Top 10 Worst Military Blunders of All Time

The Top Ten

  1. Napoleon's Invasion of Russia (1812)

    Napoleon didn't know how harsh the Russian winter is. Nor did Hitler.

    No one defeats General Winter. No one.

  2. The Blitz (1940-1941)

    It cost Hitler the war.

  3. Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943)

    Obsessing over one goal to the exclusion of all else rarely ends well.

  4. The Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)

    Undermanned, underequipped, and without air cover. Yeah, that'll work.

  5. Battle of the Somme (1916)

  6. Operation Barbarossa (1941)

    Never, ever start a second front.

  7. The Allies' Failure to Invade Germany (1939)

    It is how you can trust the UK and France when they sign a treaty.

  8. The Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783)

  9. Attack on Pearl Harbor (1941)

  10. Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)

    Rumor has it Custer left his Gatling guns behind. Would it have mattered? Probably not.

    Custer got what he deserved thanks to it!

    11. The Newcomers
  11. ?

    Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan (1979)

    No one has ever taken over Afghanistan in the past 700 years.

  12. ?

    The British Invasion of the Zulu Kingdom (1879)

    13. The Contenders

  13. Soviet Invasion of Finland (1939)

    An embarrassment for Stalin, all the way around.

  14. Invasion of Quebec (1775)

  15. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)

    A blunder caused by a junior officer. While telling the English Light Brigade to charge cannon being towed away by the Russians, he pointed out the wrong cannons. The Light Brigade charged the cannons and got shot to pieces.

    If "don't charge entrenched cannon" isn't the first rule of warfare, what is?

  16. Pickett's Charge (1863)

    Caused the Confederacy to lose the Battle of Gettysburg, which turned the tide of the American Civil War and eventually led to the Union winning.

    Robert, Robert, Robert! You should have listened to your Old War Horse when he said that no 15,000 men could take that position.

  17. Stationing of British Forces at Yorktown (1781)

    American Revolutionary War. Seriously, who stations themselves on a peninsula with no route to escape?

  18. Battle of Midway (1942)

  19. Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964)

    Should have just told the truth.

    Because of this lie, the U.S. was involved in an unnecessary war for ten years.

  20. Operation Market Garden (1944)

  21. Battle of the Alamo (1836)

    10,000 troops couldn't bypass 150 guys in the middle of nowhere?

  22. German Invasion of Belgium (1914)

    Invading Belgium brought the British and Italians into the war. (The Italians wouldn't have declared war if the British hadn't.) The war would have been much shorter and less bloody, with the Central Powers probably victorious.

  23. Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954)

  24. Battle of San Jacinto (1836)

    Whose idea was it to have a fiesta the night before getting defeated by a bunch of angry Texans who remembered the Alamo? Cost you the revolution in only eighteen minutes.

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