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Ok I will bite. Depends on the criteriea of "greatest"
I think these are all possible contenders.
1949 Israel vs the whole Middle East. Israel fighting off a gang bang of arabs without tanks, planes or a navy.
300 BC (or therebouts) Macedons vs Persians at Gaugamela. Led to fall of Persian empire and greatly changed the history of most of the known world at that time.
June 1942 Battle of Midway, US vs Japan. Led to fall of Japanese Empire and export of US influence over all of Asia and the Pacific.
Sept 1941 Siege of St Petersburgh. Led to fall of Nazis and the enslavement of eastern Europe to a new master.
Last edited by justanokie; 07-05-2013 at 09:35 PM..
Yes, Finland did lose. The Russians tried to claim a small amount of territory from Finland, Finland resisted, and in the final armistice, the Russians gained even more Finnish territory than they had demanded in the first place. That territory is still Russian.
I'd say the Battle of Brittan. It was the first battle that made Germany realize that overrunning Europe wasn't going to be as easy as they thought. It was the first battle in human history I think that was solely fought between aircraft.
For a single battle, probably the Battle of Tannenberg (1914), on the Eastern Front of the First World War.
One of the most complete military victories in history, in which the Germans cleanly encircled 4 entire Russian Corps despite a two-fold numerical disadvantage. Also, relatively few fatalities given the scope of the battle, given that the bulk of the Russian Second Army surrendered after it became evident their situation was hopeless. The following is a communique from Russian Northwest Headquarters illustrating the totality of their defeat and the absolute state of disarray of their armed forces, now fighting each other in confusion:
Quote:
There is no information about the situation of the Corps of the Second Army on the evening of the 31st ... There is no news of the XIII Corps. Isolated men of the XV Corps are arriving in batches at Ostrolenka. A portion of the XXIII Corps is fighting with the I Corps, a portion was with the XV Corps.
Also an impressive maneuver battle in the use of screening tactics, encirclement and the Napoleonite principle of divide-and-conquer.
Above, a single cavalry division screens the Russian First Army advance in the north, while the bulk of the German army ablates the Russian Second Army to the south.
Last edited by MissionIMPOSSIBRU; 07-06-2013 at 02:22 AM..
Yes, Finland did lose. The Russians tried to claim a small amount of territory from Finland, Finland resisted, and in the final armistice, the Russians gained even more Finnish territory than they had demanded in the first place. That territory is still Russian.
I agree that Finland eventually did lose, but we won by retaining our independence. It's naïve to think that Stalin would have stopped there had he gained what he wanted in the negotiations. Stalin wanted the whole country, starting the war and setting up a puppet government in the first days of the war indicate this.
If Finland wouldn't have take up arms, we'd had probably followed the same path as the Baltic States - eventually total occupation without war. I'd also like to remind you that the public favored war in this case, istead of giving up territory, so technically the war was a democratic decision.
What is interesting to see in the casualties section is that the number of captured was very low. The fighting was literally "to the death".
I would like to mention the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Some 20,000 German barbarians destroyed 3 Roman legions and the battle led to the Roman withdrawal from parts of modern Germany. The battle was so humiliating for the Romans, that the lost legions (XVII, XVIII, XIX) were never raised again, and those numbers were banned to use in another legion.
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