On an operational level, I'd rate Manstein fairly high.
The Kharkov operation was simply genial.
Tactically, Rommel. I mean he was not such a great army commander, but at division size engagements he was really great.
He understood the value of initiative and communication.
But at army level, the russians certainly were top notch. While individual engagements were often fought with much casualties, the mere logistics of moving such a huge army so fast in so few days are daunting.
Montogomery was also quite good at army level command and logistics.
Kesselring would rate quite high as well. His defense of Italy was maybe one of the first successful assymetric wars ever fought.
I wouldn't rate the japanese too highly, they were good at pre-planning, but in wartime they neglected intelligence and communications, often in favor of wishful thinking. Japanese favored extremely convoluted, complicated top-down planning over individual initiative.
The battle of the Marianas is an example.
The only real great leader was Yamashi ta. The Singapore operation was nothing but brilliant. Yamash ita was one of the few japanese leaders who dared to improvise.
Regarding the americans, the whole top echelon was quite good. The logistics of the US war effort were not glamorous, but simply an archievement which was not comparable to any war effort ever undertaken by any nation.
People like Gen. Marshall, Adm. King or Emory Land (father of the Liberty ship) created the largest war machine ever out of a civilian economy basically overnight.
And in doing so, they avoided crashing that civilian economy, instead, they managed to strenghten it.
German sources are usually quite disdainful of any US operational/tactical leader except Patton, but the US simply had a more cautious, firepower-centered approach that was only possible in a "rich man's war" and was never really understood here. Avoiding casualties might be a losing strategy if you are poor, but if you're the greatest industrial power on the planet, you can waste endless amounts of material instead of letting your people get killed.
Lol, Subsim doesn't let me spell the name of the conqueror of Singapore correctly.....
Problem with all operational leaders is Ultra. I only now realized how much codebreaking (on both sides) influenced WW2. Often codebreaking meant the difference between victory and defeat, not a leader's skill
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