Most overrated person in WWII

Well,

––I would respond to this question with a short list, with the “Most Overrated” from top to bottom:

1.) Bernard Montgomery……Head and shoulders above the rest of the “Overrated”. Although I concede that “Monty” was an excellent commander at lower levels, and played an important part in securing the beachhead during the withdrawal at Dunkirk, he was an embarrassment at the high levels of command that he attained. This was not simply an American observation, but most importantly by many of his fellow British Generals/Admirals as well. I’ve read many�accounts by British Generals who had a very low opinion of “Monty’s” generalship.

2.) Omar Bradley……While a great American General at the Division/Corps level, he was elevated beyond his talents and was an extremely hesitant commander with none of the daring or improvisational skills needed to shorten the war. I understand that “Operation Cobra” was his idea, and a great one at that. But the American Forces in Europe suffered from his lack of overall leadership talents. Patton would have done a much better job if it weren’t for the ‘politics’ of the time.

3.) Hermann Goering……While I agree that he was a true WW1 hero and deservedly so, he was an utter joke and embarrassment in the WW2 Nazi leardership. Just reference his politically motivated boasts that the Luftwaffe alone could kill the English at Dunkirk, and resupply the Germans at Stalingrad. His flawed leadership deprived the Luftwaffe of a heavy bomber force among many other vital mistakes he personally made.

4.) Isoroku Yamamoto……While the best of the IJN Admirals, it was his highly complex operation plan that doomed the Japanese Navy at Midway. I’ll accede to his being the victim of the way the Japanese Navy trained their leadership and believed their navy should be fought. However, after being at war for over 6 months with the Allies I feel he should have been able to “adapt” his strategy & tactics to accommodate the realities of war with the Americans. I will concede the point that the Coral Sea and Aleutian Island operations were NOT his ideas and were forced on him by a the IJN General Staff as the price to be paid for allowing his Midway operation.

5.) MacArthur……While truly a Brave and talented General earlier in his life, I completely despise him for his defectiveness in WW2 like:
A.) Allowing his air force to be destroyed on the ground after having heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor 9 hours previously when his air force general was screaming for permission to recon and attack the Japanese.
B.)moving all of the ammo & food from inside the Bataan area to the forward beach areas in Luzon before this was anywhere near being an acceptable plan and then refusing to let it be returned to Bataan because it would be “bad for moral”.
C.) Receiving a Congressional Medal of Honor in recognition of his inept leadership in the Philippines and re-assignment to the SWPA in Australia simply so as NOT to return to America and be a vocal opponent of FDR’s policies and potential political rival.
D. His “leadership from the far rear” and complete mis-understanding of the realities being faced in the Buna campaign and his use of suicidal frontal attack strategy. This is where the statement “no more Bunas’s” came from.
E.) His assumption of the “Island-hopping” strategy as his own idea, which is was NOT. It was originated by a MARINE General and first put to use by Admiral Halsey in the South Pacific.
F.) His total and complete EGO, accomplished through his own “PR” officers that allowed no other “heroes” other than himself. Just read about General Eichelburger and his CMH being downgraded with no accompanying press simply because of “Mac’s” EGO! This is only one of MANY documented examples.

----I may have misspelled some names or whatever in the above, but I feel that this discussion is between students of military history who understand what I’m saying and not “nit-pick” my grammer as I’m very tired at the moment.
----And BTW, seeing a movie, doesn’t usually qualify as imparting HISTORY, because many times movies are only out for ticket sales irregardless of facts. And the same can be said of many “Revisionist History” books where the author tries to bend history into agreeing with his already determined agenda instead of letting the history determine the lessons to be learned.

“Tall Paul”

@GoSanchez6:

Read about the Normandy invasion. We built a fictional army in England around Patton for the reason I just described. The Germans were convinced the Allies would have their best general Patton lead the allied invasion at Calais. Get in the last word because I know you will but I am right on this one.

If you had bothered to read the link I gave you in my last post

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/106656

then you would know that despite you claiming 'I am right on this one’ you are in fact, dead wrong.

'The same applies to Patton’s role as commander of the fictional U.S. 1st Army Group in Kent, designed to create the impression that the invasion would occur at Calais rather than Normandy. In Yeide’s view, Farago’s assertion that the Germans concentrated on Patton as the general likely to command American forces in the invasion of France is mainly based on a misinterpretation of an entry in the German High Command’s war diary and on a routine Air War Academy paper entitled Invasionsgenerale. In fact, says Yeide, in a copy distributed in February 1944 Patton is “the only senior Allied general in Britain and the Mediterranean not profiled with a brief, one paragraph summary.” Bradley appears and so does Montgomery, but no Patton. Yeide does not rule out his inclusion from a later version now missing, but anyway, such papers were standard products with the all services, from which nothing much can be inferred.

@Tall:

1.)I’ve read many�accounts by British Generals who had a very low opinion of “Monty’s” generalship.

Much of US the venom seems to date from post war attempts to blacken Montgomery. Wartime views are much more positive.

from D’Este:

The First Army staff, already resentful of the change of command, is alleged to have been less than pleased to be under British command. Such resentments, and many seem to be of postwar creation, were not evident to James Gavin, the 82d Airborne commander, when he dined with Hodges and his staff several days later. “The staff spoke of Montgomery with amusement and respect. They obviously liked him and respected his professionalism.” For his part, Gavin was impressed with Montgomery as a soldier. “I took a liking to him that has not diminished with the years.”

Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 326:

“For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector [Caen] while we maneuvered into position for the U.S. breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing. . . . In setting the stage for our breakout the British were forced to endure the barbs of critics who shamed them for failing to push out vigorously as the Americans did. The intense rivalry that afterward strained relations between the British and American commands might be said to have sunk its psychological roots into that passive mission of the British on the beachhead”.

more?

W. D. Ellis and
T. J. Cuningham, jr., Clarke of St.  Vith, The Sergeant’s General .

http://www.amazon.com/Clarke-St-Vith-Sergeants-General/dp/0913228087/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369084047&sr=1-1&keywords=Clarke+of+St.++Vith%2C+The+Sergeant's+General

during the critical defense of St. Vith. Montgomery paid several visits to the 7th
Armored front: “General Montgomery was impressive to me,” Clarke later said,
“Very cool in battle" Before Montgornery’s order to withdraw, Clarke said, “lt
looks like Custer`s last stand to me."

and:

J. D. Morelock, Generals of the
Ardennes; American Leadership in the Battle ofthe Bulge 1993

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1410203956/ref=dp_bookdescription?ie=UTF8&n=283155

" Morelock points out while Bradley and Patton were angry at Monty`s receiving command in the north, many lower level American commanders were delighted to have the British Field Marshal take charge of the confusing situation in the northern sector of the Bulge. Monty’s “timely assumption of command in the north,” writes Morelock, was welcomed by Hodges, Simpson (9th U.S. Army commander), and their subordinate commanders who were fighting desperately to stop the German drive. He comments, “it cannot be denied that Montgomery brought much needed order and discipline to a confused and chaotic situation.”

You will find much more of the same if  you try.

I saw this movie u-571 where the US navy captured a german submarine.  The movie made a great deal of money.  Obviously, in the movie the US navy was very heroic and therefore it all must be true, cause it was in a movie see……

From wiki on that incident…

U-571 is a 2000 film directed by Jonathan Mostow, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Thomas Kretschmann, Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Noseworthy, Will Estes, and Tom Guiry. In the film, a World War II German submarine is boarded in 1942 by disguised United States Navy submariners seeking to capture her Enigma cipher machine.
The film was financially successful and generally well-received by critics in the USA[1] and won an Academy Award for sound editing.[2] The fictitious plot attracted substantial criticism since, in reality, it was British personnel from HMS Bulldog who first captured a naval Enigma machine (from U-110 in the North Atlantic in May 1941), long before the United States entered the war. A German U-boat crew is portrayed in a negative light (See the U-852 story below.) The anger over the inaccuracies even reached the British Parliament, where Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that the film was an “affront” to British sailors.[3]
The real U-571 was never involved in any such events, was not captured, and was in fact sunk in January 1944, off Ireland, by a Short Sunderland flying boat from No. 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force.

I think Patton was one of the worst, but Clark beats him out.  For how he conducted the war in Italy he should have been court marshalled and shot.  As they were approaching Rome his vehicle was stopped and the soldiers told him that they would have the Germans cleared out in a few hours.  He told them they had 1 hour.  Why?  Because he wanted “good light” to get his picture taken in Rome.  Someone should have fragg’d his ass.

@Zooey72:

I think Patton was one of the worst, but Clark beats him out.  For how he conducted the war in Italy he should have been court marshalled and shot.  As they were approaching Rome his vehicle was stopped and the soldiers told him that they would have the Germans cleared out in a few hours.  He told them they had 1 hour.  Why?  Because he wanted “good light” to get his picture taken in Rome.  Someone should have fragg’d his ass.

Surely this has been taken out of context.

That said, sometimes you have to be an a$$ to get the troops moving.