Biggest Epic Fails in History

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I don't think either invasion of Russia can really count as an "epic fail"; both were pretty sensible moves considering the situation and in WWII especially, was essentially a forced move not a choice. There is some crowd that thinks Russia is invincible so ever attacking them in any situation is evidence of stupidity, but this doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. They afterall lost hard to Germany in WWI despite Kaiser's position being much worse on paper than either Napoleon or Hitler's.

Hitler's invasion of Russia might be a forced move on its own, but in the context of his starting a worldwide war it's pretty stupid. I also contended that Sweden's invasion of Russia was a forced move, but after Spoonist gave context I didn't dispute it. And Russia's loss in WWI must have a lot to do with them meeting the Austro-Germans in eastern Europe instead of having them inside Russia proper and letting their logistics fail them. You'll notice that whoever won in Russia either came from back east (the Mongols) or never had to invade the country to defeat them.

Like Commodus, they took a fairly healthy Empire, closed their eyes, and simply crashed it into a mountain.

I side with Thanas on this one, and blame Russell Crowe for your statement.

[Gandalf]

And Russia's loss in WWI must have a lot to do with them meeting the Austro-Germans in eastern Europe instead of having them inside Russia proper and letting their logistics fail them. You'll notice that whoever won in Russia either came from back east (the Mongols) or never had to invade the country to defeat them.

Russia's main problem was that it just wasn't ready for a war like WW1, and as a result of the pressures put on everyone there, both civilians and military turned on the government. The problem wasn't necessarily where they were fighting, but the fact that it kept going.

I think.

Like Commodus, they took a fairly healthy Empire, closed their eyes, and simply crashed it into a mountain.

I side with Thanas on this one, and blame Russell Crowe for your statement.

Are you not entertained?

[Gandalf]

I don't think either invasion of Russia can really count as an "epic fail"; both were pretty sensible moves considering the situation and in WWII especially, was essentially a forced move not a choice. There is some crowd that thinks Russia is invincible so ever attacking them in any situation is evidence of stupidity, but this doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. They afterall lost hard to Germany in WWI despite Kaiser's position being much worse on paper than either Napoleon or Hitler's.

By that logic, could one refer to the entirety of WW1 as an epic fail?

[K. A. Pital]

By that logic, could one refer to the entirety of WW1 as an epic fail?

Actually, yes. That's the most epic fail of fails; a giant slaughterhouse between the most advanced industrial empires of the age. WWII at least could've been interpreted as a war that served to contain Nazism, which was an ideology hellbent on exterminating entire races from the face of the Earth, and thereby also stop the evolution of proto-Nazist ideological experiments in other fascist dictatorships like Japan, which were also doing crazy things in China.

WWI has no such excuse; it was a massive butchery of conscripts sent forth by the most industrially developed metropoles, nations that were supposedly "high above the barbarians" due to the Great Divergence; it was the same nations which repeatedly initiated the most enormously huge and deadly wars in the XX century.

Which is why war between industrialized nations is perhaps the most epic fail of all - the development of industry did not correspond to a decrease in violence because war reaped adult lives without any rational reason, other than tribalism escalated to a greater level. The ultimate demonstration on the failure of pure technology and technocratic ideas to produce a humane outcome.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Russia's main problem was that it just wasn't ready for a war like WW1, and as a result of the pressures put on everyone there, both civilians and military turned on the government. The problem wasn't necessarily where they were fighting, but the fact that it kept going.

I think.

I am entertained.

I hardly think any of the powers were ready for something like WW1, though, so I won't single out Russia. Britain had to literally rebuild the army after it was wiped out in the first year, for example. I think only the US had the advantage of preparation.

Now, a war on Russian soil could have inspired greater loyalty to the government, with one catch: Petersburg is easier to reach than Moscow and the enemy has it easier if he can get supplies via the Baltic.

[Thanas]

I don't think either invasion of Russia can really count as an "epic fail"; both were pretty sensible moves considering the situation and in WWII especially, was essentially a forced move not a choice. There is some crowd that thinks Russia is invincible so ever attacking them in any situation is evidence of stupidity, but this doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. They afterall lost hard to Germany in WWI despite Kaiser's position being much worse on paper than either Napoleon or Hitler's.

By that logic, could one refer to the entirety of WW1 as an epic fail?

Yeah, that is probably the worst epic fail in history and most of it was made due to a nebulous fear of either a German or British invasion, lots of dick-waving and some inept politicians being unable to step back from the ledge. WWI is the definition of epic fail, come to think of it.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I would say that rather than WW1 itself being the massive fail (although I am sure there are plenty of military massive fails in there) it's more the pre-1914 diplomacy and alliance systems that were the massive fail. As best I can tell both sides formed alliances in the expectation that the threat of war would force the other sides to bail on their treaties.

[Sea Skimmer]

It was also hardly a predictable forgone conclusion that the war would not be exactly what both sides expected, a short vicious conflict which would be decided in several months.

[Simon_Jester]

Russia's main problem was that it just wasn't ready for a war like WW1, and as a result of the pressures put on everyone there, both civilians and military turned on the government. The problem wasn't necessarily where they were fighting, but the fact that it kept going.

I think.

I am entertained.

I hardly think any of the powers were ready for something like WW1, though, so I won't single out Russia. Britain had to literally rebuild the army after it was wiped out in the first year, for example. I think only the US had the advantage of preparation.

Now, a war on Russian soil could have inspired greater loyalty to the government, with one catch: Petersburg is easier to reach than Moscow and the enemy has it easier if he can get supplies via the Baltic.

You're missing something here.

Russia was less prepared for total war in 1914 than the other European powers, with the possible exception of Austria-Hungary. Significantly less.

France, Britain, and Germany all had populaces that were reliably loyal to the government, and who approved of its basic structure.

Russia had massive discontent with the czars and several different blends of republican and communist sedition running under the surface.

France, Britain, and Germany had "broad and deep" industrial infrastructure: it was widely distributed throughout the countries, and most of the population had a steadily growing grasp of, and relationship with, modern technology. They had plenty of factories to produce weapons, educated people to operate them, and surplus labor to wield them.

Russia had shallower, weaker industrial infrastructure, with a larger proportion of peasants and illiterate people. They had inadequate supplies of weapons compared to the size of their armed forces, and indeed kept importing stocks of munitions from outside throughout the war.

[The USSR did this in WWII, but unless I am much mistaken, the proportional reliance on foreign aid was greater in WWI. I could be wrong about this, but the basic point stands: Russia was still in mid-Industrial Revolution in 1914]
_____________

In World War One, trying to stay in the war cost Russia two governments: both the czars and the provisional government fell in large part because they could not hold together the system under the massive strain of industrialized warfare.

By contrast, Britain and France were never in serious danger of governmental collapse, and Germany was only in danger because they lost. No one was truly prepared for total war in WWI, because so much about it was unexpected. But Russia was at a further disadvantage in that it lacked the tools it needed to cope with the unexpected.

[The Grim Squeaker]

The War of the Triple Alliance.
(Tiny, landlocked) Paraguay, led by its dictator and his Parisian french mistress declared war on Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. All atthe same time.
After results included the rough loss of 60% of its population, including depopulation of nearly all (90%) males.


"The odds were stacked against Paraguay. The allies’ combined population was 25 times bigger. Paraguay relied on Napoleonic-era kit—muskets, 17th-century cannon and wooden boats—and, being landlocked, could not import modern armaments. Many of its horses were crippled by a spinal ailment. The allies ultimately mustered long-range rifles, artillery and ironclad warships."
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas ... ght-nation

Crushing defeat. The new "getting squashed like a bug".

[energiewende]

I don't think either invasion of Russia can really count as an "epic fail"; both were pretty sensible moves considering the situation and in WWII especially, was essentially a forced move not a choice. There is some crowd that thinks Russia is invincible so ever attacking them in any situation is evidence of stupidity, but this doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. They afterall lost hard to Germany in WWI despite Kaiser's position being much worse on paper than either Napoleon or Hitler's.

...snip...

While probably not the Russia decision particularly, Hitler's decision to ever start WWII doesn't look at all sensible if you only judge by the information of the day, ie. France probably wasn't going to be defeated in a few weeks and the Entente would simply build up a huge material advantage. Then Stalin would probably switch sides when it looked like he could win an easy victory.

Care to elaborate on your reasoning here?
Which one would be 'sensible' and why wouldn't they be epic fails regardless of intentions?
Each of the defeats was the demise of the respective attackers.

I think because the consequences of not doing those things would have been either worse or not much better, and certain, while attacking had some reasonable chance of success (at least in comparison to doing nothing).

In WWII in particularly defeating the USSR before US-Commonwealth built up an overwhelming force was the only way for the Germans to win. Even just to defeat Britain on its own, they needed to exploit the industrial potential of their new European empire and they couldn''t do this because of British blockade. So USSR was a question of when, not if, and waiting only made the situation worse. Finally you have to consider that Stalin may have simply attacked Hitler. USSR had been an army-with-a-state for decades at that point, even more extreme than Nazi Germany itself, and most of the programs that produced war-winning weapons were initiated in the late 30s. Even if the USSR never would have attacked Nazi Germany, Hitler would still have needed to commit very large forces to deter them.

For Napoleon, well, he had a better chance of just sitting on his Empire, but he was again faced with British blockade, and defeating Russia was the only way to make his position really secure. Britain had been quite happily fighting him for 20 years, and pretty much controlled all overseas trade at that point. Who's to say it wouldn't have fought him for another 20? His Empire was too precarious for that, as shown by the mass defections when Russia started overruning imperial and allied territory.



Commodus - Coming from Gibbon. In the film of course Commodus is a great figure since he indirectly leads to the famous 200AD restoration of the Republic... right?

[ray245]

Oh God, please don't use Gibbon as a historical source. You are just begging Thanas to go nuts on you.

[Thanas]

Commodus - Coming from Gibbon.

Do you get your science from the bible? Because that is about the same thing.

[Lord Revan]

I'm not that familiar with historians so who is Gibbon and why is he considered a bad source?

Also for the OP, I'd say Vasa (the ship that is) would be pretty high on the list since, IIRC the head designer said that it would more or less take an act of god to keep the ship stable if they added 1 another gun deck to the orginal plans, but the king of sweden wanted another gun deck so it was added and just because it wasn't stupid enough already put the heaviest guns on that deck making the already dangerously unstable ship even more unstable.

[ray245]

I'm not that familiar with historians so who is Gibbon and why is he considered a bad source?

He was considered to be the foremost expert on Roman history...in the 18th century.

[Thanas]

Gibbon jumpstarted what we call Ancient History (together with Winkelmann) and was a giant in the field. I love him.

However using him would be akin to using Ben Franklin as science references today. Great men, but horribly outdated.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

You're missing something here.

Russia was less prepared for total war in 1914 than the other European powers, with the possible exception of Austria-Hungary. Significantly less.

France, Britain, and Germany all had populaces that were reliably loyal to the government, and who approved of its basic structure.

Russia had massive discontent with the czars and several different blends of republican and communist sedition running under the surface.

France, Britain, and Germany had "broad and deep" industrial infrastructure: it was widely distributed throughout the countries, and most of the population had a steadily growing grasp of, and relationship with, modern technology. They had plenty of factories to produce weapons, educated people to operate them, and surplus labor to wield them.

Russia had shallower, weaker industrial infrastructure, with a larger proportion of peasants and illiterate people. They had inadequate supplies of weapons compared to the size of their armed forces, and indeed kept importing stocks of munitions from outside throughout the war.

[The USSR did this in WWII, but unless I am much mistaken, the proportional reliance on foreign aid was greater in WWI. I could be wrong about this, but the basic point stands: Russia was still in mid-Industrial Revolution in 1914]
_____________

In World War One, trying to stay in the war cost Russia two governments: both the czars and the provisional government fell in large part because they could not hold together the system under the massive strain of industrialized warfare.

By contrast, Britain and France were never in serious danger of governmental collapse, and Germany was only in danger because they lost. No one was truly prepared for total war in WWI, because so much about it was unexpected. But Russia was at a further disadvantage in that it lacked the tools it needed to cope with the unexpected.

Yes, but I didn't want to spend my afternoon writing an essay.

[Simon_Jester]

Eh, that took me like 15-20 minutes tops.

If we agree, fine, I just misunderstood the parts where you said "I am entertained" and (to paraphrase) "no one was prepared." Sounded to me like you disagreed about the preparation gap between Russia and France/Russia/Germany, which was kind of important to understanding why the Eastern Front wound up like it did.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Eh, that took me like 15-20 minutes tops.

I don't know, I usually write, rewrite, revise, and generally conduct surgery on my posts. Hell, I sometimes think of posting, write something, then I delete it. I'm usually shocked to find a typo, because that means I missed it not once, but three or four times including in the edit window.

If we agree, fine, I just misunderstood the parts where you said "I am entertained" and (to paraphrase) "no one was prepared." Sounded to me like you disagreed about the preparation gap between Russia and France/Russia/Germany, which was kind of important to understanding why the Eastern Front wound up like it did.

Look at Gandalf's post for the first bit. The second one was because I truly phrased that weirdly.

[Irbis]

To be fair, that wasn't entirely Karl's fault; the anti-Swedish alliance was between Denmark, Russia and Poland, so trying to get Peter to back off would leave him vulnerable to the Poles. As far as cock-ups go, the Great Northen War has the Danish king getting Copenhagen captured because he forgot to fortify his island, one of Karl's generals setting out to resupply him and losing the supplies and half his soldiers in a mutiny, and also... uh... the entire Norwegian campaign of 1718.

I wouldn't say 'vulnerable to the Poles' is a good line of thinking, unless we count it as a fail. In 1700, Polish army was rotting, weak, underfunded carcass of an organization that would struggle to put 10.000 men to field (in big part due to Prussian/Russian machinations) and our big involvement in the Great Northern War was to provide a battleground scenery all other sides could loot. We were even absent in peace agreement and division of spoils when Russians won it, for Vader's sake. If anything, you could say Electorate of Saxony, nominal Polish ally in that war, mattered more and raised more soldiers.

I would argue Italy's stillborn invasion of Egypt during WW2 makes Adowa look like something worthy of Sun Tzu. Just how did the Italians lose a 150,000 man Army to an inflated 30,000 man garrison? The world wonders.

It was fought in the desert, place where something called 'water' is rather crucial to survive. Quite a lot of Italians decided to surrender when they ran out and had no way to get more

If anything, you should call sending Afrika Korps into battle next a fail instead, as the German commanders optimistically assumed Aryan willpower can convince their soldiers to not sweat and thus need less water than the Italians recommended. It worked about as well as it sounds.

Seriously, Nazis had every opportunity to learn from Fins how to fight in deep winter, and from Italians how to in desert, and they made amateur mistakes both times handing the win to weaker opponent.

[lord Martiya]

Italians have been already listed here. While I'd like to counter what has been said, I have to admit that we rarely get our act together long enough to make a difference in the other way.
Case in point: the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lissa_%281866%29 Battle of Lissa]]. The Wikipedia article is good, but forgets a few things: Persano had not been at sea for years before being ordered to take command of the fleet; the Italian fleet was a ragtag mix of the pre-unification navies of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (providing most of the ships and crews, plus the uniforms and naval traditions), Kingdom of Sardinia, Papal States (Adriatic fleet only) and Grand Duchy of Tuscany (very little), with former Sardinian officers placed over the more competent and experienced Sicilian officers and relative rivalry; the only thing that made the officers of all pre-unification navies agree on it was that Persano was an incompetent, resulting in his direct subordinates rear admiral Vacca and vice admiral Albini ignoring him during the battle; the crews of the best ships of the fleet (most of which, including the flagship Affondatore, had not been built in Italy), had little to no experience (particularly the Affondatore's crew: the ship had arrived in Italy incomplete due the Italian government fearing the British would confiscate her at the start of the war, and, being an ironclad ram with turret-mounted guns, was unlike anything the crew had ever seen); somehow, the Italian Ministry of Navy had no map of the area near Lissa (it's unknown if they managed to buy one at some stationery), and yet choose it as site of the battle.
The end result, as seen in the article, was two Italian ironclads sunk, Affondatore so damaged she sank in harbour a few days later, and Tegetthoff and his crews rightly laughing at Italian incompetence.

-Sea Skimmer, isn't it rather easy to explain why the Italians did what they did? A combination of racism and not realising the degree the Ethopians had modernised works quite well. The Italians, like other Europeans at the time, had simply failed to realise "Non-White" does not necessarily mean "Ineffectual at modern warfare."

The problem is not that my compatriots of the era had failed to realise that "Non-White" does not necessarily mean "Ineffectual at modern warfare", the reasons Adowa is one of the greatest Epic Fails in military history is that part of their modern weapons had been given to them by the Italian government itself: in 1889 Ethiopia had signed the Treaty of Wuchale, under which Ethiopia ceded modern-day Eritrea and was scammed in becoming an Italian protectorate (the reason of the campaign was that they were obviously furious when they realized that and wanted to renegotiate the treaty, but Italy refused) in exchange for a loan of 4,000,000 lire and supplies of rifles Vetterli-Vitali Mod.1870/87 (Italian standard issue even at Adowa due insufficient production of the Carcano Mod. 1891), that had been already delivered before the Ethiopians realized the scam.
Long story short: Adowa is an epic fail because not only because we knew they had the modern weapons they used to defeat us, but because we gave them the modern weapons they used to defeat us.

I would argue Italy's stillborn invasion of Egypt during WW2 makes Adowa look like something worthy of Sun Tzu. Just how did the Italians lose a 150,000 man Army to an inflated 30,000 man garrison? The world wonders.

Because the Italian army was underequipped, technologically inferior, plagued by officers that should have been hanged for gross incompetency in face of the enemy as soon as they peeked at the British lines with binoculars, and had orders to sit there and wait for Britain to desperately beg for peace.
The point of the invasion was not to conquer Egypt, was to kick a supposedly already defeated enemy to earn some gain at the peace conference. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Compass With obvious results]] as soon as the British Empire [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto established a naval superiority on the Mediterranean]] and gave adequate supplies and support to that garrison.

[someone_else]

Sea Skimmer, isn't it rather easy to explain why the Italians did what they did? A combination of racism and not realising the degree the Ethopians had modernised works quite well. The Italians, like other Europeans at the time, had simply failed to realise "Non-White" does not necessarily mean "Ineffectual at modern warfare."

Nope.
Ethiopy was one of the last places not claimed by other nations when Fascism was trying desperately to get some thing to claim as "conquered land" to demonstrate that they were in the party too.
The failures were mostly due to high-ranking officers with heads up their asses (and trained with archaic military techniques, I have seen better tactics in AoE III internet matches) and horribly crappy equipment/training/motivation.
Heck, the equipment at the time was decent if we were still in WWI, not more than a decade later.
We won in the end though, if only by dropping nervines all over. At least we did have some kind of aviation.

---
While we are in the mood of Italian screwups, what about the 8 september 1943 with the badoglio proclamation? An incorrectly phrased speech (was understood as "the war is over") with bad timing coupled with the fleeing of all high-command, king and whatnot from Rome caused the disbanding of most of the Italian Army, and the capturing and killing of a shit-ton of italian soldiers as "traitors" by the Nazi.

[PainRack]

4
Ending of the eunuch faction and thus the treasure fleets of China, because tradition dictates that trade, research and international relations are against Confucian principles.
.

I'm sorry, just why is maintaining a large scale 'treasure' fleet, comprising of white elephants large junks which were impractical for trade and were nothing more than showflag ships important when
a. The nomadic hordes were acting up north.
b. The costly imperialisation of Anman(Vietnam) provoked a cutback against imperialism in general(confucian principles invoked) as well as a austerity drive because the Treasury was bankrupt.... which means removing said white elephants and shutting down all unneccessary shipbuilding, something that you can afford because your navy is powerful enough to secure the coast and again, Imperial defences up north in 'Chinese'(read Yuan) territories were more important strategically.
c. The Chinese had secured the diplomatic and trade routes the Treasure fleets were meant to win over?

I mean, its not like when the Portuguese sacked Malacca, it wasn't a Chinese tributary state that appealed to China for aid, and while Ming China didn't send a fleet down south to repulse the Portuguese, they did defeat and destroy a Portuguese up north near Macao later. And was militarily strong enough that they resorted to deception(Hi Chinese Emperor. I'm here to pay tribute to you. Please let me set up a trade factory, and ignore those dastardly Malaccans. Why, those rumours of genocide and slavery of Chinese women? Lies I tell you. LIES!)

Its not as if the Chinese stopped innovating their ships, such as when they incorporated foreign(read Frank) cannons into the naval vessels, right?

[Simon_Jester]

So what ultimately made China unable to protect not only its tributaries in Southeast Asia, but also its own coasts against Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries? I would be curious to hear your thoughts in the matter.

[ray245]

So what ultimately made China unable to protect not only its tributaries in Southeast Asia, but also its own coasts against Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries? I would be curious to hear your thoughts in the matter.

Industrial revolution?