best commander of all times

Well why didn't anyone consider Takeda Shingen?
Or how about Zhuge Liang of the Han Court during the Three Kingdoms period?

Anyway Roel, i think sun Tzu has been recorded in Chinese Annals. There have been records of his battles with other states of China. Correct me if i am wrong

 

you dont understand kaiser the israeli Military is one of the finest in the last 50 years including exelent leader ship and equitment and they performed exelent in all four wars BUT no Moshe dayan or Ben Gurion wrote Global or Military History the Characters i Listet will be known for centurys or even milleniums in the future and you will find their names in every good History book conquering half the known world or even the whole
fighting with army groups of a millon in a Battlefield with a continental or even global dimension in the case of israel we are talking about a small battlefield with only a a few dozen thousend troops involved
ben gurion wrote national history and will be known in Israel but absolutly non Comperable to my mens

so why dident you nominate general tommy franks he took whole Afganistan with only air suport and a few special forces
or Norman Schwarkopf defeating one of the biggest Armys in a few weeks
Because they all fought like the israelis against low skill low quality forces while the other take on global powers and crushed empires that last for hundrets of years affecting an impact on globval history its almost ridiculus to compare gurion to one of my men

 

Your men,Amin?

Anyway,my friend, as i was saying,i was referring only to the war of 1948. i supposed i wasn't clear but that war was fought only by a newly-formed isreal! To make this even clearer to you, it would mean that any military units the Israeli had was undoubtedly, under-equipped!

Now answer me Amin, do you expect a country that was formed in a single day to win against 7 established countries with a functioning army?

Once again Amin, Israel was definitely not the best army in the middle east in 1948. it's airforce at first consisted only 7 me-101s which was packed and had to be unpacked?

 

oh and also, the reason why we know those men such as Frederick and caesar is because those are European people or happened in Europe. Most history the Westerners will have or written will be Eurocentric. You'l be surprised to see how many famous generals they have in China alone.

What i am saying, those men are famous only because European history books are widespread.

 

pff kaiser your post shows me that you obviosly didnt read my post very well i enlisted the world best field commanders not the european ones and the countries that fought against israel were also not so old maybe a few years older than israel

and isreal population were in that time EUROPEAN jews and Israel is counted to europe (ESC,UEFA) and the main reason is the scale israel is so big like wales even smaler while the others in my list conquerd continets Nations and empires
if ben gurion or moshe dayan swept through the whole middle east pushing a stronger opponet over thousends miles(like rommel) than i would agree but not so comrade not so

 

Mein Fruend,

I do read your post. However your world's best commanders are European people or rather, things that happened in Europe!
Would Attila or the Golden Horde reached such popularity if they did not attack Europe?i doubt so.

Amin,you are not following me, i agree the Israelis were mostly European jews but so what? Does that make them more powerful than the arabs?Are you saying that European jews fight harder than arabs?

If your saying a great commander is one that conquers great territories, then certainly Napoleon do not deserve to be there,so does frederick the great. Instead you should include more Chinese commanders since the Empire of China dawrfs europe itself!

 

As an example, Tamerlane was a great military leader, but almost unknown in Europe because he never bothered us.

 

i have no problem with chinese field commanders i have a problem with ben gurion+

and yes the israelis are better soldiers than the arabs
the got better equitment a better leadership a better diciplin
and more understanding of modern warfare that means the use combined forces in a certain aera the arab warfare is much more chaotic and large scale operations were maximum on brigade size acting autonomios to recive a small size goal and a lack of long time planing
the arabs coming at you with a full push but when you manage it to hit em on the nose they fell in chaos and their whole strategy is waisted

 

No man, they (the radical) are cowards and rather attack civilians, like NY 09.11.2001, Bali, Djerba, London and many places in israel and iraq. They´re anti-semitic, full of hate and envious, just because they´re trying to distract that they are abnegators.

 

AMIN! you still don't understand me do you? I'll put it in simpler terms.

the Israeli army of 1948...note this date 1948....are not trained,has LOUSY equipments and seriously outnumbered but yet won the arabs,which has better equipments and men.

 

Cao Cao is another great military leader often left out of Western historical books. His victory at the Battle Guandu was nothing short of astonishing.

 

Good one Zhukov! How about Zhuge Liang at the Battle of Chi Bi?

 

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Well, I cannot agree with the statement above.

The war of 1948 is some sort of israeli founding myth and gets considerabely exagerated.("Poor settlers vs well equipped armies of 7 countries")

Truth is that actually the israelis outnumbered the arabs.
When the war started in early 1948, both sides had around 30.000 men.
But the israeli forces grew rapidly.
In mid 1948 it was 65000 israelis against 40.000 arabs, and early 1949, it was 115.000 israelis against 55.000 arabs.

It has also largely been said that the arabs armies were bether equipped which isn't true also.
Not more than a dozen figthers and a handfull bombers saw action with the arab forces.(80 % of arab tanks/planes/artillery was in such a bad technical situation that they were consodered unserviceable).
The israelis achieved complete air superiority as soon as mid 1948.


Of course the israelis fought courageously in 1948 and were highly motivated, but their victory was hardly a military miracle.

 

But before then they had no planes at all.

The 1948 war went roughly along these lines:

It begins with Israel in trouble, with no real army (just many volunteers with a nucleus of better-trained men) and no air force

Then Israel 'aquires' a fair bit of ex-WW2 equipment from a variety of sources, some legal, some not. This tips the balance

 

No, they had 25 Avia S-199 in 1948 and they were quite effective.




BTw I found that nice pic of the IAF´s first kill with an avia.

 

Thanks Castelot for the correction

I have did some research and have concluded that i was wrong,my bad!

But still,it is in my belief that though now Ben Gurion wasn't as great commander in the world rankings,he is good in his own right after all.

Furthermore,i just cannot imagine 7 arab nations losing to one Israel.

Pardon me,it's like Singapore winning Malaysia and indonesia in a war.

*feeling unsettled,i went to find out about the total srength of the Malaysian and Indonesian armed forces....and found out they they numbered about 100,000 and 217,000 respectively compared to singapore's 350,000. i am much relieved knowing that Indon ships can only float(told to me by my friend in the Republic of Singapore Navy.) and if anyone is interested,i am to be conscripted this december!haha

 

He didn't though.

Al Amin, I think there's a general disagreement here as to what makes a great general. You say this is determined by the extent of the empires they created, but don't you think simple land surface is a rather shallow measure to go by? After all it's not too surprising that the Mongol hordes conquered Central Asia since there were no strong states that stood in their way. The achievements of Caesar or Alexander were much greater than those of the Khans if you consider this. I would measure the achievements of great generals by the power of the leaders and countries they defeated in battle. Frederick the Great comes out pretty high for defeating three Great Powers of its day (and Prussia in those days was pretty new - its first aggressive move was less than a decade old).

 

Well, he did not really defeat France, nor Russia, but kept France and Russia from defeating him, which is quite a difference.
None of his soldiers ever stepped on french or russian soil.

Russia got out of the war after the death of it's empress, leading to a new Prussia friendly tsar who concluded peace.

France,after having occupied Hannover soon losrt interest in the war against Prussia, and focused on it's duel with England.

There is no doubt I think that, had Austria, France and Russia really fully worked together, and had they been comitted to fight till Prussia's defeat, there is not much Frederick would have been able to do against it.


Also, Austria, Prussia's main ennemy was not totally defeated either.

 

no roel the huns for example smashed the roman empire
the mongols were crushing several chinese dynastis and the persian empire

 

No Amin, the Mongols crushed only one dynasty...JUST ONE, which is the Song Dynasty which was weak anyway. The other Dynsty that co-existed with the Songs were the Jin which were another nomadic race much like the Mongols. There is only ONE chinese dynasty at that time.

And Roel, the mighty army of Kazakstan did stood before the Mongols but lost due to weak leadership.

And anyway,i didn't think there was a persian empire though at that time...Saladin can't be considered Persian,is he?

And Amin, the mongols are great not because they crushed an empire or what,but because the Khan managed to keep together several tribes during his lifetime and crossed the Great Wall.

THE HUNS DID NOT SMASH THE ROMAN EMPIRE! For goodness sake, Rome was already very weak due to the migration of Goths and other internal affairs.