Casualties in the Pacific numbered in the thousands. Casualties on the Eastern Front numbered in the millions. Stalingrad/Kursk hands down.

Percentage, not numbers outright. The US lost approx 10% of their forces at Guadalcanal, the Australians lost 21% of their forces in New Guinea. Thats what I mean. Percentage of soldiers lost in battle is a good way of figuring the impact.

if looking at the number of death and wounded..
i think

Stalingrad

If you want to talk percentages, AussieNick, that's fine. The Germans had over 200,000 troops in Stalingrad at the start of the battle and only 93,000 went into captivity so that's a greater than 50% loss ratio for the Germans alone. The Russian figures will never be accurately known but all who were there on both sides said it was much worse for them. A further note, although not part of the battle itself, the loss ratio for those Germans in captivity was far greater than those who died in combat. Of those 93,000 only 2400 ever returned to Germany so nothing approaches Stalingrad. Your troops suffered terribly it's true, but they did not suffer worse than Stalingrad.

As soon as you factor the Russian Winter into the equation, the Eastern Front of WW2 was perhaps the most horrible war area in history. The question is, which of those battles was the fiercest. Stalingrad would probably be it, but there are many alternatives that were quite terrible.

Originally Posted by Kane

Like you guys mentioned earlier, Stalingrad.

How about Ancient Historical battles? We often spoken of battles occured in the Modern Era.

My nominees would be:

- battle of Gaugamela (331 BC, Alex the Great vs. Dareios the Persian emperor)
- Varus campaign (9 AD, 3 roman legions under Varus vs. Arminius and his germanic tribes)
- battle of Azincourt (1415, 6000 Britons, mostly longbow archers vs. a french army of 26000, mostly knights and noblemen)

More recent, the Napoleonic Wars:
- battle of the nations at Leipzig (1813, France and several smaller allies (Poland,...) vs Prussia, Sweden, Austria and Russia)
- battle of Borodino (1812, la grande armée vs. a Russian army led by general Kutusow)

These are some that come to mind, though my knowledge of ancient history is deficient at best so there may be many others.

Gaugamela, Leipzig and Borodino stand out judging from the mere number of casualties. OTOH, three legions plus auxiliaries was an impressive army at the time of the Varus campaign and there were only few roman survivors.
Azincourt isnt a bad guess either, many casualties in a short span of time, slaughtering of prisoners by the British, etc.

Yeah, Borodino definetly comes to mind out of those.

lol, this is really funny

stalingrad wins hands down.

citybattles are the bloodies of them all. men determined to reach the volga aginist men determined to defend to their deaths, you can imagine how bloody it would be.

the death toll also agree that stalingrad is the grandest and bloodiest battle of them all

3 months of both sides going at each other with any weapons they can lay their hands on is quite a long time for such a men-wasting battle

I still say when the Romans invaded England.................pure true bloody evil history. Thats when battles were wars!!

I don't know about that..... I'd be more frightened to charge into machine gun fire while being under-armed and have a fear of being shot if I retreat than lining up on a field and then the two sides charging each other. Also house-to-house is a tactical nightmare where the majority of casualties occurs, and Stalingrad was the bloodiest city battle. I think Borodino maybe the bloodiest field battle.

Budapest..

Simply because everyone knows about Stalingrad...