietnamese did in Vietnam.
 
In case you missed it, war isn't pretty, Irish ;) .
In my opinion, Sherman did what had to be done, it wasn't nice, it wasn't pretty, but it was effective, and it brought an end to the war much quicker than would have happened otherwise. I also believe that he WAS a master of strategy (it worked, didn't it?), and that he was much more responsible with his men's lives than, say, Grant by attacking the infrastructure if the South and therefore the ability of the Confederate army to refit and resupply rather than throwing poorly trained men against a (generally) much more determined enemy with homecourt advantage (there was no need for anymore Fredericksburgs).
 
Yes he did get the job done but I don't hold him as a master of strategy just because he did it. Majority of it was sweeping across the South and clearing out citys that were filled with women and children. Grant, as you said, is another good example of a person with the same thoughts as Sherman. He didn't hold anything back like he did at Vicksburg, which didn't work to well. Im not questioning him ending the war quicker because he truly did. Im just questioning him being a great General because in my opinion he was not. He did not pull off any miraculous thing in battle or do a heroic thing in my opinion. He made the South submit by destroying its citys and leaving women and children out for the coming winter. Doing that does not make him a great general at all. A great general I'd say would be Lee, Jackson, or even McClellan.
 
In retrospect on Sherman, im afraid that you are both right, and both are wrong.

What we are clearly over-looking was that the over all grand strategy was formulated by Grant, in that he had to split the southern areas off from their major commerce ports first along the missisippi, and then he arranged to split the southern areas into smaller, more easily controllable units. The big strategy of taking the confederate capital and winning the war wasnt working. So, by completing the strangelation of the southern supply lines, exhausting the incomming resources, then splitting and taking or destroying the resources in the smaller sections, Grant was going to drive the confederacy into more desperate acts.

Sherman was only one small part of that strategy. True, he has the more memorable part ( the people in Atlanta celebrated "Shermans Burial Day" for years) but there were other officers that pretty much did the same thing, in their smaller areas of responsibility.

But was Sherman the most contraversial general officer? In my opinion...based on just the discussion of the amount of distruction caused to civillians and resources Id have to say no...there have been plenty more that have occoured more contraversy than Sherman (one example was the general officers that ordered the burning of Richmond or the firing on the civillian part of the town of charleston by military batterys are two more examples).

really need to get back on topic, and get some more examples of contraversial generals... :D
 
Yeah thats true Conley, we strayed off topic real bad :P. LoL but yeah back to the actual subject. There's a few contraversial generals but I'd like to see what some other people have to say since I talk to much :P
 
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