"Most overrated battle in history" Topic

We are all familiar with the famous battles of history. Ones with all the books and coverage. But, sometimes, can they be over blown, not really as important as memory has made them? What battle do you feel has been overrated?

For me it would be Gettysburg. The whole idea that this battle could have won the war for the South and captured Washington just ain't happening for me. First, there was no way Lee was going to destroy the Union Army. Clausewitz states that to totally defeat an enemy army one must outnumber them 2-1, have good terrain and superior cavalry.
Lee clearly didn't have the first two and it is questionable if his cavalry was better. Second, the Union had the interior lines and could have retreated if hard pressed. Third, after the second, and for sure the third day, Lee's losses would have stopped him from resuming the offensive even if he had won. Finally, Washington was heavily fortified and garrisoned, so with a banged up army could Lee really have captured the capital. I think not.

But that is just my opinion on that battle. My question remains, what battle do you feel has been overrated and why?

Wasnt the goal of the Northern invasions by the South to win a significant battle on Northern soil and crush the North's will to continue the fight?

Got to agree with you. Gettysburg. The South was winning most of the battles 'til they made that foolish foray into rural Pennsyltucky! It's just logical; weaker army? make them come to you.

For that matter the ACW is perhaps the most overrated war! Bad generalship, ugly uniforms, bad causes on both sides, and the only item supposedly used first time in war that actually debuted in the ACW was barbed wire!

Just look at the casualties! Generals who learned their trade with smoothbore flintlocks as the norm threw troops at other troops armed with rifled percussion muskets, rifled artillery, breechloading artillery and small arms. And all in the style of Napoleon 50 years earlier!

I guess the ACW just has better access to media!

Battle of the Bulge. Bad weather, low supplies, and an allied air force that would eventually get off the ground in good flying weather. The Germans never had a chance.

There are probably a lot on a similar level. Given the fuel situation, I'd go with the Bulge as well. It wasn't going to win the war for Dolph baby.

Anything with Patton or Monty in it!
Ducks below parapet

Some Island battles in the Pacific, A few were needed by the Air Force so had to be taken. But some islands if they still had Japanese troops and their decedents who still didn't want to surrender what difference would it make?

For that matter the ACW is perhaps the most overrated war! Bad generalship, ugly uniforms, bad causes on both sides, and the only item supposedly used first time in war that actually debuted in the ACW was barbed wire!

Nicely summed up.

Some Island battles in the Pacific

Peleliu comes to mind.

On Gettysburg I sort of agree. The Confederates did make a huge mistake invading the North. They gave up the moral High Ground of defending the South against Union Aggression, so bad idea. However, it was significant for the North that they decisively defeated Lee in a battle of his choosing.
As for the ACW being overrated, never. It was the fight for the soul of America.
Bulge was an awesome battle, only overrated if someone exaggerates its importance.
Now to start a real fight, how about Trafalgar. Don't hate me my British friends, I am a huge Horatio Nelson fan, but was the poorly led and poorly trained Franco-Spanish Fleet really that big a threat to England. Was there any question that Nelson would prevail as he had at the Nile, Copenhagen, St. Vincent, etc. Most of the captured ships sank in the storm that followed. There were 33 enemy ships. What about the hundreds in the Anglo-Dutch Wars? The Four Days Battle?

At the time of Gettysburg America wasn't really that important to Britain and Europe so that battle and the ACW in general whilst being of mild interest didn't really cause much concern one way or the other. The Confederates had threatened to stop supplies of cotton to Britain as a bargaining ploy to which the British government had pretty much shrugged their shoulders and said "suit yourself" and gone off and got their cotton from India. One kind of wonders why the Confederates didn't expect that response, trying to strongarm the biggest empire in the world whilst fighting a Civil War was probably not a good idea, I'd've thought they needed all the friends they could get. Desperate times call for desperate measures I suppose. Then again Britain never really had any serious intention of getting involved on either side. There wasn't much to be gained from getting involved in someone else's war 3,000 miles away having fought the USA to a draw 50 years previously.

Is the ACW more important now? Probably as with the benefit of hindsight we can see America's rise to being a superpower coinciding with the British Empire transforming into the Commonwealth as colonies were granted independence. We simply couldn't afford to maintain an empire after playing such a major and costly role defending our own and Europe's freedom in WW2.

So I suppose the importance of battles rises and falls as the fortunes of the nations involved do.

I will say though that given the choice between living in Victorian British urban squalor and taking my chances in a new life across the pond I'd've been on that boat, trying on my nice blue uniform and wondering which way Virginia was as I believe a fair number of Brits actually did at the time.

Balaklava. I guess it isn't the battle so much as the things that come out of it. All of that heroism for essentially nothing.

But I agree that Gettysburg is pretty overrated too. As a matter of fact I'd say that about almost the whole Eastern theater of the ACW. The Western theater is neat.

Waterloo.

I would define "overrated" for my purposes as "Famous, bloody, and not all that decisive."

How about Jutland? Both sides kind of collectively thought "What the hell was I thinking? You aren't getting ME to repeat that!"

Gettysburg was certainly thought to be decisive, by both sides. I am not about to argue with those who were there!
Ditto the Battle of the Bulge.

I would have to agree with Pictors about Balaclava. If it were not for that poem…

I will join in the iconoclasm and offer up Overlord. I hate to say this , because I find it both utterly fascinating and one of the most inspiring and heroic undertakings in military history.

However.

Had the invasion been repelled, it would have played hell with Western Allied morale, but we wouldn't have quit the War. Any German propaganda victory would be mitigated by the relentless advance of the Soviets and the continued strategic bombing campaign. The Soviets would have been disappointed, but hardly slowed down by the news.

How much in men and materiel could the Germans have shifted East? Well, they had fallen for the FUSAG disinformation, so they still might have expected a second invasion force in waiting and been unwilling to undermine western defenses. Had they wished to, however, they would have had tough sledding given the massive infrastructure damage done by Allied air power, resistance organizations, and special ops teams in the run up to Overlord. The critical loss to the Allied Expeditionary Forces would have been to the land elements and perhaps some of the naval assets. The airpower which crippled German logistics and troop movements before and during Overlord would be intact and available to interdict any significant transfers to other theaters.

Sure, the War would have dragged on longer and the outcome would be different in terms of total casualties and areas left under post-war Soviet control, but I think that might be the extent of it.

OFM,

About Gettysburg being thought decisive. Not at the time. During the war Gettysburg was just another battle. It wasn't until after the war and the "what ifs" of the Lost Cause that it became so major.

" Bad generalship, ugly uniforms, bad causes on both sides, and the only item supposedly used first time in war that actually debuted in the ACW was barbed wire!"

"bad causes on both sides"? I'm not sure what you're referring too, but Andrew Jackson considered secession such a mortal threat to the Union that he informed the South Carolina state assembly that he would order the navy to bombard Charleston and burn it to the ground if they followed through on their threat to secede. Jackson was hardly anti-slavery.

The Spanish Armada….the storm smashed up the fleet…but could there actually have been an invasion?

Agincourt
Isandalwana+Rourke's Drift

The most "overated" battle with the most ink written about it has to be the Little Big Horn. It doesn't matter it you believe Custer was an idiot or hero. It doesn't matter if you believe the Indians fought with great heroism that day or if they were just lucky. For every one book you find on the conflicts & settlement of the Western U.S. there has to be at least 5 on the Little Big Horn.

I'm not saying that the battle isn't important. I'm just saying that it is a shame that some historians would rather regurgitate the Custer mythos or rewrap the scholarship of others than to research other events that shaped the American West. But that is just my opinion.

-Elaine

I think I agree on all of the battles listed so far.

El Alamein. Yes it was a significant axis defeat, but hardly on the scale of Stalingrad.

It did however mark a turning point in Allied fortunes, just as the Somme did in 1916.

The battle of New Orleans. A battle that wouldn't have happened if they'd waited about a week and found out about the treaty of Ghent and a so-calld victory to repel the re-colonisation of America by Britian… which was never the British intention, never going to happen anyway!

Also Plassey. On the surface an amazing victory against overwelming odds, until you realise it was mostly won by turncoats treachery!

Any battle which did not stop the enemy from their strategic plans and only delayed an attack. One example would be The Spanish Armada against England. the Spansih attacked again soon afterward.

I agree with Extra Crispy as to Waterloo

While it has generated a ton of minis and games, bottom line is that I think that barring a very, very, very major victory over both the British and the Prussians the outcome post Waterloo was pre-ordained given all those Austrians and Russians marching west

"and the only item supposedly used first time in war that actually debuted in the ACW was barbed wire!"

What, wasn't the Henry repeating rifle and the Gatling gun first uses in the ACW? What about the Ironclads? Am I missing something here?

Anything with the Brits in …. probably.

Well said AlanYork. Good post.

Invented by Richard Gatling, it is known for its use by the Union forces during the American Civil War in the 1860s, which was the first time it was employed in combat.

Not so much in terms of media or books written about it, but my nomination is The Battle of the Bulge in terms of gaming coverage. I remember a time in the late 70s and 80s where board game designers seemingly became obsessed in producing Battle of the Bulge games. SPI, Avalon Hill, GDW amongst others churned out titles such as "Battle of the Bulge" then "Ardennes '44", "Hitler's Last Gamble", "Drive on Bastogne", "Patton's Glory", "Nuts!", "Battles for the Bulge Quad" (4 games in 1 in case you were wondering), "The Road to Wiltz" and even "One Page Bulge". The most innuendo laden of them all was "James F. Dunnigan's Bulge" wherein you could purchase it and open it up to check out what made his Bulge so different. I'm ubercommando, try the chicken.

ubercommando, you missed Wacht Am Rhein SPI's battalion level Battle of the Bulge. God, how many times I played that game, funny the Germans never won.

> Am I missing something here?

Effective Submarine attack (the Turtle was not really a submarine and it was ineffective).

The following website has a whole list of things, some have been mentioned already and others I were introduced earlier I think.

link

Gattysburg. I admit it had a lot to do with the South losing the war, but not nearly as much as the surrender of Vicksburg, which happened at the same time. But all the Important People lived in the East, so Gettysburg got (and still gets) all the attention.

El Alamein is another one. The whole North African campaign was a side-show to the war in Russia, but the UK needed some good press, so they hyped this battle to the hilt.

I think morale is a huge factor. So for that reason alone I wouldn't class El Alamein as overrated. Also, if Rommel had all his own way in North Africa things would have been a lot trickier for southern Europe, and even southern USSR perhaps.

How could I have forgotten "Wacht Am Rhine"? The biggest monster Battle of the Bulge game of them all!

Arnhem.
Totally botched by the allies and yet hailed as a great feat of arms.

Dunkirk.
Get your behinds kicked and then tossed into the ocean. So call it a great victory because there were survivors.

Crete.
Virtually no opposition. Not much of a fight.

The Alamo / Camerone / Thermopyle
Last stands are overrated.

Lee invaded Pennsylvania to capture food and stores, while allowing the farmers in Virginia to have an undisturbed growing season. (Explains the Union's priority of laying waste to the Shenandoah Valley the next year.) Also, there was the political angle. Popularity and support of the war was not universal in the North, especially the Northeast. Had Lee been successful in threatening Philadelphia or New York through the summer, the political outcry and fallout in Washington may have proved greater than any military attack on it. Granted, Gettysburg turned out badly for Lee (I believe he felt the war could not be won after that defeat.), but had he won on the first day (it hung by a thread), American history could be significantly different. Imagine a world with a CSA and a USA, say in 1918, or in 1944. Great Britain might have had two opportunities to adopt German as its official language. So those second and third days at Gettysburg may have greater ramifications than just a single battle lost by the South.

Don

Arnhem I'd agree with, along with some of the last stands. Nt so sure about Dunkirk – without it I could see a peace being made with Germany and even at the time Churchill was realistic. "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations."

I agree Arnhem was overrated, but then again, I'm not looking at it from the German perspective. (I probably feel this way because I think "A Bridge Too Far" is one of the most overrated war movies of all time. In a way the movie is much like the actual battle…….A big splash with little result, a total waste of a lot of fine talent and resources.)

Don

> I think "A Bridge Too Far" is one of the most overrated war movies of all time

It was panned when it was released though. This one from Roger Ebert being somewhat typical

link

Gettysburg – although in one sense it was just another battle, it's loss broke the morale of the ANV, sure they fought hard and very well afterward but from then on they never again believed that 1 reb was worth 10 yankees. This next bit has more to do with Grant then Gettysburg but after Gettysburg (and Grant taking command) the ANV was never left in possession of the battle field – unless Grant decided to slide past them on his continuing march to Richmond…

Villers-Bocage.

But then the battle was puffed by professionals, both at the time by the SS propaganda company Wittman debriefed to and later on in paperback by "Paul Carrell".

All the best,

John.

Holy crap – I was curious why you put "Paul Carrell" in quotes and looked him up. He was one of the Nazi regime's chief propagandists, and never stood trial! To think I bought a couple of his books … time to lighten the bookshelves I think!

link

Agincourt. What was the point (ahem)? The superiority of English longbow tactics against plodding French commanders had long since been demonstrated in previous battles. Nothing new to see here, everybody just move along. The Hundred Years' War limped on another few decades and then eventually ended with the English kicked out of France anyway, despite winning the battles most often remembered (in English-speaking history, at least). The long conflict seems pointless now and would it have really mattered in the long run which dynasty sat on either the French OR English throne(s)?

I have to wonder if Agincourt doesn't owe its fame more to later popular Victorian English histories as well as to Shakespeare's brilliance (if there had been no Agincourt, Shakespeare would have invented it for Henry V). Is this battle as celebrated elsewhere as it is in the UK, or the US by extension?

The Crusades seemed all-fire important back in their day, but today, the West just seems embarrassed by them and I remember in school they were skimmed over as pathetic failures, even though thousands of people endured them for centuries and entire nations were once consumed by their fervor. So I don't know, by modern reckoning would we consider them "overrated" or just hapless/pointless? The effect they had on world history seems to have been more oblique than direct.

I love the Fourth Crusade. You can't make stuff like that up.

Well said AlanYork. Good post.

Nice of you to say so 1815Guy. Thank you.

I definitely find the Crusades fascinating and have many books on the subject -- so I suppose I wouldn't really call them "overrated". Just seems like the sort of conflict that moderns would find irrelevant (even tho' it's not, and in a way I personally think them perfectly justified according to the beliefs of the times and the nature of statecraft in that era. In the West today, for example, people tend to decry the Crusades but no one criticizes the Islamic Conquests that were the first "outside" invasions of the Holy Land. But this is perhaps a digression. Carry on.

My criteria for an over rated battle is that regardless who won the outcome of the war would have been the same.

Given that Gettysburg would rand high. On the other hand had the Allied won Market Garden they would have crossed the Rhine into Germany, with the likelihood of an early end to the war.

Waterloo is an interesting proposition. Given the intransigence of the Allies I suspect that even a French victory would not have made a great deal of difference in the ultimate removal of Napoleon. Its benefit is as bloody as it was it mercifully put a quick end to both Napoleon and the war.

Bob Coggins

Not so sure I'd include Market Garden as over-rated. It was a full scale production, and the eventual outcomes hung on a knife edge at quite a few cliff-hanging points during the operation. And as has been pointed out, success could have ended the war much earlier, with countless lives saved on both sides.