From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: alt.war
Subject: Re: Greatest Military Blunders of All Time
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:16:02 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

In article <urf.717700887@sw2001> urf@icl.se (Urban F) writes:
>karlr@think.com (Karl Rotstan) writes:
>>How about these for starters:
>>1) Saddam Hussein going to war with the world.
>Another view is that he was tricked into believing he wouldn't
>have to fight a war to regain the 19:th province. Mistake, yes,
>but a political, not military.

On the other hand, once tricked, he didn't have the military sense to
back down in the face of UN and Arab backed opposition. Certainly allowing
the Desert Storm campaign to proceed to the land was stage was a military
blunder.

Then again, Hussein is still claiming an Iraqi victory, and the fact that
he remains alive and in power to do so make me wonder...

Still, this is small potatos.

>>2) Hitler going to war with the world.
>
>He was let "enlarging Germany" quite some time. The big _military_
>mistake was on the side of the others -- disarming so that they
>couldn't stop him early.

Regardless of what happened before the war with appeasement, it is clear
that Hitler lost sight of Germany's military limitations. Attacking
Russia too late in the season, without finishing matters on the West Front,
then giving Roosevelt an easy time of helping England by declaring war
on the US to support an Axis partner who didn't even tell him Pearl Harbor
was immanent? These are not well-measured strokes in either the military
or political sense.

My own two kopeks:

If by greatest blunder, one means the stupidest action upon which a military
event hinged, I would nominate the Dyle plan for the defense of France and
the Benelux countries in 1940. This reaction to a Schlieffen style German
invasion totally missed the point established during the blitz in Poland, and
led to the fall in five weeks of what was seen as the strongest military
force in the world at the time (France's army augmented by the British).
France as an independent country ceasted to exist in less time than some
WWI battles took, as a result of faulty allied defensive moves.  The Germans
may have still been learning combined arms operations and strategies, but
the Allies hadn't a clue.

If, however, the meaning is the blunder that had the overall most significant
impact on military history, and the world, I would say that Napolean's
Russian campaign resulted in a defeat that totally changed the face of 
Europe, and the course of history. If he had stayed home, Americans might
all speak French, and Shakespeare would be a literary footnote.

A second place finisher in this intentionally euro-centric evaluation (and
fairly modern-era one at that) would be the idiotic handling of the Russian
army in the Tannenburg campaign in WWI. This was the start of the chain of
events that culminated in the tsar's overthrow and the birth of the Leninist
state. Almost inconceivable had the Russians won these battles.

The morale of these is: Your blunders get a lot more ink when your opponent
has the genius to exploit them. From Rommel/Guderian to Suvarov to Hindenburg/
Ludendorf, the blunder was magnified by the response.

Matt
 
Newsgroups: alt.war