Well for me it depends on what you mean by fierce. If you mean by deaths then I would have to say the Battles of the First World War and Stalingrad. If you mean by fighting then the battle for Berlin was a pretty fierce battle. I can never remember how long that lasted though.

Interesting link:

The Bloodiest Battles of the 20th century

Ranking:

1- Siege of Leningrad (Eastern front, WW2) - 850.000
2- Stalingrad (Eastern front, WW2) - 750.000
3- Moscow (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 719.000
4- Kiev (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 678.000
5- 1st Smolensk (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 535.000
6- Voronezh-Voroshilovgrad (Eastern front, WW2) - only the Russian KIA is 370.000
7- 1st Bielorussia (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 375.000
8- Operation Bagration (Eastern front, WW2) - 350.000
9- Kursk (Eastern front, WW2) - 325.000
10- Somme (Western front, WW1) - 306.000

So, the most fierce battle in the 20th century must have been some battle in the eastern front in WW2.

Originally Posted by Guaporense

Interesting link:

The Bloodiest Battles of the 20th century

Ranking:

1- Siege of Leningrad (Eastern front, WW2) - 850.000
2- Stalingrad (Eastern front, WW2) - 750.000
3- Moscow (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 719.000
4- Kiev (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 678.000
5- 1st Smolensk (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 535.000
6- Voronezh-Voroshilovgrad (Eastern front, WW2) - only the Russian KIA is 370.000
7- 1st Bielorussia (Eastern front, WW2) (Barbarossa) - 375.000
8- Operation Bagration (Eastern front, WW2) - 350.000
9- Kursk (Eastern front, WW2) - 325.000
10- Somme (Western front, WW1) - 306.000

So, the most fierce battle in the 20th century must have been some battle in the eastern front in WW2.

Well, notice that it says bloodiest. Just because it had the most deaths, doesn't mean it was the fiercest. Many battles have had little casualties but the fighting was fierce. As I have said, it depends what you are meaning by 'fierce'.

The title of this thread say Fiercest battle in history, not fieriest MILITARY battle in history, therefore again I mention my divorce, I'd rather go disarm roadside bombs, and play in mine fields than go through THAT again

Originally Posted by Yin717

Well, notice that it says bloodiest. Just because it had the most deaths, doesn't mean it was the fiercest. Many battles have had little casualties but the fighting was fierce. As I have said, it depends what you are meaning by 'fierce'.

I think that exists some correlation between the two.

Originally Posted by Guaporense

I think that exists some correlation between the two.

Not necessarily. You can have fierce battles in that the fighting was so fierce that both sides found it hard to advance or retreat and so forth. But very few men died in the conflict. And then you can have WW1 were the advance was relatively simple yet lots of men died. Although for a majority cases there is normally a correlation, it;s not always the case.

i think that only the battle of Marathon must be honored with the <<Title >> Fiercest Battle in History (dont forget that until this battle the Persina army had never deafeted in the Battlefield the greeks were only 10.000 and the barbarians 60.000 to 120.000).Instead to fear the Greek army attack first to barbarians with mighty speed and courage

Originally Posted by Vitaly

Yeah, air combat is very fierce, but how about something from 'Nam? What does every one here think about those battles and operations?

I think combat within Jungle areas that are so dense that you at times need flashlights during day time would be unbelievably frightening.

Dak To comes to mind for Vietnam. Unimaginable carnage in a very small area.

Operation Buffuloe in July 1967 up around Con Thien. It was single worst loss of life in a day for the Marine Corps throughout the war. Assault barrages, hand to hand, napalm mere meters from their perimeter.

Then there's Hue...nobody can argue that this battle was 6 weeks of just utter carnage.

Ia Drang also comes to mind, particularly the ambush on the American column after the fight for LZ X-ray.

Khe Sanh was pretty crappy too...1500 rounds of incoming day in and out for months...enough to make anyone go crazy. Even worse were the jarheads up on 881 S that took just as much arty and had to fight off several determined NVA attacks on their base.

I would definitely say that these were some of the worst for the Vietnam war (American).

I am still going for Verdun but for slightly different reasons than just the casualty rate, primarily that it was designed as a meat grinder battle all of the proposed battles were fought for territory Verdun was not.

The original German plan (that backfired) was to take something that the French had to retake and then sit there and grind up the French army as attempted to retrieve the territory.

The German commander-in-chief General Erich von Falkenhayn considered England to be Germany’s most important enemy. He believed England would collapse as soon as France, their most important ally, would be defeated. That is why a target had to be found that would be so important to the French, that they would be willing to sacrifice their entire army. This army would 'bleed to death' (the Germans called this 'weissbluten') and could then easily be defeated.

http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battl...rdun/index.htm

http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/verdun.htm

I tend to agree with MontyB's assessment of Verdun as "fiercest battle". I think "weissbluten" translates more colorfully as "to bleed white". Unfortunately, German casualties were also extremely heavy. Additionally, huge French losses led directly to the "sister" Battle of the Somme as an attempt to relieve the hard-pressed French by the British. The giant artillery duels truly made mincemeat of human flesh,to say nothing of machine-gun fire and the vicious hand-to-hand trench fighting of the first big Industrialized War. Battles of material[attrition] are BRUTAL!!!!