Military Hall of Shame- An examination of great military blunders

R

r@n3g@de

Active member
My favourite subject: the blunders and the blunderers …. littering the annals of military history.

I know there was a similar thread titled: Biggest Blunders in Military History started by The Other Guy. As the thread developed the focus of the discussion changed from ‘blunders’ to ‘history, as I know’ or that was my understanding. Therefore, I want to resurrect this thread with due recognition to The Other Guy and all participating members in that thread.

I understand this is a subject, which is very flexible to personal understanding and knowledge. As some of the members have pointed out the blunders can be categorized at different levels- Strategic, Operational, Tactical levels. While strategic blunders are attributed to politicians (like Stalin refusing to accept the intelligence against German buildup or Hitler declaring war on the US to honour the Axis pact with Japan), operational and tactical blunders are mostly credited to military commanders. Not all the mistakes and defeats can’t bedubbed as blunders or disasters. Often then not, they are associated with the blatant disregard to lives of under command, poor planning, faulty intelligence, unfit, inapt or ambitious commanders, and most alarmingly political muddling in the operational level. I intend to classify and present a few such events which/who according to my perspective, deserves to be in the Military Hall of Shame. Few known and successful generals/ commanders may deserve place here also for individual event/battle (Monty of Arnhem) but not necessarily for the whole tenure of the engagement. While the causes for a particular debacle may be endless, the root is limited to only a few such causes. Of course, individual view on the matter will set the stage for deciding the sublime cause behind.

I am sure there will be differences in opinion. I encourage that and hope to refine my understanding and knowledge from that. I would also request the informed members to contribute spontaneously with their view with some elaboration.

I have made following broad categories and will try to discuss one by one. You are welcome to chip in.

Ø Underestimating Enemy
Ø Unfit Leaders
Ø Planning Disasters
Ø Intelligence Blunders
Ø Political Influence

Underestimating Enemy - Coming up soon

Unfit Leaders...
 
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r@n3g@de said:
My favourite subject: the blunders and the blunderers …. littering the annals of military history.

I know there was a similar thread titled: Biggest Blunders in Military History started by The Other Guy. As the thread developed the focus of the discussion changed from ‘blunders’ to ‘history, as I know’ or that was my understanding. Therefore, I want to resurrect this thread with due recognition to The Other Guy and all participating members in that thread.

I understand this is a subject, which is very flexible to personal understanding and knowledge. As some of the members have pointed out the blunders can be categorized at different levels- Strategic, Operational, Tactical levels. While strategic blunders are attributed to politicians (like Stalin refusing to accept the intelligence against German buildup or Hitler declaring war on the US to honour the Axis pact with Japan), operational and tactical blunders are mostly credited to military commanders. Not all the mistakes and defeats can’t bedubbed as blunders or disasters. Often then not, they are associated with the blatant disregard to lives of under command, poor planning, faulty intelligence, unfit, inapt or ambitious commanders, and most alarmingly political muddling in the operational level. I intend to classify and present a few such events which/who according to my perspective, deserves to be in the Military Hall of Shame. Few known and successful generals/ commanders may deserve place here also for individual event/battle (Monty of Arnhem) but not necessarily for the whole tenure of the engagement. While the causes for a particular debacle may be endless, the root is limited to only a few such causes. Of course, individual view on the matter will set the stage for deciding the sublime cause behind.

I am sure there will be differences in opinion. I encourage that and hope to refine my understanding and knowledge from that. I would also request the informed members to contribute spontaneously with their view with some elaboration.

I have made following broad categories and will try to discuss one by one. You are welcome to chip in.

Ø Underestimating Enemy
Ø Unfit Leaders
Ø Planning Disasters
Ø Intelligence Blunders
Ø Political Influence

Underestimating Enemy - Coming up soon

Unfit Leaders...
Click to expand...

Hello and welcome. :) I look forward to reading what you have to say and chipping in with my own comments.
 
Ok, time to have a bit of fun:
Underestimating the enemy: that one has to go to the Italians who underestimated just about everybody, but particularly the Ethiopians. They attacked an army of horse-mounted sword wielding cavalry with a modern (for the time) armoured force, and proceeded to win a war with a long drawn out campaign, when they should have trounced the Ethoipoans in two or three days. For good measure, they were then kicked out of Africa by the Brits, whose favourable kill ratios were the most spectacular of the war.

Unfit Leaders: General Ambrose Burnside.... 'nuff said!

Intelligence blunders: I would change this to "horrid decisions in the face of useful intelligence". The two prizes go to Marshal Montgomery who went ahead with Market-Garden (an airborne assault) in spite of the fact that a German Armoured division was known to be resting a few kilometers from the drop site.
The second goes to Stalin, who did not prepare for Barbarossa in spite of the fact that his intelligence services knew the date, time units commanders, axes of attack, reserves, and everything else. Stalin chose not to believe it, and we all saw the result.
Political influence: Has to go to Stalin for Barbarossa and to Hitler for his attempts to micromanage the war from before Stalingrad right up to the end. He managed to subjugate the German General staff, which was argueably one of the best in the world, and he replaced them with a buch of vapid, useless yes-men.

Dean.
 
The Japanese for invading Kokoda. Severely underestimating the ability of a handfull of (admitadly rag tag, poorly trained and poorly equiped) Australians. Resulting in Japan's first land battle defeat in WW2, and it became the furthest reach of their advance, from which they were soundly beaten back across the Pacific (massive over-simplification of events there).
 
Unfortunately the Australians were not the first to defeat the Japanese in a land battle during WW2. The Chinese had been winning and loseing land battles with the Japs before (1930's) and during WW2.
Cheers
ST
 
Winning? The Chinese lost mate. The first record of a Chinese victory I could find in Western or Chinese history books was as a joint op with US forces in 1943.
 
Look up the eighth route army around june 1938.
Cheers
St

research july 9 1942 . Nationalist forces in Jiangxi province.
Could probably ad a few more if you want?
Cheers
St
 
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G'day Bulldog,
A basic one on the net is Wikipedia Which I used because I am away from home and don't have my reference material with me ( I tend to not use the net as I don't realy trust some of the information). Another date is april 1938 Shantung province.
Cheers
ST
 
Let me rephrase.
First land defeat in the 1939 to 1945 war against the western Allies.
I'm sure you've heard of Milne Bay Stanford, and you'd not be one to dispute it as the first decisive defeat of the Japanese in the pacific campaign.
 
KC72 you forgot to mention that he did build a Bunker 60 feet deep while Rommel was attacking to make sure he stayed safe. Ike fired him after that and replaced him with Patton.
 
KC72 you forgot to mention that he did build a Bunker 60 feet deep while Rommel was attacking to make sure he stayed safe. Ike fired him after that and replaced him with Patton.
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What a freakin' disgrace.
 
bulldogg said:
Wikipedia is blocked in China and its not a vetted source, but thanks anyway.
Click to expand...
Hey, at least we have seen some progress recently in the unblocking (likely with heavy restrictions) of Google in China.
 
Wikipedia is blocked in China and its not a vetted source
Click to expand...

It is vetted by its own members which appears to be sufficient in most cases. There is a problem when there is a specialist subject in which only one or two members have any knowledge. Neither does it provide any privilege to an experts view, although in some cases perhaps that could be an advantage. The big advantage of Wikipedia over most other sources is its rapid rate of updating. A new piece of information about a subject can sometimes appear within minutes of a piece of research being released.

Nature compared Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica in a wide range of topics. The journal found just eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts, in the articles. Of those, four came from each site. They did, however, discover a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. All told, Wikipedia had 162 such problems, while Britannica had 123.
 
Market Garden as a Brit paratrooper I agree it was failure, but had it been launch a few days earlier then it could have been an overwhelming success. What really mucked up was a Panzer Division had been pulled out of the Eastern front and stationed at Arnhem for re-equipping, so it makes hind sight a wonderful thing
Now what about the American General Mark Clark who ignored his orders to push across Italy and deal with the German troops being pushed out of Monte Casino, but decided instead to take Rome at let the Germans escape and cost the life's of thousands of Allied troops who then had to fight the troops they could have caught in open but were now in prepared defensives position.
 
LeEnfield said:
Market Garden as a Brit paratrooper I agree it was failure, but had it been launch a few days earlier then it could have been an overwhelming success. What really mucked up was a Panzer Division had been pulled out of the Eastern front and stationed at Arnhem for re-equipping, so it makes hind sight a wonderful thing
Now what about the American General Mark Clark who ignored his orders to push across Italy and deal with the German troops being pushed out of Monte Casino, but decided instead to take Rome at let the Germans escape and cost the life's of thousands of Allied troops who then had to fight the troops they could have caught in open but were now in prepared defensives position.
Click to expand...

I agree totally about Market Garden. My great uncle was one of the surviving paras from Arnhem, so I have a lingering personal interest in the campaign. I believe that tactically it could have been an outstanding success. It was a gamble, and the commanders knew this. But as Ike said it was "the gamble we had to take".

If it had worked, then it would have placed a British armoured element with a clean run to Berlin. It could have been a very different end to the war.
 
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