Who were the greatest generals in history?

[Chosen1]

Who in your opinion were the best generals in each time period, and the best general overall?

My opinions:

Ancient times: Alexander the Great
Medieval times: Saladin
Late Renaissance to 19th Century: Napoleon
Modern: Erwin Rommel

I think the greatest general in history was Napoleon.

(Feel free to list more time periods if you want.)

[Duster]

Ghengis Khan, hands down. Dominated everybody that was in the way. Dan Carlin did a great podcast on him and I've been a fan ever since.

[HardRice]

Alexander Suvorov

[Herezy92]

Alexander Suvorov

He created one of the french slogan army :
"What is difficult in training will become easy in a battle"
(we are still using it)

He never lost a battle. Even if to be honest, his battles never were ultra hard / impossible to win.
Maybe luck, or probably he was wise enough to know when he must engage.

In my honest opinion, winning battles isn't the only point which must be consider if you want to evaluate a general.
How he improved the military tactics, what kind of  maneuver he made in which circonstancies he fought and won/lost, etc...

I am sadly not good enough to name a general yet.

[Xant]

Ah, so that's why the French are so good at running away -- their army does a lot of jogging.

[Osiris]

havent we had like 12 of these to derail already?

[Teeth]

Georgy Zhukov for World War II

If you take into account the technology of the era, the vast distances and the fact that it all went down in 13 years, Alexander's exploits are damn impressive from a logistical point of view. Makes one wonder what he could have accomplished if he had more time.

[Erebosaither]

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk simple as that he defended his country against countless countries.. 

[Hirlok]

calling military figures "great" has a questionable ring to me, usually they were (and certainly are today) just bigger pawns pushing smaller pawns around in the interest of the hidden powers of their time... But anyways - some of them certainly were better at it than others.

I second Rommel as the choice for modern times.

Not so much because of his military genius, or what he was fighting for - but for his style of leadership.
The guy had balls, did genuinely care about his men (as much as that is possible in the horrors of war), kept the warfare in Africa relatively clean (ignoring several direct orders from the fucking "Führer"), and did not hide in some command post most  of the time, but was in the line of fire more often than not.

Too bad he had that Suebian accent, LOL

[Angantyr]

An admiral not a general, but military history's greatest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-stopped-nuclear-war

[Laufknoten]

Spurdo Spärde

[Flans]

Khalid_ibn_al-Walid  For 2 reasons 1) He is 1 of 2 generals that never lost a battle. 2) He played a big part is the building of the muslim world.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid

[Osiris]

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and Wellington were pretty damn good British generals

[Xant]

Khalid_ibn_al-Walid  For 2 reasons 1) He is 1 of 2 generals that never lost a battle. 2) He played a big part is the building of the muslim world.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid

History is full of generals who have never lost a battle. Thousands of them alive right now.

[Harpag]

a) Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Hannibal Barka
b) Tran Hung Dao, Tamerlane, Saladin
c) Napolean Bonaparte, Jan III Sobieski, Horatio Nelson
d) Erich Von Manstein, Erwin Rommel, Hans Guderian (my personal opinion - fu  )

Tran Hung Dao - Under his command, Dai Viet (currently Vietnam) armies defeated 2 major Mongolian Invasions in 1285 and 1287. His victories over the mighty Mongol Yuan Dynasty under Kublai Khan are considerably the greatest military feats in world history.

Jan III Sobieski - Grand Hetman of the Kingom of Poland, extremely talented and popular, finally elected as a King of Poland. After a short research I quite sure that he didn't lose any battle. Most important battle he fought is Vienna 1683 - 70 000 of Polish-German soldiers defeated 300 000 Turkish soldiers who were trying to capture city of Vienna. It was his most famous victory, after this battle the Ottoman supremacy in southeastern Europe ended. The most important part of battle was probably charge of Polish hussars (some historians say it was the greatest cavalry charge in history) who smashed Ottoman forces and captured their enormous camp. Nevertheless I have to give some credit to artillery and defenders of the city who also contributed a lot. Battle of Vienna was truly one of greatest victories of European forces over Muslims in history and one of the most important for the fate of the world.