Absolutely! Although he did have his limits. The one time he was appointed to command an army group, the result was a disaster.
And exactly when was that? When he was given command of Army Group G in Western Europe he turned their rout into a static defence in no time, given his possibilities...
Correct me if I am wrong, but he was the one who let 2 German division go so he could take Rome. Allowing them to refroup and cause more allied casualties through his own vanity. That is bad. With a bl**dy big B.
Yeah, that was his big screwup of the war. Most generals have at least one of them, too. I have to agree, however, that this one was epic. The commander of the troops pursuing the Germans protested the order; Clark refused to listen.
No, no CC, Clark was terrible! He is Exhibit 1 for why being a good Chief of Staff (he was COS for Marshall at one time) doesn't necessarily translate to being an excellent field commander. Without his ties to Marshall, he would have been sacked early in the campaign.
post subject Re. Mark Clark, TV (Whicker's War) Aug.23rd., comment from that programe about Clarke's dash to Rome, "If Clarke had been German, Hitler would have had him shot".
Re: post subject A lot of Clark's men would have done so cheerfully. I have reviewed my info on the Italian campaign, and I have to agree, Clark handled it abysmally. I once read that during his offensives, battalions were reduced to the size of platoons, due to the heavy casualties. He was quite casualty callous until after they reduced his supply of replacements after D-Day.
Worst leadersis this 1.Chamberlin (No needed explanation) 2.Hitler (After the battle of France which was won thanks to Erich von Manstien, he decided to rewrite history in his favor, claim the plan as his own and stop listening to his generals.) 3.Moussalini (SP) no needed explanation 3.Daladier (On the merit of signing at Munich) 4.Stalin-military purges, and refusal to listen to his intelligence, British intelligence, or "Gaullist" intelligence. 5.Gamelin-Phony War was his idea because he did not want to see any of his troops die, but if it weren't for Manstien his guess that the attack would come in Belgium, and his deployment of the allied army would have been a sound decision which is why I have him as the 5th worst. If you restrict it to just generals then Gamelin is 1st however. Weygand was a bad general because he panicked when he could have used the french and British Navy to evacuate the 1.5 million french soldiers to North Africa, and carry on the war with the vast resources of the french empire. His panick got him into the service of a terrible traitor, which is why he resigned in 1941.
I forgot to mention the allied forces that Gamelin lost with were actually better then what the germans had against him, making him the worst general for not using them during the phony war.
I don't think you can blame Weygand for not evacuating all possible forces to North Africa. He only was supreme commander of the army, but the decision wether to cease combat, or to continue the fight along the british(french navy and air force were intact) was a political one, and Pétain favoured the armistice when he saw that Germany did not require unconditional surrender. Armistice was of course the wrong decision, but Pétain tought Germany and Britain would soon conclude peace and tried to get for France the best conditions he could get.
The plan was Guderian's. Von Rundstedt was in charge of the main thrust, which made it succeed. What role does Manstein play in this? Mussolini. Well, at least he did so more often than Hitler, which caused the Russians to win the war. Oh, but of course you have Hitler on second place, so that's taken care of.
Mussolini. thanks got it now, I knew I had it spelled wrong. De Gaulle blames Weygand for putting pressure on Renaud to resign in his War Memoirs, while he might have written that for political reasons I also think there had to have been some truth to it for it to have entered the memoirs. The Manstien plan of going into Belgium with a diversionary force to draw out the french and british armies while using the main german one to attack through the Ardennes (SP I know I can't spell) was Manstiens idea. What Rundstedt and Guderian had before Manstien was full attack into Belgium. Had they done that they might have been defeated, or at very least held off in Belgium for a long time, since Gamelins strategy other then nothing was the defense of Belgium. The french army despite poor training performed pretty well in Belgium, Girauds forces destroying 100 tanks and losing 5 could be a sign of how the war would have ended up without Manstien. While I recognize Rundstedt and Guderian did make many important modifications to the Manstien plan, their original plan was to go through Belgium.
Without question, the Manstein Plan is the most important reason of german victory over the allies in 1940. And it should be noted that this plan was only used because of Hitlers"Interference". Because the vast majority of german generals was not that less conservative than their allied counterparts and were shocked when Manstein exposed his plan, the tought it was suicidal to led tanks push forward like that, without infantry support and flank protection. Another reason why the original german plan of going trough Belgium was chanceled is because on january 10 th 1940, a german plane with officers on board lost it's way in the fogg and landed in Belgium.These german officers carried the plans of the offensive.They tried to destroy them, but belgian police recovered the plans and handed them over to french high command. So another plan had to be found. When Hitler heard about this incident he was of course very annoyed but in the end it proved as lucky for Germany....
I'm confused here. Didn't the German main thrust go through Belgium and Luxembourg? What's this diversion force? Armeegruppe B?
Don't forget Henri Giraud, who was considered "an adequate division commander on his best days" by Eisenhower. He was also about as hard to deal with as de Gaulle, though less reasonable.