The Worst U.S. General in WWII
How Major Gen. Lloyd Fredendall led the II Corps to disaster in Tunisia
Throughout the campaigns and frontlines of the Second World War, the United States was able to produce some of the most talented military leaders to ever serve under the Stars & Stripes. Men such as Patton, Eisenhower, and Bradley would distinguish themselves in the battles against the Axis powers and have their names immortalized forever in the annals of history.
But for every great military mind, there are hundreds of failures who lacked the talent needed to achieve success and/or were hampered by their own personal flaws, with fatal consequences for their men on the battlefield. Major Gen. Lloyd Fredendall was one of these failures, as his poor leadership would spell disaster for the GIs in their first land engagement in the European theater.
Today, Fredendall remains relatively unknown among the general public, with his failure being overshadowed by all the great successes the U.S. would have in the war. Nevertheless, his story serves as a cautionary tale for future military commanders, and a reminder that even the U.S. Army had to undergo its own teething problems before it could achieve its true potential.
Deconstructing a Bad General
When Fredendall first arrived in North Africa to take command of the II Corps, he had little to no experience in direct combat. His time in WWI was spent commanding training centers, far away from the trenches. He also spent the interwar period in a variety of staff and training positions, where he earned some commendation as an excellent teacher and administrator.
But while Fredendall lacked combat experience, what he did have was connections in the right places. His staff duties during the interwar era allowed him to make friends and connections in the military, including U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.
It was Marshall who first recommended Fredendall to Eisenhower, claiming that he was “one of the best” and that “you can see determination all over his face.” Through his endorsement, Fredendall earned himself the rank of Major General and command of the II Corps.
It did not take long, however, for Fredendall to demonstrate that Marshall and Eisenhower made a terrible decision in assigning him command. Fredendall was a noted Anglophobe and Francophobe, an unfortunate combination of prejudice given that the Tunisian Campaign was fought in cooperation with British and Free French forces. The British and French commanders also disliked Fredendall, and some already began to suspect that the general’s swaggering personality concealed his incompetence.
Upon taking command, Fredendall would go on to demonstrate a complete disregard for proper military procedure. Fredendall had his own vocabulary he insisted on using in the battlefield, calling infantrymen “walking boys” and artillery “pop guns.” While his folksy naming conventions may have been fine in a training camp, they were unacceptable on an active battlefield where an imprecise order could lead to disaster.
Not helping manners was the fact that Fredendall refused to use the military-map grid system when relaying orders, instead delivering bizarre orders that few of his officers could interpret. Here is one example of Fredendall’s incomprehensible commands:
“Have your boss report to the French gentleman whose name begins with J at the place which begins with D which is five grid squares to the left of M”.
Throughout the Tunisian Campaign, Fredendall never visited the front lines, instead spending his time building an elaborate bunker system 100 miles away from his men. The men of the II Corps nicknamed this bunker “Lloyd’s very last resort” and “Shangri-La, a million miles from nowhere,” showing how little respect they had for their absentee commander.
Perhaps the greatest demonstration of Fredendall’s arrogance and complete lack of priorities was his struggle to obtain a bulletproof staff car for himself. Eisenhower had earned himself a bulletproof Cadillac upon taking command of Operation Torch, and Fredendall had grown envious and demanded one for himself. Eisenhower was reportedly disgusted when he learned of Fredendall’s demands, but he did not remove him from command.
Finally, in terms of pure military strategy and tactics Fredendall made several blunders in assigning his men on the frontline. The II Corps had been assigned to the southern portion of the frontline, holding defensive positions at the Kasserine Pass. But Fredendall had spread his command far too thinly on the frontline, with no mobile reserve units left behind to block any German breakthroughs or perform any actions of their own.
Of course, Fredendall was unaware of how precarious his position was, given that he never left his bunker to visit the front. Despite various warnings from both his fellow commanders and the British and French, he refused to visit the frontline or make any changes to how his men were deployed. This indifferent attitude rubbed off on the men of the II Corps, as discipline began to erode and no one bothered to set up minefields or other defensive structures.
But while Fredendall continued to hunker in his bunker and complain about his lack of bulletproof Cadillac, the Afrika Korps and their Italian allies were looking for an opportunity to attack before the Allies could achieve numerical superiority. And they had just noticed that the U.S. positions at the Kasserine Pass were particularly thin…
The Battle of Kasserine Pass
In Fredendall’s defense, even an experienced American general would have had trouble fighting Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel in his element with the inexperienced U.S. troops available.
While his invincible reputation had been shattered the previous year at the Battle of El-Alemein, the Desert Fox was still a dangerous opponent who knew that he had limited time before the Allied forces would build up enough to achieve numerical superiority in North Africa. As a result, he needed to strike first, and the overstretched II Corps gave him the opportunity he was looking for.
On February 14th, 1943, Rommel’s attack began with the 10th Panzer Division and 21st Panzer Division attacking US. defenses in the town of Sidi Bou Zid from both the north and south. Colonel Thomas Drake, the commander of the Sidi Bou Zid position, desperately radioed Fredendall in his bunker for permission to retreat, but the general was too far away to understand the urgency of the situation and merely told Drake to hold out and wait for reinforcements.
Those reinforcements never arrived, and the defenders found themselves completely encircled. Nearly 1,400 men were taken prisoner, and the Axis forces seized large amounts of abandoned American vehicles and equipment.
Four days later, Rommel struck again, this time going directly for the II Corp’s positions at Kasserine Pass. Fredendall had deployed a reinforcing task force under Colonel Alexander Stark to the position with the order to “go to Kasserine right away and pull a Stonewall Jackson, “but his bombastic overconfidence could not make up for the lack of air support and reinforcements he provided to his beleaguered men.
By February 20th, the American positions at Kasserine Pass had collapsed, leaving Rommel free to go deeper into Allied lines. Fredendall, meanwhile, finally began to realize the enormity of his folly, but instead of taking charge of the situation he slipped into defeatism and considered the battle to be already lost. He even began preparations to demolish his bunker complex before the enemy could capture it, making all the unnecessary construction and resource usage pointless.
When Eisenhower sent Maj. Gen. Ernest Harmon to stabilize the situation in the south, he found Fredendall broken and unable to provide any meaningful command. After telling Harmon that “the party is yours”, he went to bed and played no further role in the Tunisian Campaign.
In the end, Harmon was able to stabilize the situation, and an influx of American, British, and French reinforcements succeeded in restoring a cohesive defense line that could hold off the Afrika Korps. Running low on fuel and with mounting losses, Rommel called off his offensive on February 23rd, and the original front line was restored.
The Battle of Kasserine Pass would end with the Americans losing 183 tanks and 7,000 men dead, wounded, or missing. While an embarrassing defeat that demonstrated the inexperience of the American GIs, there was a silver lining to Fredendall’s debacle; Rommel and the rest of the Axis forces in Tunisia were so shocked at how quickly the II Corps crumbled that they began to believe that the entire U.S. Army was weak and ill-disciplined, a paper tiger that could be easily crushed by German fighting prowess.
On the other side of the front, the Kasserine Pass proved to be an early warning call for the Allied High Command, and they used all the lessons learned from the debacle to improve the discipline and command structure of their forces.
The combination of an overconfident Rommel and a revitalized Allied war effort would lead to the Axis’ defeat in Tunisia, with nearly 250,000 German and Italian troops taken prisoner. But Fredendall would not be there to witness the victory.
Aftermath
“I cannot see what Fredendall did to justify his existence.”- Gen. George S. Patton, in his diary, March 13th, 1943.
After his disastrous stint as commander of the II Corps, Fredendall was relieved of command by the more-competent and aggressive George S. Patton, who managed to restore discipline and lead the II Corps to victory in the Tunisian Campaign. Fredendall would never receive another command involved in any active combat, instead returning to training new soldiers in the home front.
Despite his failure at Kasserine Pass, Fredendall would be promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General in July 1943. The reasons for this were political- firing a commander that had been previously showered with praise had the potential of seriously damaging morale in the home front. Promoting him and then sending him off somewhere where he could do no further damage, therefore, was the more expedient solution.
While not all of the blame of Kasserine Pass can be placed on Fredendall’s shoulders, his arrogance, cowardice, and complete lack of regard for proper military procedure led to the II Corps shattering in the battlefield while he was busy cowering in his bunker
. The men under his command held no respect towards him, and his fellow commanders labeled him useless and a coward. While the Battle of Kasserine Pass was only a tactical Axis victory that was quickly reversed, this was a cold comfort for the thousands of GIs killed and captured while their commander waited for his bulletproof Cadillac.
Works Cited:
Citino, R. M. (2016). The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting A Lost War, 1943. University Press of Kansas.
Jerome, B. (2022, July 19). The Battle of Kasserine Pass and the Failure of General Lloyd Fredendall. Warfare History Network. Retrieved September 17, 2022, from https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-battle-of-kasserine-pass-and-the-failure-of-general-lloyd-fredendall/
