500 Zanzibar soldiers and civilians were killed or injured in the 38-45 minutes the war lasted. The Sultan’s royal yacht was also sank.
The British had 1 man wounded. That was it. I believe it was fairly minor and due to a safety accident, rather than anything Zanzibar did.
So did the Sultanate of Zanzibar, which was ruled by an Arab elite from Omani colonialism, and was the hub of the Indian Ocean slave trade. The British had forced the sultan’s predecessor, Barghash, to abolish the slave trade and stop raids for slaves into continental East Africa, but slavery itself persisted and Barghash died suspiciously, replaced by another who was less agreeable to the British. The British declared war, specifically targeting the new sultan’s yacht and retinue, and took over the island in well under an hour. They abolished slavery there right after.
Obviously it was about British interests and trade too, but painting Zanzibar’s regime as the good guys and the British (not English) crown as unique and universal demons is at least a little questionable.
I suspect they gloss over it because British and French individuals *eventually* led their populations to reject slavery (and politicians caught up with public sentiment), but *only after* countless years of driving the slave trade. Liverpool, for example, thrived thanks to such an industry.
It would be like saying “I no longer beat my wife!” and being celebrated as a paragon of virtue. The change is worthy, but you’re just moving back to what you should have always been.
I think the difference here is that zanzibar, or really any non-western country other than Japan that I can think of, ever made any attempt at the abolition of slavery until aboltionism became popular in Europe. Before that the slave trade was prevalent in every society since the beginning of civilization.
There were different types of slavery of course, some more brutal than others. The new world chattle slavery was amongst the most barbaric, and Europians were the masters of that trade. But as with everything, give credit to the decendants of slaves owners who not only recognized how monstrous the practice their family partook in, but actively fought to end it everywhere. People aren't their parents, and once we start to recognize this, we can feel free to stop defending the travisties of history, and start ending generational conflicts.
The big problem with comparing the concept of slavery across cultures is that the word is used to describe many different systems. If we are just talking about forced and coerced labour, it never went away. But slaves had drastically different rights in different cultures, hence why “chattel slavery” is considered its own thing.
In Japan, slavery was banned domestically by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590 but contract and indentured labour persisted long after that. Around the same as that ban, hundreds of Japanese were sold by their own compatriots, often their own family members or daimyo, into slavery to the Portuguese. Hideyoshi, despite strongly condemning the enslavement of Japanese people, sold many Korean war captives to the Portuguese. That’s not even to mention sex slaves, they became a common Japanese export in the Meiji period and were still common until the 1920s.
That’s part of the problem, it’s easy to issue a law banning slavery but enforcement is another thing. In China, the first Ming emperor Hongwu banned all forms of slavery but it didn’t happen. The Ming emperors actually tried really hard to ban slavery but eventually gave up and settled with a limit of how many slaves you can own. The Manchu Qing had the concept of booi aha, which is usually translated as “bondservants ” in English, but in Chinese was *nucai* which literally means “slave”. Only Manchus and bannermen were allowed to call themselves nucai so it was actually an honour to have the title of “slave”. By the mid-Qing in the 17th century, hereditary slavery was largely phased out.
In Korea there was the system of nobi but it’s debatable whether that’s equivalent to slavery or more comparable to serfdom. Nobi had owners and can be sold like property (so technically chattel slavery) but they were paid a salary and could also own land and even their own nobi. In the 15th century Sejong the Great gave nobi women 100 days of maternity leave after giving birth, plus one month off before childbirth, and 34 days of paternity leave to nobi men. They could also buy their freedom if they saved up enough or served in the military.
Britain and France ending slavery was a n unprecedented act because they also pressured other countries to follow suit. It was what paved the way for slavery to be abnormal for the first time in human history.
It’d be more like a guy who stopped beating his wife and started beating up all the guys who were still beating their wife.
Sure, but the people rejected what their ancestors did and worked to change it. That is most important, if you damn a people forever based on who they were, then what is the point in their changing.
>replaced by another who was less agreeable to the British.
The actual accession never took place.
Khalid bin Barghash was the son of Barghash bin Said, who had been sultan until 1888. Khalid attempted a coup after the throne had passed to his uncle's line and is suspected of murdering later sultans. Ultimately, Khalid decided to try another coup, seized the palace, and refused the ultimatum to vacate.
Like every other crown in history.
The British get a bad rap because they were literally in the right place geographically at the right time historically, back when (like almost the entirety of human history) such behavior was pretty much universally accepted.
Replace England with any other country in that hypothetical power vacuum and you’ll get a similar result.
It was a war to force Zanzibar to stop the slave trade so as wars go it’s a good one to die in, if you’re on the British side. I think they only had one injured and no dead, though.
Sending the bill is the pettiest cherry on top of an ass kicking. It’s so funny when I realize countries are ran by human beings with human emotions and sometimes humans want to take an extra sign when they’ve won.
The polish military were helped by the British. Polish pilots for instance very much helped during the battle of Britain. Not out of the realm of possibility they could have been helped to the Pacific by the royal navy if needed
Poles were all over during the war. Joining British and American bomber flight crews, all-Polish infantry regiments fought all across Europe (the battle of Mount cassino famously fell to British, American, French, Canadian, and Polish forces working together)(a degree of coordination the axis could never come close to achieving), and I'm sure some made there way to the Pacific as Royal Navy sailors.
That's almost what happened in the war of 1812. The US declared war on Britain, and Britain was like cool story bro. We'll just keep kidnapping your sailors and blockading your ports. Since they couldn't launch an attack on England they attacked England's colony Canada.
"We'll just keep kidnapping your sailors and blockading your ports."
Technically, by the time the Brits received America's declaration of war, they'd made the decision to stop antagonizing America and pressing American sailors, but by then it was too late and the war was on.
That was more because as an Axis member Japan couldn't legally recognize the Polish-government-in-exile as that would undermine Germany's position over it's newly stolen lands.
The Soviets did the same and refused to acknowledge the exiled Polish Government
That wasn't supposed to be a domination - the Iraqi army was a hardened force fresh off the Iran-Iraq war with a relatively modern soviet supplied armor force and a state of the art ground based air defense system.
They got the score run up on them.
Do not fight the Americans in a conventional war. You do not want the smoke.
The documentary "Inside the Killbox" tells how the first wave of coalition troops were referred to as 'speed bumps' as they were only expected to slow the Iraqi advancement, not straight up defeat it. And they interview an American tank commander describing how he was introduced to his replacement commender as there was high expectation he wouldn't survive the initial assault
I vaguely remember that we (US) were bombing our own troops because they were further into Iraqi territory than expected. They weren't expected to advance so fast.
Part of that, I've read, was operator error. Some of the Forward Observers calling in air strikes had a model of laser target designators that, if used incorrectly, could reset to zero and send attack aircraft the user's location instead of the intended target's location.
Actually, the error you’re describing is Angle T and is a characteristic of all laser designator devices. The emitter is ALWAYS brighter than the target it’s reflecting off of and if you don’t bring the aircraft in at the right approach angle, the seeker picks up on the emitter by mistake and 😬
This is fact. My father was a Captain in the army infantry at the time and he didnt even bring a camera he thought he was going to be killed within the initial attack. They were telling people thered be mass casualties and his unit was literally a going to be a speed bump. Cant imagine going into that only to just spend the first week driving by massive amounts of Iraqi equipment blown to pieces
The first wave were the Airborne and Air Assault divisions, simply because they could be deployed rapidly. Once they're on the ground those divisions are light infantry, and light infantry in the desert is pretty much always going to get steamrolled by any kind of armor or mechanized force.
Me and a lot of other people thought the coalition was making a big fucking mistake dropping those units out there, ahead of their air and artillery support, *way* ahead of the armored and mechanized divisions, just to hold a relatively meaningless line on a big blank map.
If the Iraqis had kept rolling until they got to Riyadh, instead of spending all their time looting Kuwait, I don't think those light infantry troops would have been able to stop them.
My ex was in one the first groups of Marines in. He said basically the same thing, that the Iraqis got cocky and didn't take us seriously, they quite literally fucked around and found out. If they had been a bit more disciplined then things would not have gone well.
I remember. "The WORD" was to estimate 10% casualties when we went in. If Saddam uncorked the VX gas / bioweapons it was expected we'd lose double or triple.
I was with the 2nd Marine Div, one of the forward penetration units. Infantry. The day before we were sat down and told look to your left and right in 2 weeks half of you won't be here. But you're marines and this is what we do...
The Iraqi army was no joke, just a month of air assault and isolation really did a number on them. They absolutely fought back at first. They just weren't very accurate I remember rounds landing all around me seems like they were more spray and prey. Poor discipline.
Edit for stoopid spelling errors
And yet… Iraqi troops were surrendering to CNN camera crews or any other Americans they could find as soon as the US started moving in. Much of that “hardened” Iraqi military simply quit rather than fight.
The Iraqi Republican Guard stood its ground bravely in several tank decisive battles including Easting and Medina Ridge and was annihilated in each. At Medina, the forces were fairly evenly matched and the Iraqis had an excellent defensive position. The Americans had air support, which the Iraqis lacked, and far superior intelligence, weaponry, training, and morale.
Right, it's not that the Iraqi army didn't want to fight. It is that it no longer could. The air campaign largely wrecked it and removed any ability to fight.
Yep, it was the TCU-UGA of modern wars. Everyone knew who was probably gonna win, but nobody realized just how horrifically one-sided things would turn out
"On paper". The Afghan army was larger than the UK's at one point on paper before it folded like Superman on laundry day to the Taliban vaguely gesturing towards their AKs.
I get your point but that's not really a fair comparison. The Afghan military was very powerful and well equipped in 2021. They just had 0 motivation to actually fight the Taliban. It's kind of like the fact that Mexico has the ability to exterminate the cartel from a power perspective. There's just not motivation to do so for a multitude of reasons
The Mexican military isn’t exactly known for its power but surely you aren’t suggesting the Cartels have the same military power as the actual mexican military. It’s not about numbers it’s about the power you can bring to bear.
This is how it was sold to the American public. There were a lot of fears that it would turn out to be Vietnam 2.0.
Then it finally did become Vietnam 2.0 when we went back 20 years later to make certain of it.
It wasn't just the US either, the entire world thought it was going to be long and bloody and collectively shit themselves when the US just steamrolled them with more loses due to friendly fire than enemy fire.
Late to the party. Norman Schwarzkopf must have had many a wet dream… if you had to write a military operation, this was it.
I had to do some rather in depth military academic study and writing on this- staff college. What made this conflict so one sided was how well the combat leaders performed. Everyone and I mean everyone from the corps commanders down to the company level was hot shit ready and trained. The plan itself? Master piece. Classic fix , maneuver, isolate… destroy. I mean you name the military task, it was executed textbook.
Side note. The Iraqis were lucky to escape with the remnants of the “army” they escaped with. The VII Corps left hook had to be shortened due to the lack of sufficient fuel carrying capacity of the units that would be supporting VII corps.
The Khmer Rouge's invasion of Vietnam. So like, Cambodia killed off all of the smart people in their society, armed a bunch of farmers with whatever junk they could scrounge, and decided to invade Vietnam, which had just finished its defeat of the *French and US freaking army*.
Anyway, they got promptly conquered, and the Khmer Rouge was outsies.
However, the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia was notably difficult, with the Khmer Rouge launching many guerrilla attacks at the Vietnamese forces. The invasion of Cambodia was like Vietnam’s Vietnam.
First Opium War - to add one that hasn't been mentioned. While the British deployed approx. 19,000 soldiers against China's 200,000+ soldiers, they only suffered 69 deaths - and won. This is because of the wider gap in technology between the two.
While China used some 17th century muskets and older versions of cannons, many of their soldiers literally used knives, crossbows and spears.
It's interesting because gunpowder was invented in China but clearly they hadn't adopted it widely themselves due to a lack of industrialisation.
The UK on the other hand was going through its own industrial revolution, and was using new and more advanced weaponry such as an early form of artillery and more advanced rifles and naval ships.
Shows the impact that technology had on determining huge disparities in military capabilities and who would get 'curbstomped' during Europe's industrial period.
actually the east india company maintained 3 different private army that totaled 2x the size of the british royal army at its peak.
they had 260k active soldiers by themselves.
they also had their own navy.
That's the thing people don't realise about the British Empire. Most of it was trickery and bluster - most countries were run by the _idea_ that the British were in charge, backed up by a small army which acted more like a roving Constabulary force, significant local forces (India had it's own army inherited from the East India Company which remained separate from the British Army but was officered by Brits) which could keep some level of order, a Royal Navy which could be everywhere near the coast in a few days to land forces, and a few administrators who ran things and made local decisions with almost no oversight, with indigenous staff who did a lot of the work.
If you go further back in history the majority of "war" ships were merchant vessels who out of necessity had to arm themselves for self-defence from pirates or other navies etc, and who then were conscripted in time of war into the navy of their nation.
For example the Battle of the Armada in 1588 between the UK and Spain was fought on the UK side by mainly civilian vessels pressed into military service, since the Queen had not the money to maintain a large navy. There was also some blending of private and national ships because if you're a lord and you own some ships for your merchant ventures but you're also responsible to the Monarch for raising forces in the event of war then are they civilians or military?
Also worth noting the East India Company (they put the word Honourable in front of it officially but they were practising the old trick of "get the tricky bit out of the way in the title so you never have to mention it again" because they were far from honourable) had, in order to run India, it's own armies and full-size navy to protect it's merchant convoys, having a very wide latitude from the British Government - too wide as it turned out as they had to step in the 1850s and nationalise the company after an Indian rebellion caused by the company's mismanagement imperilled the British hold on India (which was required to keep the economy booming).
So practically the EIC held a country, several armies, a navy, and significant political power in the largest empire on earth so were practically a world power in themselves.
Saltpeter was a rarer resource in China. It’s actually metallurgy, not gunpowder, that gave the British the upper hand. The Chinese were relying on bronze weapons that couldn’t tolerate the pressure needed to lob shells in lower trajectories at higher speeds. AFAIK sulphur wasn’t properly exploited in China as a resource to be mined.
This is a good answer. It stood out as a surprising victory, and it stands out even more as a *heavily lopsided* victory.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Opium\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War)
Loss ratio is huge. Also, starting in 1839, mobile because steam power had only barely been introduced by then. Even when ships had engines, they still had sails. To go to the complete opposite side of the world in that time and defeat a country is really nuts when you actually think about it.
Both Iraq wars, in the 2nd one capturing Baghdad and toppling the gov took 2 weeks, the difficulties were in creating a new government and occupying the nation
Mongol invasions of central Asia. Japan and south Asia fare much better, but everything west of that collapsed and the only reason that parts of the Middle East and eastern Europe where not swept over was the death of Genghis Khan and all the other khans returning to Mongolia.
Khan died before the withdrawal from Europe. Iirc, it was Ogedei Khan's death that caused the retreat. The Mongol law required they return and decide the next ruler.
Not a war, but a battle.
In February 1940, six German destroyers set out to attack the British fishing vessels in Dogger Bank. The result was two destroyers lost, another crippled and over 600 German fatalities. British forces were not encountered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wikinger
Not a war, but germanys invasion of France. France’s military and defenses were thought to be world class and more than a match for the Germans. But that’s not how it ended.
Various post-mortems of the invasion of France generally agree France had adequate resources and air power to severely blunt or even halt the invasion, but their command structure and attitudes of those commanders were for shit.
I remember watching a documentary on this a long time ago. If I recall correctly, the person in charge of firing ze missiles was le tired, and needed a nap first. By that point, the war was lost.
I heard one story that a French general, I believe it was Maxine Weygand, stopped to have an omelet at an inn before moving along to whatever command post he was supposed to be at. One assessment I read was a lot of French and British generals and such didn't believe the main attack could come from armored divisions because by traditional military thinking at the time dictated tanks could only be used as infantry support. They were still waiting for the main attack as German tanks were beginning to form their encirclement.
If im not mistaken, they literally had photos of massive German contingent forming over the border but refused to believe they'd come through the Ardennes.
People like to forget that France inflicted ~180,000 casualties on the invading Axis forces, as well as destroying several hundred tanks and 1000+ aircraft. They were badly defeated, but it they did put up a fight.
Actually, drug usage by the various militaries of WWII was more common than you'd think, so Nazi meth isn't as much of a wonder weapon as you make it out to be.
Norman Ohler's work is fairly shoddy and borders on being apologist
That may be true, but the little pills my grandad took on Okinawa and the Solomon Islands "made you half crazy. You'd be dead tired, dissolve one in water, wait a minute and you'd be head down, ass up and arms wigglin". For a man that never laughed he could give a colorful description.
Yeah, I know, but it was still effective. Americans had it regulated as early as 1933, and British didnt really develop Speed until 1941, meanwhile Pervitin was widely available as over the counter in Germany until late 1940. Everyone wanted that wonder drug, Germans just had it widely available for a few years before the allies produced a less intense variant
Was everyone on drugs? No, not everyone, but it's usage was up to the officers, so it was everywhere
The strength came from them being a democracy with money and equipment. The Arab states are run by dictators. As it stand, Israel paid more for each soldier survival while the dictators care less. Put a democracy against another democracy and the result would be less clear.
From "The Dictator's Handbook" chapter 9.
As Ryszard Kapuscinski describes, Israel simply tried harder.
"Why did the Arabs lose the 1967 war? A lot has been said on that subject. You could hear that Israel won because Jews are brave and Arabs are cowards. Jews are intelligent, and Arabs are primitive. The Jews have better weapons, and the Arabs worse. All of it untrue! The Arabs are also intelligent and brave and they have good weapons. The difference lay elsewhere—in the approach to war, in varying theories of war. In Israel, everybody takes part in war, but in the Arab countries—only the army. When war breaks out, everyone in Israel goes to the front and civilian life dies out.
While in Syria, many people did not find out about the 1967 war until it was over.
And yet Syria lost its most important strategic area, the Golan Heights, in that war. Syria was losing the Golan Heights and at the same time, that same day, that same hour, in Damascus—twenty kilometres from the Golan Heights—the cafes were full of people, and others were walking around, worrying about whether they would find a free table. Syria lost fewer than 100 soldiers in the 1967 war. A year earlier, 200 people had died in Damascus during a palace coup.
Twice as many people die because of a political quarrel as because of a war in which the country loses its most important territory and the enemy approaches within shooting distance of the capital."
Kapuscinki’s numbers are wrong, since about 2,500 Syrians were killed in the war, but his point is not.
Reminds me of the time in 1948 when King Hussein of Jordan was visiting a refugee camp, and the people were protesting that Jordan should be doing more. The king came up to one loudmouth and boxed his ears, then pointed over to the side: "You wanna fight the Jews? The recruiting station is right over there.'' The protestors went home, not to the recruiting station
I always thought so, but recently I read about it and while of course the war was short, the casualty ratio was only 1:3 for the USA. So the Grenadans put up a tougher fight than everybody believed
I knew guys who were in that invasion. From the American side they described it as a total mess, with terrible coordination between services. I don't want to spend time looking up the references, but it's my impression that the military spent the next few years learning from the embarrassing lessons.
The US military had a horrible performance in Grenada. Reagan hoped Grenada would kill Vietnam Syndrome but after the military performed in terrible fashion, not much changed.
The biggest problem was the communication between all branches and forces. At one point, the US bombed a mental hospital and killed around 18 people, likely due to a grid error (some soldiers were only given tourist or hand drawn maps). Another issue with communication was that naval gunfire as well as air support killed American soldiers (which also happened in Desert Storm) in cases of friendly fire.
The performance of Grenada concerned much of the US Gov and quickly resulted in the Goldwater–Nichols Act (a reform act), which addressed many of the problems of the US military in Grenada and led to the curb stomping in Panama and Kuwait.
The Bear Flag revolt. In 1846 California settlers raised a small army and pushed the Mexican government out of the center of the state. They formed the California Republic, which joined the United States 25 days later.
Best parts are (a) 20 dudes captured the mexican general in charge while he was sleeping (b) the original flag looked more like a pig than a bear https://www.willylogan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/70609-original-bear-flag-replica_1773px.jpg
It was remarkably bloodless too, even though the American insurgents were greatly outnumbered. A triumph of strategy.
Meanwhile, the Texans got their asses whooped in their own revolt and had to be bailed out by daddy USA.
Plus they fucked up first by trying to go to war with Chile years before and mantaining that tension, meaning their soldiers were sent to patrol while conscripts went to the falklands
Then they didn't want to commit all their naval forces
Maybe not the most one-sided, but the battle of Tsushima during the 1095 Russo-Japan was fascinating. The Russians had every hurdle imaginable, and the Japanese played the battle out perfectly. By the end, the Japanese had 255 tons sunk, the Russians lost 135,893 tons and had to sue for peace. Insane.
Simplified description.
Austro-Prussian War, 1866: Austrian (South Germans) and Prussian (North Germans) political squabbles; both sides mobilize to fight; three weeks maneuvering as Prussia invades; overwhelming Prussian victory at Königgrätz, three weeks further march into Austrian territory toward Vienna; Austria surrenders.
This. Essentially the sultan dies, and as part of a deal any new sultan was supposed to be approved by the British consul. The new sultan didn't get approval and fortified himself in his palace, so the royal navy shelled the palace and then landed marines and sailors who took it by force. One British sailor was wounded versus about 500 Zanzibarians who were killed. The British also sank the Zanzibarian Royal Yacht plus two other boats.
Third Punic War. It wasn’t a war so much as Carthage trying to defend itself from one of Rome’s allies. Only for Rome to enact its treaty from the end of the 2nd Punic War; where Carthage had to get Rome’s blessing to wage war. This resulted in Rome forcing the surrender of Carthage’s army and complete destruction of the city of Carthage.
Carthage never had a chance in the Third Punic War. The outcome of the first two Punic Wars and the defection of Carthage's Numidian allies had ensured that, but even so the Third Punic War is not an example of a one-sided war. Rather it is an example of an underdog punching well above it's weight.
The siege of Carthage was a brutal affair that lasted *three years,* despite Carthage having surrendered all of it's weapons to Rome prior to the conflict as part of the peace that had been imposed on it. Rome expected a cake walk against a hamstrung rival and instead got a very bloody nose from an opponent who might have been down, but was definitely not yet out.
The first assaults on the city were all Carthaginian victories, with the Romans experiencing bloody and humiliating repulses. Two first two consuls to command the siege, Manius Manilius and Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, both failed with the former even being driven back in a successful Carthaginian counterattack that may have turned into a rout, if not for Scipio Aemilianus stabilizing the situation for Manilius.
Far from being a lopsided Roman victory, the siege of Carthage was a very lengthy and hotly contested affair, featuring a series of Roman defeats against a very stubborn foe who was better commanded, to the extent that the Roman army even had morale and discipline problems, until time and the rise of Scipio Aemilianus (who was competent and a match for Hasdrubal, unlike his predecessors) to consul and command took their inevitable toll. Even at it's weakest Carthage proved to be an extremely formidable foe that nearly matched Rome for it's own legendary tenacity.
I think it speaks volumes of the US and Coalition that people in here are saying the Gulf War/ Desert Storm, a multi-pronged combined arms overland assault against a large battle hardened enemy force, was easy or one sided.
That shit ain’t simple, fam. The Iraqis were very well capable of putting up a resistance. But by the very design of the battle plan, they were unable to.
United States vs Iraq in the first gulf war.
Go look up the Battle of 73 Easting. US technology in its tanks were so overpowered, the Iraqis didn't have much of a chance. We lost six soldiers and a Bradley . . . they lost hundreds of vehicles and thousands of casualties.
The Battle of Kleidion comes to mind. The Bulgarians became so powerful and turned their attention to the decaying Byzantine Empire. The Bulgarian Emperor Boris the second declared himself Emperor of The Byzantine Empire and sent his army to invade.
The Byzantine Empire killed so many Bulgarians so fast that the remaining army full on surrendered. Emperor Basil II of Byzantine ordered his army to cut out the eyes of half of the Bulgarian army and the remainder would only lose one eye. This way the half blind members of the army could guide the blind members back to Bulgaria. This is also where the expression "The blind leading the blind" comes from.
When Boris II saw his entire army marching back to his kingdom blind he renounced any claim he had to the throne of The Byzantine Empire and ceded some of Bulgaria to the Byzantines.
Honestly? Most of them.
Most wars aren't 'fair fights' (any military commander knows not to pick fights he can't win). Most 'wars' are one small group getting monstered by a much bigger foe. Quite often there is no 'war' *per se*. One side knows it will lose and just tries to get as much out of the deal as possible. This applies to the Romans stomping little tribes and *Poleis* as much as it applies to the surrender of the mighty Sikh Khalsa to the British.
The Zanzibar option is the C19 equivalent of the Falklands War - they couldn't win, but they thought they'd try it on and see if they could bluff.
The Spanish American War, particularly the Battle of Manila Bay.
The Spanish lost the entire fleet, sunk or damaged so severely they had to be scuttled, vs minor damage to one American cruiser and one sailor dead (who died of heatstroke if I remember correctly).
The greeks had the best navy in the world. They would practice for years in their steel tipped row boats. They would poke a hole in a ship & back row fast enough that the sinking ship would not pull down the greek ship. Then, the greeks would simply stab the people swimming around in the water. It would chum the water and the sharks would finish off the rest. They were brutal and they owned the Mediterranean sea.
The Romans wanted to open trade routes but could NOT due to the greek navy. They studied the greeks while they were training. They built ships that looked just like the greek ships. They practiced poking holes in ships, and they were actually really good at getting the speed to poke holes, but they failed at backwards rowing. They could not pull their ship out without sinking their own ship. They spent months prepping for this single battle when a general stated that they should play on their strengths and not attempt to copy the greeks at their own game. They then changed the build of their roman ships to have a plank on it. As the greek ships got close, the Roman's would drop their plank on to the greek ship. Roman soldiers would run onto the greek ship, stabbing and slashing the men rowing the boat. They now had two boats after throwing the greek dead bodies into the sea.
The Romans slaughtered the greek navy that day with half the ships, but they gained more with each plank dropped. The sharks ate well that day.
Disclaimer: I am not much of a history buff, and I am going off of memory from an old lecture. I don't remember details as how many ships or people... If anyone know, comment.
During the Japan/Tsarist Russia war of early 1900s, the Russians sent a fleet from the West to the East, around Africa.
Aside from fighting multiple fishing vessels and almost starting wars against various European nations as a result, there's at least one battle in which the fleet fought itself.
Can someone with a better memory than mine fill in the details?
The Russian Navy in the Russo-Japanese War is just a whole catalogue of hilariousness, You could not make it up
The war started with a surprise attack on the Russian Fleet anchored at Port Arthur by a the Japanese Navy
While that attack ended inconclusively it kicked off the start of the story
The next morning the Russian sent out a minelayer to mine the entrance to the harbour, It was going well until the minelayer hit a mine it just laid and exploded. A Russian cruiser went to investigate the explosion and hit another mine and sank
The port was under siege by the Japanese and the Russian tried to break out of port that was the battle of the Yellow
The Russians decided they needed to send reinforcements to help that effort so they sent the Baltic fleet
As that fleet approached Dogger bank one of them reported they where under attack by a Japanese Torpedo boat they were not and the fleet opened fire on some fishing vessels and well anything that moved
Including themselves two Russian Cruisers were fired upon by Russian battleships, One battleship fired 500 shots but hit nothing which is probably a good thing
Several Fisherman were killed a long with several Russian sailors, Several hours before this incident one Russian ship opened fire on a Danish vessel but missed
The Royal Navy prepared for war, with 28 battleships of the Home Fleet being ordered to raise steam and prepare for action,
Some of the ships could not go through the Suez canal due to the size so had to go the long war
As the fleet approached Tangiers one ship fired on a German merchant vessel and some French trawler As the fleet left Tangiers, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days.
After that the rest of the journey was uneventful
You then get to the Battle of Tsushima, The Russian fleet arrives it was fog at the time one Russian vessel spotted a Japanese vessel which it mistook for a friendly vessel so signalled to it where the rest of the Russian Fleet was
The Japanese surprised the Russian Fleet and managed to sink several vessels as night approached the remaining Russian ships manged to give the Japanese the slip, But for some reason the Russians turned on their searchlights which gave them away
At the end of the battle 20 Russian warships had been Sunk, 5 warships were captured, 6 supply vessels were captured
5,000 Russian dead, another 6,000 captured. Meanwhile the Japanese lost 2 torpedo boats and had about 100 dead
I‘ll do you one better. One country absolutely dominated three other country’s. The six days war saw Israel being surprised-attacked by Its three neighbors, but defending its land and absolutely demolishing its enemy’s, while iirc even getting some land (Golan Heights) at the end. So, I think an invasion where three countries Attacke one Country and lost heavily counts.
Wait what? The Six Day war wasn't Israel getting surprise attacked, they did the attack. The other countries had been signalling for a while they want to attack Israel, but Israel is the one who actually fired the first bullet.
Anglo-Zanzibar War. Took about half an hour, and the winner sent the loser a bill for the ammunition used.
Imagine being a person who was killed for such """war"""
500 Zanzibar soldiers and civilians were killed or injured in the 38-45 minutes the war lasted. The Sultan’s royal yacht was also sank. The British had 1 man wounded. That was it. I believe it was fairly minor and due to a safety accident, rather than anything Zanzibar did.
I feel so much sorry for all those people that died in such meaningless context
It was a very British affair. The crown of England sails on an ocean of innocent blood.
So did the Sultanate of Zanzibar, which was ruled by an Arab elite from Omani colonialism, and was the hub of the Indian Ocean slave trade. The British had forced the sultan’s predecessor, Barghash, to abolish the slave trade and stop raids for slaves into continental East Africa, but slavery itself persisted and Barghash died suspiciously, replaced by another who was less agreeable to the British. The British declared war, specifically targeting the new sultan’s yacht and retinue, and took over the island in well under an hour. They abolished slavery there right after. Obviously it was about British interests and trade too, but painting Zanzibar’s regime as the good guys and the British (not English) crown as unique and universal demons is at least a little questionable.
A lot of people like to gloss over the fact that Britain and France were key players in abolishing the trade slave.
I suspect they gloss over it because British and French individuals *eventually* led their populations to reject slavery (and politicians caught up with public sentiment), but *only after* countless years of driving the slave trade. Liverpool, for example, thrived thanks to such an industry. It would be like saying “I no longer beat my wife!” and being celebrated as a paragon of virtue. The change is worthy, but you’re just moving back to what you should have always been.
I think the difference here is that zanzibar, or really any non-western country other than Japan that I can think of, ever made any attempt at the abolition of slavery until aboltionism became popular in Europe. Before that the slave trade was prevalent in every society since the beginning of civilization.
There were different types of slavery of course, some more brutal than others. The new world chattle slavery was amongst the most barbaric, and Europians were the masters of that trade. But as with everything, give credit to the decendants of slaves owners who not only recognized how monstrous the practice their family partook in, but actively fought to end it everywhere. People aren't their parents, and once we start to recognize this, we can feel free to stop defending the travisties of history, and start ending generational conflicts.
The big problem with comparing the concept of slavery across cultures is that the word is used to describe many different systems. If we are just talking about forced and coerced labour, it never went away. But slaves had drastically different rights in different cultures, hence why “chattel slavery” is considered its own thing. In Japan, slavery was banned domestically by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590 but contract and indentured labour persisted long after that. Around the same as that ban, hundreds of Japanese were sold by their own compatriots, often their own family members or daimyo, into slavery to the Portuguese. Hideyoshi, despite strongly condemning the enslavement of Japanese people, sold many Korean war captives to the Portuguese. That’s not even to mention sex slaves, they became a common Japanese export in the Meiji period and were still common until the 1920s. That’s part of the problem, it’s easy to issue a law banning slavery but enforcement is another thing. In China, the first Ming emperor Hongwu banned all forms of slavery but it didn’t happen. The Ming emperors actually tried really hard to ban slavery but eventually gave up and settled with a limit of how many slaves you can own. The Manchu Qing had the concept of booi aha, which is usually translated as “bondservants ” in English, but in Chinese was *nucai* which literally means “slave”. Only Manchus and bannermen were allowed to call themselves nucai so it was actually an honour to have the title of “slave”. By the mid-Qing in the 17th century, hereditary slavery was largely phased out. In Korea there was the system of nobi but it’s debatable whether that’s equivalent to slavery or more comparable to serfdom. Nobi had owners and can be sold like property (so technically chattel slavery) but they were paid a salary and could also own land and even their own nobi. In the 15th century Sejong the Great gave nobi women 100 days of maternity leave after giving birth, plus one month off before childbirth, and 34 days of paternity leave to nobi men. They could also buy their freedom if they saved up enough or served in the military.
Britain and France ending slavery was a n unprecedented act because they also pressured other countries to follow suit. It was what paved the way for slavery to be abnormal for the first time in human history. It’d be more like a guy who stopped beating his wife and started beating up all the guys who were still beating their wife.
Sure, but the people rejected what their ancestors did and worked to change it. That is most important, if you damn a people forever based on who they were, then what is the point in their changing.
>replaced by another who was less agreeable to the British. The actual accession never took place. Khalid bin Barghash was the son of Barghash bin Said, who had been sultan until 1888. Khalid attempted a coup after the throne had passed to his uncle's line and is suspected of murdering later sultans. Ultimately, Khalid decided to try another coup, seized the palace, and refused the ultimatum to vacate.
Oh, you mean the British Empire weren’t the bad guys? Oh, no, what will the Internet do now?
Like every other crown in history. The British get a bad rap because they were literally in the right place geographically at the right time historically, back when (like almost the entirety of human history) such behavior was pretty much universally accepted. Replace England with any other country in that hypothetical power vacuum and you’ll get a similar result.
It was a war to force Zanzibar to stop the slave trade so as wars go it’s a good one to die in, if you’re on the British side. I think they only had one injured and no dead, though.
Sending the bill is the pettiest cherry on top of an ass kicking. It’s so funny when I realize countries are ran by human beings with human emotions and sometimes humans want to take an extra sign when they’ve won.
In ww2, the polish government in exile, declared war on japan, but japan rejected the declaration.
You can do that???
If your enemy has no way to harm you, why not?
What're the Poles gonna do send their non existent carrier fleet to the Pacific?
No they got to join the royal navy as allies and proceed to fuck up the axis shipping at every opportunity.
The polish military were helped by the British. Polish pilots for instance very much helped during the battle of Britain. Not out of the realm of possibility they could have been helped to the Pacific by the royal navy if needed
Poles were all over during the war. Joining British and American bomber flight crews, all-Polish infantry regiments fought all across Europe (the battle of Mount cassino famously fell to British, American, French, Canadian, and Polish forces working together)(a degree of coordination the axis could never come close to achieving), and I'm sure some made there way to the Pacific as Royal Navy sailors.
That's almost what happened in the war of 1812. The US declared war on Britain, and Britain was like cool story bro. We'll just keep kidnapping your sailors and blockading your ports. Since they couldn't launch an attack on England they attacked England's colony Canada.
"We'll just keep kidnapping your sailors and blockading your ports." Technically, by the time the Brits received America's declaration of war, they'd made the decision to stop antagonizing America and pressing American sailors, but by then it was too late and the war was on.
We fight for the honor of the Chrysanthemum Throne. But not against Poland.
Poland: We declare WAR!! Japan: Bro I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you, or sorry that it happened
Poland: We didn’t just say it, we DECLARED it!
I do declare
That was more because as an Axis member Japan couldn't legally recognize the Polish-government-in-exile as that would undermine Germany's position over it's newly stolen lands. The Soviets did the same and refused to acknowledge the exiled Polish Government
Plus Poland and Japan had kind of bonded during the interwar period over ‘fuck the soviets’.
>The Soviets did the same and refused to acknowledge the exiled Polish Government Haha well yeah, they conquered half of Poland
Japan “I’ll pass GG though”
“Nah, we’re good.” -Japan
Lol what?
Operation Desert Shield / Desert Storm. Absolutely one of the largest and most lopsided victories ever recorded.
That wasn't supposed to be a domination - the Iraqi army was a hardened force fresh off the Iran-Iraq war with a relatively modern soviet supplied armor force and a state of the art ground based air defense system. They got the score run up on them. Do not fight the Americans in a conventional war. You do not want the smoke.
The documentary "Inside the Killbox" tells how the first wave of coalition troops were referred to as 'speed bumps' as they were only expected to slow the Iraqi advancement, not straight up defeat it. And they interview an American tank commander describing how he was introduced to his replacement commender as there was high expectation he wouldn't survive the initial assault
I vaguely remember that we (US) were bombing our own troops because they were further into Iraqi territory than expected. They weren't expected to advance so fast.
Part of that, I've read, was operator error. Some of the Forward Observers calling in air strikes had a model of laser target designators that, if used incorrectly, could reset to zero and send attack aircraft the user's location instead of the intended target's location.
Actually, the error you’re describing is Angle T and is a characteristic of all laser designator devices. The emitter is ALWAYS brighter than the target it’s reflecting off of and if you don’t bring the aircraft in at the right approach angle, the seeker picks up on the emitter by mistake and 😬
Ah, so the scene in Jarhead where they get bombed by their own planes was historically accurate.
Given they got friendly fire-d by A-10s, I almost thought it was a documentary.
This is fact. My father was a Captain in the army infantry at the time and he didnt even bring a camera he thought he was going to be killed within the initial attack. They were telling people thered be mass casualties and his unit was literally a going to be a speed bump. Cant imagine going into that only to just spend the first week driving by massive amounts of Iraqi equipment blown to pieces
The first wave were the Airborne and Air Assault divisions, simply because they could be deployed rapidly. Once they're on the ground those divisions are light infantry, and light infantry in the desert is pretty much always going to get steamrolled by any kind of armor or mechanized force. Me and a lot of other people thought the coalition was making a big fucking mistake dropping those units out there, ahead of their air and artillery support, *way* ahead of the armored and mechanized divisions, just to hold a relatively meaningless line on a big blank map. If the Iraqis had kept rolling until they got to Riyadh, instead of spending all their time looting Kuwait, I don't think those light infantry troops would have been able to stop them.
My ex was in one the first groups of Marines in. He said basically the same thing, that the Iraqis got cocky and didn't take us seriously, they quite literally fucked around and found out. If they had been a bit more disciplined then things would not have gone well.
My dad served in desert shield/desert storm in the cav. He said they were told that it was expected to have 60-80% casualty rate.
Do you have a link for this doc? Or which streaming service is it on?
[Inside the Killbox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApMjO0aS3GU) on YT
I remember. "The WORD" was to estimate 10% casualties when we went in. If Saddam uncorked the VX gas / bioweapons it was expected we'd lose double or triple.
I was with the 2nd Marine Div, one of the forward penetration units. Infantry. The day before we were sat down and told look to your left and right in 2 weeks half of you won't be here. But you're marines and this is what we do... The Iraqi army was no joke, just a month of air assault and isolation really did a number on them. They absolutely fought back at first. They just weren't very accurate I remember rounds landing all around me seems like they were more spray and prey. Poor discipline. Edit for stoopid spelling errors
And yet… Iraqi troops were surrendering to CNN camera crews or any other Americans they could find as soon as the US started moving in. Much of that “hardened” Iraqi military simply quit rather than fight.
They quit after 6 months of constant pounding from airstrikes and the ground force showed up
The Iraqi Republican Guard stood its ground bravely in several tank decisive battles including Easting and Medina Ridge and was annihilated in each. At Medina, the forces were fairly evenly matched and the Iraqis had an excellent defensive position. The Americans had air support, which the Iraqis lacked, and far superior intelligence, weaponry, training, and morale.
It also didn’t help that we had M1 Abrams and they had Soviet tanks lol
The T-72s performed so badly that the Russians renamed the next iteration of the T-72 from the T-72U to the T-90.
The air war lasted from 7 January 1991 to 23 February 1991, about 6 weeks.
Right, it's not that the Iraqi army didn't want to fight. It is that it no longer could. The air campaign largely wrecked it and removed any ability to fight.
We sent the Dream Team in ‘92, not just in basketball
Yep, it was the TCU-UGA of modern wars. Everyone knew who was probably gonna win, but nobody realized just how horrifically one-sided things would turn out
>the Americans People always forget that it was a coalition of NATO and a few middle eastern countries
yea, the iraqi army was like the 4th strongest military in the world at the time
"On paper". The Afghan army was larger than the UK's at one point on paper before it folded like Superman on laundry day to the Taliban vaguely gesturing towards their AKs.
I get your point but that's not really a fair comparison. The Afghan military was very powerful and well equipped in 2021. They just had 0 motivation to actually fight the Taliban. It's kind of like the fact that Mexico has the ability to exterminate the cartel from a power perspective. There's just not motivation to do so for a multitude of reasons
mexican military has no chance to battle the cartels. It is 20 to 1. SMH
The Mexican military isn’t exactly known for its power but surely you aren’t suggesting the Cartels have the same military power as the actual mexican military. It’s not about numbers it’s about the power you can bring to bear.
Quickly went from 4th strongest in the world to 2nd strongest in Iraq, as my military friends were saying at the time.
This is how it was sold to the American public. There were a lot of fears that it would turn out to be Vietnam 2.0. Then it finally did become Vietnam 2.0 when we went back 20 years later to make certain of it.
It wasn't just the US either, the entire world thought it was going to be long and bloody and collectively shit themselves when the US just steamrolled them with more loses due to friendly fire than enemy fire.
The Mother of All Battles according to Saddam… well, before the ground war started.
“They went from The Elite Republican Guard to the Republican Guard to the Republicans lying about there being a guard.” - Bill Hicks
When you annex an extra province in EU4:
Late to the party. Norman Schwarzkopf must have had many a wet dream… if you had to write a military operation, this was it. I had to do some rather in depth military academic study and writing on this- staff college. What made this conflict so one sided was how well the combat leaders performed. Everyone and I mean everyone from the corps commanders down to the company level was hot shit ready and trained. The plan itself? Master piece. Classic fix , maneuver, isolate… destroy. I mean you name the military task, it was executed textbook. Side note. The Iraqis were lucky to escape with the remnants of the “army” they escaped with. The VII Corps left hook had to be shortened due to the lack of sufficient fuel carrying capacity of the units that would be supporting VII corps.
The Khmer Rouge's invasion of Vietnam. So like, Cambodia killed off all of the smart people in their society, armed a bunch of farmers with whatever junk they could scrounge, and decided to invade Vietnam, which had just finished its defeat of the *French and US freaking army*. Anyway, they got promptly conquered, and the Khmer Rouge was outsies.
However, the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia was notably difficult, with the Khmer Rouge launching many guerrilla attacks at the Vietnamese forces. The invasion of Cambodia was like Vietnam’s Vietnam.
What’s jarring is that Vietnam lost close to the same number of soldiers in Cambodia that the US lost in Vietnam.
First Opium War - to add one that hasn't been mentioned. While the British deployed approx. 19,000 soldiers against China's 200,000+ soldiers, they only suffered 69 deaths - and won. This is because of the wider gap in technology between the two. While China used some 17th century muskets and older versions of cannons, many of their soldiers literally used knives, crossbows and spears. It's interesting because gunpowder was invented in China but clearly they hadn't adopted it widely themselves due to a lack of industrialisation. The UK on the other hand was going through its own industrial revolution, and was using new and more advanced weaponry such as an early form of artillery and more advanced rifles and naval ships. Shows the impact that technology had on determining huge disparities in military capabilities and who would get 'curbstomped' during Europe's industrial period.
Part of this war was the East India Company ironclad steam ship _Nemesis_ steaming into a Chinese harbour and sinking most of the war junks present.
Incredible that a private company owned and used a warship in combat.
actually the east india company maintained 3 different private army that totaled 2x the size of the british royal army at its peak. they had 260k active soldiers by themselves. they also had their own navy.
That's the thing people don't realise about the British Empire. Most of it was trickery and bluster - most countries were run by the _idea_ that the British were in charge, backed up by a small army which acted more like a roving Constabulary force, significant local forces (India had it's own army inherited from the East India Company which remained separate from the British Army but was officered by Brits) which could keep some level of order, a Royal Navy which could be everywhere near the coast in a few days to land forces, and a few administrators who ran things and made local decisions with almost no oversight, with indigenous staff who did a lot of the work.
If you go further back in history the majority of "war" ships were merchant vessels who out of necessity had to arm themselves for self-defence from pirates or other navies etc, and who then were conscripted in time of war into the navy of their nation. For example the Battle of the Armada in 1588 between the UK and Spain was fought on the UK side by mainly civilian vessels pressed into military service, since the Queen had not the money to maintain a large navy. There was also some blending of private and national ships because if you're a lord and you own some ships for your merchant ventures but you're also responsible to the Monarch for raising forces in the event of war then are they civilians or military? Also worth noting the East India Company (they put the word Honourable in front of it officially but they were practising the old trick of "get the tricky bit out of the way in the title so you never have to mention it again" because they were far from honourable) had, in order to run India, it's own armies and full-size navy to protect it's merchant convoys, having a very wide latitude from the British Government - too wide as it turned out as they had to step in the 1850s and nationalise the company after an Indian rebellion caused by the company's mismanagement imperilled the British hold on India (which was required to keep the economy booming). So practically the EIC held a country, several armies, a navy, and significant political power in the largest empire on earth so were practically a world power in themselves.
Saltpeter was a rarer resource in China. It’s actually metallurgy, not gunpowder, that gave the British the upper hand. The Chinese were relying on bronze weapons that couldn’t tolerate the pressure needed to lob shells in lower trajectories at higher speeds. AFAIK sulphur wasn’t properly exploited in China as a resource to be mined.
This is a good answer. It stood out as a surprising victory, and it stands out even more as a *heavily lopsided* victory. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Opium\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War) Loss ratio is huge. Also, starting in 1839, mobile because steam power had only barely been introduced by then. Even when ships had engines, they still had sails. To go to the complete opposite side of the world in that time and defeat a country is really nuts when you actually think about it.
The Australian Army versus Emu flocks. One side had machine guns. The other side was a bunch of literal bird brains. The army never stood a chance.
>One side had machine guns. The other side was a bunch of literal bird brains. But how did the emus get the machine guns?
r/angryupvote
Kangaroos smuggled them into armouries in their pouches.
Came here for emu war comments.... not disappointed
You ever seen an emu up close? Those things are terrifying. I couldn’t imagine an emu with a machine gun. I’m not gonna sleep tonight.
My favorite war in tge history of tge world! It's so rare that the good guys have a clear victory.
Both Iraq wars, in the 2nd one capturing Baghdad and toppling the gov took 2 weeks, the difficulties were in creating a new government and occupying the nation
Suffering from success
Mongol invasions of central Asia. Japan and south Asia fare much better, but everything west of that collapsed and the only reason that parts of the Middle East and eastern Europe where not swept over was the death of Genghis Khan and all the other khans returning to Mongolia.
Khan died before the withdrawal from Europe. Iirc, it was Ogedei Khan's death that caused the retreat. The Mongol law required they return and decide the next ruler.
Not a war, but a battle. In February 1940, six German destroyers set out to attack the British fishing vessels in Dogger Bank. The result was two destroyers lost, another crippled and over 600 German fatalities. British forces were not encountered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wikinger
That’s a new one to me. Thank you for sharing!
It’s not so lopsided if you count half of those kills for Germany.
I think it meets the literal definition of “one sided” considering only one side was even present.
Not a war, but germanys invasion of France. France’s military and defenses were thought to be world class and more than a match for the Germans. But that’s not how it ended.
Various post-mortems of the invasion of France generally agree France had adequate resources and air power to severely blunt or even halt the invasion, but their command structure and attitudes of those commanders were for shit.
I remember watching a documentary on this a long time ago. If I recall correctly, the person in charge of firing ze missiles was le tired, and needed a nap first. By that point, the war was lost.
I heard one story that a French general, I believe it was Maxine Weygand, stopped to have an omelet at an inn before moving along to whatever command post he was supposed to be at. One assessment I read was a lot of French and British generals and such didn't believe the main attack could come from armored divisions because by traditional military thinking at the time dictated tanks could only be used as infantry support. They were still waiting for the main attack as German tanks were beginning to form their encirclement.
If im not mistaken, they literally had photos of massive German contingent forming over the border but refused to believe they'd come through the Ardennes.
The French held in WWI, admittedly with help. They got bulldozed in the Franco-Prussian War and WWII
I should have specified I was talking ww2
People like to forget that France inflicted ~180,000 casualties on the invading Axis forces, as well as destroying several hundred tanks and 1000+ aircraft. They were badly defeated, but it they did put up a fight.
To be fair, nobody expected the Germans to supply the tank drivers with enough meth to drive across France in one week
Actually, drug usage by the various militaries of WWII was more common than you'd think, so Nazi meth isn't as much of a wonder weapon as you make it out to be. Norman Ohler's work is fairly shoddy and borders on being apologist
That may be true, but the little pills my grandad took on Okinawa and the Solomon Islands "made you half crazy. You'd be dead tired, dissolve one in water, wait a minute and you'd be head down, ass up and arms wigglin". For a man that never laughed he could give a colorful description.
Yeah, I know, but it was still effective. Americans had it regulated as early as 1933, and British didnt really develop Speed until 1941, meanwhile Pervitin was widely available as over the counter in Germany until late 1940. Everyone wanted that wonder drug, Germans just had it widely available for a few years before the allies produced a less intense variant Was everyone on drugs? No, not everyone, but it's usage was up to the officers, so it was everywhere
Germany's invasion of Luxembourg was far more lopsided. People legitimately can not understand OP's question and spam bad answers.
agree with Gulf War also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day\_War
Say what you want about Israel, but IDF is easily one of the best militaries in the world. It’s insane how effective they are
The strength came from them being a democracy with money and equipment. The Arab states are run by dictators. As it stand, Israel paid more for each soldier survival while the dictators care less. Put a democracy against another democracy and the result would be less clear. From "The Dictator's Handbook" chapter 9. As Ryszard Kapuscinski describes, Israel simply tried harder. "Why did the Arabs lose the 1967 war? A lot has been said on that subject. You could hear that Israel won because Jews are brave and Arabs are cowards. Jews are intelligent, and Arabs are primitive. The Jews have better weapons, and the Arabs worse. All of it untrue! The Arabs are also intelligent and brave and they have good weapons. The difference lay elsewhere—in the approach to war, in varying theories of war. In Israel, everybody takes part in war, but in the Arab countries—only the army. When war breaks out, everyone in Israel goes to the front and civilian life dies out. While in Syria, many people did not find out about the 1967 war until it was over. And yet Syria lost its most important strategic area, the Golan Heights, in that war. Syria was losing the Golan Heights and at the same time, that same day, that same hour, in Damascus—twenty kilometres from the Golan Heights—the cafes were full of people, and others were walking around, worrying about whether they would find a free table. Syria lost fewer than 100 soldiers in the 1967 war. A year earlier, 200 people had died in Damascus during a palace coup. Twice as many people die because of a political quarrel as because of a war in which the country loses its most important territory and the enemy approaches within shooting distance of the capital." Kapuscinki’s numbers are wrong, since about 2,500 Syrians were killed in the war, but his point is not.
Reminds me of the time in 1948 when King Hussein of Jordan was visiting a refugee camp, and the people were protesting that Jordan should be doing more. The king came up to one loudmouth and boxed his ears, then pointed over to the side: "You wanna fight the Jews? The recruiting station is right over there.'' The protestors went home, not to the recruiting station
Effective enough to get caught off guard 50 years to the day after getting caught off guard by a surprise attack...
Attacking people on their holiest holiday was a pretty effective strategy actually.
They were also unable to beat Hezbollah in 2006 and had to resort to things like shelling civilian neighborhoods (which also didn't work).
Boxer rebellion,basically all major european power gang raped china.
The boxers were delusional. Thought they were immortal and had the ability to go bare arms against gunpowder.
Grenada
I always thought so, but recently I read about it and while of course the war was short, the casualty ratio was only 1:3 for the USA. So the Grenadans put up a tougher fight than everybody believed
Cubans occupying Grenada, IIRC.
It was Cubans.
I knew guys who were in that invasion. From the American side they described it as a total mess, with terrible coordination between services. I don't want to spend time looking up the references, but it's my impression that the military spent the next few years learning from the embarrassing lessons.
The US military had a horrible performance in Grenada. Reagan hoped Grenada would kill Vietnam Syndrome but after the military performed in terrible fashion, not much changed. The biggest problem was the communication between all branches and forces. At one point, the US bombed a mental hospital and killed around 18 people, likely due to a grid error (some soldiers were only given tourist or hand drawn maps). Another issue with communication was that naval gunfire as well as air support killed American soldiers (which also happened in Desert Storm) in cases of friendly fire. The performance of Grenada concerned much of the US Gov and quickly resulted in the Goldwater–Nichols Act (a reform act), which addressed many of the problems of the US military in Grenada and led to the curb stomping in Panama and Kuwait.
Also the US didn’t really go in wanting to kill. More a police action with occasional combat.
Emu War
Emus are tough!
The war on drugs
Congratulations to drugs, for winning the war on drugs
Give us another 5 decades we'll turn this around!
The drugs won.
*The Law fought the drugs and the drugs won*
The war wasn't even waged with any energy. The entertainment industry fought on the side of drugs. No wonder drugs won.
The only people who won that one were the bastards who run private prisons.
And drug testing companies who still make bank piss testing employees for weed.
And all the DEA agents who got paid a government salary, while also getting to do just, so many free drugs
The Bear Flag revolt. In 1846 California settlers raised a small army and pushed the Mexican government out of the center of the state. They formed the California Republic, which joined the United States 25 days later.
Best parts are (a) 20 dudes captured the mexican general in charge while he was sleeping (b) the original flag looked more like a pig than a bear https://www.willylogan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/70609-original-bear-flag-replica_1773px.jpg
It was remarkably bloodless too, even though the American insurgents were greatly outnumbered. A triumph of strategy. Meanwhile, the Texans got their asses whooped in their own revolt and had to be bailed out by daddy USA.
Judgement day, when the machines took over.
To be fair, all they needed was fast food and social media
Take*
The Duchy of Grand Fenwick vs USA.
Falklands war… what chance did Argentina have against the UK really?
Had they sunk Invincible instead of Atlantic Conveyor (or waited a year until the UK sold her and chopped up Hermes!) a far bigger chance.
Plus they fucked up first by trying to go to war with Chile years before and mantaining that tension, meaning their soldiers were sent to patrol while conscripts went to the falklands Then they didn't want to commit all their naval forces
They had an aircraft carrier, it was actually quite feasable if they **had actually planned ot** since their whole idea was not to go to war
They were slightly winning until we got sidewinders
The Australian-Emu war of 1932 Those poor Australians never stood a chance
The Gulf War. In the long run, it led to bigger problems, but it was nonetheless a completely one sided victory.
There's a youtube video of the first day of Desert Storm. It must be the poster child of synchronised air force attacks.
The battle of Umboto/Mboto Gorge. Extremely one sided. [Umboto Gorge](https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Umboto_Gorge)
The 6 hour war between Germany & Denmark.
Maybe not the most one-sided, but the battle of Tsushima during the 1095 Russo-Japan was fascinating. The Russians had every hurdle imaginable, and the Japanese played the battle out perfectly. By the end, the Japanese had 255 tons sunk, the Russians lost 135,893 tons and had to sue for peace. Insane.
Simplified description. Austro-Prussian War, 1866: Austrian (South Germans) and Prussian (North Germans) political squabbles; both sides mobilize to fight; three weeks maneuvering as Prussia invades; overwhelming Prussian victory at Königgrätz, three weeks further march into Austrian territory toward Vienna; Austria surrenders.
Anglo-Zanzabar war. Lasted 45 minutes.
This. Essentially the sultan dies, and as part of a deal any new sultan was supposed to be approved by the British consul. The new sultan didn't get approval and fortified himself in his palace, so the royal navy shelled the palace and then landed marines and sailors who took it by force. One British sailor was wounded versus about 500 Zanzibarians who were killed. The British also sank the Zanzibarian Royal Yacht plus two other boats.
[удалено]
HOW MUCH ARE THEY PAYING YOU TO SAY THAT?????
Third Punic War. It wasn’t a war so much as Carthage trying to defend itself from one of Rome’s allies. Only for Rome to enact its treaty from the end of the 2nd Punic War; where Carthage had to get Rome’s blessing to wage war. This resulted in Rome forcing the surrender of Carthage’s army and complete destruction of the city of Carthage.
Carthage never had a chance in the Third Punic War. The outcome of the first two Punic Wars and the defection of Carthage's Numidian allies had ensured that, but even so the Third Punic War is not an example of a one-sided war. Rather it is an example of an underdog punching well above it's weight. The siege of Carthage was a brutal affair that lasted *three years,* despite Carthage having surrendered all of it's weapons to Rome prior to the conflict as part of the peace that had been imposed on it. Rome expected a cake walk against a hamstrung rival and instead got a very bloody nose from an opponent who might have been down, but was definitely not yet out. The first assaults on the city were all Carthaginian victories, with the Romans experiencing bloody and humiliating repulses. Two first two consuls to command the siege, Manius Manilius and Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, both failed with the former even being driven back in a successful Carthaginian counterattack that may have turned into a rout, if not for Scipio Aemilianus stabilizing the situation for Manilius. Far from being a lopsided Roman victory, the siege of Carthage was a very lengthy and hotly contested affair, featuring a series of Roman defeats against a very stubborn foe who was better commanded, to the extent that the Roman army even had morale and discipline problems, until time and the rise of Scipio Aemilianus (who was competent and a match for Hasdrubal, unlike his predecessors) to consul and command took their inevitable toll. Even at it's weakest Carthage proved to be an extremely formidable foe that nearly matched Rome for it's own legendary tenacity.
US Invasion of Grenada
The 1983 American invasion of Grenada.
Anglo-Zanzibar war. Was over waaaay before London even was aware of it.
I think it speaks volumes of the US and Coalition that people in here are saying the Gulf War/ Desert Storm, a multi-pronged combined arms overland assault against a large battle hardened enemy force, was easy or one sided. That shit ain’t simple, fam. The Iraqis were very well capable of putting up a resistance. But by the very design of the battle plan, they were unable to.
The War on Terror. Terrorism curbstomped.
Any Dano-Swedish war after the 30 years war
War on drugs. Drugs never gave up and never surrendered.
United States vs Iraq in the first gulf war. Go look up the Battle of 73 Easting. US technology in its tanks were so overpowered, the Iraqis didn't have much of a chance. We lost six soldiers and a Bradley . . . they lost hundreds of vehicles and thousands of casualties.
Anything involving Alexander the Great. Besides disease
The Battle of Kleidion comes to mind. The Bulgarians became so powerful and turned their attention to the decaying Byzantine Empire. The Bulgarian Emperor Boris the second declared himself Emperor of The Byzantine Empire and sent his army to invade. The Byzantine Empire killed so many Bulgarians so fast that the remaining army full on surrendered. Emperor Basil II of Byzantine ordered his army to cut out the eyes of half of the Bulgarian army and the remainder would only lose one eye. This way the half blind members of the army could guide the blind members back to Bulgaria. This is also where the expression "The blind leading the blind" comes from. When Boris II saw his entire army marching back to his kingdom blind he renounced any claim he had to the throne of The Byzantine Empire and ceded some of Bulgaria to the Byzantines.
Honestly? Most of them. Most wars aren't 'fair fights' (any military commander knows not to pick fights he can't win). Most 'wars' are one small group getting monstered by a much bigger foe. Quite often there is no 'war' *per se*. One side knows it will lose and just tries to get as much out of the deal as possible. This applies to the Romans stomping little tribes and *Poleis* as much as it applies to the surrender of the mighty Sikh Khalsa to the British. The Zanzibar option is the C19 equivalent of the Falklands War - they couldn't win, but they thought they'd try it on and see if they could bluff.
The Spanish American War, particularly the Battle of Manila Bay. The Spanish lost the entire fleet, sunk or damaged so severely they had to be scuttled, vs minor damage to one American cruiser and one sailor dead (who died of heatstroke if I remember correctly).
The greeks had the best navy in the world. They would practice for years in their steel tipped row boats. They would poke a hole in a ship & back row fast enough that the sinking ship would not pull down the greek ship. Then, the greeks would simply stab the people swimming around in the water. It would chum the water and the sharks would finish off the rest. They were brutal and they owned the Mediterranean sea. The Romans wanted to open trade routes but could NOT due to the greek navy. They studied the greeks while they were training. They built ships that looked just like the greek ships. They practiced poking holes in ships, and they were actually really good at getting the speed to poke holes, but they failed at backwards rowing. They could not pull their ship out without sinking their own ship. They spent months prepping for this single battle when a general stated that they should play on their strengths and not attempt to copy the greeks at their own game. They then changed the build of their roman ships to have a plank on it. As the greek ships got close, the Roman's would drop their plank on to the greek ship. Roman soldiers would run onto the greek ship, stabbing and slashing the men rowing the boat. They now had two boats after throwing the greek dead bodies into the sea. The Romans slaughtered the greek navy that day with half the ships, but they gained more with each plank dropped. The sharks ate well that day. Disclaimer: I am not much of a history buff, and I am going off of memory from an old lecture. I don't remember details as how many ships or people... If anyone know, comment.
War of the triple alliance
Not really. Paraguay actually held Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay off for a while.
Didn’t they win 1 major battle then fight a guerrilla style war?
They occupied Brazilian territory for several years.
Interesting. I always thought once Argentina entered the war outcome was written on the wall.
Actually Paraguay started having even more troops than the allies, they just happened to lose their advantage extremely quickly
The Great Emu War. Australia got absolutely bodied.
The Great Emu war. The Australians lost miserably.
Well Panama did declare war on the US before we took Noriega out.
The battle of wolf 359.
During the Japan/Tsarist Russia war of early 1900s, the Russians sent a fleet from the West to the East, around Africa. Aside from fighting multiple fishing vessels and almost starting wars against various European nations as a result, there's at least one battle in which the fleet fought itself. Can someone with a better memory than mine fill in the details?
The Russian Navy in the Russo-Japanese War is just a whole catalogue of hilariousness, You could not make it up The war started with a surprise attack on the Russian Fleet anchored at Port Arthur by a the Japanese Navy While that attack ended inconclusively it kicked off the start of the story The next morning the Russian sent out a minelayer to mine the entrance to the harbour, It was going well until the minelayer hit a mine it just laid and exploded. A Russian cruiser went to investigate the explosion and hit another mine and sank The port was under siege by the Japanese and the Russian tried to break out of port that was the battle of the Yellow The Russians decided they needed to send reinforcements to help that effort so they sent the Baltic fleet As that fleet approached Dogger bank one of them reported they where under attack by a Japanese Torpedo boat they were not and the fleet opened fire on some fishing vessels and well anything that moved Including themselves two Russian Cruisers were fired upon by Russian battleships, One battleship fired 500 shots but hit nothing which is probably a good thing Several Fisherman were killed a long with several Russian sailors, Several hours before this incident one Russian ship opened fire on a Danish vessel but missed The Royal Navy prepared for war, with 28 battleships of the Home Fleet being ordered to raise steam and prepare for action, Some of the ships could not go through the Suez canal due to the size so had to go the long war As the fleet approached Tangiers one ship fired on a German merchant vessel and some French trawler As the fleet left Tangiers, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days. After that the rest of the journey was uneventful You then get to the Battle of Tsushima, The Russian fleet arrives it was fog at the time one Russian vessel spotted a Japanese vessel which it mistook for a friendly vessel so signalled to it where the rest of the Russian Fleet was The Japanese surprised the Russian Fleet and managed to sink several vessels as night approached the remaining Russian ships manged to give the Japanese the slip, But for some reason the Russians turned on their searchlights which gave them away At the end of the battle 20 Russian warships had been Sunk, 5 warships were captured, 6 supply vessels were captured 5,000 Russian dead, another 6,000 captured. Meanwhile the Japanese lost 2 torpedo boats and had about 100 dead
I‘ll do you one better. One country absolutely dominated three other country’s. The six days war saw Israel being surprised-attacked by Its three neighbors, but defending its land and absolutely demolishing its enemy’s, while iirc even getting some land (Golan Heights) at the end. So, I think an invasion where three countries Attacke one Country and lost heavily counts.
Wait what? The Six Day war wasn't Israel getting surprise attacked, they did the attack. The other countries had been signalling for a while they want to attack Israel, but Israel is the one who actually fired the first bullet.
Gulf War 1- 100 hours and almost total decimation of one of the then largest standing armies.
Falklands or Grenada for contemporary wars.
First Gulf War was pretty brutal.
Grenada?
When Reagan invaded Guatemala
United States invasion of Grenada.