# The 15 Greatest Wartime Leaders in History

> Some of these men held a line for four years; others crossed a continent and never lost a battle. Ancient generals sit alongside people who ran wars by telephone.

*By YPB Team · Published August 18, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-15-greatest-wartime-leaders-in-history*

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## Current results (4 votes)

1. **Napoleon Bonaparte** — 50% (2 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Fought some sixty battles and reshaped European law and borders between them.
2. **Winston Churchill** — 25% (1 votes · score 794/1000)
   Took office in May 1940 with Britain alone and turned refusal to negotiate into national policy.
3. **Horatio Nelson** — 25% (1 votes · score 741/1000)
   Broke the Franco-Spanish line at Trafalgar and ended the threat of invasion.
4. **Franklin D. Roosevelt** — 0% (0 votes · score 600/1000)
   The only US president elected four times, who ran the American war effort from a wheelchair.
5. **Queen Elizabeth I** — 0% (0 votes · score 529/1000)
   Rallied her troops at Tilbury with the Spanish Armada in the Channel.
6. **Duke of Wellington** — 0% (0 votes · score 529/1000)
   Beat Napoleon at Waterloo after grinding down French armies across Spain and Portugal.
7. **Boudica** — 0% (0 votes · score 448/1000)
   Led the Iceni revolt that burned Roman London to the ground.
8. **George Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 448/1000)
   Held a ragged Continental Army together for eight years against the world's strongest navy.
9. **Genghis Khan** — 0% (0 votes · score 448/1000)
   Built the largest contiguous land empire in history from a fractured steppe.
10. **Julius Caesar** — 0% (0 votes · score 448/1000)
   Conquered Gaul, wrote the account himself, and made his own commentaries a Latin set text.
11. **Alexander the Great** — 0% (0 votes · score 448/1000)
   Took the Macedonian army from Greece to the Indus without losing a major battle.
12. **Charles de Gaulle** — 0% (0 votes · score 353/1000)
   Broadcast from London in 1940 to declare that France had lost a battle, not the war.
13. **Dwight D. Eisenhower** — 0% (0 votes · score 240/1000)
   Supreme Allied Commander who planned and launched the Normandy landings.
14. **Hannibal Barca** — 0% (0 votes · score 240/1000)
   Marched elephants over the Alps and beat Rome at Cannae with a smaller army.
15. **Simón Bolívar** — 0% (0 votes · score 240/1000)
   Freed six South American countries from Spanish rule in a fifteen-year campaign.

Tags: all-time, leaders, military