(5) Great Commanders of the Late Modern Era

First World War & Communist Revolution (1900-1924)

Edmund Allenby (1861-1936) -

John Jellicoe (1859-1935) -

Radomir Putnik (1847-1917) -

Joseph Gallieni (1849-1916) -

Louis Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934) -

Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929) -

Philippe Petain (1856-1951) -

August von Mackensen (1849-1945) -

Erich von Falkenhayn (1861-1922) -

Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) -

Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck (1870-1964) -

Reinhard Scheer (1863-1928) -

Franz von Hipper (1863-1932) -

Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938) -

Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935) -

Mikhail Frunze (1885-1925) -


Interwar and Second World War (1924-1945)

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951)

Rodolfo Graziani (1882-1955)

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

Gunther von Kluge (1882-1944) - Originally a staff officer during the First World War, he was promoted to field commands in the interwar period. During the Second World War he gained experience in Army commands and then finally Army Group command, which gave him an advantage over many contemporaries. He commanded 4th Army in northern Poland (under Bock), 4th Army as part of the central thrust in France (under Rundstedt) and 4th Army as part of the central attack in Russia and in the Battle of Moscow (again under Bock). At the end of 1941 he replaced Bock as commander of Army Group Center. Largely he had commanded the bloody defensive operations of Army Group Center from the very end of 1941 until 1944. Even carrying out strategic withdrawals such as Operation Buffel. He was also in command of one of the Army Groups in Operation Citadel, along the northern sector of the Kursk salient which included Orel. After Rundstedt had failed to defend Normandy, he was replaced by Gunther von Kluge. Generally being more competent than his predecessors, he was nonetheless unable to hold the line, no counter offensive succeeded, and was forced to withdraw towards the Seine and Loire rivers. On 19 August he drank cyanide either for fear of implication in the Bomb Plot or for fear of being defeated in France.

Albert Kesselring (1885-1960) -

Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) -

Erich von Manstein (1887-1973) -

Karl Doenitz (1891-1980) -

Walter Model (1891-1945) -

Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) -

Aleksander Vasilevsky (1895-1977) -

Georgy Zhukov (1896-1974) -

Konstantin Rokossovsky (1896-1968) -

Nikolai Vatutin (1901-1944)

Andrew Cunningham (1883-1963)

George S. Patton (1885-1945)

Bernard Montgomery (1887-1976)

William Slim (1891-1970)

Chester Nimitz (1885-1966)

Shunroku Hata (1879-1962)

Hisaichi Terauchi (1879-1946)

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943)

Tomoyuki Yamashita (1885-1946)

Shojiro Iida (1888-1980)

Jiang Jieshi (1887-1975)


Cold War & Fall of Empires (1945-1991)

Peng Dehuai (1898-1974) -

Lin Biao (1907-1971) -

Vo Nguyen Giap (1911-2013) -

Sam Hormusji Manekshaw (1914-2008) -

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934-2012) -