When someone gets to be a commander of troops and especially when they reached the highest levels one would think they are extremely capable, however this is not always the case and even if it is these commanders can also make mistakes and sometimes these mistakes are very costly. Anyone who has studied the history of World War II must have noticed some of the blunders which were made. We all know one of the biggest ones took place when Hitler, who was fighting a European war, opened the new front in the Soviet Union. He took over a million men away from the European battle and an incredible amount of weapons and equipment and still he almost was successful, but destroyed his chances when he decided to deviate from the plan his generals had and attack the city of Stalingrad just because it was named after Stalin the leader of the Soviet Union. On top of this he had underestimated the size and determination of the Soviet army. He also thought the Japanese would help him in this invasion since they were his allies, but they refused. Perhaps they saw the futility of his actions and were also saving their forces to go against the United States. This was probably the biggest blunder of World War II.

World War I also had many blunders as do most wars and one of the biggest had to be the British attack on Gallipoli. The Germans in World War I didn’t have much respect for the British commanders. Sir Ian Hamilton was given command of the attack on Gallipoli. In 1915 amphibious landings were made by the British, French, Australian and New Zealand Army. The idea was to take Turkey which was a German ally. Churchill was also involved and had proposed taking eighteen battleships through the Dardanelles and right up to Constantinople. Unfortunately there were many forts along the way and the British lost five battleships and their plan failed. The Greeks had estimated it would take at least a hundred and fifty thousand men to invade successfully, but the British laughed at this estimate. Instead of using armored craft for the landing the British warships towed lifeboats which were cut loose near the beach. The Turks had a ball mowing down the soldiers with machine guns. Those who made it to shore were vulnerable. After eight months of trench warfare had ensued and half a million men on both sides had died, nothing was accomplished.

The American Civil War was a war with many blunders. Abraham Lincoln went through many generals before he was able to settle on Ulysses S. Grant as the leader of the Northern forces. In 1862 Robert E Lee commander of the Confederate Army took forty thousand troops into Maryland, he wanted to bring the war to the North. General McClellan was the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Lee’s divided his forces in half sending one half to capture Harpers Ferry so his supply line would be kept open. McClellan had discovered Lee’s plans and although he had 95,000 troops and outnumbered Lee’s force by almost 5 to 1 he decided not to attack for days allowing Lee to rebuild his force. The battle took place at Antietam and even though Lee was able to double his force he still only had the original 40,000 troops, but yet the battle was only a stalemate. It is believed by many historians McClellan’s action or should I say inaction prolonged the Civil War by at least two years. President Lincoln relieved McClellan of his post and sent him home to sit out the rest of the war.

Napoleon was not immune to making mistakes on a grand scale and one of the worst mistakes anyone could make, he made when he invaded Russia. Napoleon’s forces were known as the grand Army and Napoleon sent 100,000 lightly clothed troops into Russia in the warm season. The Russians burned crops all along the way in front of the French Army which began to get hungry. As the Army trudged along, the weather began to change and the French troops began to freeze. Mud bogged them down and then wagons and carts got stuck. While the French were freezing and starving the Russians attacked them and Napoleon seeing what was happening ran for his life. His grand Army had been destroyed and almost all of his troops killed. This was the beginning of the end for Napoleon who was forced into exile in 1814.

The ancient battle of Changping is a great example of incompetence. The battle took place in 260 B.C. And as you have guessed it involved the Chinese. The Chinese state of Qin had been besieging a fortress at Shangdang and the siege had lasted for three years. The Qin commander was named Zhao Kuo and he had an army of 450,000. When he attacked he found the opposing army was much smaller than he had expected and he pushed his men on. He was in such a hurry he left his supply train behind. The opposing army sent its cavalry out and destroyed the supply train. This was the end of the food supply and forced the Qin army to retreat to Shangdang. There was no food there and they were starving and when they were sufficiently weakened they were attacked and their commander was killed and the remaining four hundred thousand troops were then ordered executed.

Sometimes politics can cause an Army unit to fail and no greater example of this appears in history than the battle at Yarmouk. In 636 AD an army of 40,000 Muslim warriors were raiding the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines sent out their army of 100,000 men. This should have been more than enough to defeat the Muslims, but there was a problem with this army and the problem was the leader of the Army who was named Vahan and the second in command named Trithyrius didn’t trust each other. Trithyrius believed he should have been in charge and neither man wanted to field his men for fear the other would destroy them. This caused the Army to lose almost every battle and eventually get destroyed.

There are plenty of stories of commanders being their own worst enemies in wartime.