What battles in history would you mark as tactical victories but (with hindsight) were strategic failures? I suppose many such battles might be counted among those so I am looking for the more notable instances of this.
For instance, the one that springs to my mind is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A smashing tactical victory but of course it led to the United States entering WWII which ultimately doomed Japan.
Details would be good too if you are so inclined. Again going with the Pearl Harbor attack on the face of it the attack looked to be a huge success. Yet Nagumo, despite advice to do follow on attacks, backed off leaving the oil storage facilities and dry docks at Pearl intact. I suppose it is debatable whether taking those out would have done anything more than extend the war in the Pacific but still it was a major miss in that attack.
Any others? I suppose my above example might open the door to things such as Operation Barbarossa but I am trying to think more of a single engagement that while at first looked to be a success but ultimately was not a success in the bigger picture. That said don’t hold back and have fun with this as you like.
That was a tactical victory for the US? Inasmuch as it wasn’t a tactical victory for the Vietnamese I thought they found the effort worthwhile.
I am unclear whether the US really thought the Chinese would step in. Of course it still fits the OP (despite it not really being a single engagement)…just saying I have never been clear on that point.
Kind of misses the OP. More like Operation Barbarossa. Just a bad move overall rather than a winning battle with a longer term strategic downside.
Breed’s Hill (Bunker Hill) was a British victory, but it cost them over 1000 casualties. General Henry Clinton: “A dear bought victory. Another such would have ruined us.”
The Tet Offensive was a tactical disaster for the Viet Cong. It finally brought them out into the open, where US forces could engage them in a battle we were trained for. The VC were wiped out. From that point on, they were no longer a viable force in the field. However, the offensive rocked the US population, and kicked the demand for withdrawal into high gear. For the first time, Middle America started questioning the war. Strategic victory went to the Communists.
Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders, 1204. Although they took the city and thus were able to take control of the immediately region of Constantinople for decades, it was only at the cost of permanently severing East-West Christian relations. They never got to the Holy Land either.
Invasion of Russia, 1812. Although Napoleon won tactically and a “strategically” in that the Russians were forced to withdrawl, in advancing toward Moscow Napoleon doomed his army to wither away over winter, as the absolutism of Russia meant that the Czar only had to capitulate if he felt like it, and he didn’t. The Russians lost as badly (they weren’t as winter-hardy as is popularly believed,) but just like the Germans in WWII, every French troop lost was much harder to replace than Allied. If you want to narrow it down to a specific battle, the Battle of Borodino let Napoleon capture Moscow, but it might have been better to just retreat to the nearest large city to shorten his supply line.
McArthur’s complete rout of the North Korean army was a total tactical victory. That neither he nor the US seriously considered that the Chinese would feel their interests were at stake and intervene was the strategic disaster. While China only became red in 1949, few of the Allies seemed to really consider the power, and certainly not the mindset of the Chinese as they watched a joint Soviet-Chinese satellite state crumble.
Possibly, but unlike Barbarossa, the Soviets pretty much conquered Afghanistan. They just couldn’t fully control all of it at once, nor did they consider that it would draw in financial and manpower support from neighboring Muslim countries.
The Suez Crisis of 1956 essentially involved a single battle. Egyptian strongman Nasser seized the Suez Canal in '56 (which had been under British control just a few years before but was under private control at the time). This gave him control over a then-vital route for commercial shipping. Britain, France, and Israel put pressure on Nasser to leave, but he refused. A few months later, all three countries planned for an Israeli invasion of Egypt in order for the Israelis to take the Canal. After Israel had begun its invasion, Britain and France would “intervene” to stop the fighting - but really to support the Israelis and help them consolidate the Canal.
The invasion was a complete victory militarily. The US and the USSR, condemned the invasion strongly, however, and made it abundently clear that the invading forces should leave. The USSR portrayed the invasion as just another example of an imperialist, colonialist plot by capitalist nations. In order to prevent Egypt and other Arab nations from fully going over to the Soviet side, the US also refused to condone the invasion and called for a complete withdrawal. The US also threatened to sell its currency reserves of the British pound if Britain did not withdraw. When the British agreed to withdraw, the French felt obligated to do so as well.
So, militarily, the Suez Canal invasion was a success but the implications of that success were a strategic and political disaster.
Dunkirk (Hitler’s victory marred by failure to capture/eradicate British forces). An ultimate morale-booster for the Allies.
The second (current) invasion of Iraq may ultimately prove to be the classic example in modern times of a sweeping tactical win and a strategic disaster.
Not bad, but I’d say this was more a lack of complete tactical failure by the British, and therefore a lack of complete tactical success by the Germans. The ~300,000 men saved and the morale boost had strategic implications, but It didn’t mean that Germany’s conquest of France had backfired. As Churchill put it, wars are not won by evacuations.
Not really. I suppose one might make the case that the killing of all prisoners at the Alamo and Goliad might have inspired more ferocity among the Texans at San Jacinto, but really they were simply battles that were won in a campaign that eventually failed. There was no strategic disaster that resulted from the deaths of 183 (sometimes 187) men in one lopsided battle.
One has to observe about the Suez crisis, had the British, French and Israeli forces been allowed to get on with it, then there would not have been any 6 day war, nor any occupation of the part of Jordan now known as Palestine, and with Egypt pretty much taken care of, there’s little chance that Syria would have taken the path it did in Lebanon.
It’s one of those ‘what if’ scenarios, how would ME politics have developed ?
How about The Day of the Rangers? About 160 US soldiers versus the whole city of Mogadishu. The Rangers kicked ass and took names, suffering (comparatively) light casualties themselves. Their reward for the victory? From the linked article:
Good example-I think that the whole intervention in Somalia was a mistake. So what if the US managed to capture Adid? he was just one of of many warlords who would have stepped into the leading role. As far as i know, Somalia continues to be a lawless hellhole. Basically. the Us FORCES WALKED INTO A TRAP. tHERE WAS NO PLAN TO EXTRICATE THEM, AND NO BACKUP FORCE AVAILABLE TO RESCUE THEM. tHE us MANAGED TO “ACHIEVE” TWO THINGS IN sOMALIA: (1) WE MANAGED TO appear to be weak and indecisive
(2) we wound up killing a lot of innocent people, because we fought in the center of the city.
It was a complete mistake. Coming after the slaughter of 18 pakistani troops (at the hands of Adid’s men), it made the UN reluctant to do anything more.I think the slaughter of the Pakistanis was meant as a warning-one that we chose to ignore. A complete disaster with no redeeeming features.
I think it should be worth distinguishing between tactical victories that were “merely” costly (e.g. the Alamo) versus victories that ultimately turned out to be a loss for the temporary victor.
The assault on Arnhem, 1944. Bridges taken, British bridgehead later wiped out, threw a spanner in the works of Allied offensive plans and killed the idea of mass use of paratroopers for some time.
Would the Battle of Valcour Island count? The British forces clobbered Benedict Arnold’s flotilla of papier mache boats, but did not advance on Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga, wasting a golden opportunity to smash the rebels.