7 Worst Generals of All Time

April 1916: thirteen thousand British and Indian soldiers starve in a mud town on the Tigris, because their general sent a false report that set off a disastrous rescue. Every one of these generals was warned. From McClellan and the lost order at Antietam, Mark Clark at the Rapido and Braxton Bragg at Missionary Ridge, to Westmoreland's body counts, Paulus at Stalingrad, Townshend at Kut and Haig on the Somme: the seven worst generals in history, ranked by the lives their own choices cost. Chapters 0:00 Cold open: starving at Kut 0:58 No. 7 — The Lost Order (McClellan) 4:04 No. 6 — The River and the Road to Rome (Mark Clark) 6:31 No. 5 — Quarreling With Himself (Bragg) 9:09 No. 4 — The Body Count (Westmoreland) 12:08 No. 3 — The Airlift That Couldn't (Paulus) 15:07 No. 2 — One Month of Food (Townshend) 17:51 No. 1 — The First Day of the Somme (Haig) 20:32 The Verdict — Seven Warnings Sources Antony Beevor, Stalingrad (1998) Lewis Sorley, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam (2011) Wikipedia: "George B. McClellan", "Peninsula campaign", "Special Order 191", "Battle of Antietam", "Mark W. Clark", "Battle of Rapido River", "Battle of Anzio", "Liberation of Rome", "Braxton Bragg", "Battle of Chickamauga", "Chattanooga campaign", "Battle of Missionary Ridge", "William Westmoreland", "Tet Offensive", "Friedrich Paulus", "Battle of Stalingrad", "Charles Townshend (British Army officer)", "Siege of Kut", "Battle of Ctesiphon (1915)", "Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig", "First day on the Somme", "Battle of the Somme", "Battle of Passchendaele", "Hundred Days Offensive". These were used as an index for the five acts without a book; where accounts are disputed (Walker's diary, the Bragg quartermaster story, Clark's press rule, the Passchendaele drownings, the deaths after Kut), the narration says so. Footage The Battle of the Somme (1916 film, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell) · British Pathé (Haig, Ypres, Cassino, On to Rome, De Gaulle and Mark Clark, Haig's funeral) · British Movietone (Stalingrad surrender, Rome, Westmoreland at the Press Club via AP Archive) · U.S. Army and National Archives (Anzio, Fifth Army, the Somme 1918, Westmoreland's 1967 report) · Library and Archives Canada (Mons, 1918) · ITN (Tet) · CriticalPast · Huntley Film Archives · German newsreels of Stalingrad (1942–43) · film of the British front in Mesopotamia, 1917–18 Pictures Period photos and paintings from the Library of Congress (Brady and Gardner Civil War photographs), Kurz & Allison prints, the U.S. National Archives, Imperial War Museums, the National Army Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London and Washington), the Bundesarchiv and others. Some photos are animated with a slow camera move. Animation: the cartoon scenes and battle maps (Kut, the Quaker guns, the lost order, the Rapido, the turn to Rome, Bragg's quarrel with himself, Missionary Ridge, the body-count board, the PROVN report, the Stalingrad ring and airlift, the march up the Tigris, the Somme plan and the week of shelling) were made for this video. Real people appear with their real photographed faces. No AI-generated photos or footage of real events are used. Numbers come from the sources above, and "about" marks an estimate. Music: background bed generated with ElevenLabs Music.