PULVERDAMPF

Old Sam hat geschrieben:k.A. ob er ein Indianerhasser war - ich denke nur er war auf seine Weise ein Blender.

Greenhorn hat geschrieben:eine schnelle, ungenaue Übersicht...

Greenhorn hat geschrieben:Um Custer ranken sich jede Menge Legenden, es bedarf einiger Beschäftigung, diese von der Wahrheit zu trennen.

Fakt ist, dass Custer 1861 als Schlechtester seines Jahrgangs WestPoint absolviert hat. Hätte nicht der amerikanische Bürgerkrieg nach zumindest einigermaßen ausgebildeten Offizieren verlangt, wäre für ihn keine militärische Karriere in Frage gekommen.

Custer scheint ein wilder Draufgänger gewesen zu sein, der mäßige Ausbildung und mangelnde Übersicht durch persönlichen Einsatz sowie die Fähigkeit, seine Männer mitzureißen wettgemacht hat. Nach kleineren Erfolgen wurde Oberbefehlshaber Major General George McClellan auf Custer aufmerksam und nahm ihn in seinen Stab auf. Hier wurde Custer zum Selbstdarsteller, der sich gerne in aufwändigen Phantasie-Uniformen präsentierte.

Höhepunkt seiner Karriere war die Schlacht um Gettysburg, wo seine Kavallerie sich mit der Einheit von Brigadegeneral David Gregg Jeb Stuart entgegenstellte. 2 Pferde wurden ihm unter dem Gesäß weggeschossen, was zwar kein Hinweis auf Führungsqualitäten ist, aber eben doch auf sein Draufgängertum.

Nach dem Krieg wurde er im Rahmen von Umstrukturierungen auf den Rang eines Captains zurückgestuft. Ein Engagement in Mexiko als General wurde in Washington verhindert.

1867 wurde er für ein Jahr suspendiert, weil er die Truppe unerlaubt verlassen hatte, um seine Frau zu sehen. Es gibt Gerüchte bezüglich Alkohol-Problemen.

1868 kehrt er zur Truppe zurück, und gewinnt die Schlacht gegen die Cheyenne am Washita River.

Ob Custer's Verhalten vor der Schlacht am Little Big Horn durch die gegebenen Umstände berechtigt initiativ war oder dumm, wird ein Streitpunkt bleiben. Wäre sein Vorstoß durch den Verzicht auf bremsenden Nachschub gelungen, gälte er heute als genial. Nachdem er - villeicht nur durch ein paar unglückliche Zufälle - misslungen ist, behält die Meinung der Kritiker die Oberhand. Was auch berechtigt sein mag.

Letztendlich ergibt sich das Bild eines nicht besonders cleveren, mutigen, sehr spontanen, arroganten, wenig sympatischen aber doch charismatischen Selbstdarstellers, der durch oft unverdientes Glück aufgestiegen ist, und sich auf dieses Glück im entscheidenden Moment offenbar zu sehr verlassen hat.

eine schnelle, ungenaue Übersicht...

besten Gruß

Werner

Elsa hat geschrieben:Wie dem auch sei, für mich ist er nicht einer der als Vorbild herhalten könnte.
so long
Elsa

Leonardo hat geschrieben:Tatsache ist, dass Custer vor der Attacke befahl, Frauen und Kinder zu verschonen

What Sherman called the “final solution of the Indian problem” involved “killing hostile Indians and segregating their pauperized survivors in remote places.” “These men,” writes Fellman, “applied their shared ruthlessness, born of their Civil War experiences, against a people all three [men] despised. . . . Sherman’s overall policy was never accommodation and compromise, but vigorous war against the Indians,” whom he regarded as “a less-than-human and savage race” (1995, 260).
...
During the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan had practiced a total war of destruction of property. . . . Now the army, in its Indian warfare, often wiped out entire villages” (Marszalek 1993, 382). Fellman writes that Sherman charged Sheridan “to act with all the vigor he had shown in the Shenandoah Valley during the final months of the Civil War” (1995, 270). Sheridan’s troops had burned and plundered the Shenandoah Valley after the Confederate army had evacuated the area and only women, children, and elderly men remained there (Morris 1992, 183). Even Prussian army officers are said to have been shocked when after the war Sheridan boasted to them of his exploits in the Shenandoah Valley.
...
Sherman, Sheridan, and the other top military commanders were not shy about announcing that their objective was extermination, a term that Sherman used literally on a number of occasions, as he had in reference to Southerners only a few years earlier. He and Sheridan are forever associated with the slogan “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” he said. Sherman announced his objective as being “to prosecute the war with vindictive earnestness . . . till [the Indians] are obliterated or beg for mercy” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 270). According to Fellman, Sherman gave “Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages” (1995, 271).
...
Sherman and Sheridan’s troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together. The U.S. army’s actions matched its leaders’ rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier, Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians’ chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods.

trenck hat geschrieben:

Leonardo hat geschrieben:Tatsache ist, dass Custer vor der Attacke befahl, Frauen und Kinder zu verschonen

Dann war er unter seinen Offizierskollegen eine positive Ausnahme:

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=803

What Sherman called the “final solution of the Indian problem” involved “killing hostile Indians and segregating their pauperized survivors in remote places.” “These men,” writes Fellman, “applied their shared ruthlessness, born of their Civil War experiences, against a people all three [men] despised. . . . Sherman’s overall policy was never accommodation and compromise, but vigorous war against the Indians,” whom he regarded as “a less-than-human and savage race” (1995, 260).
...
During the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan had practiced a total war of destruction of property. . . . Now the army, in its Indian warfare, often wiped out entire villages” (Marszalek 1993, 382). Fellman writes that Sherman charged Sheridan “to act with all the vigor he had shown in the Shenandoah Valley during the final months of the Civil War” (1995, 270). Sheridan’s troops had burned and plundered the Shenandoah Valley after the Confederate army had evacuated the area and only women, children, and elderly men remained there (Morris 1992, 183). Even Prussian army officers are said to have been shocked when after the war Sheridan boasted to them of his exploits in the Shenandoah Valley.
...
Sherman, Sheridan, and the other top military commanders were not shy about announcing that their objective was extermination, a term that Sherman used literally on a number of occasions, as he had in reference to Southerners only a few years earlier. He and Sheridan are forever associated with the slogan “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” he said. Sherman announced his objective as being “to prosecute the war with vindictive earnestness . . . till [the Indians] are obliterated or beg for mercy” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 270). According to Fellman, Sherman gave “Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages” (1995, 271).
...
Sherman and Sheridan’s troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together. The U.S. army’s actions matched its leaders’ rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier, Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians’ chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods.

Offensichtlich haben die Indianer das falsche Schwein geschlachtet.

Trenck

Leonardo hat geschrieben:Könnte mir vorstellen das er kein Ureinwohner Liebhaber war....

Sidekix hat geschrieben:das würde ich von den meisten Armeeangehörigen/Polikitern/Siedlern zu der Zeit sagen.....

The real culture of violence in the American West of the latter half of the nineteenth century sprang from the U.S. government’s policies toward the Plains Indians. It is untrue that white European settlers were always at war with Indians, as popular folklore contends. After all, Indians assisted the Pilgrims and celebrated the first Thanksgiving with them; John Smith married Pocahontas; a white man (mostly Scots, with some Cherokee), John Ross, was the chief of the Cherokees of Tennessee and North Carolina; and there was always a great deal of trade with Indians, as opposed to violence. As Jennifer Roback has written, “Europeans generally acknowledged that the Indians retained possessory rights to their lands. More important, the English recognized the advantage of being on friendly terms with the Indians. Trade with the Indians, especially the fur trade, was profitable. War was costly” (1992, 9). Trade and cooperation with the Indians were much more common than conflict and violence during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney relate how Thomas Jefferson found that during his time negotiation was the Europeans’ predominant means of acquiring land from Indians (1994, 56). By the twentieth century, some $800 million had been paid for Indian lands. These authors also argue that various factors can alter the incentives for trade, as opposed to waging a war of conquest as a means of acquiring land. One of the most important factors is the existence of a standing army, as opposed to militias, which were used in the American West prior to the War Between the States. On this point, Anderson and McChesney quote Adam Smith, who wrote that “‘[i]n a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.’” (1994, 52). A standing army, according to Anderson and McChesney, “creates a class of professional soldiers whose personal welfare increases with warfare, even if fighting is a negative-sum act for the population as a whole” (52).

The change from militia to a standing army took place in the American West immediately upon the conclusion of the War Between the States. The result, say Anderson and McChesney, was that white settlers and railroad corporations were able to socialize the costs of stealing Indian lands by using violence supplied by the U.S. Army. On their own, they were much more likely to negotiate peacefully. Thus, “raid” replaced “trade” in white–Indian relations. Congress even voted in 1871 not to ratify any more Indian treaties, effectively announcing that it no longer sought peaceful relations with the Plains Indians.