Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Preserving Foolish Enemies March 15, 2015

A very speculative post. In war there may be something to be said, in strategic terms, let’s forget the tiresome debates around international law, for killing enemy leaders. Sometimes this is a simple decapitation strategy (American attempts to annihilate Sadam Hussein at the beginning of the Second Gulf War or earlier US targeted bombing on Khadafy) with the hope of throwing a dictatorial regime off balance. Sometimes it is just a question of strategy (the assassination of Yamamoto, 18 April 1943 or the various British attempts to kill Rommel) reflecting the fact that a handful of enemies have talents that you could do without. Sometimes it is question of making a statement (the Czech patriots who killed Heydrich with British equipment and British training, the killing of Osama Bin Laden ‘for God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo…’). But now, stop for a moment and imagine, instead, that an enemy leader is so bad at what he or she does that it is necessary to keep them in place. For example, SIS (British intelligence) played around, for the first part of the Second World War, with plots to kill Hitler. But by 1944 the Allies had realized that it made, instead, sense to keep Hitler breathing. The brilliant and daring ‘general’ of 1940 had become a liability for Germany by 1944: the country would likely (we knowing more might debate this) be more easily defeated with Adolf at the helm. Beach’s question is a simple one: are there other cases from history where it made sense to keep an idiot in the driving seat even if it would have been possible to take out the individual in question: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beach has a vague, vague, vague memory of a North American conflict (the Civil War, the Mexican-American war???) where one general was so appalling that, when captured, his opponents deliberately released him to work more damage on his own side. Can anyone track this reference down or perhaps find other similar instances? Given the extraordinary ability of regimes to promote and reward incompetence there should be plenty of examples around and yet Beach has failed to find many. Perhaps the real problem is that prior to the World Wars and the Cold War killing an enemy monarch or general was just not really cricket? These kinds of plots only really matured prior to the modern age in the nastier medieval regimes where the act of killing the king was paramount to winning the war anyway.

21 Mar 2015: Stephen D writes ‘Re your “vague memory of a North American conflict (the Civil War, the Mexican-American war???) where one general was so appalling that, when captured, his opponents deliberately released him to work more damage on his own side”. Are you perhaps thinking of General William Henry Winder, a Baltimore lawyer who was for unknown reasons made a brigadier in the abortive invasion of Canada in 1813? During a night attack by an inferior British force at the Battle of Stoney Creek, Winder “ordered the U.S. 5th Infantry to protect the left flank. In doing so, he created a gap in the American line while at the same time leaving the artillery unsupported by infantry” [Wikipedia article]. British infantry promptly overrun the battery, then charged the US 23rd Infantry which “got off one round before the momentum of the 49th scattered them”. Winder turned up to discover what was going on, believed the victorious British must be the 23rd Infantry, and was promptly taken prisoner, unwounded.

The British lost no time in exchanging him, as being a notable asset to his enemies. Congress responded by making him commander of the defences of Washington in 1814, and then … well, we all know what happened. Remarkably, Winder survived his subsequent court-martial.

21 Mar 2015: Nathaniel ‘A couple of thoughts come to mind about why (law/morality aside) assassinating leaders might be a bad idea. One is that any leader who has to appear in public would be vulnerable to retaliation, and if anything democratic leaders of open societies are in the worse position there. Another is that even dictators are often popular and/or represent some powerful faction, so just killing that one person wouldn’t really alter the strategic situation much. What it would do is derail legitimate politics. No matter how legitimate a leader’s policies were, there is no guarantee that somebody wouldn’t try to change them using violence. There are just too many downsides to escalating things by assassination.’

Thanks Nathaniel and Stephen!