Who was the worst US general of world war 2?

Answer 1

well the worst generals of all time have to be:

1.General Sherman of the Union army during the civil war

2.General westmoreland of the US Army during the Vietnam War

3. General Bragg of the Confederate Army during the civil war

4. General Stephen Van Rensselaer III of the US army during the war of 1812 ( COMPLETE IDIOT NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER )

5.General Rupertus of the US army during WW2

6.General McClennan of the Union army during the civil war ( Great plan deviser horrible battlefield commander )

7.General James Wilkinson of the Colonial army during and after the Revolutionary war ( completely corrupt attempted to sabotage Washington, and after the war he was selling secrets to other countries)

8. General Alan Jones of the US army during WW2 ( horrible desicions in the battle of the bulge )

9.General Lloyd Fredenall of the US army during WW2 ( II Corps commander in Tunisia during the second world war got beaten horribly by the Germans )

10.General Custer of the US army against Indians ( saw that he was outnumbered heavily and attacked anyways end result was a slaughter for him and his men)

Answer 2

Any such judgment as who "was the worst" is entirely subjective, and based only on the opinion of one individual. Every effort was made by the Chief of Staff of the US Army, George Marshall, to ensure that competent, effective officers were made generals and that only these were entrusted with commands. For example, very, very few of the National Guard division commanders in charge when their divisions were called up for service in the war ("Federalized") were still in that position when their units deployed overseas. This was because the National Guard for most of the time is under the control of the governors of the states, and the officers are appointed by the governors, and oftentimes the appointments are for political favors and not for military competence. Marshall and his staff considered that it took two years to train a National Guard division up to standards justifying its deployment, and this was a unit supposedly already trained when it arrived in camp, while starting from scratch with a group of draftees a properly trained division could be produced in a year. The extra year involved much time spent in weeding out the deadwood of incompetent and overage officers, and replacing them with good ones, and this was at all levels, not just at the top. The only National Guard division commander of whom I am aware who kept his job was Major General Raymond McLain, of the 30th Infantry Division, and he was a good one. But he was never considered for promotion to three star general, and stayed throughout the war in command of his division, where he started. All this is not to say that the officers who were in command did not make mistakes or errors of judgment, but that is the nature of war. In general (speaking of generals) the Germans had very many more excellent ones than the US system had produced. The Germans had had a General Staff since the days of Frederick the Great, and its equivalent had only been a part of the US Army for a generation or two. The Germans had had the Kriegsakademie for a century or so; the US had only begun its Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1925. Any officer who hoped to wear stars in WWII in the US Army (or hopes to today) needed to have completed the course at the Command and General Staff School, which took either one or two years. Only promising officers of whom it was thought that one day they might be worthy of becoming a general were selected to attend the course. There were some older WWII generals, who had gotten their stars before the Command and General Staff School was created, such as Walter Kreuger and Douglas MacArthur, and these older officers could have problems understanding the newer concepts (MacArthur adapted, Kreuger frequently did not).

All this being said, I'd nominate for the worst general to attain a combat command in the US Army in WWII Lloyd Fredendall, who commanded II Corps in North Africa. He attempted to do this from a bunker he employed an entire engineer battalion to construct for him, jack-hammering a cave into the side of a wadi, 70 miles or more from the front. His very distant command style helped bring on the disasters at Kasserine Pass and Sidi-bou-Zid, which were about the only battlefield defeats the Army suffered in WWII where numbers were about equal, after the first defeats in the Philippines. But after this Fredendall was replaced as commander of II Corps in March, 1943 by George S. Patton, who began his career as probably the best US combat commander there. Fredendall was sent back to the states, but was promoted to Lieutenant General ("three stars") in June 1943 and greeted as a hero. Fredendall was given command of Second Army, which was a training command and never deployed overseas, so Fredendall performed useful service, though he was never again entrusted with a combat command.