Worst military mistakes.

[Fiddler]

yep, but the french used tear gas from police supplies, the germans went the whole way and used chloride.

One of the all time highs probably is azincourt.
Don't wait for your crossbowmen to do their part, charge across a muddy field, get bogged down, cut to pieces and let a third of the army flee before getting involved.

[Watchman]

One of the all time highs probably is azincourt.
Don't wait for your crossbowmen to do their part, charge across a muddy field, get bogged down, cut to pieces and let a third of the army flee before getting involved.

The crossbowmen had kind of already lost the arrow-fight, but anyway that's the limitations of the feudal chain of command and period methods of communication (ie. shouting loudly) for you. C^2 issues were actually the main reason the French armied seemingly paradoxically tended to perform way better when they were small, and blundered disastrously when they were large.

As far as military mistakes go... if Operation Barbarossa was heavy on the desperate gambling, wistful thinking and pure blinkered superiority complex on the part of the Germans, their initial success was most certainly greatly assisted by the blunt fact that when it came to the disposition, deployement etc. of the Red Army in Poland Stalin had picked up the Idiot Ball and hung on to it quite stubbornly. Massing the divisions densely right at the border just meant the German assault promptly overran through both lines before the reserves had any time to react, nevermind now being something of a textbook example of How Not To Deploy Your Forces Period anyway. Putting an incompetent sycophant in charge of the whole front for the better part of the peace period, and then pretty much panicking and issuing idiotic orders to the commanders when the Germans attacked, weren't exactly Uncle Joe's brighter moments either.

End result was that the Soviets had to fight a desperate rearguard action all the way to the gates of Moscow with shattered remnants and hastily raised conscripts until the massively overstretched German logistics finally keeled over...

[Tyrfingr]

Allied invasion of Gallipoli (WWI) - Yeah, like attacking entrenched turks is a good idea.

Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990) - "Nobody will care if we just walk in there, right?" (Saddam Hussein to his advisors, august 1990)

USSR invasion of Finland 1939 - How to get your ass handed to yourself by knife-wielding alcoholics.

All marches towards Russia (Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler) - ...becausing learning from history is boring

[Watchman]

All marches towards Russia (Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler) - ...becausing learning from history is boring

The funny thing is, Napie and Adolf failed because aiming for Moscow terminally overstretched their lines of communication; Charlex XII failed because he didn't aim for St. Petersburg (which would've forced Peter to stand and fight or lose his pet new city) but instead rather pointlessly chased the Russian field army down into the Ukraine, terminally overstretching his lines of communication to the Baltic littoral.

Dumb kid got his priorities wrong, basically.

[General Appo]

Any and all military decisions made by the Carthaginian Senate throughout its history.

Gotta agree with the USSR invasion of Finland, poorly planned invasions by poorly equiped untrained soldiers with incompetent commanders seldom works.

[Frodge]

Speaking of the USSR I feel compelled to mention Afghanistan. By all rights the USSR should have steamrolled but they got their arses handed to them.

[Che Roriniho]

Speaking of the USSR I feel compelled to mention Afghanistan. By all rights the USSR should have steamrolled but they got their arses handed to them.

That, and the fact that they destroyed a fair amount of the Ruins of Baktra. Bastards. But yeh, I think Afghanistan is one of those places that is almost impossible to conquer, we failed back in C19, the Russians failed pre-USSR, and in the '80s, and I believe the chinese Unsuccesfuly attempted an invasion at one point, don't quote me about that though.

[Watchman]

Weren't the Chinese just rustling horses though ? (Albeit with an army...)

[Che Roriniho]

Any and all military decisions made by the Carthaginian Senate throughout its history.

Gotta agree with the USSR invasion of Finland, poorly planned invasions by poorly equiped untrained soldiers with incompetent commanders seldom works.

Plus, Finland were damned good at artic warfare:

[Watchman]

Plus, Finland were damned good at artic warfare:

While it's certainly quite frosty around here in the winter, the arctics proper only start at the northern part of the country. The issue was really simply that the Finnish army was fighting according to how it was trained and equipped for, ie. as a light-infantry army oriented for forest warfare. Even without their absurd lack of reconnaissance and proper preparations the initial Soviet thrusts made the cardinal mistake of trying to operate like the force oriented for mobile warfare on the Eurasian plain that the Red Army primarily was, and were duly completely out of their depth in the endless forests of the Northern Coniferous Belt. (The Germans would have the selfsame problem against the Soviets in northern Finland - and forested lands in general - later on; their fancy Blitzkrieg stuff just didn't work there.)

That IIRC the formations used hailed from the steppe regions and duly didn't know the first thing about forests in general of course didn't help one bit.

Something of a modern re-enactement of the infamous Braddock Expedition really, when you think about it.

Speaking of the USSR I feel compelled to mention Afghanistan. By all rights the USSR should have steamrolled but they got their arses handed to them.

Oh the Russkies could steamroll all right. But just like the British a century earlier, that didn't avail them much because the local opposition just didn't fight in those terms.

Persistent guerilla warfare is like that. There's no question that in anything approaching a straight fight the Soviets and the British could reliably enough pulverize whoever was foolish enough to expose himself as a target that way. It was the endless ambushes, raids and the sheer inability to actually establish a secure hold on the land that sent them packing. (The Brits back in the day had more or less made like the Romans in Germania, largely staying the hell out save for punitive expeditions and settling for securing the border of their actually valuable lands.)

Maybe the rule "never wage a land war in asia" should be ammended with "without having a clear, reachable objective. No, conquering the world is not a clear reachable objective."

It's actually just "don't wage war in general unless you actually know what you're doing". The Russian climate and geography was after all never much of an obstacle to invaders who actually prepared accordingly and knew the score (eg. the Polish-Lithuanians and Swedes in the 1500s), or hailed from the selfsame environment and were duly up to the task by default (eg. the steppe nomads).

The ones who floundered were those who came half cocked and/or failed to appreciate the sheer scale of the Eurasian interior.

[Fiddler]

The crossbowmen had kind of already lost the arrow-fight, but anyway that's the limitations of the feudal chain of command and period methods of communication (ie. shouting loudly) for you. C^2 issues were actually the main reason the French armied seemingly paradoxically tended to perform way better when they were small, and blundered disastrously when they were large.

I would go as far as to say the problem was the character of the french army in the first part of the second half of the war (). Large armies could only be assembled by calling up the feudal levies (i.e. knights) and they where a independent-minded, unruly mob, going as far as to squable the night before the battle about who would get a place in the vangaurd.
The english army of Henry of the other hand was a professional force, and henry was the undisputed leader, so c2 (or c3, for a closed loop) where much easier to attain.
Whenever the french got a commander who could get things done in his way (DuGuesclin, Dunois etc) and weren't burdened with a swath of overzealous nobles, the english faced a much steeper task.

The funny thing is, Napie and Adolf failed because aiming for Moscow terminally overstretched their lines of communication; Charlex XII failed because he didn't aim for St. Petersburg (which would've forced Peter to stand and fight or lose his pet new city) but instead rather pointlessly chased the Russian field army down into the Ukraine, terminally overstretching his lines of communication to the Baltic littoral.

Hitler was rather erratic in his decisions, i.e. the german armored forces were suddenly reassigned to the south to get the "wheatbasket" of the ukraine, spent 4 weeks destroying the russians around kiew and then had to restart the drive to moscow, getting bogged down in mud and later snow.
Stands to questions what would have happened if Army Group Centre had 4 more weeks to get moscow.
Luckily, the world never had to find out.

Maybe the rule "never wage a land war in asia" should be ammended with "without having a clear, reachable objective. No, conquering the world is not a clear reachable objective."