Was Nathan Bedford Forrest the best military commander of

>>3282469
>classic image.jpg
Phoneposting /pol/fags are a cancer

>>3282469
No, Winfield Scott was.

>>3282469
certainly one of the best and charismatic commanders of that conflict.
some are just born with natural talent, since he was not formally trained in the field of warfare.

no, he never reached a position where his skills could be truly tested. Everyone thought Hood was a phenom until he took over the Army of Tennessee.

>>3283585

Word

Thing about a lot of "brilliant" guerrilla commanders is that they are really only good at guerrilla warfare, and lack the skillset for a lot of other aspects. They rack up impressive skirmish victories, and have great K/D ratios, but all of it is pretty much pointless if at the end of the campaign, the enemy has their flag on your hill.

For all of Forrest's skirmish victories, neither him nor Hood actually stopped Sherman, which is what they needed to do. Forrest needed to hit Sherman where it really hurt, and that's hard with only a small command of around 2000 cavalrymen. Conversely, having more soldiers under his command would have slowed Forrest down, and result in him pinned by more numerous Union forces.

>The optimum characteristics of modern army operations were also modeled in this battle: initiative, agility, depth, synchronization, and versatility. A winning army will clearly demonstrate these characteristics, and all military training and doctrine should emphasize them.

>Combat power, or the ability to fight, consists of four elements: maneuver, firepower, protection, and leadership. Forrest fully understood these elements and practiced them at Brice’s Crossroads as though he had authored the modern operations manual.

>Forrest’s concise orders before the battle indicated his innate mastery of the factors of METT-T: mission, enemy, troops, terrain, and time available. These factors were fully considered in his estimate of the situation for the attack.

http://www.blueandgrayeducation.org/publications/monographs/a-study-in-warfighting/

>>3282469
>Was Nathan Bedford Forrest the best military commander of the civil war?
Rommel, Patton and the US Army thought so.

>German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox), studied Forrest’s battle tactics as did the U.S. Army’s ‘Ole Blood and Guts” General George S. Patton, and General ‘Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf. The Institute for Military Studies concluded that the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads (won by Forrest), was perhaps the most spectacular display of tactical genius during the war.

https://patch.com/california/malibu/defense-maligned-confederate-general-nathan-bedford-forrest-1821-1877-0

File: deseparate valor john bell hood seven days battles.jpg (463KB, 1400x894px)

463KB, 1400x894px

>>3283585

Most of his battlefield accomplishments occurred prior to him having two of his limbs blown off and being hopped up on morphine all the time.