A great commander oftentimes is a not so great politician (at least in democracies). The Duke of Wellington (in my opinion) was England’s greatest commander but was a complete reactionary as Prime Minister. Dwight Eisenhower, a not very brilliant commander-in-chief (again in my opinion) was a pretty good president. George Washington, tempered by years and years of tactical defeats until Yorktown, was an outstanding political leader of this country because he grew as a man during the Revolution.
by Victor Davis Hanson
What factors decide wars? Luck? Fervent ideology? Preponderance of material resources? Or is advantage achieved by superior manpower and morale? In modern times, is victory found largely in lethal cutting-edge technology?
All these factors in varying degrees have in the past explained military success. Hernan Cortés’ destruction of the Aztec Empire (1521) was predicated on the vastly outnumbered, but well-led Spanish conquistadors here alone possessing harquebuses, artillery, steel swords, metal breastplates and helmets, horses, and crossbows. That monopoly allowed a few hundred mounted knights to end an empire of millions in roughly two years.
The industrial might of the United States often ensured that American forces in the distant Pacific during the Second World War simply had far more food, weapons, medical care, and military infrastructure than did the imperial Japanese in their own environs. Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht was often outnumbered through much of 1939–41; nevertheless, in those three years, it managed to maintain greater fervor, morale, and conviction of purpose than did its surprised French, Soviet and disorganized British opponents.
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How did the savior generals win on the battlefield, when so many others failed to stave off defeat?
Grant certainly was felt to have been such a figure by spring 1864 when he came eastward to assume direct command of Union forces in Virginia that had been bled white since 1861 under Generals McDowell, McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker. And yet by late summer 1864, Union dreams of ending the Civil War in the spring under the miracle worker of the West, Grant, had been wrecked with the near destruction of the Army of the Potomac in a series of horrific battles in Virginia — leading to doubt not only about the reelection of Abraham Lincoln, but also for a while the president’s very re-nomination by the Republican Party.
In general, resentment arises through the higher echelon of the officer corps at the selection of an outsider such as a William Tecumseh Sherman or Philippe Pétain to restore order to the battlefield. After all, a fresh change in command is inherently a harsh verdict on all that preceded it. The qualities in a military leader necessary to galvanize dispirited troops and resurrect national will — outspokenness, self-promotion individualism, even eccentricity — are sometimes precisely those that naturally incite suspicion and envy. Creighton Abram’s successful “hold and build” efforts to turn around the war in Vietnam (1968-1972) through Vietnamization and a change in tactics were inevitably interpreted as rebuke of his predecessor William Westmoreland’s “search and destroy” strategy.
Naturally savior generals were often suspect outsiders before their appointments. Even after their successes, most did not necessarily enjoy the acclaim and tranquility that the record of their military brilliance otherwise might have ensured. Heroes like Themistocles, Scipio, or Belisarius — and in the modern age a Pétain or Grant — died either in poverty, obscurity or near disgrace. Mavericks of real genius like a George Patton and Curtis LeMay ended up as caricatures of their once brilliant selves. National laurels and a quiet retirement did not meet a triumphant Matthew Ridgway when he returned from Asia. A forced retirement and endless controversies instead marked the next four decades of Ridgway’s long life. General William Slim almost single-handedly saved the Burma Theater in 1945; within two decades few recognized either his name or his victories.
What traits allowed such rare generals to save a war when the general consensus was that the situation was already lost? There is certainly no typical profile of shared age, class, or political point of view. More important are commonalities of character and disposition that encourage contrarianism. Too often, sober examination of the facts on the ground is lost in the general public hysteria that arises from unexpectedly depressing news from the front.
When Ridgway arrived at Korea, he quickly discovered, contrary to the general consensus, that an invincible Chinese enemy had not crushed the outnumbered and outgunned Americans led by the once brilliant Douglas MacArthur. The American army was not so much beaten militarily by Chinese and Korean forces, as poorly equipped for winter weather, panicked, terribly led in the field, and without confidence in the nature of its mission. Thus in less than 100 days, Ridgway went on to address those issues, and ended up back across the 38th Parallel, with the Chinese invaders as exhausted and over-extended as the Americans had been in the north during November 1950.
Less than a third of the American public by late 2006 thought a surge of troops could salvage the Iraq War when David Petraeus was given command of all ground forces in Iraq — to the consternation of politicians back home and many senior military commanders abroad. Yet Petraeus, seemingly almost alone in the active military, understood that after four years of warring, Islamic insurgents were tired, had suffered terrible casualties, alienated the Sunni population, and were now vulnerable to new counter-insurgency tactics.
Savior generals are often controversial figures: LeMay could be coarse and brutal, Themistocles often a rogue, Patton deemed crazy.
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The savior generals were sociologists of a sort too. They understood concepts such as national character and what their own forces were best — and worst — at. As leaders of democratic societies, they knew especially the constraints of public patience. The proverbial people were for or against the war not solely on ideological grounds, but more often as a result of perceptions of losing or winning. Unpopular wars turned popular with quick victories — but turned into sure defeat with continued stalemate. Time in democracy was of the essence. That incessant demand for success in turn required aggressive tactics — Themistocles challenging the Persian fleet, Scipio taking the war home to the Carthaginians, Sherman methodically driving into Georgia to capture Atlanta before the election of 1864, Ridgway going on the offensive in Korea and Petraeus surging in Iraq. Many generals ultimately come to distrust, if not despise their civilian overseers; savior generals singularly understood and dealt with the public constraints which limit their masters’ options.
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Unexpected successes won these visionaries public acclaim. But they also raised their statures from minor theater commanders into national political figures. Radical change in fortunes often clouded perceptions of why these contrarians had been suspect for most of their careers, and thus explains why in the calm of peace that their reexamined careers would so often end in controversy and their lives sometimes in unhappiness. Democracy can be unkind to successful military commanders — but especially unkind when the conditions of peace encourage collective amnesia about how the rather coarse sorts among us in times once brought delivered victory on the brink of defeat. America was not only shocked that Curtis LeMay ran as Vice President on the George Wallace ticket in 1968, but had forgotten as well LeMay’s prior heroic career as a World War II general who shortened the war and saved thousands of American lives. By 2010 David Petraeus — stricken with prostate cancer and once again invested with the mission of saving a collapsing American theater of war — was no longer always associated with the salvation of Iraq in 2007.
Read the rest: Victory and the Savior Generals
