Are war leaders like FDR, Churchill and Lincoln overrated because their side won wars?

Just because he served important offices, it never made him a great leader.

You seam to read more into my words then I wrote. I said that these offices gave him experience, nothing more nothing less.

Even during WW2, many questioned his military experitice.

Well, if you don't want to give the generals all the power, you will not be able to find many civilian leaders that have more experience.

He had more experience in commanding troupes then many of the american generals. He had more experience in civil administrations in a war economy then virtually every other person in the world that was still active in WW2.

While I believe Churchill was the best man for the job, it is well known that he wasn't always the best man for the job - but he believed he was and this created a lot of conflict.

He was a man of strong convictions and often he was right. This is a feature many great leaders have, generally you can not lead if you don't have a strong conviction and a plan. There are rare leaders who excel mainly in appointing the right people and letting them do their thing, but those people don't make it to the top very often.

However there are also many cases where he was convinced to go a different way by the general/admiral on the ground or in his staff. People like Cunningham or Brook did not have any problems in disagreeing with him if the thought it was right, and sometimes the prevailed. There are also some cases where he pushed threw his views and turned out to be wrong.

All in all his understanding of strategy and geopolitics was sound and better then most other civilian or military people.

Please point me to the strategic and political geniuses that were better then Churchill. I can think of very few, and those probably would not have all the other capabilities Churchill had.

He also wasn't very popular publicly until WW2, I'm not expert on the subject but Chuchill's life was a bit of a rollercoaster

Not sure what his popularity had to do with him being a good leader. Many popular things are bad, and many good things are not popular.

you hold him way too high and fail to see many of the issues surrounding him.

I have in my post mentioned some criticism. There are more that could be mentioned. However you have not really provided any except Gallipoli and that he always thought that he was right (witch I have addressed above).

During WW1, he became a partially disgraced officer due to his actions as First Lord of the Admiralty.

He became a escape goat for a disaster and got fired. However he was not disgraced and was soon returned into high office.

Later reports done by the government show that he was not mainly responsible for Gallipoli.

Let me make the case for this here.

Gallipoli was a innovative idea that was endorsed by many people. It came from the navy, threw the admiralty to the main government planning committees. Many people liked the idea, both english and french government endorsed the idea. It offered a blow at the enemy without going threw the death fields of northern France.

The hole Gallipoli campaign can be studied as a typical case were a idea get run threw a complex system of bureaucracy and because of initial problems gets morphed and completely spins out of control. Blaming any one person will not explain it.

I will here not go into detail about the navel and military operation and the exact stages. The campaign had a fair bit of bad luck and a fair bit of bad planning. Commanders that could not handle the stress and the sacrifice required. Bureaucratic fights between navy and military control, both on the spot and in London.

Most of the troupes were added long after Churchill had lost any control he ever had, and that was not very much to begin with.

Its the canonical example for throwing good money after bad. Over non of this, Churchill had much control.

“The price to be paid in taking Gallipoli would no doubt be heavy,” he wrote, “but there would be no more war with Turkey. A good army of 50,000 and sea-power—that is the end of the Turkish menace.”

He might well have been right. The troupes were actually available but Kitchener did not want to give them out. Only later when the army had control over the operation more and more troupes got allocated to the campaign.

People like Asquith did not sprinkle them self with glory either.

The British War Office, however, refused to send as many troops as he wished, but Churchill sent in the fleet anyway.

Churchill can not 'send' the fleet. He was not the dictator. They agree on a plan that did not require troupes and the fleet was sent.

/r/AskHistorians Thread Parent