The Worst Military Decisions in History

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by Struggo

Adding to the thread, I believe the following were poor decisions,

WWI - Gallipoli campaign & The Battle of the Somme

WWII - Bombing of Pearl Harbour

1588 - The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British

The Fastnet yacht race in England was held in 1979 in atrocious conditions and 18 died. Ted Turner had competed and was asked about the logic of racing in such terrible conditions.

His reponse to the Englih interviewer was, "If it wasn't for weather like this, you would be speaking Spanish".

[Focused]

Originally Posted by Moby Vic

And not a single nuclear weapon has been used in anger since 1945.

And I think the fear of a nuclear holocaust was what stopped the cold war properly happening. JFK had a good quote, which I can't recall, but it was justifying a large army and said something along the lines of a big deterrent will stop aggression thus resulting in peace. And I guess it's somewhat true.

[Road_Warrior]

Originally Posted by Moby Vic

And the Germans already knew from experience that fighting a war on two fronts was not sustainable.

Three actually - North Africa.

They even wanted to take over Madagascar so they could deport all of Europe's Jews there and keep them confined in one place. This was before they decided to kill them all.

[CoupeKing]

Don't forget the fourth front, the longest continual fighting theatre of WW2, the battle of the Atlantic.

[marty351]

^^^^ makes me think, the german failure to realise that the enigma had been cracked.
Admiral Doenitz suspected it had and added a fourth wheel to the machine putting the British back a
further 12 months in the U-boat war.

[Fordman1]

Originally Posted by Moby Vic

The Nazi regime was doomed to failure. It was intentionally set up to feed the paranoia of its members (to get them to report on each other) with redundant organizations (Wehrmacht, Wehrmacht SS, SS, Gestapo) that were all stovepiped to the megalomaniac at the top who fired anyone who disagreed with him. An empire can't be sustained through the will of one person.

And the Germans already knew from experience that fighting a war on two fronts was not sustainable.

You mean Waffen SS, there is no such thing as Wehrmacht SS.

[castellan]

I think the whole WW1 and WW2 thing and maybe all the other wars were just a total disgrace and total madness.

And most likely created for other reasons that what we are lead to believe.

My Grand Dad was a aristocrat and he said only a hand full of people control the world and that's it and the rest is all mainly BS in reality and he said that the fact was a persons life was not worth 2 red cents during the war.

Hitler was never found alive nor is there any proof of his remains at all, worth jack.

Some of the so called blunders are not blunders at all but just gibberish that the hair brain media push and idiots just swallow.

Hitler bombed London for one reason only and it was not a military strategy so much, but pay back for the British disgusting gutless war crime in bombing the German civilians and this helped Hitler only gain more support at home and his whole focusses was not in destroying England at all and never was.

Hitler was not in charge as much as most people think as no one rules alone and all have there foundation backers.

It's all about money power and position and never anything other directly, so is this the worlds worst Military decision in history for the English to start, as it near totally destroyed England and was hell for years after for the people of England living in the misery of what the toffs started.
Look at what the average poms drove for cars mainly for years after, just backward hopeless rubbish !

[Itsme]

Invasion of Afghanistan by USSR, this parallels the USA conflict in Vietnam.

[superyob]

Originally Posted by castellan

I think the whole WW1 and WW2 thing and maybe all the other wars were just a total disgrace and total madness.

And most likely created for other reasons that what we are lead to believe.

My Grand Dad was a aristocrat and he said only a hand full of people control the world and that's it and the rest is all mainly BS in reality and he said that the fact was a persons life was not worth 2 red cents during the war.

Hitler was never found alive nor is there any proof of his remains at all, worth jack.

Some of the so called blunders are not blunders at all but just gibberish that the hair brain media push and idiots just swallow.

Hitler bombed London for one reason only and it was not a military strategy so much, but pay back for the British disgusting gutless war crime in bombing the German civilians and this helped Hitler only gain more support at home and his whole focusses was not in destroying England at all and never was.

Hitler was not in charge as much as most people think as no one rules alone and all have there foundation backers.

It's all about money power and position and never anything other directly, so is this the worlds worst Military decision in history for the English to start, as it near totally destroyed England and was hell for years after for the people of England living in the misery of what the toffs started.
Look at what the average poms drove for cars mainly for years after, just backward hopeless rubbish !

Was not London bombed first?

[marty351]

Originally Posted by superyob

Was not London bombed first?

Yes. In WWI. And also in France during dunkirk.

[minheim]

Originally Posted by superyob

Was not London bombed first?

In respect of Britain/Germany, it was Britain that initiated indiscriminate civilian bombing.

See the quotes below:

James M. Spaight (1877-1968), CB, CBE, Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry in his book Bombing Vindicated:
"Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets reluctantly three months after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets. Hitler would have been willing at any time to stop the slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement confining the action of aircraft to battle zones... Retaliation was certain if we carried the war into Germany... there was a reasonable possibility that our capital and industrial centres would not have been attacked if we had continued to refrain from attacking those of Germany... We began to bomb objectives on the German mainland before the Germans began to bomb objectives on the British mainland... Because we were doubtful about the psychological effect of propagandist distortion of the truth that it was we who started the strategic bombing offensive, we have shrunk from giving our great decision of May 11th, 1940, the publicity it deserves."

Also the following extract from a review of The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 Richard Overy in the Spectator clearly illustrates the blame lies on Churchill for the shift by Hitler to retaliatory bombing of urban areas in Britain:

Overy traces the origins of the bombing war back to 10 May 1940, the same day that Germany began its attack on the West and Churchill replaced Chamberlain as British prime minister. ‘Chamberlain had always opposed the use of bombing against urban targets,’ writes Overy, ‘but Churchill had no conscientious or legal objections.’ Indeed, already as Minister of Munitions in 1917, Churchill had been in favour of an independent air force and a policy of long-range bombing against German industrial targets.

Up until Churchill’s appointment as prime minister both Germany and Britain had stuck to a pledge not to attack targets in each other’s cities where civilians were at risk. Overy dismisses the long-held belief ‘firmly rooted in the British public mind’ that Hitler initiated the trend for indiscriminate bombings. Instead, he says, the decision to take the gloves off was Churchill’s, ‘because of the crisis in the Battle of France, not because of German air raids [over Britain].’

Ethical restraints which had been imposed at the start of the war became slowly eroded as a result of Britain’s decision to initiate ‘unrestricted’ bombing of targets located in Germany’s urban areas. In a fascinating chapter entitled ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Overy suggests that Britain’s Bomber Command developed its tactics for concentrated ‘area bombing’ and the wide use of incendiary bombs by observing the destruction Germany wrought on London during the Blitz.

The RAF altered its strategy of focusing on precise targets when it saw how effectively the German air force attacked clusters of targets in industrial and commercial areas. However, Overy says that under Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris’s stewardship Bomber Command took things a grisly step further by deliberately targeting German workers to reduce industrial output.

For much of the war, combined British, Commonwealth and American forces lacked the necessary technology to develop the long-range heavy bombers they needed to launch attacks on Germany’s main industrial hubs. The bombing war only really escalated in 1943 when Harris finally felt ready to launch three major offensives: the Ruhr-Rhineland in late spring and summer, Hamburg in July and Berlin in the autumn.

It was the second of these, codenamed ‘Operation Gomorrah’, that resulted in the single largest loss of civilian life in one city throughout the European war. Some 37,000 people died and over 60 per cent of Hamburg’s houses and apartments were destroyed by a blaze of incendiary bombs. Overy cites a German doctor who says he had to estimate the number of dead by measuring the ash left on the floor.

It was only near the end of the war, and the bombing of Dresden which killed approximately 25,000 people in a few hours, that there was any kind of outcry against Allied strategy, which incidentally had failed in any way to stem Germany’s production of armaments (there was a three-fold increase between 1941 and 1944). Yet after the war the British Bombing Survey Unit’s assessment was positively damning and criticised almost ‘all phases of Bomber Command’s activities except the final phase against oil and communications targets [in Germany].’

Though he is never quick to judge Overy does not disagree with postwar interpretations which saw ‘the final flourish of bombing against a weakened enemy, with overwhelming force, as merely punitive, neither necessary, nor, as a result, morally justified’. Looking desperately among the historical rubble for a positive response to a campaign which saw roughly 50 per cent of bomber pilots lose their lives during airborne sorties, Overy, suggests that


bombing was at its most significant as a political gambit in the earlier part of the war when the British government used the RAF as a means to win support among the occupied populations and from the US by showing that Britain was capable of fighting back.

[CQB-241]

As a manufacturer not producing product in segments people are buying, not upgrading those that you are, not promoting your product.....

As a country with 3 levels of government, giving vast quantities of money to foreign owned companies to make stuff in your country rather than BUYING stuff made in your own country, making regulations excluding the purchase of the stuff you paid yo have make by government based on size rather than economy, allowing agreements with other countries which aren't honoured both ways but do nothing, float legislative change in the dying days of one parliament that kills the last line of hope (FBT changes on fleets) for this industry......

Oops, this is a MILITARY decisions thread......

[CoupeKing]

Guess who was ignored by all the girls at school

[superyob]

Originally Posted by CoupeKing

Guess who was ignored by all the girls at school

[Moby Vic]

Originally Posted by castellan

My Grand Dad was a aristocrat and he said only a hand full of people control the world and that's it and the rest is all mainly BS in reality and he said that the fact was a persons life was not worth 2 red cents during the war.

Hitler bombed London for one reason only and it was not a military strategy so much, but pay back for the British disgusting gutless war crime in bombing the German civilians and this helped Hitler only gain more support at home and his whole focusses was not in destroying England at all and never was.

Aristocrat where?

Oh yeah, Hitler was known for exercising restraint and only attacking after having been injured first. It's not like he would claim the flimsiest pretense to unleash savagery, like claiming communists burned down the Reichstag so he could get "emergency powers" or claiming that ethnic Poles were oppressing ethnic Germans so he could invade.

But I'm sure you can cite something from Goebbels that will disprove that.

[marty351]

Where do we start...
Sudatenland, Austria, Belgium, Holland, France, Denmark, Norway, Channel Islands, Yugoslavia, Greece.
He even wanted to invade Turkey to get to the Middle East oil fields but as Turkey was neutral with a large army thought against it opting for North Africa via Tunisia and Malta.What the British did to Berlin was nothing but embarrass Hitler,Goebbels and Goering. By this time blitzkrieg was the only thing the NAZIs knew.

[castellan]

Originally Posted by Moby Vic

Aristocrat where?

Oh yeah, Hitler was known for exercising restraint and only attacking after having been injured first. It's not like he would claim the flimsiest pretense to unleash savagery, like claiming communists burned down the Reichstag so he could get "emergency powers" or claiming that ethnic Poles were oppressing ethnic Germans so he could invade.

But I'm sure you can cite something from Goebbels that will disprove that.

Switzerland and Demark manly but had house ever where in the world.

What we are informed about has got very little to do with 'why'.
Ask that question why, all the time and see how angry some people will get with history.
Wealthy people did not like Hitler at all you know and my GD was keen on getting some of the lands back off Germany that was once theirs and wanted a smaller Germany mainly divided into south and north Germany because it was going to become a super power without a shadow of dough. ( prove me wrong )

The Germans were on the path to overshadow the Poms in every way in the future and that's why WW1 was created and WW2 as they did not want to loose there top dog spot, look at how they attacked the USA but lost it. ( prove me wrong )

People like Churchill were the ones who created people like Hitler.
Every war was created due to money, power or position and nothing other, as it's just business. ( prove me wrong )

And who created the communist and why ?

The great Poles that's a joke as they had no right to that land worth jack as Hitler was correct about there filthy cunning dog of a government and if you have real good look into what was going on in Poland like I have, you will be surprised about what low life dogs they were in treating the people of east Prussia like that and I would think this could be the worst military decision ever in history.

Just try to think about it having to be dealing 200% inflation in your nation and see how you go. think about it ? and I am on about the poor people that had to deal with such.

I do not take any sides but see it from the hell that people had to go through position.
As I have come to a position that I don't like any of them leaders because there were all truly cunning dogs, and it all did not have to happen.
And it was all the work of Satan and down the track you will have to deal with the workings of Satan at hand.

My GGD lost a lot of money due to cunning greed driven devilish moronic twerps and that all filters down to the man in the street getting the wrong end of the pineapple, because of filthy criminals actions that went on.
There was no need for any of it, but only a creation led by the works of Satan.

[Fordman1]

I think this thread has run its course.

The fruitcakes are coming out ....

[marty351]

Churchill had nothing to do with the creation of Hitler.
Switzerland was neutral in WWI and WWII.
Karl Marx created communism.
Look at the treaty of Versallies and understand the likes of where National Socialists were born.

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by Barraxr8

I think this thread has run its course.

The fruitcakes are coming out ....

Yep, you're right.