What's the dumbest moment in history?

I’ve got two favourites:

  1. The 1893 peacetime collision and sinking of HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown resulting in the loss of 352 lives. The Flag Officer, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, ordered 2 columns of ships to turn in towards eachother and drop anchor in an almost impossible maneuvre deisgned to impress the spectators. Such was the naval culture that, of the captains of the 12 ships involved, not one raised any objections or deviated from their course until the last second. Norman Dixon’s book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence gives a detailed accoun of this which is hilarious if only you can forget about the loss of life.

2.This is not at all historical but a BBC television announcer, covering a snooker match in the early 1970s, said “for those of you at home with a Black and White television set, the blue ball is behind the brown ball.”

I suggest you read this thread.

Re: The various mentions of Hitler’s delay of Operation: Barbarossa (Invasion of Russia) in order to conduct Operation: Punishment (Invasion of Yugoslavia) and Operation: Marita/Merkur (Invasion of Greece/Crete)
Try as I might, I’ve never been able to find a direct reference to Barbarossa having been directly delayed by the Balkan operations. The major cause of delay in Barbarossa was simply the time required to assemble the various forces at their starting points, and preparing logistics for the invasion. German transport and logistical support was woefully primitive and haphazard throughout WW II, in contrast with their fighting forces, and this was a major drag on the pace of advance in Russia once the invasion actually began. The second chief cause of delay was an unusually prolonged spring rainy season (“Rasputitsa”, I believe, though I’m uncertain of the spelling. Russia has rainy seasons in both the spring and fall). I don’t think more than two dates were ever set for the commencement of Barbarossa. The first, in mid-May, I believe was set well before the Balkan offensives were executed. It was postponed into June because of assembly delays and because various rivers near the border were still swollen from the spring rains. I don’t believe that the forces that invaded the Balkans were involved in the initial invasion of Russia in any event.

I would perhaps question the assertion that the Germans “planned on 6 weeks to reach Moscow”. The main strategic weakness of the invasion was its lack of a real plan. Hitler’s famous quote that “we need merely kick in the door, and the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down” was pretty much the extent of the strategic planning. If some of the General Staff and theater commanders saw Moscow as the primary objective of the invasion, many others did not. The chief concern of all commands was with the encirclement and obliteration of as much of the Soviet army as possible. The possibility that reserves and newly raised forces might be more than sufficient to replace that standing army doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone. While it is possible that the fall of Moscow would have crippled Russia due to its importance as a transportation and administrative hub, the Germans never even got to the point of developing that expectation. The drive to take the city in the late fall of '41 was merely an ad hoc move by Army Group commanders who saw an opportunity. The “shift” of objectives in 1942 to conquering the Ukraine and Caucasus was, in fact, the first real set of geographic objectives the invasion had ever had.

Backtracking a bit, the Balkans were not an inexplicable distraction for Hitler. The Italian situation in Greece had deteriorated to the point of the Greeks threatening to throw the Italians out of Albania. Worse yet for the Germans, the Greeks were feeling out how much British assistance they might be able to receive, and I believe were already hosting British aircraft. Hitler actually wanted to avoid a “two front war”, since he considered Britain to be dead on its feet and affairs in the west to be essentially concluded. The last thing he could tolerate on the eve of an invasion of Russia was the possibility of matters in the Balkans snowballing, with Yugoslavia and Greece perhaps encouraging independent thoughts on the part of his other halfhearted Balkan allies, with the British possibly even getting their foot in the door. The whole thing had to be crushed in short order, and that is what was done.

The real blooper/bonehead move in the Balkans was Italy’s back in 1940. Mussolini, in a snit over not having been granted French North Africa in reward for his 11th hour participation in the invasion of France (Hitler left it under the control of the Vichy French government, lest it look like even more of a joke), decides he needs to conquer /something/ in order to look like a big league player. So he invades Greece, a military dictatorship which until that time was likely to have eventually fallen in line as a German ally alongside Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Tens of thousands of Italian troops, which might well have made a difference if employed against the British in North Africa, were instead sent to their deaths against a Greek army dug in in formidable mountain terrain.

Also, regarding Yugoslavia, while Tito eventually developed wide enough support to seize the country as the Germans retreated, I don’t think the German army was really bled all that badly by the Yugoslavian resistance. Rather, they raised various local forces and legions to keep the partisans in check. While the partisans can be credited with keeping the Germans from exploiting Yugoslav resources and industry as effectively as they were able to in many of their other conquests, most of the fighting involved Croats vs. Serbs vs. Bosnians, etc., without the real line elements of the Wehrmacht having to get their hands dirty. The Germans encouraged an ethnic bloodbath because it prevented any significant unified opposition until they were in full retreat anyway.

Re: The Maginot Line
The fall of France was most certainly not a case of the French high command building the Maginot Line and hiding behind it while the Germans “went the other way”. Moreover, the Ardennes forest was not the main route of the German advance in 1914 (though it was in 1871).

The Maginot line went no further than it did for reasonable diplomatic reasons. Not only would it have been unneighborly for France to fortify its border with Belgium and Luxembourg, it would have implied that France was writing off those countries in the event Germany went on the warpath again. The Allied plan of defense was to assist in the defense of Belgium if the Germans threatened its neutrality again, and to defend from behind the Maginot line if it did not.

The original German invasion plan (“Plan Yellow”) called for a tank-assisted rerun of the World War I Schlieffen plan. Whether the Allied defense plan would have been able to halt the Germans in Belgium is debatable, though many modern historians seem to think that they could. A copy of Plan Yellow was captured by the Allies when a German courier plane was forced down, and the Allies used this information to encourage Belgian defensive cooperation.

The Germans, however, knowing that the plan had been captured, were not as bound by inertia as they had been in 1914, and considered modifying their invasion plan. General Manstein, backed by Guderian and other panzer generals, proposed a plan called Sichelschnitt (sickle stroke), which was essentially an inversion of Plan Yellow. Instead of sweeping along the coast through Belgium and down on Paris, the Germans would drive through southern Belgium and Luxembourg, and sweep up to the coast, thus cutting off the Allied forces attempting to defend Belgium. While many in the German General Staff doubted that armor could move effectively through the Ardennes, and feared that the flanks of such an armored drive would be horribly vulnerable to counterattack, Hitler approved it.

To make a long story short, most of the German High Command was as surprised by what the plan accomplished as the Allies were. France fell, not to a calculated German operation that bypassed a static and timid Allied army, but to a punch thrown by the Germans on-the-fly, which caught the Allies off balance as they tried to move rapidly to defend Belgium. Was building the Maginot Line a mistake? Probably, but only to the extent that less money could have been spent to adequately fortify the same frontage. The Allies real mistakes were in assuming that the Germans would not modify the captured plan, and in not taking greater care to guard their southern flank while massing on the Belgian border.

Re: Burnside’s Bridge
I’ve visited the Sharpsburg/Antietam battlefield, and seen the infamous bridge which, the guides note, crosses a stream that could easily have been waded. What they don’t mention is that the banks of the stream are very steep, and the stream would have impeded an advance as much as a fortress moat would have. Advancing across the bridge was tough, but trying to advance without the bridge would have been even tougher.

Re: the Petersburg Crater
This was an unorthodox idea, but not a dumb one. The failure came as a result of no one really wanting to commit their full support to the unorthodox tunnel/mine plan, with non-existent organization the result. As I recall, Burnside trusted an alcoholic subordinate to command the actual post-detonation assault, and it was he whose drunken stupor delayed the advance. I also recall the story that a last minute substitution was made, which replaced a specifically trained black regiment with a poorly briefed caucasian one. The justification was allegedly a combination of a racially-biased lack of confidence on the part of the local commanders, coupled with fear that if the attack failed it would seem that the black troops had been used as cannon fodder in a harebrained scheme. As it happened, the black unit ended up being committed in a later wave and being decimated anyway.

Re: the Magic Bullet
I agree with the comment about the positioning of the bodies. As the first bullet struck Kennedy in the back while the view of the famous Zapruder film was blocked by a road sign, there is no clear record of his and Connoly’s precise positioning at the moment of impact. A PBS special some years ago showed how a positioning of their bodies which would put their wounds in essentially a straight line is not at all far fetched.

Umbriel, that was a great post. You should do that more often.

Jeez, I could play this game all day :smiley: . Here’s a few more:

Antiochus III losing the first great battle of his life to Ptolemy IV at Raphia when he led a calvary charge that shattered one wing of his opponent’s army and he pursued instead of disengaging and turning the Egyptian flank. While he was off galloping across the countryside, the Egyptians rallied and shattered his army. 27 years later he lost the last great battle of his career to the Romans at Magnesia in <i>the exact same way</i>. What’s worse, he should have been well-aware that his ancestor Seleucus I was victorious a century earlier at the pivotal battle of Ipsus against Antigonus Monopthalamus and Demetrios Poliorcetes, when Demetrios pulled the <i>exact same stunt</i>.

The Battle of Tondibi in 1591, when a Songhai army of 30,000 faced off against an invasion force of 1,500 weary Moroccans. Instead of attacking directly the Songhai stampeded a massive herd of cattle at the Moroccans first, thinking to leisurely mop up the shattered remains. Instead the Moroccans fired their muskets at the charging cattle, the cattle startled at the noise, reversed course, and trampled the Songhai instead. The Moroccan invasion succeeded. Of course this one may not have been so dumb, as the Songhai weren’t really well-acquainted with firearms. Except I consider it pretty idiotic to even take a chance at being in the way of a stampeding herd.

The San Diego Chargers sign Ryan Leaf as their starting quarterback. 'nuff said :stuck_out_tongue: .

  • Tamerlane

Dumbest thing ever was the publication of the Ostend Manifesto in United States papers, this angered antislavery forces in the US and prevented acquisition of Cuba by the US and would lead to (but not necessarily be a direct cause of) the Civil War, Spainish American War, Bay of Pigs, Castro, Cuban Missle Crisis, et cetera et cetera. On the bright, it quickened the liberation of slaves through the Civil War.

“Massive frontier battles to be expected; duration up to four weeks.” - Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch as quoted by Keegan’s The Second World War

From Hitler’s Directive #21 dated 18 Dec 1940, which outlined Barbarossa:

“In the North a quick advance to Moscow. The capture of this city would represent a decisive political and economic success and would also bring about the capture of the most important railway junctions.”

And, from another source…

"Field Marshal Erich von Manstein described Hitler’s strategic aims as based primarily on political and economic considerations.

" ‘These were,’ he noted, ‘(a) the capture of Leningrad… (b) the possession of the raw-material regions of the Ukraine, the industrial centers of the Donets and later the Caucasus oil fields.’ " - Salisbury, The 900 Days

Unfortunately I don’t have detailed books on the planning of the operation, so the I can’t testify to what extent plans were made. The information I do have indicates that, yes, the initial stages were definitely targeted toward eliminating the Red Army, but I’m fairly certain the assertion that there was no greater strategic plan is wrong. It probably can be said the secondary stages were not throughly planned, but the sheer scale of the operation and reversal of expectations likely would have made any plans of that unfeasible anyway.

Oh, and BTW… I’ve seen Burnside’s Bridge, too. Yes, the bank on the opposite is pretty steep (and about 20+ feet high), but the point most critics raise is that a undefended crossing was just downstream a few hundred yards. We didn’t have time to reconnoiter the entire area when I was there, though. (Besides the fact that the stream was supposedly higher at the time.) I agree that it probably wasn’t the single dumbest decision ever made during the entire course of history…

I’ve heard this too.

R.H.S. Stolfi in Hitler’s Panzers East does give the “6 weeks” figure. I wouldn’t trust everything in the book, which is very partisan and at times ill-argued, but the guy did go over the German sources with a fine-tooth comb.

**

**

You sure about this? My Encyclopedia of World War II (vol. 4) has Directive 21 ordering the taking of specific geographic objectives in order, first Kiev, Smolensk, and Leningrad, then Moscow, then Murmansk. The final objective was a line running Astrakhan-Volga-Gorky-Kotlas-Archangelsk. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia has no direct citation to primary sources for this.

True, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, but I do say the French should have known it wasn’t impassable. Your point about the diplomatic reasons for limiting the Line and not writing Belgium and Holland off is well taken, but once the German rearmament program got into full swing, diplomatic niceties should not have taken priority over France’s security. Gamelin’s failure to keep a real strategic reserve, though, was probably dumber than the Maginot Line itself was.

My thanks to Jab1

Re: Mrblue92’s post –
I admit I probably overstated the Germans’ lack of strategic planning. Obviously, though, inasmuch those plans amounted to taking Leningrad, Moscow, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus, they essentially amounted to “take the whole damn place over.” The expectation was that they would have free run of Russia once the army on the border was annihilated. The geographic objectives were essentially a shopping list. There was essentially no anticipation of any possibility that the Soviets could rebuild their army around the eastern reserves, or continue any significant resistance after the collapse of the first line.

I believe that someone else earlier mentioned Stalin’s purges of his army leadership among the great blunders. I wonder if anyone has seen any reasonable evidence of the claim that the reason most of the Soviet army was sitting on the border waiting to be engulfed and devoured by the Germans was that they were massing for an attack on Germany.
Perhaps another thread?

I’d disagree with the “shopping list” characterization, as I expect there was a little more to it than that, but you are certainly correct that the Germans underestimated the Soviets’ resolve. I’d argue that assumption was not altogether unreasonable–after all, the Germans were welcomed initially by many Russians who thought (wrongly) that the Germans couldn’t be worse than Stalin.

I’ve not seen any evidence of that. On the contrary, ISTR a documentary mentioning that Stalin expected war with Germany was inevitable, but wanted to delay until '42 or '43 in order to increase Soviet readiness.

1.) According to Panzer Battles by Maj. Gen. von Mellathin (sp?) Hitler’s generals told him that they needed another two years before going to war with England to properly prepare. Hitler didn’t believe that England would go to war over Poland. Oops.

2.) Hitler not having an efficient method of allocating resources for R&D during the war, thus allowing the US to race ahead in developing a little thing known as the atomic bomb.

3.) Hitler’s parents deciding that having unprotected sex was a good idea.

4.) Hitler decided that Jews were evil and thus sending some of the brightest minds in Germany to either their deaths or to the welcoming arms of the US.

5.) The moment some monkey decided he/she would rather walk upright on the ground than spend his/her days swinging in the trees.

6.) The ability of Germany to develop nearly every successful military technique and structure during its existence, but managing to lose the two largest conflicts of the 20th Century.

Decca declines to sign the Beatles; declares that “guitar groups are on the way out”

During the 1980’s everyone one thinks that the Japanese are financial geniuses; Japanese snap up U.S. properties like Rockefeller Center; Japanese lose their shirts!

Anything involving slavery.

Churches refusing to have installed the newly invented lightning rod, belieiving that God wouldn’t strike a church with lightning. This despite the fact that churches were struck about as often as other buildings. Isaac Asimov once identified this as the key event in the rise of science.

Others:

Cop Rock: Dump the singing cops, and you had a pretty good show; with them, it was just goofy.

A church deacon, trying to raise money to make a series of inspirational movies based on bible stories, instead invests in a young filmmaker hoping to make big profits to finance the whole series. The filmmaker was Ed Wood; the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space (I’ll resist the urge to end this with "And now you know, the rest . . . "

“The colonials wouldn’t dare attack on Christmas Eve, so let’s get drunk and sleep in.”

William Henry Harrison’s inaguration speech: hours in freezing rain with no topcoat. He died of pnumonia a month later.

John Wayne is Ghengis Khan.

The internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, despite the fact that in the months between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the signing of the internment orders, no American of Japanese ancestry ever did anything remotely harmful to the war effort. Slavery was evil, but not necessarily stupid. This was evil and stupid.

As regards Al Campanis: He said that African Americans might not have the “necessities” to be managers in the major leagues. Ted Koppel did indeed give him several chances to retract, explain, or modify his statement, which he didn’t. Jimmy “the Greek” did something similar. He claimed that blacks dominated sports because the white slave owners bred the strongest males to the females to produce stronger offspring. Not true, wouldn’t have made a difference if it were true, and stupid to say on the air following the Al Campanis incident anyway. He also claimed that blacks didn’t dominate swimming because they were less bouyant. The greatest stupidity about these incidents is that these men didn’t realize that they were making inflamatory, racist statements.

First of all, what he said has been accurately reported above and was ridiculous and untrue. Campanis was an uneducated, old man who didn’t know what he was talking about but he didn’t have an ounce of malice in his heart. In fact, Campanis was instrumental in breaking the color barrier in baseball by bringing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers in the 1950’s. The reason for the interview was the anniversary of Robinson’s first game for the Dodgers. The interview was supposed to be about Robinson and Koppel ambushed Campanis with a relatively complex political question about the current state of minority management in baseball. Complex for Campanis anyway.

After the incident many African American former players rallied to Al’s defense including IIRC the widow of Jackie Robinson. He should have been fired. Public relations are too important in baseball and his answers to Koppel’s questions showed that he was horribly out of touch. In his time, though, he was a hero in the fight against ignorance and racism.

Haj

hahario: If you read my post carefully, you’ll see that I make no claim about what kind of man Campanis was (other than not very bright). I say that his statements were inflamatory and racist, without making any claim about the man himself.

I am aware of the role he played in bringing Jackie Robinson to the majors, and he deserves praise for having done so. The question he was asked was about why there were so few blacks in management, given the number of blacks playing the game. Asking a man who was in management, and who helped integrate the playing field, why management hadn’t also been integrated seems to be a legitimate qutestion to me. Especially given that the show he was on was a forum for political discussion, and the topic of the show in question was the integration of baseball.

If you read my post carefully, you’ll see that I make no claim about your feelings on the subject or your knowledge of the background of the incident and that I essentially agree with you on all of your points. I merely filled in some details that I thought explained the story a little better. Geez, 6, chill.

Hajario

Speak for yourself. I like indoor plumbing, penicillin, dentistry, air conditioning, and the internet.

Though there are still some trees around, if you want to head on out there…

If I inferred some meaning not intended, my apologies.

Hey, mrBlue92, I visit Antietam every couple of years or so, and I know it pretty well. There is a crossing just a couple of bends down the river, Snavely’s Ford. Following along the river it’s actually closer to a mile away. There is another, smaller ford about a quarter mile closer, but it connects with a steep, wooded hill, and was under observation by a small Confederate unit.

What I haven’t seen the what-ifers address is the nature of the terrain after the crossing.

It’s an extremely steep conical draw that leads up to a less but still considerably steep plain, with a large section of rocky scrub that would prevent the formation of anything but a skirmish line. The draw is very narrow, perhaps a hundred yards wide. At the top of that plain was D.R. Jones’ division. Jones had two brigades in reserve, waiting to plug any gaps. An assault up that draw and the hill after it still wouldn’t have allowed Burnside’s preponderance of numbers come to bear and wouldn’t have been any easier than the push up the easier terrain of the Rohrbach draw. As it happened, when three brigades finally did cross at Snavely’s, they marched under the lee of the hill to form up in front of the Rohrbach bridge rather than advance directly uphill from the ford.

It still would have been a bloody mess. The real stupidity was trying to cross there at all instead of continuing to pressure Lee’s decimated left and center, and that onus falls squarely upon the Young Napoleon.

I’m surprised that I have not yet seen it mentioned, but among stupid military moments, the British loss of Singapore to the Japanese, surely the most disastrous and unnecessary defeat of the whole Second World War, has to rank right up there. The stupidity displayed by Gen. Percival during that battle is just amazing in its scope and depth.