Discussion Main / ModernMajorGeneral

No worries, I was the fool who put the psychiatry entry there. It's just that there are some people who attempt to "cure" crime by treating it as a contagious mental illness. The results are usually not pretty. I suppose a modified version of the entry should be filed under some other title related to social quackery.

I cut the following examples from the Real Life section:

• Before the modern period, the way to become an officer in most Armed Forces was to pay for the privilege, or (for some of the top leadership positions) to be appointed there by politicians, who often selected their friends (c.f. William "Pinafore" Smith, discussed above under theatre). Hence, you got a lot of people commanding the armed forces... whose only real qualification was that they could pay. Examples of the result of this system include:
  • George McClellan had a good reputation for training and organizing his troops and he got along with them well, but he would eventually be dismissed by Abraham Lincoln both for their poor relationship and for McClellan's lack of aggressiveness as a battlefield commander, partially influenced by overestimating Confederate numbers. This is still contested from a historical standpoint. Lee, when asked who his toughest opponent was, actually named McClellan. It doesn't help that McClellan was replaced as general right before his massive planned invasion of the south, subsequently ruined by a failed General Ripper.
    • His subordinate (and, later, successor) Ambrose Burnside considered himself one. Like Mc Clellan he was a skilled at training soldiers but mediocre at best at leading them. He was also a skilled gunsmith, designing the Burnside carbine which was one of the first breech-loading firearms adopted by the US military.
    • Another American example would be Benjamin Butler, a influential lawyer-turned-Civil War general. While a brilliant lawyer and debater (for one, he coined the term "contraband" for slaves escaping to Union lines), he was an incompetent commander; however, his political influence protected him from a sacking until Lincoln's second term. In an improbable run of bad luck, the Union would continually transfer Butler to quiet sectors, only for that area to become suddenly important; whenever Butler was the highest ranking officer on the scene (he usually was), disaster soon followed.
  • In particular, this trope is a recurring feature of the armed forces of Great Britain; British historian Max Hastings once remarked that the empire "seemed to have a bottomless supply of unwarlike warrior chieftains." While by no means typical, these characters feature prominently in some of Britain's greatest military disasters. Some lowlights:
    • General Thomas Gage, commander to the British Forces in North America at the beginning of the American Revolution. His career is a repetition of the same events: Get Assigned - Screw Up Royally - Get Promoted - Get New Assignment. Forget King George - 90% of the American Declaration of Independence consists of complaints about Gage's actions and policies. It has been argued that if it weren't for Gage, the U.S. wouldn't have even wanted to become independent. He was in command of the vanguard ("walking point") during Braddock's Defeat (just about the worst ambush in Colonial British military history).
    • Related to the above is George Sackville, 1st Viscount Sackville. He was court martialed and driven out of the British army after he prevented a decisive victory at the Battle of Minden out of pure pique. He was ruled "...unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatsoever" in 1760. On November 10, 1775, Sackville (now with the title Lord Germain) was appointed Secretary of State for the Americas, making him the guy in charge of suppressing the American Revolution. Many of the problems with British strategy can be attributed to him.
    • Another British incompetent was William Elphinstone, as depicted by George MacDonald Fraser in Flashman: "Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with a touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again."
    • The Charge of the Light Brigade is probably the Ur-Example of this as the incident was subsequently used to discredit and end the practice of purchasing commissions, however the facts themselves are rather more complicated. It was led by Lord Cardigan, described by one historian as "an overbearing, hot-tempered fool of the most dangerous kind in that he believed that he possessed real ability." His immediate superior was Lord Lucan, also none too bright and much too hot-tempered. However, tied up in the performance was Captain Louis Edward Nolan, a "merit" officer, who may have intentionally miscommunicated the order to advance (the supposedly "garbled" order would have been quite comprehensible to a man standing where it was drafted). Lucan ordered Cardigan charge his men through a gauntlet of fire to capture a battery of guns at the far end of the valley. After capturing the guns the light brigade was driven off due to the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, retreating through the same gauntlet of fire a second time. The result was over two hundred British cavalryman killed or captured in a charge that accomplished nothing of real military value. At the time Cardigan was lionised as a hero, while Lucan and Raglan the supreme commander variously blamed each other and Nolan.
  • Across the Channel, the French could be plagued with this too. By the War Of The Spanish Succession, Louis XIV had begun mistaking personal loyalty for military talent and appointed dullards like Villeroi and Tallard as generals and marshals, whereupon they proceeded to get their asses kicked by real commanders like Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy. Subverted with Villars, who was a genuinely skilled general and was instrumental in salvaging the situation for France.
• The problem of paying for commissions was specific to the British army, and political appointments were really more something that applied to republics and parliamentary systems, e. g. the United States in the 19th century. In autocratic monarchies although officers tended to be recruited mostly from the nobility, there actually was quite a bit of competition among them and it generally was possible to maintain a certain level of competence (let's not forget: Napoleon was a product of the officers' schooling of Louis XVI's army). But there were different types of problems, namely that some people would be pushed forward by personal connections to the monarch or those close to him (Villeroi had been raised together with Louis XIV as a boy, others were helped by the influence of a king's mistress like the Marquise de Pompadour) and that the very top positions would usually go to monarchs or their relatives.
• Of course, there's other ways to get to be highly incompetent in your field:
  • Santos Degollado is a Mexican example; he was adept at gathering and motivating men to fight for the Liberal cause, but failed to ever lead them to victory. He was nicknamed "prince of defeats" and in some versions "Apostle of defeats". Incredibly likeable because of his motivation to the cause and his enthusiasm but he should have delegate the actuald military tactics to someone else.
  • Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin are textbook examples of this trope. Hitler was a brilliant demagogue, motivating his people to go to war against the rest of Europe...but turned out to be a rather inept military commander. Stalin was a maestro at keeping his subordinates in line and building up a nearly impenetrable network of power within the Bolsheviks, but his blunders led to the USSR getting its ass kicked by Finland when it invaded that country, and very nearly getting destroyed by Nazi Germany before he smartened up and let his generals direct the war.
  • Let's not also forget Benito Mussolini, who proved just as incompetent as Hitler and Stalin. If anything, he actually proved to be more of a hindrance than a help to the Axis, as Germany repeatedly had to come to Italy's rescue whenever Mussolini fouled things up.