Who was more important in miltary history - generals or soldiers?

[Count of Montesano]

So here's my question: who has been more important to the outcome of miltary history - generals or common soldiers?

Obviously generals get all the limelight and there are plenty of situations where a capable commander ensured victory in the face of almost unbeatable odds. Also, bad generals have doomed stellar armies, one only has to look at the Axis in WW II to see an example of that (sorry for counting Hitler as a "general," but he did make most of the grand military decisions).

But I can also think of situations where soldiers really made or broke their commanders. In modern warfare there are examples of a handful of men turning the tides of entire battles, sometimes while cut off from any high ranking commanders. But looking back in history, I can also see evidence that Alexander, Leonidas and Julius Caesar would have perhaps not had so much success if they hadn't commanded the best troops of their time. On the flip side, powerful commanders have been handed major losses when they were in command of green or incompetent troops. Hannibal at Zama or Napoleon at Waterloo commanding green armies against veteran enemies; General Lee commanding a starving and outgunned Confederate force; Rommel stuck with a hodge podge force of mutlinational conscripts to repel the Normandy invasion.

Anyhow, feel free to go town. My apologies that this thread may be a little bareboned at the moment - I'm waiting for my carpool partner to arrive and am doing this a bit on the fly.

[therussian]

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.
Napoleon Bonaparte

[pannonian]

"There is no beating these troops in spite of their generals. I always thought them bad soldiers, now I am sure of it. I turned their right, pierced their centre, broke them everywhere; the day was mine, and yet they did not know it and would not run."

Marshal Soult

[STReetSamurai]

This is not a quote fest.

And it depends, did the general train the soldiers or was he given the soldiers? The troops might be really good and the general sucks or the other way around. I would say the troops but sometimes the quality of the troops is high because of the general.

[Darth Caesar]

I say the general,alot of the times, a good general is one who has trained his men and prepared the supplies for the army in the campaign

[The Super Pope]

Napoleon had veterans at Waterloo. 1/3 of the british army was veterans the rest were fresh.
I would say generals, as without leadership the troops are nothing. Look at the first world war.

"Better an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep"

[Farnan]

You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down. - Zap Branigan

Having added to the quote fest...

In truth it is a combination of both. Alexander would have lost all his battles if his NCOs failed to keep the ranks of the phalanx's dressed. Yet, his battles would have also been lost if he lacked the leadership and decisiveness. The same for every battle. Its like a company. If a company has bad management and excellent employees it will still fail because the management would make bad decisions that ruin it. If a company has great management but awful employees then its never going to excel.

[Ragabash]

I suppose it depends quite much what time frame we want to look.

Ancient times:

Both had significant roles, troops had to be well equipped(this was done mostly by themselves), but it was generals and other officers who planned the tactics, their use, and most important gave soldiers reason to battle, either it was money, prestige, loot or simple charisma.

Middle Ages:

I would say that generals had more important role, it was them who had to make sure soldiers had proper equipment(either they were mercenaries or conscripts) and reason to fight(money) as no peasant fought for himself during these wars, for them it was almost the same under what banner they marched.

Also, as new equipment and tactics were started to use around the Europe, it was generals who had to invent and use them for their advantage(especially in siege wars).

Early Modern and Modern Eras:

I would say troops this time, it was now the troops who played major role. Generals could loose battles, but to win, you had to have well equipped and trained army.

Remember, generals can loose the battle, but troops win them.


This is of course rather narrow, and perhaps not the most accurate description but if you read between the lines you should understand what I was after.

[Konstantin Alexander]

One day i will have bloody fingers from repeating to type: "Vague question can only result in vague answers."

What is more important to a car, the engine or the driver? What was first, the egg or the hen? If you expect an undeniable answer to such questions, you will be dissapointed.

There are some points which need to get corrected though.

sorry for counting Hitler as a "general," but he did make most of the grand military decisions

This is what i´ve written in another thread:

Actually he began to mess up his generals´ decisions after the russian counteroffensive in winter 41/42. He meddled with strategy before as well, but he was not completely oblivious to the advice of the OKW. (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht - german high command) During the winter counteroffensive he ordered not to retreat an inch, which, by chance, seemed to be the right decision in this situation.(later on he would rely on this measure regardless of the situation and would create havoc for the Wehrmacht) Operation Barbarossa though was largely the work of the generals. Hitler taking more and more decisions in his own hands was, of course, a gradual process, which had started with the first victories, was severly quickened by France´s surrender (in 4 weeks the country that couldn´t be conquered in 4 years in WWI was vanquished, of course this let people - and himself - believe in the superstition of him being a great war leader) and culminated in the dismission of von Brauchitsch Dez 41 and him taking overall command of the army. But it would be far too easy to say that it was Hitler´s mistake alone, that Operation Barbarossa and Taifun didn´t succeed and Moscow wasn´t conquered.

I cannot understand why people content themselves with blaming Hitler (who was, at best, partly educated in military matters, agreed) for all failures of the german military in WWII. It is not like a single person has even the capacity to ruin the efforts of a military machine consisting of millions of soldiers.

Rommel stuck with a hodge podge force of mutlinational conscripts to repel the Normandy invasion.

Actually Rommel was lying in a hospital as the fights in Normandy were taking place. It is true, though, that even if he would have been in command at that point he wouldn´t have achieved miracles in such a situation. So, in regard to his reputation for posterity, he was quite lucky to have been wounded by a strafing allied plane as he was returning from a visit to his wife in germany (17th of Juni 44) and couldn´t held responsible for a fight that couldn´t have been won. (Which he stated himself on several occasions)


I am aware that i sound like a smartass. Facts are facts though.

Besides, quotes are worthless besides giving a first impression if not presented together with the circumstances under which they were spoken. (Napoleon obviously said this in public and wanted to flatter his men)

[ProneStar!]

Its not one or the other. You can have the greatest soldiers in the world, it doesnt matter if they dont have a competent leader. The reverse is true as well, a great leader cant take a bunch of whiny farmers and conquer the known world. True the limits have changed quite a bit, but the fact remains the same, you need both. Thats why every great empire has always had 2 things, a powerful leader and a a disciplined, well trained force.

[Count of Montesano]

@ Konstantin - No offense taken, although in my first post I clearly stated I was starting the post while waiting for a friend, details to follow. So please don't come after me when I've already pointed out this thread is a work in progress - at least I'm not writing another "Spartans with laser guns versus Green Berets with pungi sticks" thread.

I was not blaming Hitler for every German mistake during WW II, but he did overrule his commanders in key situations like Barbarossa where doing so proved to be disastrous. And my comment about poor leadership in the Axis was meant to extend not just to Germany but also Italy and Japan - having studied Japanese history in some detail my understanding is the Japanese Army and Navy commanders had very different and often competing interests in conducting the war in the Pacific. Certainly Yamamoto warned his peers against starting a war with America but his warnings were ignored. I won't even go into the many mistakes Italy committed during the war.

You do have a point about overfocusing on Hitler, so perhaps it's best to leave discussion of national leaders out of this thread except in cases where the leader was also commanding from the front (ie, Alexander The Great or Richard The Lionheart).

Rommel may not have been in direct command during Normandy, but he was tasked with defending the Atlantic sea-wall, training a force of multinational young conscripts from all over German-occupied Europe, and deciding where and when to commit his reserves when the Allied attack came. But that kind of falls into my point that at Normandy, the failures and shortcomings of German soldiers played a greater part in losing the battle than the actions of the German High Command. Also, according to the fact site I checked, Rommel was wounded in July not June, which meant that he was still capable of command in the critical first weeks of the battle.

PS - In hindsight I shouldn't make the D-Day discussion all about Rommel since he was stymied by von Geyr and Hitler himself on how to deploy the Panzer reserve divisions. I guess I picked on him a little more because he was Germany's greatest leader at the time and also the one who took over preparations for repelling the invasion.

[Phoebus]

There cannot be a general answer for all of history; the question needs to be raised for virtually every individual battle. Even then, the answer might not indicate one or the other alone, but may point at both.

[antirelic]

Great troops and a bad general == defeat
Great generals and bad troops == defeat

There are so many historical examples of the above... I'm just too lazy to do your research.

[Legio XX Valeria Victrix]

The two are so interconnected that it would be impossible to even hazard a guess at which is more important. One without the other is like a body missing a head or a head missing a body.

[The Super Pope]

A head missing a body wins, have you never seen futurama?

[Tecumseh]

"Better an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep"

I hate that quote so much. It's just not true.

Okay, suppose you line up two armies in a big field.
One is an: army of sheep led by a lion,
And the other: an army of lions led by a sheep.

That lone lion leading his pathetic army of sheep is going to be owned by the army of lions. Because *really*, the sheep army has no weapons, no speed, and just crappy chances in general against their powerful and well-equipped foe.

-

Crazy sheep analogies aside, good soldiers are more important than good generals. An army of a million conscripts with cardboard shoes and badminton rackets(they couldn't afford tennis rackets), regardless of who their general is, is going to lose to an army of of elite Delta force soldiers, even against a much smaller force.

The two are so interconnected that it would be impossible to even hazard a guess at which is more important. One without the other is like a body missing a head or a head missing a body.

Pfff. The body of the Incredible Hulk would be able to win a fight on it's own against something far weaker than it. All it has to do is charge around swinging it's arms about and it will eventually kill something. Of course the body(soldiers) would have to be very powerful for this to work.

His head though? I could beat his head in a one-on-one fight.

Bottom line is soldiers are more important than generals.

[Konstantin Alexander]

@ The Count

Perhaps i get way too fired up upon that specific topic of blaming Hitler for all the failures of the Wehrmacht, but what i was actually trying to ask you to set specific boundaries for the topic. "Do you consider the generals or the soldiers as more important to the victory of the Turks at Mantzikert 1071" is, at least from my point of view an answerable question, as all the important side factors like technology, odre du battailes (spelling?), the individual orders given by the commanders, the disposition of troops and so on are specified, while a vague question as if generals or soldiers are more important in the whole history of mankind is not answerable.

Let me give you just one example. Compare the battle of Gaugamela were thousands of men were trying to understand what was actually happening and could not see as far as a few metres due to the dust that was kicked up by the throngs of men marching to and fro and the battle of britain where each individual taking off of a plane was part of a greater strategic concept, with a specific mission, rather accurate informations about the enemy, his forces, his territory and the targets were available and the majority of the most important, individual participants (the planes) had access to radio communication. The whole command&control issue has to be judged in a different light and hereby the analyse of the importance of the qualities of generals and soldiers. Ragabash´s approach was the right one, as he started to differentiate between different periods, but as this differentiation would have go to lenghts to give proper credit to the peculiarities of every single battle since ancient times, i think we will be stuck with general remarks and be left alone with vague arguments which can neither be proofen or denied for sure as they refer to examples. And every example can be proofen "wrong" by giving just another example in which the circumstances were different.

So, i fear we will be left with a useless list of examples, quotes and general remarks that, naturally, are devoid of any explanatory value. Not because i consider anyone here as stupid, but because the work neccessary to answer this general question is far beyond the scope of a forum. Indeed i consider it as beyond the scope of any book as well.

[Gary88]

so are the soldiers the egg, or are they the chicken...

[James Cook]

I dont think i can come up with an good anser.

well the general would not been able too win, whitout the
soldiers, and the soldiers wouldent been able too win, whitout
the general.

[Ragabash]

I don't think that the original poster meant we should get focused too much in general vs. armies aspect as much as we should try to give views which one of them played more important role in our military history in general.