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Greatest Military Genius Ever

Who is the greatest military genius in history?

  • Robert E. Lee

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • Julius Caesar

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • Tadeusz Kosciuszko

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Adolf Hitler

    Votes: 4 19.0%
  • Hannibal

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Joan of Arc

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • Genghis Khan

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • Atilla the Hun

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Alexander the Great

    Votes: 8 38.1%
  • Napoleon Bonaparte

    Votes: 3 14.3%

  • Total voters
    21
Soviet_Guy said:
:ws A true American pig.

What a shock, you seem to find a way to insult anything and everything American. That's actually fine, America has long valued freedom of speech, so you can say whatever moronic thing you wish.
 
Pacridge said:
What a shock, you seem to find a way to insult anything and everything American. That's actually fine, America has long valued freedom of speech, so you can say whatever moronic thing you wish.

You have a usual American Education, don't attempt to mock me you moronic Capitalist appraiser.
 
Pacridge said:
Welcome to Debate Politics!

Not a bad choice I guess, still going to stick with the "American Pig."

Nice photo album, going to take a wild guess that "42" has nothing to do with your age.

no, not at all, lol...42 is only my basketball number
 
Pacridge said:
What a shock, you seem to find a way to insult anything and everything American. That's actually fine, America has long valued freedom of speech, so you can say whatever moronic thing you wish.

Right free speech :rofl

that's why it was illegal to be a revolutionary, they used to fit almost all left-wing under this
 
Comrade Brian said:
Right free speech :rofl

that's why it was illegal to be a revolutionary, they used to fit almost all left-wing under this

Illegal actions- yes, illegal words-no. Words have never been outlawed. Unlike the Soviet Union.
 
Pacridge said:
Illegal actions- yes, illegal words-no. Words have never been outlawed. Unlike the Soviet Union.

Revolutionaries also have to speek to incite revolutions, revolutionaries aren't about a one-man revolution, they try to speak to many others to become part of a revolution, so free speech isn't entirly accurate, its free speech unles you want to overthrow the government, want to put in a socialist or leftist government and try to put an end to inequalities and capitalist rules.
 
off topic guys

anyways my vote out of those goes for alexander, although there could have been some better choices<cough>sun Tzu<cough>
 
I am surprised why so many voted for Alexander the great. He was a good commander I suppose but his massive success in Persia was more to do with the direct tactics the greeks had used for centuries. No eastern army could face a direct assault properly. It was Alexander's fortune that the greeks used those tactics at the time.

Also, his own troops did not follow him in India. He was facing a revolt from his best troops. This is not the sign of a good leader. It is the sign of a ruler.
 
I am surprised why so many voted for Alexander the great. He was a good commander I suppose but his massive success in Persia was more to do with the direct tactics the greeks had used for centuries. No eastern army could face a direct assault properly. It was Alexander's fortune that the greeks used those tactics at the time.

Of course the tactics were there, and Alexander used them. Its how he used them that was a stroke of genius. He destroyed Persian Armies that vastly outnumbered his troops. And you can credit him to his masterful use of the phalanx, something that only his father had previously invented (not a traditional greek invention). The phalanx was key to Alexander's victories. Eastern Armies


Also, his own troops did not follow him in India. He was facing a revolt from his best troops. This is not the sign of a good leader. It is the sign of a ruler.

He did go into India, and did fight against armies with elephants, and large numbers of men. He barely defeated them (again showing his military genius). His men would not follow him out fo fatigue. He never lost his men's confidence, the men were just tired of war. Alexander finally agreed, and decided to turn back. He had plans to conquer the Arabian Peninsula but died along the way because of fever.

He was a great leader and a great ruler.
 
I find his military career remarkable but a Persian force-no matter what size- would have a difficult time with direct tactics.

Just for those that dont know and to add some background:

The Persian armies at the time had developed a strategy of using archers, slingers, mounted bowmen and other ranged troops to harry the enemy. It may seem alien to us now as it seems largely inefficient but at the time it was the best way of fighting with their levied troops.

Then the Hoplites of Macedonia and Greece came along and used shock tactics to carve through their lines in concentrated parts of the battle line and with heavy cavalry- the cataphracts- to totally destroy opposing troops. These brutal tactics were simply too much for the persians. As a result they were beaten. Many fled instead of dying but the result was usually a commander being killed by his own troops to avoid combat. Darius was killed by his own court when they fled the capital.
 
I just would like to know why Joan of Arc has 2 votes?
She's French and she's a woman.

She got a vote for each.
 
Soviet_Guy said:
No, his only weakness was impatience.

The German military successes during WW2 were due to thier military leadership and in spite of Hitler.

The German military failures were due to Hitler and beyond the retreval of it's military leadership.

Hitler was NOT a great military leader nor genius. He was simply willing to act in his and what he believed Germany's own best interest and refuse to abide by any agreements he made with anyone in fact using them to his own advantage until he could turn on his targets. Had the world been willing to stop him in the Rhineland WW2 would not have happaned. In fact there is a great editorial today in the Washington Post comparing preceisly that to Bush's decisive action in removing the Hitler of our time, Saddam Hussein.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701217_pf.html

"There is not much dispute about what kind of leader Saddam Hussein was. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once compared him to Hitler, and the comparison was apt in a couple of ways. Hussein, as we will soon relearn in excruciating detail, had contempt for human life and no qualms about killing thousands of his own citizens and many thousands more of his neighbors' citizens, about torturing women and children and about using any type of weapon he could buy or manufacture to burn, poison, infect and incinerate political opponents and even entire populations, so long as they were too weak to fight back. This alone placed him in a special class of historical figures, a not irrelevant factor in determining whether his removal, even at the present cost, was worth it. Was it not worth at least some sacrifice to remove such a man from power?

Amore intriguing question is whether a decision not to go to war in 2003 would have produced lasting peace or would only have delayed war until a later date -- as in the 1930s. There is a strong argument to be made that Hussein would have pushed toward confrontation and war at some point, no matter what we did. His Hitler-like megalomania does not seem to be in question. He patiently, brutally pushed his way to power in Iraq, then set about brutally and impatiently making himself the dominant figure in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, using war and the threat of war as his principal tools. In the early 1980s he invaded Iran and fought it to a bloody standstill for the better part of a decade. No sooner had that war ended than he invaded Kuwait. He fancied himself the new Saladin, much as Napoleon and Hitler had fancied themselves the new Caesar." Robert Kagan
 
walrus said:
a.) Your name is Soviet Guy (the USSR having claimed to be a communist nation

Yeah that's why it was called Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, no country has ever claimed to be communist
 
Comrade Brian said:
Yeah that's why it was called Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, no country has ever claimed to be communist

Now this is interesting. Lenin claimed to be a communist. Stalin claimed to be a communist. Mao claimed to be communist. The party that governed the Soviet Union called itself the communist party. The website of the CPUSA maintains that the Soviet Union was intended to be a communist country.

Now, if you are suggesting that the USSR was never communist in practice , I will wholeheartedly agree. This is primarily because communism doesn't work. They also found that socialism didn't really work either, but fortunately totalitarianism worked just fine.

"The goal of socialism is communism." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?" - Joseph Stalin

"Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy." - Mao Tse Tung

"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." - Ronald Reagan
 
Although im not an advocate of communism, it is true, that communism has never been put into practice the way marx intended it. He intended it for industrialized countries like england and germany, but instead largely rural/undeveloped countries like russia and china adopted the system.
 
walrus said:
Now this is interesting. Lenin claimed to be a communist. Stalin claimed to be a communist. Mao claimed to be communist. The party that governed the Soviet Union called itself the communist party. The website of the CPUSA maintains that the Soviet Union was intended to be a communist country.

Just because it is ruled by communists doesn't mean it is communist, and stalin was no communist, even lenin thought that.

and that reagan quote that's a bunch of garbage

There can be no communist country
 
From the list I'd choose Robert E. Lee, 2nd in his class @ West Point. Choosing to lead the Confederate Army was a difficult decision for him. Without his leadership the Union would have won sooner.

Not on the list, but certainly worthy of consideration, Field Marshall Rommel. From what I recall from my history classes, he was a brilliant strategist, both respected and feared by the Allied Forces.
 
edb19 said:
From the list I'd choose Robert E. Lee, 2nd in his class @ West Point. Choosing to lead the Confederate Army was a difficult decision for him. Without his leadership the Union would have won sooner.

Not on the list, but certainly worthy of consideration, Field Marshall Rommel. From what I recall from my history classes, he was a brilliant strategist, both respected and feared by the Allied Forces.

That's a good choice. If Hitler hadn't micro managed him who knows what would have happened.
 
slim said:
I am surprised why so many voted for Alexander the great. He was a good commander I suppose but his massive success in Persia was more to do with the direct tactics the greeks had used for centuries. No eastern army could face a direct assault properly. It was Alexander's fortune that the greeks used those tactics at the time.

Also, his own troops did not follow him in India. He was facing a revolt from his best troops. This is not the sign of a good leader. It is the sign of a ruler.
Plus, he wasn't so much about strategy as about massive numbers to overwhelm his opponents. Hitler took the best of that strategy and combined it with lightening quick attacks from multiple directions in what he knew to be blitzkrieg.
 
ShamMol said:
Plus, he wasn't so much about strategy as about massive numbers to overwhelm his opponents. Hitler took the best of that strategy and combined it with lightening quick attacks from multiple directions in what he knew to be blitzkrieg.

In the early years and the planning up to war Hitler seemed to employ very intelligent military tactics. In later years he often made what could only be referred to as complete blunders. Blunders many of his top generals begged him not to make. One of the reasons we were able to gain a strong hold on the beaches of Normandy was he ordered that no one could move troops and tanks in that region without his express approval. So Generals and high ranking officers were sitting on the beach watching the massive force approach but couldn't order reinforcements until someone woke Hitler up and asked him if it was alright. And even after they woke him up, Hitler thought the invasion was a decoy, so he balked and lost even more time.
 
Not to go all zenophobic on you but there arn't any British military tactitians up there. I mean, several people have picked Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun for commanding such large empires, but at its height the British empire spanned a quarter of the globe. I'm afriad I would have to go for Horatio Nelson.
 
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