If by 'fiercest' you mean the highest number of casualties then the Battle of Moscow is a prime candidate. If we take the battle in its entirety, from September 30th, 1941 until April 20th, 1942, then some 7 million soldiers on both sides were involved. Casualties are conservatively estimated (KIA, MIA or POW) at 2.5 million men, of which nearly 2 million were on the Soviet side.

Just to give you some idea of scale, the extended Battle of Moscow was numerically twice as big as the Battle of Stalingrad.

I have been trying to look up the figures of those that were killed and wounded at the Somme and Verdun that were fought at the same time. Now there are various lists all showing different totals but it would seem that these figures are fairly close to the average.

Verdun 1916 French 550.000....................... Germans 434.000
Somme 1916 British & Commonwealth 419.654 Germans 630.000

The battle at Verdun kicked off in Feberuary of 1916 and the Somme a few months later to try and take the pressure of the French.

I think this is where we need to define the parameters for "fierce" though.

Moscow - 2.5 million casualties over roughly 200 days
Verdun - 1 million casualties over roughly 300 days
Somme - 1.1 million casualties over 180 days
alternatively you have the likes of:
Cannae - 60,000 est. casualties in less than 24 hours.

The only real problem I can see with ancient battles is determining the actual and accepted casualty numbers.

Agreed Monty, although when all has been said and done, can anyone really say that one battle was more 'fierce' than another? They are all 'fierce'.

The bottom line is the numbers of casualties and in that the Battle for Moscow in 1941/42 remains supreme. Casualties for ancient battles cannot be accurately assessed; hell we still have major debate about casualty rates for the last global war in history and that is still fresh in the memory. Many accounts of ancient battles appear to be exaggerated, whereas at least we have many kinds and accounts of recording for WW2 battles.

Moscow should be amongst the most well known battles of all time. It was the largest battle in human history with the greatest numbers of casualties ever recorded. The Eastern Front in itself was the most intense ongoing conflict of all time. The Red Army alone suffered nearly 30 million casualties of all types during its 4 year duration.

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Agreed Monty, although when all has been said and done, can anyone really say that one battle was more 'fierce' than another? They are all 'fierce'.

The bottom line is the numbers of casualties and in that the Battle for Moscow in 1941/42 remains supreme. Casualties for ancient battles cannot be accurately assessed; hell we still have major debate about casualty rates for the last global war in history and that is still fresh in the memory. Many accounts of ancient battles appear to be exaggerated, whereas at least we have many kinds and accounts of recording for WW2 battles.

Moscow should be amongst the most well known battles of all time. It was the largest battle in human history with the greatest numbers of casualties ever recorded. The Eastern Front in itself was the most intense ongoing conflict of all time. The Red Army alone suffered nearly 30 million casualties of all types during its 4 year duration.

Jesus H. Christ, D., you have a way of putting things into perspective. Thinking about the 20-30 million Sovs is a tough one for the western population. they think in thousands and not millions. Those who think about the Afrika Korps cannot understand the real dimensions of WWII. And, I agree with your heavy emphasis on Moscow.

Now the Battles in and around the Crimea where again very heavy, may be not as big as Moscow but quite near it.

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

Now the Battles in and around the Crimea where again very heavy, may be not as big as Moscow but quite near it.

Agreed!...good thinking LeEnfield.

Who really knows, but I'll go for the Battle of Moscow along with Stalingrad.

It is difficult to quantify fierceness in a battle in retrospect with the most effective guiding criterion being the number of casualties inflicted by all or some of the parties to the battle, I guess. On that criteria alone, I would have to say that the very large battles fought on the German-Soviet front were particularly fierce. So, too, were many of the island-hopping and naval battles between the US and the Japanese in the Pacific War which were fought with an exceedingly intense ferocity. So were the battles conducted in the CBI theatre (a much neglected area of operations in the history of WW2) by the Western Allies and Nationalist Chinese against the Japanese. Indeed throughout Japanese-occupied China, the Communist & Nationalist Chinese campaign against the Japanese was fought with great ferocity; so much so that this campaign led one Japanese general to declare that it was fighting China in the eight-year Second Sino-Japanese War that lead Japan to defeat more than fighting the US.