Who would you list as your top 10 most influential and important military commanders ever from your native country? I'm talking about military leaders who were responsible for winning or losing decisive battles that forever changed the course and development of your native country.

My list,

George Washington
Ulysses S. Grant
Stonewall Jackson
Robert E. Lee
Andrew Jackson
William T. Sherman
Raymond Spruance
Nathanael Greene
George S. Patton
William Halsey Jr.

I think the Italians and Chinese have a bit of an unfair advantage here

Come to think of it I'd struggle to even name ten influential Australian commanders...

Edit: There's Monash and Blamey but I'm not sure you'd put them into the same category as people like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan

El Cid!!

I think you guys have a couple more like,

Hernan Cortes
Francisco Pizzaro

Not sh*t hot on Swedish history, but I'd say:
1, Gustav Vasa, for taking the throne back from the Danes.
2, Charles XI, for securing Scania as Swedish territory.
3, Charles XII, for making even the Russian Czar beg for peace (which in hindsight, he really should've taken him up on).
4, Who or whatever was running the country when we lost Finland to the Russians during the 1800's.

Hell, I can come up with ten just from the First World War!

General Monash sticking it to the Germans in North Africa and the Turks in the Middle East? He's the model for what the role of a modern General should be,

PM, I like your list.

I would add
Henry "Hap" Arnold
Evans Carlson
Hyman Rickover

Adding to list:

Alexander the Great
Genghis Khan
James T. Kirk

I'd be split between Hap Arnold and Billy Mitchell. Not necessarily for battlefield influence, but for historical importance.

EDIT: And while I'm standing up for my service, we should consider Jimmy Doolittle and Curtis LeMay.

McHale and his Navy.

You were born in Macedonia and Mongolia?

Sun Tzu

I would edit your list with the following:

Abraham Lincoln
Chester Nimitz
Frank Jack Fletcher
Norman Schwarzkopf
...kind of dragging on the last one. Curtis LeMay might be a good choice after all.

Kind of curious where Spruance came from, though? He never struck me as particularly noteworthy. And Halsey was all balls and no brains.

For Americans, I don't see how Joshua Chamberlain doesn't make the list. If he hadn't held the left of the Union line on Little Round Top, allowing the Army of Northern Virginia to flank the Army of the Potomac, I'd say the course and development of American history would have been profoundly different.

I don't know that that event constitutes influencing military thinking, though... Not that what he did wasn't significant.

Spruance won the battle of Midway and Lincoln doesn't qualify since he obviously was not a battlefield commander. I thought my initial post question was pretty clear on that point.

Sorry...still drinking my first cup of coffee. Your OP (which I did, unfortunately quote, making this all the more embarrassing) did state that!

If you're going to put Spruance up there then I think Fletcher>Spruance. I'm a bit of a Fletcher fanboy after reading a couple of Lundstrom's books. I agree that Spruance fought well at Midway, but Fletcher was in command.

Agreed on Fletcher. I'll cheat and make my list 11 and add him.

Nelson and Wellesley.