Been reading a book about Robert E Lee's generalship recently

>>2180089
>I now think Lee's the most overrated general in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Anyone else agree?


Hell no. While there is definitely a myth about Sherman, he's nowhere near as overrated as guys like Rommel.


And seriously? MUH KDR? In what is supposedly a scholarly work? That more makes me think the book is shit than anything else.

>>2180106

Lee. I have no idea what is with my typing today, it's not even the first malapropism in text I've done

>>2180089
>"Had Lee not squandered the Confederacy's limited resources on offensives during the three preceding years, the Confederacy's 1864 opportunity for victory might have been realized. It was Lee's strategies and tactics that dissipated irreplaceable manpower- even in his victories. His army lost at Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg. His army took unnecessarily large losses in those defeats, as well as throughout the entire Seven Days Battles."

>"Throughout the Seven Days Battles, Lee's strategy and tactics were extremely aggressive. His strategy was totally offensive. Incredibly, Lee watched thousands of his best troops be slaughtered while charging usually fortified Union positions but did not seem to realize the foolhardiness of such tactics when he was at such a numerical disadvantage. Lee's Seven Days battle plans were overly complex; he frequently issued vague and discretionary orders to his generals, and then he failed to to supervise their execution through adequate on-the-field command and control."

>>2180106
>Hell no. While there is definitely a myth about Sherman, he's nowhere near as overrated as guys like Rommel.

Rommel wasn't a general from the Western Hemisphere.

>And seriously? MUH KDR? In what is supposedly a scholarly work? That more makes me think the book is shit than anything else.

The KDR only comes up on a few pages precisely because Lee fanboys often try to use it. The vast majority of the 600+ page book is devoted to outlining why Lee's strategies were ill-advised for the position he found himself in, and comparing him unfavorably to other Confederate and Union generals.

>>2180119

>Rommel wasn't a general from the Western Hemisphere.

Patton then.

> The vast majority of the 600+ page book is devoted to outlining why Lee's strategies were ill-advised for the position he found himself in, and comparing him unfavorably to other Confederate and Union generals.

Well, I'd be lying if I said I did a lot of study into the ACW, I haven't. But when

A) The Northern Virginia front was the only one where the Confederacy wasn't in immediate and often desperate retreat

B) Lee was not in charge of strategic thought for the confederacy and as a theater commander shouldn't have been put into that position

C) Almost all of his opponents had very high praise for him.

D) the surrender of Lee's army was the de facto end of the Confederacy, and that as long as it was intact, the war wasn't considered fully over.

All speak to someone that seems to have done his job rather well.

Also, criticizing Lee for strategic offense and the casualties taken in it would seem to necessitate proving that he was taking more losses in said offensives than when he was on the defense. I certainly haven't seen that proven.

>>2180089

>Lee was a shitty general

>based entirely on his KD ratio

am I being memed?

>>2180089
I know this is an old thread now, but I feel the need to explain why this is stupid. Bonehead argues for a Fabian strategy because it would have been less taxing on the Confederates limited resources. While this may sound well and good in theory, it really doesn't take into account just how superior the Union's resources were. The Union could field about 2.5 times as many soldiers as the Confederacy which in all likelihood would have meant the South would still have lost a war of attrition even if they'd stayed on the defensive. The most likely way the Confederates would have won would have been to either scare the North into surrender or to gain outside support, the two goals being related, and neither would have been achieved if they just let the North walk around in their land. Lee's strategy, if he had been successful at Antietam or (less likely) Gettysburg, may have been able to further these goals. Meanwhile, in the West, Johnston was fighting the type of war you seem to be suggesting and sitting with his hands on his ass while vital objectives like Vicksburg fell. This may have conserved Confederate resources (may, it also meant they lost land, soldiers were captured, and freed slaves joined the Union), but it meant in the eyes of everyone that the Union was winning, thus encouraging the continuation of a war the Confederates could not realistically have won if it came down to attrition. He fucked up at Gettysburg, no one's denying that, but his overall strategy was sound.

>>2180112
>>"Throughout the Seven Days Battles, Lee's strategy and tactics were extremely aggressive. His strategy was totally offensive. Incredibly, Lee watched thousands of his best troops be slaughtered while charging usually fortified Union positions but did not seem to realize the foolhardiness of such tactics when he was at such a numerical disadvantage. Lee's Seven Days battle plans were overly complex; he frequently issued vague and discretionary orders to his generals, and then he failed to to supervise their execution through adequate on-the-field command and control."

It worked, McClellan's forces were at the gates of Richmond, which was both of high symbolic importance being the capital and of high strategic importance given its industrial output (the Tredegar Iron Works being the largest in the Confederacy). If they'd lost that, there ability to produce ordnance, among other things, would have been greatly diminished, which would have been disastrous to the war effort. McClellan was a much better general than history tends to give him credit for (Lee considered him the best Union general and Grant and also gave him high praise), the fact that he got that close to Richmond so early in the war with much less effort than any other general is testament to this, but it is true that he was perhaps overly cautious. By going at him with brute force, Lee was able to get the better of his cautious nature and force him to retreat rather than continue the campaign.