Hmm....
Rome had several good ones, best examples below:
- Cannae: Hannibal takes advantage of a two-headed Roman command structure, and lures the entire army into an encirclement with using a weak center and fast flanks. The Roman army gets penned in, surrounded, and massacred, despite being the larger force. Classic example of double envelopment and the danger of disunited command.
- Carrhae: Crassus gets surrounded by a Parthian all-cavalry army on flat ground, has no way to deal with the infamous Parthian horse archers, and what cavalry he has, gets merc-ed by Pathian cataphracts (the ancient equivalent of medieval knights). Long story short, entire Roman army massacred.
- Alesia: This one was by one of Rome's enemies for a change. Vercingetorix successfully (if tenuously) unites the Gallic tribes against Caesar and both seriously threatens Caesar's supply lines and threatens to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. He then allows himself to get penned in at Alesia, where Caesar, using vastly superior Roman engineering, constructs a nearly-flawless double wall around the fort, rather than assault Vercingetorix's very strong position. Vercingetorix can't get out, and his relief forces can't get in. Fast forward a month or so and Caesar has fended off a sizable relief force, and V-getz has run out of food. The defeat breaks the back of Gallic resistance and Caesar has successfully conquered modern France and Belgium despite being grossly outnumbered the entire time (even if you write off the historical troop counts as Caesarian propaganda)
- Caesar's Civil War (for Pompey) - The Senate and Pompey successfully pick a fight with Caesar, okay, but then Caesar steals a march on them, chases them out of Rome with a single legion, swipes the treasury and Pompey is forced to retreat east to rally support. Caesar then marches to Spain and neutralizes Pompey's legions there, taking advantage of chasing Pompey out of Italy. Pompey strikes back when Caesar goes to Greece to fight him and successfully gets him on the run. Then comes Pharsalus.
-- Pharsalus (this one deserves it's own subpoint): Pompey has Caesar out-numbered, cornered, and running out of food. Morale is low in Caesar's camp and high in Pompey's. Pompey wants to starve Caesar into submission, the Senate wants Caesar defeated on the field. Pompey, having superior numbers is bullied into agreement. He waits on the far side of the field and lets Caesar come to him, thinking his army will tire having to cover twice the distance. Caesar's troops, being veterans of Gaul (and recognizing that Pompey's troops aren't marching out to meet them), halt halfway, catch their breath, and then charge. Pompey then sends in his larger cavalry force to flank Caesar's thinner and stretched lines. Caesar mixes in his reserve infantry with pila into his cavalry force (anticipating Pompey's strategy) and successfully repulses the Pompeian cavalry, and then proceeds to roll up Pompey's line. Pompey's troops. being greener than Caesar's, and unable to give ground and reform (due to staying on their side of the field), promptly scatter and bolt. Pompey successfully nullifies every advantage he had going in, and allows himself to get beaten where a halfway competent general should have at least been able to pull out a draw.
- Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: Arminius, a German who had lived in Rome (as a hostage) and fought in her armies, set a trap for three Roman Legions under Varus. It started by luring them into marching in unfamiliar thick forest in Germany. The narrow roads, rainy weather, and rough ground forced the Romans to march in a miles-long marching column that allowed Arminius to hit it in several places. The Romans responded by forming a night marching camp in the forest which allowed Arminius to tighten the noose and inflict heavy losses on them when they broke out. The Romans then tried to find better ground to march and fight on and instead blundered into another trap set by Arminius where the road was flanked by a hill on one side and a swamp on the other. Arminius blocked the road at this point along with an earth wall on the hill. After the Romans failed to take the earth wall on the hill, the army lost cohesion and started to scatter as the cavalry tried to bolt (and were later caught and killed) and the officers started falling on their swords. The entire army was... you guessed it.... wiped out.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say: "Upon hearing of the defeat, the Emperor Augustus, according to the Roman historian Suetonius in his work De vita Caesarum ("On the Life of the Caesars"), was so shaken by the news that he stood butting his head against the walls of his palace, repeatedly shouting:
"Quintili Vare, legiones redde!“ ('Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!')"
Now for some of the more famous examples...
- Horns of Hattin: Saladin lures the Crusaders out of a decent defensive position by besieging and taking Tiberias where the wife of the Crusader leader (Guy of Lusignan) is. The Crusaders march out into the desert, and get caught in between wells as Guy attempts to steal a march. The Crusaders are surrounded and quickly defeated in detail. This defeat breaks the back of the Crusader forces in the Holy Land and enables Saladin to retake Jerusalem.
- Crecy: French march their knights into a perfect killing ground for English archers. Hilarity or tragedy (depending on which side you're on) ensues.
- Napoleon in Russia and at Waterloo I discussed in another thread. Simply said, Napoleon was the best in his day easily at maneuver warfare, but failed miserably to deal with defensively minded generals who enjoyed strategic advantages, particularly when he was getting old and impatient.
- The British in Afghanistan is particularly famous:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War ... You know you screwed up when your war is nicknamed "Auckland's Folly" and only one wounded man on a half-dead horse makes it out alive.
- Gallipoli was a decent idea, just very poorly executed. If it had succeeded, it could have knocked the Ottomans out of the war, stabilized the Russian front, and given Germany a side headache just big enough that it could have seriously weakened the Western Front.
Now for more recent ones... but i haven't got the time nor energy to describe them in detail
- The Fall of France (epic fail for the British/French. The Germans did have a good strategy, but the Allies played right into it, even better than einstein and Co. had dreamed possible)
- Dunkirk: no excuse for allowing the BEF to escape. I know einstein still thought he could force peace with Britain but still... way to misread Churchill bro.
- The Battle of Britain: failing to focus on the radar stations and airfields allowed Britain to win this airborne attrition battle and save the nation from invasion.
- Crete (for both the Germans and the British)
- North Africa (for the Italians, until Rommel shows up)
- Not reinforcing Rommel when he was within striking distance of the Suez Canal, a critical British possession.
- Operation Barbarossa: einstein's best chance to defeat Russia, close but no cigar, unlike Napoleon, he should have focused on Moscow, being the rail, communication, political, and to some extent economic center of gravity for the USSR. (Also a blunder for the Soviets getting caught flat-footed despite repeated signs and warnings; they would have lost if they were anybody other than the Soviets)
- Stalingrad (no explanation required methinks)
- Kursk (einstein actually lets his General Staff do their job, and what do they do? Come up with a pedantic, predictable, and unsuccessful campaign that wipes out the cream of Germany's mechanized forces for no tactical or strategic gain)
- Singapore (for the British, a huge embarrassment)
- Midway: Isolating Japan's irreplaceable carrier fleet away from their heavy escorts robbed them of the AA cover that could have held off the American planes while the carriers were vulnerable, or at least have given them something else to worry about...inexcusable mistake by Yamamoto, who was otherwise brilliant. It could be said that Japan lost the Pacific war the moment American planes appeared over the Japanese carriers who had no fighter cover and bombs/fuel all over their flight decks due to rearming/refueling.
- einstein ignoring Rommel's requests for close tank support at the Normandy beaches. The Germans' only chance to defeat an invasion of France was to drive them into the sea at the beach. einstein believed the misinformation pointing towards Calais as the invasion point, and ignored the very real intelligence pointing towards Normandy. The Allies established their beachhead and the rest is history.
- Market Garden: Monty, Monty, Monty.... you're just not Patton, and it really was a bridge too far. Flawed plans and equally flawed execution, despite the valor of the airborne troops involved.
- The Ardennes Offensive (for Germany): to quote Rommel: "A risk is a chance you take; if it fails you can recover. A gamble is a chance taken; if it fails, recovery is impossible." - 'nuff said.
- Dien Bien Phu: the French in Indochina place a strong force in an isolated mountain valley surrounded by hills with a more or less indefensible airstrip and vulnerable supply lines. The Vietnamese cut the supply lines, place artillery on the hills, and attack, one by one, the French strongpoints. Once the airstrip was taken, it was game,set,match for the French, not just there, but in Indochina as a whole.
- The Americans in North Korea right before the Chinese invade. All the pieces are there: ignorance of ominous intelligence, overstretched troops and supply lines, bad weather and unfamiliar terrain, high command ignoring facts on the ground and caught up with silly politics and power struggles... The Chinese blindside the Americans in the North Korean mountains and send them retreating in near-disarray south. Only the valor of American troops and field officers save this from being a complete fiasco.
- Americans in Vietnam. The biggest blunder was putting boys on the ground to prop up a corrupt and hated government against local guerrillas and their northern cousins, supported by powerful foreign countries and sympathetic neighbors. Land wars in Asia...sigh
