Who would you think was the better WW2 general?
That's a question that deserves its own thread.
Among the Americans? They had a lot of generals who were good at different things.
There were several outstanding corps and division commanders, like Ted Brooks, Alexander Vandegrift, Joe Collins, Gee Gerow, Geoffrey Keyes, and Matt Ridgway. Due to the rapid expansion of the peacetime military, the Americans took time to produce good leaders at those levels, but by 1944 they had a collection that was better than most.
The leaders of American numbered field armies were a bit more uneven in quality. Sandy Patch and Truscott were probably the best and most well-rounded. Bill Simpson and Walter Krueger were competent and steady. Hodges was an unimaginative tactician who wasted his men's lives, and probably the worst of the lot.
Patton is tough to evaluate. He was an imaginative thinker who saw the operational level of war better than any other Western general. He got the most he could out of limited subordinates, like Eddy, Middleton, and Walker. He was also frequently insubordinate in destructive ways, and had trouble abandoning some of his preconceptions despite repeated failures. His actions during the breakout in France show just how superb a commander he could be; his actions during the frustrating fall campaign in Lorraine show how he easily he could slip into bad habits.
At army group, Devers was excellent. (His only drawback was not his fault: Eisenhower didn't like him, was unwilling to give him necessary support, and prevented his forces from crossing the Rhine in December 1944, shortly before the Battle of the Bulge.) Clark was often competent but rarely better than that, and sometimes worse; he fully deserved the opprobrium that came down on him for diverting an entire field army to occupy Rome for prestige purposes rather than attack retreating
Wehrmacht units. Bradley was unable to think on the operational or strategic levels of war and was frequently insubordinate, but he also conceived and executed the most brilliant operation the Western Allies ever mounted during the war, COBRA. (Whether you give Bradley credit for organizing it, Collins and Brooks credit for tactical control and feel for the battle, or Patton credit for turning a breakthrough into a real exploitation, is a matter of debate.)
Eisenhower did his job about as well as anyone can expect him to have done. He lacked operational experience but had a strong theoretical background. More importantly, as a leader of an international military force, he kept the Western Allies mostly going in the right direction despite some incredibly trying circumstances (and subordinates). He certainly did better than MacArthur at avoiding strategic blind alleys, and he rarely, if ever, wasted lives. It is hard to imagine Ike providing a subordinate with limited resources and then ordering him to take an objective or "not come back alive", as MacArthur did to Bob Eichelberger during the Buna campaign.
And then there's Marshall, who was the greatest strategist America ever produced, and arguably its greatest general.
Dachs, who was it who said, of his dad and meeting him when he was his father's aide in the pacific east (Japan?), "I had never met a man more flamboyantly egotistical, until I met his son."?
I don't know. That's a delightful quotation, though. Apparently it appears in something by William Manchester - possibly his biography of MacArthur,
American Caesar.
Just had a quick look at his Wiki and noted all the orders he ignored. Do you think the fall of the Philippines could have been averted if he stuck to previous plans? Would there have been relief forces available after the hold-out plan?
No. The Philippines were probably going to fall to Japan regardless. American and Filipino forces in-theater were too small in number and too low in quality. MacArthur's error was in failing to mitigate the damage. Eisenhower, who was in the War Plans Division at the time and who was responsible for overseeing the Philippines, said that MacArthur "might have made a better showing", but was realistic about the allies' prospects.
After Pearl Harbor, no relief force was going to be able to follow War Plan Orange and steam directly to the Philippines' rescue. Even if the Pacific Fleet were intact, Navy planners thought that progress through the Marshalls, Carolines, and Marianas would probably take two years, not the six months that the Army assumed. (Naturally, the Navy failed to inform the Army of this belief.) Holing up in Bataan was not going to end well, regardless. Trying to fight the Japanese on the beaches of Lingayen Gulf was even more obviously not going to end well. Ideally, President Quezon could have declared the Philippines neutral and convinced the Americans to withdraw to forestall a Japanese invasion entirely, but it's hard to see the Americans agreeing to such a course of action and even harder to see the Japanese giving up on an invasion in such a case; they'd probably have just occupied the islands anyway.
Militarily, then, MacArthur was dealt a bad hand. He then proceeded to waste what assets he already had. Instead of facing court-martial, like Admiral Kimmel and General Short in Hawaii, MacArthur got a Medal of Honor and a starring role in the ongoing war effort.