31 of the Most Wildly Disastrous Mistakes Militaries Have Made

‘Saddam thinking the USA was bluffing about invading a second time’
31 of the Most Wildly Disastrous Mistakes Militaries Have Made
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Miscalculations and mistakes in war have grave consequences. Well, for the poor saps who end up fighting in them, at least. For the commander who blew it, the worst thing they’ll do is probably take one of his medals away. At least history will forever be unkind to them, not that it’ll bring back the lives lost thanks to their blunder.

Some mistakes, though, are so stupid as to be indefensible. Even just in theory, they’re highly inadvisable. To make it off the map table and onto the actual battlefield is pretty much indefensible, then and any time in the future. 

Below, historians on Reddit share the most disastrous military mistakes they can think of.

d_zeen . 1mo ago The Battle of Karánsebes (1788) the Austrians got drunk and fought themselves
Bob_Leves . 1mo ago The War of the Triple Alliance. Paraguay picked fights with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay and, by some estimates, as a result 90% of its male population was killed.
bruceki 1mo ago Sacking a trade caravan sent by Genghis Khan, and then killing the diplomats Genghis sent to talk about the sacking of the trade caravan. Resulted in the death and enslavement of millions, the sacking of a whole list of major cities, and the emperor being hunted into the sea less than 2 years later. Very nearly wiped out the muslim religion; huge loss of faith given the terrible things that happened to them.
Berkamin 1mo ago Edited 1mo ago In the late 500's/early 600's, Sui dynasty China invaded Goguryeo (one of the proto-Korean kingdoms), under the pretext that conquering Goguryeo was necessary to unify China. The entire Sui army camped around the Salsu river, and the Goguryeo general destroyed the dam upstream of the Sui camp, washing away and killing hundreds of thousands of sleeping Chinese soldiers in the dark. Most of the soldiers who survived the flood were caught on the wrong side of the river, where Goguryeo troops cut them down mercilessly. The Chinese army sent to invade Goguryeo numbered 305,000
SsooooOriginal . 1mo ago There is a podcast for this. Look up the Russo-Japanese war by the Lions Led By Donkeys podcast. There are many, but that one is a high note.
Smrgel 1mo ago The naval battles around Guadalcanal were full of incredibly questionable decisions on both sides. Turns out when one side has radar but has never fought at night, and the other side doesn't have radar but is well versed at night engagements, you get some fun results.
StrictGuarantee468 . 1mo ago South Vietnam retreating from the Central Highlands in the 1975 campaign is a very good contender. The causal mechanisms leading to and from it were quite clearly documented, ending at the regime's collapse.
Robbylution . 1mo ago I haven't seen Pickett's Charge mentioned, but Lee committing several divisions to a full frontal assault up a hill against an improved defensive position was complete madness. It literally cost the South any little chance they had of defeating the Union army.
Duketogo133 . 1mo ago Pyrrhus of Epirus, the campaign against ancient Rome in the Pyrrhic War. Got a whole phrase named after it. Also Alexander the Great's invasion of India, netted nothing for him, and nearly collapsed everything he accomplished.
cmoellering . 1mo ago Invading Russia. Broke Napoleon, broke Hitler.
bodycount19 . 1mo ago Saddam thinking the USA was bluffing about invading a second time.
jaleach 1mo ago Operation Barbarossa. Napoleon couldn't do it and neither could Hitler. Total and absolute disaster. Tens of millions of lives tossed into the bonfire of total war. I'm American and it's always been rah rah D-Day but it's Stalingrad that is the hinge point of WWII. Been reading up on some of Adolf's collaborators in the Balkans and they were obsessed with Operation Barbarossa. They knew the whole fate of the war depended on it.
2WheelSuperiority . 1mo ago Ukraine invasion (the start). Russia lost its most experienced members in short order.
bananosecond 1mo ago The Spanish Armada attempted invasion of Britain turned out pretty bad for them.
Robalo21 1mo ago European observation of the American Civil War. European observers came to watch battles in the civil war and were disgusted by the lack of discipline and cowardly behavior. Many of the observers were European aristocrats and they were still believing that armies should behave like chess pieces and move in lines and columns. They completely misunderstood that the advent of accurate rifles firing minne Balls, repeating arms like revolvers, gatling guns and lever action rifles unleashed withering fire where standing in formation was suicide. Not learning this lesson led directly to the carnage of WWI and the
Voltage_Z . 1mo ago Japan attacking the US during World War 2. There was a sizeable block of Americans who had no problem with the Axis - the attack on Pearl Harbor is what made the US getting directly involved in the war politically tenable.
. 1mo ago Edited 1mo ago In terms of financial cost/benefit, does anything exceed the US war in Afghanistan? Imagine what $2.3Tn ($46Bn per state) invested in the US could do. Instead we lit $2.3Tn on fire, lost American/Afghani/Coalition lives, and handed the country with improved infrastructure over to our rivals as a trade partner.
MudandSmoke 1mo ago Edited 1mo ago Perhaps the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome. I'm not sure there was any way to avoid the first war. But the Barcid clan pushed Carthage into the second, and Rome was looking for a chance to have a third. In any event the wars ended with the utter destruction of Carthage. For sure these were not on the scales of world wars but a lot of knowledge, history, and other fun stuff was lost in the sack of Carthage.
chicagotim1 1mo ago The Battle of Saratoga during the American Revolution. Washington's army walked right into a trap set by the British which would have routed the colonials. Fortunately for us, General В refused to join the battle because he didn't want General A to get all the glory so he left him hanging. Without general B's army Washington crushes General A's forces in a decisive victory that could easily have been an all out defeat.
Soonerpalmetto88 1mo ago The Maginot line itself was good. But the judgment that German tanks couldn't drive through the Ardennes was the third biggest mistake by a western military in the past 100 years. Second biggest mistake was Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Biggest mistake was Stalin thinking the entire Soviet military could conquer Finland.
Kind-Handle3063 . 1mo ago Germany bombing London instead of bombing RAF airfields in WW2. Gave the pilots a respite, saved the island from invasion, and the rest is history
Vip3r237 . 1mo ago Manzikert. If emperor Romanos IV Diogenes would've ignored the Turks who were asking for a truce and let them focus on Egypt instead, then Constantinople may have never fallen. This forever weakened the power and influence in Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire in Anatolia, and changed the course of history.
More-Dot346 . 1mo ago Hitler's order to not wake him up on the eve of D-Day?
neroselene . 1mo ago Gallipoli was an exercise in pure stupidity and mass loss of lives that should never have happened if someone with even half of a brain-cell was in charge of planning it.
Viking_Musicologist 1mo ago The Nedelin Catastrophe. The Soviets were slated to test a prototype of the R-16 ICBM in October of 1960 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in what is now modern day Kazakhstan. The second stage of the ICBM shorted out causing the second stage engine to prematurely activate and ignite the fuel tank of the first stage which shortly exploded. This all happened when the missile was still on the ground on the launchpad. 54 engineers and personnel were either killed in the explosion or from inhaling the toxic fumes of Nitric Acid and Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine used to fuel the
JohnnySack45 e 1mo ago Cannae. Absolute bloodbath, literally.
ILoatheNickCage . 1mo ago A combination of Russia's military actions under Czar Nicholas II which lead to the revolution that created the USSR. The death toll from 1918 forward that is related to this event is staggering.
christonamoped . 1mo ago Battle of the Somme. The idea that walking in formation would protect infantry from machine gun fire.
The Battle of Adrianople was an absolute disaster for Rome. Seeking to take advantage of the desperate Goths who were fleeing the Huns, the Emperor had granted them safe passage and settlement within the borders of the Empire. The Romans in charge of the resettlement treated them terribly, forcing many to sell their children into slavery for scraps of food. The Goths eventually rebelled when the Romans assassinated most of the Gothic leadership and ransacked the area south of the Danube for food, their missing children, and for revenge. This uprising resulted in the Battle of Adrianople and ended up
RapidWaffle 1mo ago During the early days of Alexander the Great's campaigns against Persia, a Greek commander on the Persian side told them to not engage Alexander because he had put everything into the invasion and without a battle to get loot from, he'd be quickly forced to leave as he'd go bankrupt They did not listen.
1mo ago GlueSniffingCat Battle of Hattin the templars broke a truce on a rumor, are in the midst of a siege after losing like 45% of their entire army, everyone tells the emperor hey maybe let them go home and the emperor was like NO, that's not alpha! and winds up getting the rest of the army trapped in a desert still getting sieged by the same guys. They even started showing them caravans of camels carrying water to the templars.

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