General Van Riper used low-tech but effective techniques like using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders in a way that could not be intercepted by US ELINT/COMINT or blocked by jamming.
We are lucky Saddam did not have inventive Marine generals, because any general smart enough to be effective would have been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime.
If the Iranians could have they would have done so already. There's a reason why they had resorted to militias and sectarian violence in Iraq instead.
A successful strike on a US carrier group would inevitably lead to large scale reprisals on both the attacking force and the nation launching the attack. Iran wouldn't kill a carrier just to prove they could, and would instead reserve such an attack for the event of a Carrier group attacking something of existential importance to the Iranian state.
Saved our asses in the European theater, in WWII. Hitler was an insecure micromanager.
His generals represented generations of military expertise. They were really good.
There's a number of places where Germany could have won the war, but were short-circuited by der dumkopf fuhrer
Oil was very important to a mechanized army.
Stalin knew Hitler's objectives well because of how hard Hitler was pushing for oil in negotiations before they became foes, and strategically positioned Russia's army in a way to block Hitler's advance specifically to key oil locations, while leaving other locations relatively weaker.
They were foes before they became foes. While it had the non-aggression pact, Germany could have easily persuaded Russia to give it a pass on acquiring oil by aggression in the Middle East. Germany had two reasons to not do this -- a long supply line for oil to Germany from the Middle East would have been impossible to defend if Russia wanted to sever it, and German territorial acquisitions in the Middle East would be of little value as real estate on which German people could be settled to live a prosperous Germanic lifestyle. Dictators planning world domination do not publish their enemy lists.
This sounds interesting, do you have any sources about this?
> His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s.
My limited understanding of the eastern front is that: a, Hitler ordered the initial attack despite the warning of his generals b, forbid any (even tactical) retreat when the tides turned which eventually led to the destruction of multiple army groups.
The problem here being that his generals warned against all of his other attacks earlier in the war which were amazingy succesful. I suppose he felt that he knew better by the time of the Eastern front.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the attack on Stalingrad was a diversion for a symbolic victory ordered by Hitler. And when German forces were getting beat he ordered them to fight to the last man, and the general in charge was a rule follower and did not disobey orders.
In other words, I think you’re blaming the wrong person here. Germany’s generals were on the way to the Caucasus to do exactly what was needed (from Germany’s perspective) but Hitler stopped them because he was going crazy and wasn’t a good military commander.
Another general that comes to mind os Field Marshal Haig. He wanted a break through on the Western Front in WW1. He got a war of attrition, which worked for him and not for the Germans. So he thought going for a break through was the way to go. It worked in the end, but for the wrong reasons.
That being said, a lot of German WW2 generals are over hyped, first on their memoirs and then by anti-communist "propaganda".