Monday, April 16, 2012

Geo Washington Wins

In a vote in the UK, General George Washington was voted
… the greatest enemy commander to face Britain, lauded for his spirit of endurance against the odds and the enormous impact of his victory.
To qualify as a candidate in the final round you had to have been a field commander, so thus Adolf Hitler wasn't in contention.

The final five included, besides General George Washington, Irish independence hero Michael Collins, France's Napoleon Bonaparte, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, who led successful Turkish troops at Gallipoli, during World War One.

The report went off the beam here:
Matthew Hughes of London's Brunel University said that Rommel and Napoleon were both great operational commanders but they ultimately achieved nothing on the political level.
I am not sure that is quite fair to Bonaparte, who gave much of Europe and Louisiana the Napoleanic Code.  Not that this was a good thing.

Regards  —  Cliff

2 comments:

  1. I'm sure Sun Tzu would have favored giving far more credit to Gandhi for achieving similar results to Washington without firing a shot, but yes you certainly have to give General George his due for kicking the ass of the best standing army on the planet with what he had at the time.

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Please be forthright, but please consider that this is not a barracks.