I am writing an article and looking for examples of nations (or tribes, or forts/castles, or other such entities) who were well-off and well-armed and could have very well defeated their invading enemies, and yet gave up too soon and easily because they underestimated their own strength and overestimated that of the enemy’s. Does Holland’s surrender to the Germans in WWII count, or were the Dutch really totally out-gunned, for instance?
I am not referring to defenders who were deceived by a clever ruse of the enemy’s, but rather, defenders who knew full well what numbers they were going up against, yet simply flat-out underestimated their own ability and assets for fighting off the enemy, or thought the enemy would conquer them much more easily than they would, and gave in.
I’m not sure if this is exactly what you want, and its not modern era, but at the Battle of Cajamarca the Inca army, who outnumbered Pizarro’s forces 45 to 1, could easily have overwhelmed them despite the guns and horses of the Spanish if they had just attacked them en masse. But they were shocked and terrorized by the capture of the Emperor Atahualpa and the massacre of his mostly unarmed retinue and fled without trying to engage them.
In many other engagements during the Conquest, the Spanish won as much by intimidating much larger native forces as they did because of their horses, guns, and armor.
Possibly the USS Yorktown at the battle of Midway would count.
The ship had been struck by Japanese bomb, had lost power and was listing heavily (26 degrees) when the captain ordered it abandoned. However, the ship neither sank nor capsized, and the next day, a salvage crew was put back onto the ship and was making progress toward recovery. However, a Japanese submarine was able to shoot a torpedo, sinking the covering destroyer, and hitting the ship again. So again, Yorktown was abandoned. And again, she continued to stay afloat for another day and night, eventually sinking on June 7th, 3 days after the battle of Midway, and about 60 hours after first being hit by bombs.
So the 12 hours after she was first abandoned may be critical – had the crew stayed aboard and kept working at recovery, she might have been saved. Might be an example where they gave up too quickly.
(Not that we can blame the captain for this. A 26 degree list and complete loss of power is generally reason to abandon ship. At that time, it wasn’t know just how much punishment those american carriers like Yorktown & Lexington could take & survive.)
The Fall of Singapore has often been taken to have been an unnecessary failure or at least the scale of failure could have been minimized. Percival and company didn’t exactly shower themselves with glory.
In the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, it has been argued that despite the fact they were getting their clock cleaned in the early going and were outnumbered, the Pakistani military command in the east surrendered far too hastily. They could never have won, but could have held out in strongpoints for awhile. This would have affected the inevitable peace negotiations after the war bogged down in the west( as it somewhat did and was always likely to ).
Also, looking at the military situation without looking at the overall startegic one is misplaced. In 1918 the German Army surrendered while still inside France and Belgium. Yet, the Germans were screwed regardless.
No doubt the British comforted themselves after losing Singapore with that thought. They still were defeated by much inferior ground forces, giving up far sooner than necessary.
Would Sgt. Alvin York ( wiki ) count? During WWI, he singlehandedly captured a lot of enemy while also destroying notable amounts of their eqpt, etc. From that link: * He received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a Germanmachine gun nest, taking 35 machine guns, killing at least 25 enemy soldiers, and capturing 132. York’s Medal of Honor action occurred during the United States-led portion of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France, which was intended to breach the Hindenburg line and force the Germans to surrender.
Possibly the ISIS conquest of Mosul, in which ~1,500 ISIS fighters overwhelmed ~60,000 defenders. Though the reasons for the outcome are more complex than simply an incorrect assessment of the attacker’s strength.
The Malaya-Singapore campaign was lost in Malaya, when the British force in addition to being larger than the Japanese one was no less well supplied. The sinking of the two British capital ships in Dec '41 foreclosed the possibility of British naval power cutting off the Japanese from their supply, but it didn’t actually cut off the British from theirs. Considerable reinforcement and supply arrived in Singapore after that with minimal losses to shipping.
By the time the IJA force was across Johore Strait from Singapore by the end of January 1942 resupply from outside had become impossible. But the British force still had plenty of supplies and was still much larger than the Japanese force.
At the moment the British decided to surrender with the Japanese already on the island and having seized its reservoir, it could be argued it wasn’t ‘too soon’ to give up, but that’s shared with the moment of defeat in lots of campaigns where one side was badly outfought by the other.
How about the Allies facing the Germans during the “phony war” period in WW2? They utterly surrendered the initiative to the Germans (who were busy consolidating their gains in Poland) because they vastly overestimated the German military might facing them - had they called the Nazi bluff and invaded, history may have been very different.
Instead, they waited - giving the Germans time to reorganize their forces and invade them, successfully.
Thus, whatever one thinks of the Fall of France, a major Allied failure was failing to take the initiative ASAP. Caused in part by over-estimation of the might of the enemy.
I don’t get that at all. The coalition side had the advantage in front line troops and superior equipment if not overall numbers. The air attack preceding ground operations decimated many units. Those that weren’t hit had their logistics train destroyed and communications distrupted. Many units were isolated and alone. Then the coalition tanks rolled in and engaged and destroyed at ranges greater than the Iraqi army could hope to. The Iraqi army had no chance.
That is a prime example. A superior force fled a vastly inferior force.
What AK84 said. The Pakistani units in East Pakistan/Bangladesh were not only exhausted from [del]massacring civilians[/del] putting down the local uprising, they simply weren’t supplied or otherwise prepared for pitched combat against an equal (much less superior) force.
It would be like US infantry regiments engaged in occupation/peacekeeping in Iraq suddenly discovering that half the Russian army had arrived and started lobbing shells at them. They might be better equipped, they might be better trained, and they might even be better led,* but that may be irrelevant when something they’re not prepared for shows up.
That’s especially true since they would be fighting both the Iraqis and the Russians, while the Russians only had to contend with them. The Indian Army was welcomed by the nascent Bangladeshis, for the most part.
*I’m not saying the Pakistani army was any of these things in 1971, though the Pakistani propaganda of the day commonly held that each of its troops were worth as much as several Indians.
I’ve got a good one, from the War of 1812 - the surrender of Detroit.
Brock and Techumseh used deception and bluff to convince a numerically superior force of Americans under General Hull entrenched within fortifications to surrender without a fight (allegedly, the British and Native casualties amounted to … two wounded).
2,500 Americans were taken prisoner; more than the attacking force (nearly double!); the British and Native forces consisted of 600 Native warriors, 330 British regulars, and 400 Canadian militia.
Edit: also a rare example of good coordination between allies - both British and Native leadership proved decisive; each supported the other in playing on American fears.
During the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Japanese Navy won the Battle of Savo island and the American fleet withdrew. This could have given the Japanese fleet the ability to attack the beachhead on Guadalcanal and destroy the transport ships in the area. Instead they were afraid that the American carriers were going to attack them in the morning and left the area. Because of this the Americans were able to resupply their troops on the island, defeat the counterattack and win the battle.
This one is debatable, but many people maintain that Czechoslovakia could have held off the German army in 1938 when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland. (a quora.com thread about that) The Czechs had significant fortifications, a sizable military given the size of their country, and the Germans were not as ready for war as they would be a year later.
So it’s conceivable that Czechoslovakia gave up the Sudetenland when it could have defended it - an interesting alt-history note that we are unlikely to really figure out the answer to.