The most decisive battles of world history

Mott the Hoople said:
It's not a contradiction. Lee's draining the Confederate Armies in the west of men and material played a major role in the Confederate Western theater crumbling.
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The south could never have won. The North had 3 times as many people serving and one and a half times that many more who could have served. The South never had a realistic chance of winning. They could have, however, taken DC had they wanted to. IIRC one southern cavalry unit reached deep into DC and it freaked them out that they hadn't met resistance so they hauled ass fearing it was an ambush. Cannot recall if that was one of Early's or if it was JEB Stuart's that time. Been too many years since my military strategy of the Civil War class to remember every little color story.
 
Kacper said:
The south could never have won. The North had 3 times as many people serving and one and a half times that many more who could have served. The South never had a realistic chance of winning. They could have, however, taken DC had they wanted to. IIRC one southern cavalry unit reached deep into DC and it freaked them out that they hadn't met resistance so they hauled ass fearing it was an ambush. Cannot recall if that was one of Early's or if it was JEB Stuart's that time. Been too many years since my military strategy of the Civil War class to remember every little color story.
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Please if you want to talk seriously about the Civil War ok but spare me the Lost Cause Mythologies. General Washington commanded against far greater odds than Lee faced and still won. The truth is, as evidenced by how close Lincoln came to losing the election of 1864, that the Confederacy came very close to winning. Had Atlanta not fallen when it did the likelihood that Lincoln would have lost re-election would have been high. McClelland had positioned himself under such conditions that he would have been forced to negotiate terms of peace with the Confederacy that would have required recognizing the Confederacy and then the Confederacy would have won the war on the political front. That came very close to happening because the Union had no such option. They had to conquer the Confederacy militarily. Which they did but the notion that the Confederacy had no chance of winning the Civil War just doesn’t jive with the facts. They came closer than many people appreciate.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Please if you want to talk seriously about the Civil War ok but spare me the Lost Cause Mythologies. General Washington commanded against far greater odds than Lee faced and still won. The truth is, as evidenced by how close Lincoln came to losing the election of 1864, that the Confederacy came very close to winning. Had Atlanta not fallen when it did the likelihood that Lincoln would have lost re-election would have been high. McClelland had positioned himself under such conditions that he would have been forced to negotiate terms of peace with the Confederacy that would have required recognizing the Confederacy and then the Confederacy would have won the war on the political front. That came very close to happening because the Union had no such option. They had to conquer the Confederacy militarily. Which they did but the notion that the Confederacy had no chance of winning the Civil War just doesn’t jive with the facts. They came closer than many people appreciate.
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I love how McClelland's total ineptitude as a general led to him nearly being elected president.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
No, but I do know people who are far more learned than I am in history and political science than I am who have turned me on to a lot of great books over the years. The only Battlefield Site I've been to is Gettysburg and though I am probably the lest superstitious person you'd ever meet...I'm convinced that the place is indeed haunted. I can't put a finger on it other than during my entire visit I had this incredibly erie feeling that I wasn't alone and there was another person within site of me.
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My Papa spent a summer vacation driving us around to the great Civil War battle sites of the mid-Atlantic region. It was pretty bloody cool!

You know, you are not the first person I've heard who said that Robert E. Lee was totally over-rated as a general and as a strategic thinker. The deity-status this slave-owning, treasonous rebel acquired in the southern states probably colors and biases our perspective of him.
 
Cypress said:
Certainly meets the criteria of a strategic victory.
On a sidebar, my Canadian relative take pride in their successful defense against the American invasion of upper Canada.

Another tangent - I believe the case can be made that one oversight in the list in Post #1 is the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.

It seems to me, that was not only a strategic outcome, but a historic one. One that we can still feel the effects of five centuries later. It was the ending of the last vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it created a permanent division at the Bosporus between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia; a geographic, cultural, and political division we are still feeling today.
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It also led to the Age of Exploration, since trade along the Silk Route dried-up.
 
Kacper said:
The point at which I stopped reading. George Washington lost as often as he won.
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Are you retarded? He was talking about Washington winning the overall war. What won the Revolutionary War was Washington's strategy/Divine Intervention and what won the Civil War was Lee's poor strategy/Divine Intervention.
 
Threedee said:
I love how McClelland's total ineptitude as a general led to him nearly being elected president.
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He wasn’t totally inept. In fact he had many fine qualities. He just sucked on the battlefield. As a strategist, on supply and logistics, training, communications, engineering, etc., he excelled.

But he fell down badly in battle, theatre operations and politically.
 
Cypress said:
My Papa spent a summer vacation driving us around to the great Civil War battle sites of the mid-Atlantic region. It was pretty bloody cool!

You know, you are not the first person I've heard who said that Robert E. Lee was totally over-rated as a general and as a strategic thinker. The deity-status this slave-owning, treasonous rebel acquired in the southern states probably colors and biases our perspective of him.
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I wouldn’t pin that on Lee. Give the man his due. He was a great general, even if he did fall down on grand strategy he was simply brilliant in many other areas. I’d pin that on the Southern revisionist historians of the late 19th Century who created the whole Lost Cause Mythologies that so many people who don’t study history have bought in to.

Most professional historians view Lee as an excellent general, a brilliant battlefield tactition and a master of maneuvers who fell down badly on grand strategy and who met his match in a far greater commander in Grant.
 
Threedee said:
Are you retarded? He was talking about Washington winning the overall war. What won the Revolutionary War was Washington's strategy/Divine Intervention and what won the Civil War was Lee's poor strategy/Divine Intervention.
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Give Grant his due. The Union had superior numbers in men and materials but having those and knowing how to use those effectively on the offensive is a different criter. Grant did know how to use those advantages, particularly those in transportation and communications. Two areas where Grant really stands out over every other Civil War General was his ability to effectively command armies in multiple theaters with the same strategic goals. He was the first truly modern general to understand and execute theatre operations. Something that Lee and his. Virginia centric approach was not good at. Lee drained the Confederacy of men and resources from all over the Confederacy to focus on Virginia. That permitted the rest of the Confederacy to be divided and conquered in the west, which Grant did.

The other area where Grant stood out was in casualties. One of the most pernicious slanders of the Lost Cause Mythologies was Grant was a butcher who won by sheer numbers. It is tacitly understood that an invading force is expected to lose more soldiers than the defenders by like a margin of 2 to 1. Yet Grant inflicted far more casualties on his opponents than his armies suffered, the armies he commanded suffered significantly fewer loses than Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He was also the only Civil War General to accept the surrender of a field Army and he did so three times. Doesn’t sound like a butcher to me.
 
Cypress said:
In modern history, I would rank the 1968 Tet Offensive as one of the most consequential military events of the late 20th century.
A tactical battle field win for US forces, but strategically it had long term and lasting consequences for both the outcome of the war, and for U.S. foreign policy over the next half century.
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Tet was a huge blow to my Uncle. He was serving in Da Nang when the Tet offensive occurred and this feelings immeadiatly afterwards was one of elation that they have crushed the NVA and there was no way they could recover and victory was a down hill slide. Then he came back to the States and was smacked with the reality that the majority of Americans didn't share his sense. The prevailing attitude wasn't one of impending victory but of...what the hell are we doing over there and what are we fighting for? Which didn't have any real good answers.

After that experience he just simply didn't talk about his service in Vietnam.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I wouldn’t pin that on Lee. Give the man his due. He was a great general, even if he did fall down on grand strategy he was simply brilliant in many other areas. I’d pin that on the Southern revisionist historians of the late 19th Century who created the whole Lost Cause Mythologies that so many people who don’t study history have bought in to.

Most professional historians view Lee as an excellent general, a brilliant battlefield tactition and a master of maneuvers who fell down badly on grand strategy and who met his match in a far greater commander in Grant.
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Any general that annihilates treasonous anti-American rebels is okay in my book, and thank you for the intel on our great American general, U.S. Grant.

This reminds me that I need to start a list of the top military leaders in world history.

Mine is going to have Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Ghengis Khan near the top of my list.

I don't think any American leaders are going to penetrate the top ten, but Tecumseh Sherman is a sentimental favorite of mine, because blitzkrieging deep into rebel territory and terrifying rebel traitors is something I can really respect.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
He wasn’t totally inept. In fact he had many fine qualities. He just sucked on the battlefield. As a strategist, on supply and logistics, training, communications, engineering, etc., he excelled.

But he fell down badly in battle, theatre operations and politically.
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He is probably the only general in history who could have blown the Peninsula campaign. He makes a great argument for the Civil War being a divine punishment on Americans and Confederates.
 
Cypress said:
Any general that annihilates treasonous anti-American rebels is okay in my book, and thank you for the intel on our great American general, U.S. Grant.

This reminds me that I need to start a list of the top military leaders in world history.

Mine is going to have Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Ghengis Khan near the top of my list.

I don't think any American leaders are going to penetrate the top ten, but Tecumseh Sherman is a sentimental favorite of mine, because blitzkrieging deep into rebel territory and terrifying rebel traitors is something I can really respect.
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Sherman was a great General but he didn’t have Grants ability to adapt to changing conditions on the battlefield or Grants command ability in combined theater operations which is what made Grant truly unique and the first modern general. No General in history had commanded two armies in different theaters of war. Grant commanded five. Grant should be retroactively be promoted to General of the Armies (5 star) with seniority to outrank all American Generals except Washington, but that would take an act of Congress and vengeful Southern politicians would never permit it. It’s silly to think that Black Jack Pershing outranks Grant but he does.
 
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