The Most UNBELIEVABLE World War 2 Generals You Probably Never Knew!

As Sun Tzu once said, to conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy. But who were these generals during World War II? We all know the familiar faces like Patton, Eisenhower, or Rommel, but there were many names that didn't make the history books. Here we have compiled a list of the top 5 underappreciated generals of World War II. So let's start with number 5 on the list. British Field Marshal William Slim was a rare man. In the class-conscious England of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he rose from the rank of Private to the highest rank in the British Army. Slim is number 5 on our list due to the peripheral nature of the campaign in which he formed, Burma. The Burmese campaign was primarily a British imperial affair. Burma was the gateway to India, the crown jewel of British colonies. Fighting and defeating the Japanese on their drive towards India in 1944 was vital for Britain to retain control of their valuable territory. India was not only rich in the resources and manpower Great Britain needed to win the war, but the main effort to supply the Chinese in their fight for survival against the Japanese was based in India. William Slim fought on the front lines of World War I and in many theatres of that war, France, Gallipoli, and the Middle East. He was wounded twice and twice commended for bravery. Slim was stationed in India between the wars and became familiar with the British officers there. He also learned much about the Indian Armed Forces, which at the time included men from present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. Over 2 million Indian men served in the British Armed Forces in World War II, in almost every theatre of war. When World War II began, Slim was in France and was crucial to the safe retreat to Dunkirk and back to England. He then fought in East Africa, commanding a force that helped drive the Italians from the area. In 1942, he was sent to Asia to stop the Japanese approach towards India through Burma's thick, forbidding jungles. The British were being driven back towards the Indian border when Slim arrived. He was instrumental in stopping the Japanese before they reached the Indian border. However, the British counter-offensive which followed was a disaster, as Slim said it would be when he protested against it. The officer in command of that offensive was relieved of command and Slim took his place. During the next few months, he reformed, reinforced and trained his men without let-up. He instructed them in infiltration tactics, the business of air resupply and how to defend a surrounded position. For he intended his army to fight behind enemy lines and cut off Japanese supplies. As a result, he kept the Japanese on the run for almost a year. In 1944, the Japanese High Command realised that the supplies coming to China from India prevented their victory in mainland Asia. So they determined to stop them with a massive offensive aimed at cutting the Himalayan supply route and inciting the Indians to revolt against the British. In their way were William Slim and the 14th Army. In the key, brutal battles of Impal and Kohima on the Indian border, the British Imperial Army defeated the last Japanese attempt to reach India through stout defence and manoeuvre. Number 4. Tomoyuki Yamashita Japanese General Yamashita did not fight in Burma. Still, he did fight just next door, devising and leading a brilliant campaign to defeat the British in their colonies of Malaya and Singapore. Yamashita was recognised as an extraordinarily gifted man from a young age. He attended the Army Academy, Japan's equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst, and he rose quickly through the ranks. After graduating in 1916, he joined the ranks of the Army General Staff, the command centre of the Japanese Army and politically very influential. Yamashita was especially outspoken for a Japanese officer. In the 1930s, his opposition to the Japanese invasion of China and its provocation of the United States caused Yamashita to be assigned overseas, far from Japan, where things were happening. Yamashita was also unpopular with the top general and later, in 1944, Prime Minister of Japan, Hidehi Tojo. Yamashita insisted that Japan needed to continue developing their tanks and increase their number, which Tojo rejected, to the detriment of the Japanese war effort. Despite his unpopularity, Yamashita's ability was highly regarded. In the late fall-early winter of 1941-42, he was given command of the armies assigned to conquer Malaya and Singapore. One of the problems facing Yamashita was that the British forces outnumbered him by more than 2 to 1. To overcome that problem, Yamashita used tactics that would have been recognisable to the German generals on the other side of the world, except that Yamashita's troops used quick marching and bicycles to outmanoeuvre the British, whose generals were outmatched and who had greatly underestimated the Japanese. After outmanoeuvring the British and conquering Malaya, Yamashita was faced with the assignment of taking control of Singapore, which was regarded as impregnable by the British. Unfortunately, there were weaknesses in the British defences, which were spotted and taken advantage of by Yamashita and his men. Within days, the island colony was in Japanese hands. Shortly thereafter, Yamashita's pugnacious face was plastered all over the world in pictures of him demanding the official surrender of the colony from the British commander. Yamashita was then sent to China to fight but was appointed Japanese military governor of the Philippines shortly before the American invasion of their former colony. Yamashita was completely outgunned, outnumbered and without resupply. But his long delaying action into the mountains of the Philippines kept tens of thousands of US troops pinned down in the island rather than moving towards Japan itself. However, Yamashita's military reputation was forever stained by the behaviour of his troops, especially in the Philippines in 1944. Rape, murder and torture were commonplace. Tomoyuki Yamashita paid for it with his life in 1946, having been found guilty of war crimes by an international tribunal. Number 3. Smiling Albert Kesselring The nickname Smiling Albert was given to the German general and later Field Marshal Albert Kesselring by the Allied troops fighting against him. It was meant as an insult and implied that the German was a little bit simple. At the same time, the name was given to him out of respect. There are much worse names he could have been given, but due to his treatment of the British and American prisoners of war and the way he fought, he ended the war being highly regarded by his former enemies. Of course, no German called Kesselring Smiling Albert, they called him Uncle Albert, for they knew he cared about them and their troubles, for he had seen action in the trenches of World War I. After World War I, Kesselring was involved in the German army's efforts to reform and rearm itself. He was also one of the major players in the effort The Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I, forbade Germany from possessing even one fighter or bomber. Kesselring was involuntarily transferred to the Luftwaffe at the request of Hermann Goering, its commander. Goering had a high opinion of Kesselring's organizational abilities and put him in command of an air fleet that dominated Poland's skies in 1939. In 1940, Kesselring had an important command during the Battle of Britain. In addition, he made himself more popular with his men by learning how to fly, which he did almost every day for the rest of the war. Kesselring remained in the air force but was placed in command of ground troops alongside the famous Erwin Rommel in the last half of the North African campaign. When defeat was imminent, Hitler recalled his favorite general, Rommel, back to Germany to avoid disgrace and to plan for the defense of the Channel Coast. It was left to Kesselring to either try to salvage victory in North Africa or at least retreat in an orderly and combative fashion to buy time for German armies elsewhere. Kesselring's forces were outmatched in every way except combat experience when the Americans invaded Western North Africa. The Allies slowly squeezed the Germans into the far north of Tunisia. Unfortunately for the Allies, they did not count on Kesselring's skill in both defense and organization. As a result, the majority of the German army trapped in Tunisia were successfully evacuated under the noses of Allied planes and ships. Most of the troops were sent to the Italian island of Sicily, where the Allies were expected to strike next, which is precisely what they did in July 1943. Once again, Kesselring fought an orderly withdrawal to the island's north, causing the Allies to fight much longer than their timetable had planned. Furthermore, with defeat imminent, Kesselring and his staff organized another retreat, this time across the narrow straits of Messina to mainland Italy. Again, this was done despite Allied supremacy in the air. Kesselring made his name in Italy. From the toe and heel of that famously boot-shaped country to its northern quarter, Kesselring and his men built some of the most formidable defensive lines in the war, only retreating when their positions were untenable to one more powerful defensive belt and another and another. Virtually every inch of ground gained in Italy by the Allies was contested bitterly, and when the war ended, they still had not come close to their goal of entering Germany through the south. Kesselring surrendered his army a week before the official surrender of Germany on May 8th, 1945. He and all his men knew the end was near, and there was no point in carrying on. It would only cause more men to die for nothing. That decision and the humane treatment given to Allied prisoners under his command probably saved Kesselring's life after the war. He was put on trial for war crimes he knew about and likely encouraged against Italian partisans in the latter part of the war. He was sentenced to death by an Italian court, but political pressure from the British and Winston Churchill caused his sentence to be commuted to 21 years. He was released in 1952 due to ill health, but lived until 1960. 2. Konstantin Rokossovsky Konstantin Rokossovsky was born in today's Poland in 1896. Much of Poland, including the town where Rokossovsky was born, was under Russian control. In the 1950s towards the end of his career, Rokossovsky served as Deputy Defense Minister of Poland and on the Russian Red Army General Staff. Rokossovsky fought in the army of Tsar Nicholas II in World War I, but like millions of other Russians, he mutinied in 1917 and eventually joined the Communist Red Army. He fought in many campaigns in the bloody Russian Civil War of 1919-21 and was instrumental in developing tactics similar to those the Germans used in the first years of World War II. These involved using massed armor, speed, and maneuver to outflank and demoralize the enemy. In the Great Soviet Purge of 1937, Rokossovsky was accused by Stalin of being a spy for both the Germans and the Japanese. He was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for three years, though he was completely innocent of the charges against him. He was only released by the intervention of Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, a former commander who thought well of him. Timoshenko was also close with Stalin and asked the dictator to release Rokossovsky so he could help with the disastrous invasion of Finland the Soviet Union began in late fall 1939. Rokossovsky's release and training of a new force of Red Army soldiers turned the tide in the war against Finland, which was forced to cede territory to the USSR. Rokossovsky played essential roles in the defense of Moscow, the planning of the Stalingrad counteroffensive, and he was in charge of the details of the Soviet's significant victory at Kursk in the summer of 1943. This would have been glory enough for most men, but Rokossovsky's crowning achievement was in the planning and execution of Operation Bagration in July 1944 in support of the Allies' D-Day invasion. Bagration was the largest offensive in modern history, dwarfing the 3 million man initial German assault on the USSR in 1941 in men, tanks, and artillery. Bagration drove the Germans out of the USSR and essentially broke the back of what remained of the Wehrmacht. Number 1. George Marshall General George Marshall was the cement that held the American military effort in World War II together. During the war, he served both Roosevelt and Truman as Chief of Staff of the Army. Marshall had served as a young officer in the Philippine uprising against American colonial control in the early 1900s and became a staff officer for the 1st Division, the Big Red One, and the 1st Army in World War I. After the war, he served on the staff of the World War I hero John J. Pershing. He became one of the most influential instructors of infantry tactics at Fort Benning, where he taught some of the officers he would command in World War II. Marshall was recognized as a brilliant, direct, and innovative officer who could bring disparate groups of people together to work towards a common goal. He became Army Chief of Staff on the day World War II broke out in Europe. Marshall was not a battlefield general, but he was the brains behind the build-up, organization, and swift improvement of the US Army in the first years of the war. He also recognized talent. He recommended Eisenhower for overall commander of American forces in Europe in 1943 and as supreme commander of all Allied forces in Europe following the successful North African campaign. Marshall was the common thread in many American efforts to convert the economy into a war economy. By the time the war was over, Marshall had overseen the growth of the American armed forces from one smaller than that of Mexico to the world's most powerful armed forces in 1945. After the war, as Secretary of State, famously directed the plan which bears his name. The American Marshall Plan was responsible for building and renewing a democratic Western Europe, no small feat in and of itself. And here you have our list of the top five underappreciated generals of World War II. We hope you enjoyed our video. Please leave a comment down below about your thoughts and don't forget to like today's video. Subscribe to the channel as an offering to the gods of the algorithm and we'll see you in the next video. Thanks for watching.