Best Commanders /working within limitations

Was'n sure how to title this thread but here goes:
Would G.Zhukov be considered a 'great commander' if he did'nt have the unlim

ited manpower he had? Or Patton?
I like Chuikov,defender at Stalingrad, holding off the 6th Army with little help.

 

Zhukov did pretty well defending Leningrad during the later stages of Barbarossa - outnumbered. He also handled his part in holding back Operation Typhoon very well - once again outnumbered.

These actions are just as much of his claim to fame as Bagration and other offensives, when the Red Army had achieved their (often overstated) numerical superiority.

As a side note, the Soviet manpower was far from "unlimited"! By 1945 they were scraping together young boys and old men, as well as immediately conscripting people from liberated territories and prisoner camps, in order to flesh out their ranks. A lot of these recently liberated people had their own axe to grind with the German people after the crimes they had submitted to in the camps - as witnessed by what sometimes happened when they entered German territory and cities...

 

Gort 1940. Did what he had to do, not what others wanted or insisted he did...thereby probably if not winning ww2, allowed others to do so.

 

On the German side Walther Model always seemed to make things look good or acceptable whatever he had to fight with...



Model on the left

 

The guy on the right looks a little like MacArthur, but I know it's not his as he fought on in the Pacific Theater, not the Russain front.

Would 'Smiling' Al Kesselring be a contender for this? He defended Italy fairly well despite limited resources and a massive array of nations fighting against him. He did have favorable terrain, but it cost the Allies a lot of time and blood to take Italy.

 

In North Africa the team of Monty/Alexander worked well with their opposites fromt the RAF Coningham/Tedder. Though it didn't last for long because Coningham became jealous of the exposure Monty recieved after El Alamein.

 

I believe for me it would have to be Model / Guderian / Rommel. Model was a good strategist and with superb tactical commanders like Guderian and Rommel, he could hard pressed any body in a fight. But of course Hitler bitof more than he could chew and interfered with his commanders so much as to hamper there skills.