In respect for the dead I believe that each and every single battle that a soldier dies in is the worst one in his/her life, or I should say death. We can sit here all day and talk about this, the trials and tribulations that men and women go through in battle. But for anyone and everyone who has not yet been in battle, who are we to sit here and decide this. But still, voices do cry out and we must here them.

Measuring a battle in death statistics is easy. World War 2, because in that war, over 47,210,000 people died fighting bravely for a cause that they believed in. In ancient battles, that amount would never have been possible to reach even if the entire world rose up and fought each other.

I really don’t believe that there is another way to measure a battle, you can not measure it by how much land one country took from another, or how long it took. It is simply a matter of how many lives were extinguished from Earth’s surface. Could wars like WWII be stopped, no, it is inevitable that humans fight each other. Like brothers fighting each other so will the world keep going, with people fighting and bickering amongst themselves over who is right, over oil, over money, over a single women, over gods.

World Wars have been fought many times, the Crusades, when Europe threw all of its might down to “save” Jerusalem from the Muslim invaders. When Rome began its conquest to control the world, they succeeded for a time, but thankfully Adolf Hitler did not. Alexander conquered the world, but he died to young to rule it. World Wars have been fought over many things, but to achieve total peace…well, there will never be total peace. Someone will always rise up, someone will always try to break free, such is our nature, to resist bondage, and love freedom.

My point is, "fiercest" is a totally subjective matter. I could list of many that I consider to be suitable candidates. Each had different numbers of casualties, or combatants or anything like that, but nobody can argue that soldiers fought any harder or less in any of the battles listed below.

In no particular order:
*Lone Pine
*The Nek
*Beersheeba
*Verdun
*Shrapnel Gully
*Anzac Cove
*The Somme
*Ypres
*Paschendale
*Monte Casino
*Tobruk
*El Alemain
*Normandy
*Stalingrad
*Berlin
*Battle Of The Bulge
*Kursk
*Greece
*Operation Market Garden
*Long Tan
*Kapyong
*Op Dewey Valley
*The Tet Offensive
*Coral/Balmoral
*Iwo Jima
*Kokoda
*Milne Bay
*Guadalcanal
*Bouganville
*Effogi
*Shaggy Ridge
*Balikpapan
*Borneo
*Okinawa

Anyway, you go and tell any veteran that the battle he was in was less fierce or didn't compare to another one, then see what reaction you get.
I believe all these battles were fierce as all hell. There are many I haven't listed, either because I forgot them, or because I'm taking liberties with time and space.

Battles on the eastern front during WW2 were insane in scale and the hatred for each other during these engagements. But only two come to mind when I think of the fiercest, and those are Stalingrad and Leningrad both were fights for survival by the participants in these battles. Russians trying to hold Leningrad and lift the seige around the city. And then germans trying to hold Stalingrad till Manstein could break the ring around the city. Which both cities were different in that Russians did lift the seige Leningrad and the germans could not do the same in Stalingrad.


1. Leningrad (900 day siege)

2. Stalingrad (destruction of German 6th army, and Germany's allies Romanian and Italian units.)

Originally Posted by panzer

Battles on the eastern front during WW2 were insane in scale and the hatred for each other during these engagements. But only two come to mind when I think of the fiercest, and those are Stalingrad and Leningrad both were fights for survival by the participants in these battles. Russians trying to hold Leningrad and lift the seige around the city. And then germans trying to hold Stalingrad till Manstein could break the ring around the city. Which both cities were different in that Russians did lift the seige Leningrad and the germans could not do the same in Stalingrad.


1. Leningrad (900 day siege)

2. Stalingrad (destruction of German 6th army, and Germany's allies Romanian and Italian units.)

I don't really think you can differentiate between any of the major battles of the Eastern Front. In some way all were as equally fierce as say Stalingrad. For example, during the the Battle of Kursk there was literally hand to hand fighting for much of the time as the Germans were trying to assault the most heavily defended area in history without the element of surprise. And even the Soviet soldiers trapped in the giant pockets at Minsk and Kiev in 1941 fought with a fierceness that bordered on savagery. Even when they had expended all their ammunition and were totally surrounded by the Germans they continued to fight using their boots and even their teeth.

The fiercest battles for me are: -

Somme
Stalingrad
Passchendale
Berlin
Anzio-Cassino
Rorke's Drift
Little Bighorn
Inkerman

Originally Posted by Vitaly

What do you think was the single fiercest battle in history?

Season three of America's Next Top Model... it was "fierce"... LOL

I agree with Missileer nominating Gettysburg but would add as equal first that battle that two posts have already alluded to but did not have the main names / details correct: ie the battle between Queen Boudica and Suetonius in Briton around 60/61 AD.

If "fiercest" is the criteria, then the primary sources describing the brutality and slaughter at these two battles ranks among the worst in history I believe, with all due respect to the many worthy nominations cited in this forum.


http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/...canrevolt.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudicca

Worse than Kokoda?

Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Stalingrad, Gettyburg, Somme, and Okinawa in my opinion.

Most fiercest battle of all the time, in my opinion, is Stalingrad.

Yes I agree the definition of fierce is very subjective. Perhaps the following criteria could be considered: intensity rather than protracted, hand to hand combat, proportion killed or maimed, proportion killed or maimed in relation to the population of the country.

If defined in these terms, how about the battle of Cannae where the Roman infantry was surrounded. In all, perhaps more than 75,000 Romans of the original force of 87,000 were dead or captured. I believe that the slaughter on a single day was not surpassed until the Somme.