Happy Midway Day

PurpleThrobber said:

Mosster47 said:

Why Nimitz isn't held in the same regard as Patton and Mac is fucking retarded.

MacArthur was a fuckwad.

Zhukov was the best general in WW2.

Zhukov was a terrific general, but you can't judge a Soviet or German general by the same standards as an American (or British) one. The American people would have not been willing to stomach to casualties rates that Soviets were able to sustain on the Eastern Front. Same with the British. After the Somme in WWI they were going to let their boys get slaughtered on that scale again. Ike, Montgomery and Bradley had the luxury of being cautious and not wasting their soldiers lives unnecessarily. Rather, they could rely on overwhelming fire power, plenty of gas, and hordes of Russian divisions closing in from the East.

MacArthur was vain, narcissistic, SOB, but a fuckwad he was not. Old Dugout Dug got a lot lower of a percentage his troops killed than did Nimitz with the Marines. I think between 1942 and the retaking of the Philippines, Mac lost few troops thank Ike did in one battle at the Bugle. Part of MacArthur's brilliance, was that just skipped over their bases like Rabaul in New Britian where the Japanese had 100,000 troops stationed; he just let them wither on the vine. His handling of the occupation of Japan was amongst the brilliant bit of political leadership ever by an American, civilian or military. All that said, Truman was right to fire him.