Category Archives: Top Tens

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (4) French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars

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Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David 1801 (public domain image)

 

(4) FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY & NAPOLEONIC WARS (1789-1815)

 

Cue the La Marseillaise!

The wars that made the modern world – and the modern world wars. Indeed, I’ve seen it persuasively argued that the Napoleonic Wars should outrank the First World War as the more genuinely global conflict. And the French Revolution – along with its subsequent wars – are generally regarded as the landmark of modern political history, hence the god-tier special mention entry.

Napoleon needs little introduction – the Corsican artillery officer who commandeered the French Revolution and crowned himself Emperor of France to dominate Europe.

Napoleon distinguished himself as one of the most brilliant military commanders of history. Under his leadership, the French armies repeatedly defeated numerically superior Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies – outfighting coalition after coalition led and financed by Britain.

The French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were not the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the modern joke – a somewhat unhistorical slur in any event given France’s military history, although the Book of Lists did rank France among its Top 10 Most Defeated Nations in Modern History – but the armies that forged a French empire across Europe from Spain to Russia and from Italy to Denmark.

But in the end Napoleon lost his Napoleonic wars – his empire dismantled, France completely defeated (once and for all in a battle subsequently commemorated by Abba) and Napoleon himself exiled to progressively more pathetic islands.

Despite his strategic and tactical brilliance, Napoleon was undermined by his own flaws. One basic flaw was his nepotism in handing out kingdoms or nations as prizes to his relatives – most critically in giving the kingdom of Spain to his brother Joseph, which prompted Spain to rise up against France in the Peninsular War, the running sore or “Spanish Ulcer” of Napoleon’s empire

Of course, it didn’t help that Napoleon was relentlessly opposed by the British, who were unparalleled in magnificent bastardry – with their most cunning aspect to pose as being nice, as if they were just going about playing cricket rather than taking out almost every country on earth in the name of empire.

In fighting the world’s greatest maritime power, Napoleon was handicapped by his lack of understanding of naval strategy (or his navy’s lack of ability) as well as geopolitics. It was trying to fight outside Europe (and on the seas) that Napoleon met with his earliest (and most consistent) defeats.

For all his romping around Europe, he effectively was bottled up in Europe by the British navy, unable to project his power into the world. All his victories in Europe did not change the basic fact that true world power had moved from the center of Europe to its edges – to the maritime empire of Britain and the continent-spanning empire of Russia, which ultimately crushed him between them. And in the end, all Napoleon’s wars achieved was handing world empire over not to himself, but to two successive Anglo-Saxon powers, Britain and the United States (the latter not least through the Louisiana Purchase) – the real winners of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Napoleonic Wars also initiated the rise of Germany under Prussia – with Prussia reforming itself militarily, and then, as part of the Congress of Vienna seeking to beef it up for a better balance of power, acquiring industrial regions in Germany that transformed agrarian Prussia into an industrial leader in the nineteenth century.

Of course, Germany was to have the same fatal flaw as that of Napoleon before them, bottled up between Britain and Russia as well as misjudging the extent to which world power had moved beyond Europe. Actually, their situation was even worse, as world power to their west had moved across the Atlantic to the United States, well beyond their reach. Indeed, only twenty years after Waterloo, another Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville predicted Russia and the United States as the two global powers – a process that visibly took shape during the Napoleonic Wars.

The French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars saw the transformation of Europe and the world – spreading revolutionary principles over much of Europe (then identified as liberal with the same distaste as a subsequent era was to identify socialist or communist).

Those principles saw the transformation of formerly aristocratic armies into the beginnings of modern warfare, not least the levee en masse or mass conscription of armies – which saw the French revolutionary army achieve objectives that had eluded the French monarchy for centuries

It also saw the beginnings of total war – with the dawn of industrial warfare (with the Industrial Revolution lending Britain the ability to punch above its demographic weight) and the dawn of ideological warfare, as well as the emergence of nationalism (or “people’s wars”) and militarism in the culture of war

“The wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of Britain as the world’s foremost naval and economic power, the appearance of independence movements in Latin America and subsequent decline of the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the introduction of radically new methods of conducting warfare.”

To which might have been added other things, such as the relative peace in continental Europe during the nineteenth century, and the territorial expansion of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. And my own pet theory that the destruction of indigenous nations or peoples in the Americas and Australasia can be traced to Napoleon. Not directly, of course, but indirectly through the Louisiana Purchase, consolidation of British “settlement” in Australia and Latin American revolution or independence, which accelerated the impending destruction of indigenous peoples or nations.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (3) Religious Warfare

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Baldwin of Boulogne entering Edessa in 1098 – painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1840 (public domain image)

 

 

(3) RELIGIOUS WARFARE

 

Holy war, jihad and crusade.

Similarly to psychological warfare, all warfare is religious warfare.

Well, not really, although I do see religious warfare as being wider than the term is usually applied – essentially as a subset of the psychological warfare that is ubiquitous throughout warfare. Granted, that subset is more about motivating or mobilizing your own fighting power by increasing cohesion, discipline, morale, resilience or resistance – essentially religion as a force multiplier, although it can extend to eliminating or reducing your enemy’s religion for the same effect in reverse.

As such, it arguably has similar origins in prehistory as psychological warfare in general – perhaps not in wars of religion as we understand them but in beliefs of supernatural assistance or protection in combat.

Religious warfare is usually applied to the sectarian wars fought between or within the world’s largest – and distinctively monotheistic – religions, Christianity and Islam, even if those wars overlap with secular causes.

Note that distinctive monotheism – while religious warfare has been identified or at least argued for other religious traditions, both contemporary and historical, it is commonly seen to have particular force for monotheism, notably in Christianity and Islam but also traced back to the traditions of ancient warfare seen in the Bible.

However, religious warfare is an incredibly complex and contentious subject, worthy of its own top ten (or several) – “The degree to which a war may be considered religious depends on many underlying questions, such as the definition of religion, the definition of ‘war’, and the applicability of religion to war as opposed to other possible factors.”

That extends to the observation I’ve frequently seen that all modern wars are wars of religion – to the extent that they are based on political ideologies that resemble religions – although I think it has an element of truth, particularly when applied to the ideological war of WW2.

The more usual observation by historians or those from similar academic disciplines is that only a small minority of wars are religious wars, although I think that is viewing religious warfare in a narrower sense than I do as a subset of psychological warfare.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (3) American Revolutionary War & American Civil War

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Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851 (public domain image)

 

(3) AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR & AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (1775-1783 & 1861-1865)

 

That’s right – two wars for the price of one in this special mention, the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the American Civil War (1861-1865). Also two wars that could be described as the commencement of modern history – and certainly of the predominant superpower of modern history, the United States.

These two wars earn their special entry mention for a number of reasons – firstly as representative of those categories of war that deserve (and will get) their own top ten (and special mentions), revolutions and civil wars.

Of course, those two categories tend to be overlapping, as revolutions tend to evolve (or devolve) into civil wars – that is, if they don’t start out that way. For that matter, we often forget the American revolution was itself a civil war between British subjects – loyalists and revolutionaries.

And the American Civil War has also been seen as the unfinished business of the American Revolutionary War, with the victor of the American Revolution effectively as the South (or what Gore Vidal called the Virginian junta). Indeed, some have seen both as part of series of Anglo-American civil wars back to the English civil war. Not to mention the American Revolutionary War’s loose sequel, the War of 1812.

However, both are more than representative – each earn top entry in those categories. In large part that’s due to their iconic predominance in American history and therefore in the American popular culture that is to a large extent global popular culture.

But more so because I categorize the American Revolution as the best revolution – firstly, because it succeeded, and secondly that it did not collapse into despotism like other revolutions. Pro tip – revolutions are best when they are limited. The more radical the revolution’s goals – the more it seeks to overturn and upend – the more likely it is to fail, or worse, succeed as despotism. Also – shout-out to the American Revolution’s good fortune in its quality of leadership, particularly Washington (with his only rival in popular American reverence being its Civil War president Lincoln).

Secondly, these two wars also earn their special mention in another category of wars that will get their own Top 10 – American wars. Although in that case I do cheekily profess to rank them by their art of war – and the American Revolutionary War ranks up there with the best American wars in art of war.

In large part, that is because it is almost unique among American wars as the Americans fought it as underdogs, against the largest and most powerful maritime empire in history (of course, that is, apart from their own subsequent modern maritime empire)

And they won it through the tried and true art of war for states weaker than their adversaries (as well as Americans generally in their bigger wars) – having others do the fighting for you. In particular, the French – but also the Spanish and Dutch in what was effectively a world war against Britain.

Not so much the American Civil War of course, which was fought entirely between themselves without foreign allies or intervention – and remains, not coincidentally, the American war with the highest American casualties.

Thirdly and finally, these two wars earn their special mention for their own significant impact in history, military or otherwise.

The American Revolution looms larger here, inspiring as it did the Haitian and Latin American revolutions. And it not only inspired the French revolution, but directly led to it as the French monarchy had bankrupted itself fighting the American revolution – literally two revolutions for the price of one.

The American Revolution also not only saw the United States gain independence from the British maritime empire, but ultimately supplanting it as world power, fuelled by their territorial expansion across the continent that also originated with the American Revolution.

And perhaps Europeans – particularly Germans, who were unified under Bismarck at about the same time – might have paid more attention to the American Civil War as more indicative of the attrition, industrial mobilization and general slog-fest of modern warfare, as opposed to, say outliers like the Franco-Prussian War.

Lest we do too much cheerleading for the American revolution, let’s remember its losers, apart from the British (as well as French and Spanish) monarchy. British loyalists – many of whom fled to Canada or elsewhere. Those native Americans allied with the British or who otherwise sought to thwart the growing United States. And of course slaves and women, as the new American republic deprived both of liberty or representation, uncannily echoing classical Athenian democracy.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (2) Psychological Warfare

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Photographic portrait of Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt in 1921 and signed by Freud – probably the most iconic image of Freud (public domain image)

 

 

(2) PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

 

Psywar, psyops, military information support operations, political warfare, hearts and minds, shock and awe, show of force, propaganda, disinformation

All warfare is psychological warfare.

No, seriously.

Yes, I know the term psychological warfare is usually to connote means of targeting an adversary’s morale or collective psyche – whether of their military, civilian population, or political state (or any part or combination of those) – apart from (or adjacent to) the use of military force.

However, war has always used psychological ‘force’  (and ‘space’ or ‘time’) – such as bluff, deception and intimidation for fear and shock – as much as physical force in combat from its very origin in prehistoric or primal warfare (to the extent we can infer it from observations of more contemporary tribal warfare) or even animal intra-species conflict.

After all, it’s best to reduce your enemy’s fighting power by reducing their cohesion, discipline, morale, resilience or resistance (or alternatively increase your own) – and better yet to avoid as much fighting (or as many casualties) as possible by causing them to break altogether into desertion, flight, retreat, rout or surrender (or alternatively mobilize your own forces against such things). In short, defeating the will of your enemy.

There’s Hannibal or the Mongols using deception or subtertuge to give the impression of forces as present or to inflate the apparent size of their forces. There’s the Mongols – quite the practitioners of psychological warfare – using the carrot of leniency and the stick of annihilation to encourage surrender. There’s the use of sirens on German Stuka aircraft in WW2 for their psychological effect (as well as other uses).

Of course, it’s not always about ‘negative’ impact, reducing or breaking your enemy. It can also be about ‘positive impact’, such as enlisting them to you – although that tends to involve the more usual usage of psychological warfare against their civilian populations or political states apart from or adjacent to the use of military force.

“Psychological warfare involves the planned use of propaganda, fear, and manipulation to influence the emotions, attitudes, and behavior of an opposition group, without relying on physical force. Its primary goal is to break an enemy’s will to fight, undermine morale, and cause confusion.”

Tactics of psychological warfare – particularly in the usual sense of not involving military force – include propaganda, disinformation or deception, demoralization and intimidation.

“The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people” – “various techniques aimed at influencing a target audience’s value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior.”

 

RATING:

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (2) Crusades

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Richard the Lionheart on his way to Jerusalem by James William Glass, 1850 (public domain image)

 

(2) CRUSADES

 

The Crusades – giving religious warfare a bad name for a millennium!

But seriously, the Crusades had everything – not surprisingly, as they took place at the crossroads (heh) of history, three continents and three major world faiths (with almost every variant of sect and some other faiths thrown in).

There’s the Crusades themselves, from which there are a number to choose. Eight or nine of them, counting the more formal crusades identified as such in the Middle East (by subsequent historians), but not counting all the pseudo-crusades or quasi-crusades in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as weird and generally disastrous spinoffs such as the People’s Crusade or the Children’s Crusade. If you throw in things like the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, Northern Crusades, crusades against heretics like the Albigensian or Cathar Crusade – “kill them all and let God sort them out” – and the crusading rhetoric of the Ottoman Wars, then you could easily compile a Top 10 Crusades.

There’s the wider theme of religious warfare, beyond the crusades to other wars, exemplified by wars fought by, between or within monotheistic religions, such as the wars fought as part of the Protestant Reformation. That theme arguably also extends to wars of modern political ideology or moral causes, including religious or ideological terrorism. It’s not without reason Eisenhower called his memoirs of the Second World War “Crusade in Europe”.

And there’s the metaphorical use of crusade – as well as analogous forms of crusading movements – for ideological, moral or social movements, and the paradigm of crusading as a metaphor for military or political campaigns fought for a belief or ideal.

Back to the more formal Crusades in the Middle East, on the European or ‘Western’ side, you have the Roman Empire coming together, in both its major western and eastern successors – the Catholic Church represented by the Pope in Rome answering the call for aid of the eastern Roman empire, which history disguises as the Byzantine Empire but I’ll use here for convenience of nomenclature.

And answer the call they did, most famously with the knights of military orders – with my favorite the Templars or Knights Templar, which became rich and powerful, but ultimately ran afoul of the French monarchy and the Pope. Also worshipping Baphomet if you believe the medieval gossip.

Of course, the Crusaders were styled more as the Holy Roman Empire, or the founders of that empire, the Franks (despite the Franks increasingly being, you know, French) – and indeed Europeans in general continue to be called some derivative of the term Frank throughout Asia even today.

There were also Vikings or rather their adventurous successors, the Normans. And you can throw in those scheming Venetians, who ultimately succeeded in diverting the Fourth Crusade to attack their rival, the Byzantine Empire itself (whose claims to the Holy Land were conveniently forgotten by the Crusaders).

That was to prove one of the most short-sighted schemes of history, fatally wounding the empire that had long stood as the southern bulwark of Europe against Islamic invasion. Do you want Ottomans besieging Vienna? Because that’s how you get Ottomans besieging Vienna. Twice.

And on the ‘Eastern’ side, you have a whole host of Islamic combatants, kicked off by the Seljuk Turks taking most of what is now known as Turkey from the Byzantine Empire (leading to that call for aid that started the whole Crusades), but most famously personified by Saladin (albeit he was of Kurdish ethnicity).

My favorite in the whole Crusades remains the Order of Assassins, who derived their name from the hashish with which their founder Hassan al-Sabbah doped them up and who in turn lent their name to our term for assassins.

Lacking the force for more conventional military campaigns, the Assassins focused on – you guessed it – targeted assassination as they infiltrated everyone, Muslim or Christian, until they were defeated by an enemy that came from too far away to have been infiltrated, the Mongols.

That’s right, the Mongols pop up in the Crusades, as they popped up virtually everywhere at that time. Even more interestingly, the Crusaders and Byzantines sought out the Mongols as allies against the Muslims.

This lent itself to the legend of Prester John, a mysterious Christian sovereign whose kingdom moved about Asia and Africa, much like the land of the Phantom – playing its part, as the Crusades did in general, in subsequent European maritime exploration and empire.

 

RATING: 5 STARS****

S-TIER (WHAT ELSE? GOD TIER!)

 

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (1) Prehistoric & Primal Warfare

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Cave painting of a battle between archers, Morella la Vella, Spain – public domain image used in Wikipedia “Prehistoric Warfare”

 

 

(1) PREHISTORIC & PRIMAL WARFARE

 

Hobbes vs Rousseau – the Hobbesian state of nature or “the war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes) as against Rousseau’s more noble savage state of nature.

Sadly this special mention is not for some Great Prehistoric War fought between mammoth cavalry and evil Atlantean overlords in the style of the film 10,000 BC – or a tyrannosaur-riding Neanderthal fighting off everything in the style of the Primal animated TV series, although that series seems closer to Hobbes’ state of nature.

It’s for the sheer timescale of prehistoric war compared to historic war, corresponding to the scale of prehistory in general compared to history – 98% or so of the entire span of humanity on this planet so far, all but the last 5,000 years or so out of 300,000 years. And prehistory only gets longer if you throw in our hominin ancestor species as humanity, which potentially lengthens that span to 3,000,000 years.

There’s also that prehistory didn’t just disappear with the advent of recorded history – or rather didn’t consistently disappear across time and place, instead enduring in places more remote from recorded history until the modern period. And prehistoric war hasn’t even ended now, hence the better description would be primal war – as a type of war, exemplified by ambush and raid, to which humanity regularly returns, atavistically time and time again.

Most fundamentally, there’s Hobbes vs Rousseau – the philosophical significance of prehistoric war in understanding the origins of war itself.

Of course, the origins of war in prehistory is the subject of theory or outright speculation, as by its nature prehistory involves those human societies without recorded history – typically Neolithic or Paleolithic, but potentially also more recent societies without written historical records.

It’s where prehistory meets philosophy, hence the opening dialectic of Hobbes versus Rousseau – the ongoing debate over human nature and violence or war. “The existence — and even the definition — of war in humanity’s hypothetical state of nature has been a controversial topic in the history of ideas”.

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously proposed that the original “state of nature” of humanity (or human nature) was inherently violent – the war of all against all in which “the life of man” is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Against that, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau also famously proposed a more idealistic and idyllic state of nature as more free and peaceful – subsequently styled as that of the “noble savage” – made unequal and violent by “civilized” society.

That debate over human nature continues, not least in speculation or theories of prehistoric war, “spanning contemporary anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, history, political science, psychology, primatology, and philosophy in such divergent books as Azar Gat’s War in Human Civilization and Raymond C. Kelly’s Warless Societies and the Origin of War.”

Essentially, it boils down to those who argue for prehistoric war and violence, potentially at even higher rates than those in recorded history, and those who argue for more peaceful prehistory.

To put it that simply, however, removes all context or nuance from a debate that is much more balanced or varied, reflecting a more complex situation – that prehistory was both more violent than asserted by proponents of prehistoric pacifism and also more pacific than asserted by prehistoric warmongers.

Most concede that violence or war in human prehistory was highly variable between different societies at different times in different places or circumstances. Some societies were notoriously warlike, such as the Maori of New Zealand, the Yanomami (dubbed “the Fierce People”) of the Amazon or the inter-tribal warfare in Papua New Guinea.

On the one hand, archaeological studies of human remains from prehistory have suggested a higher rate for violent injury and death substantially above those in recorded history. One interesting feature is that a recurring motive for inter-tribal warfare is raiding for nubile women – as with the Yanomami, suggesting that the legendary motive for the Trojan War may not be so far removed from the historic or prehistoric truth.

On the other hand, depictions of human violence or war is comparatively rare until relatively recently in prehistoric art. Proponents of prehistoric pacificism persuasively suggest that low population density among prehistoric tribal hunter-gatherers – and the potential costly nature of violence between them – both allowed for and pushed towards avoiding conflict, typically by migration.

Another issue is that even if or where Paleolithic societies were violent, the scale of that violence was necessarily limited or disorganized – in the nature of feuds and raids or ambushes and skirmishes. Some argue for what is termed endemic warfare – in which “war is often ritualized with a number of taboos and practices that limit the number of casualties and the duration of the conflict”. Of course, endemic warfare could readily escalate into actual warfare without such limits.

Others have also asserted various historic or prehistoric event horizons that saw the escalation of war. One such is the development of missile weapons such as bows or slings allowing for less risk than melee combat. Another more commonly argued one is the horizon between the Paleolithic and Neolithic – with the increased sedentism from agriculture in the Neolithic seeing a corresponding increase in the intensity of scale in war.

One obvious model for theories of prehistoric war is more recent or contemporary tribal warfare. And one could argue that tribal war remains the predominant model for war in general – that most wars in history are tribal wars at heart.

Top Tens – Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (1) Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire

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The Course of Empire: Destruction (1836) – one of a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole (in public domain) and typically the painting used when someone wants to use a painting to depict the fall of Rome, albeit the series depicts an imaginary state or city

 

(1) DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

 

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire – that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

I don’t think it is overstating it to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as the PTSD of western civilization. Europeans looked to the Roman Empire as their state or imperial model, with kingdoms or states purporting to succeed or revive it in one form or another thereafter.

Even now, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire informs much modern discourse about state failure – from Edward Gibbon onwards, “we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears”.

I would rank it in my top ten wars but for the lack of a definitive war – although my top ten entry for the Hunnic Wars comes closest – or that matter it is many wars, hence the special mention albeit in god-tier. Also as decline and fall, it involved the former as much as the latter. The Romans were consistently their own worst enemies – not just in their relentless civil wars but also in aspects of internal decline that were observed even as early as the second century – at its peak! – by contemporaries such as the historian Cassius Dio, who lamented the decline “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”.

But our interest here is its external fall or military defeats, most notoriously at the hands of barbarians at the gates – the Germanic tribes that swept over the empire in what history calls the Barbarian Invasions or Migration Period.

The empire was shocked to its core with the sack of Rome itself – twice, firstly by the Visigoths in 410, and secondly by the Vandals, who thereafter lent their name to wanton destruction, in 455. These sacks of Rome were still shocking even though the imperial capital had been moved to Ravenna in 402, such that the Roman Empire might more accurately be styled as the Ravennan Empire instead.

And there’s something about the Romans desperately trying to hold one line after another in that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” that resonates with me. Indeed, any last stand or waning force often invokes the fall of the Roman Empire, both in history, and as we shall see, in fantasy or science fiction.

And there’s certainly plenty to choose from with the fall of the Roman Empire in the century from the disastrous defeat in the battle of Adrianople against the Goths in 378, which opened the floodgates to barbarians invading and setting up kingdoms within the Empire itself, varying between alliance with and opposition to the Empire, until the Germanic leader Odoacer decided it would be easier not to have a puppet emperor and deposed him instead in 476.

Of course, what history tends to forget is that the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire was of the western Roman Empire – the eastern Roman Empire survived and even thrived for another millennium after the fall of the western empire. It even had a damn good shot at recovering the western half of the empire under Justinian and his legendary general Belisarius, before receding again. It then ebbed and flowed, until its final decline over two centuries before its conquest by the rising Ottoman Empire in 1453. So there’s plenty to choose from there as well.

Indeed, the decline and fall of both western and eastern Roman Empires was invoked by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings with Gondor – the eastern half of the Numenorean states that survived the fall of the western half Arnor. Of course, that would make Gondor correspond to the Byzantine Empire, increasingly focused on its capital city Minas Tirith corresponding to Constantinople making its last stand against Sauron – who would correspond to, ah, the Ottoman Turks?!

Anyway, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – and the Great Migrations or Barbarian Invasions – might be considered to be on the scale of a world war, but is a little too piecemeal in space or time.

And one can argue we are still living in the decline of the Roman Empire. Or on our Third or Fourth Rome (or more), going by all the countries that have claimed the succession to the Roman Empire. Or the Empire never fell…according to P.K. Dick. Or something like that.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (Preamble)

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Mushroom cloud above Nagasaki after atomic bombing on August 9, 1945. Taken from the north west – photograph by Charles Levy, US National Archives and Records Administration, public domain image

 

 

I’ve ranked my Top 10 Wars of history, but it doesn’t end there – nor does it end with my Top 10 Types of War, because there is almost an infinite variety of types by or into which one can classify wars.

There’s certainly enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten, including my usual weird and wild special mentions towards the end.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (Preamble)

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Raising the flag on Iwo Jima as memorialized by the west side of the Marine Corps War Memorial, Arlington Ridge Park, Virigina

 

I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 WW2 Combatant Art of War Rankings

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iconic poster image of the 1970 film Patton, starring George C. Scott as the titular US general

 

 

TOP 10 WW2 COMBATANT ART OF WAR RANKINGS

 

I’ve ranked my Top 10 Wars by art of war so now it’s time to rank the major combatants in WW2 by their art of war, drawing from my occasionally idiosyncratic application of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War

Just a reminder – I ranked WW2, the top entry when ranking my Top 10 Wars in general, in tenth place for art of war, albeit in wild tier as something of a paradox.

Part of that paradox is that despite being one of most complete victories in military history (and anomalous as such in the modern history), winning the war took a lot of fighting – seemingly contrary to Sun Tzu’s maxim of winning without fighting.

That paradox is deepened in that the major combatants all demonstrated military proficiency at different points or in different ways – hence this ranking of WW2 combatants by art of war.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT SUN TZU TIER?)

 

(1) CHINA

 

On the one hand, it seems apt that China, the homeland of Sun Tzu, should rank in top spot for art of war in WW2, particularly given the irony that, despite its claim to The Art of War, China is one of the most defeated nations in modern history.

On the other hand – what the hell? China as exemplar of art of war? In WW2?!

China – the nation that spent the war wallowing in its persistent defeat by Japan and only avoiding complete defeat because it was simply too big and because Japan was defeated in the Pacific by the United States?

Yes, because there was more than one China in WW2. I’m not talking the primary combatant – Nationalist China, the Kuomintang China under Chiang Kai-shek that is and was usually recognized as the China of WW2.

Yes, that China spent the war being relentlessly pounded into defeat and through no real fault of its own other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time – next to Imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.

No, I’m talking the other major China in WW2 – Communist China under Mao Zedong.

That China went from the verge of complete defeat by Nationalist China – a defeat from which the famed Long March was a desperate retreat – to being a viable contender and ultimately victor in the postwar resumption of the civil war between them.

And it did that by one of the best ways of winning without fighting – having others do the fighting for you, with both its enemies fighting each other and Imperial Japan effectively defeating Nationalist China for it.

Yes, that was more by stroke of good fortune than strategy, but they certainly exploited that good fortune to the fullest once it presented itself.

 

(2) USA

 

USA! USA! USA!

But seriously, you must have been expecting this.

The USA was the supreme victor of WW2, emerging as the greater of the two global superpowers after the war with the fewest casualties of any major combatant (at least relative to population, and depending on estimation or through civilian casualties, in absolute numbers).

And it did that through supreme art of war – indeed, WW2 was arguably peak American art of war.

Given that the American art of war in WW2 did involve actively fighting and strategy on its part while the Chinese Communist art of war was essentially fortuitous, I might have ranked the United States in the top spot. The only reason I didn’t was to finally give China some much needed Sun Tzu street cred otherwise missing in its military history – and that where the US ended the war as it started in a position of strength, the communist Chinese were able to reverse a position of weakness to one of strength.

The United States has proved itself in the art of war (at least until recently) by being Batman – fighting wars using money and allies. In the Second World War, the United States was the goddamn Batman of the world, winning through the sheer power of its money or economic production, not to mention its Soviet ally doing most of the actual fighting against Germany. Saving Private Ryan? More like Saving Private Ivan, amirite?

As Stalin is reputed to have said of the victory in the Second World War (and if he didn’t, he should have) – England provided the time, Russia provided the blood and America provided the money. That’s how you win without fighting.

Another classic way of winning without fighting is picking curb stomp battles. Such was the economic strength and resources of the United States in both world wars, that they were really a foregone conclusion after its entry, especially when you throw in the other allies. As the United States swamped Japan with its ships and planes in the Second World War, it did indeed have some actual curb stomp battles, such as the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’ in June 1944, labelled by American naval aviators for the ease with which they shot down the remnants of Japanese carrier aviation (prompting Japan to resort to kamikaze attacks).

There was also American isolationism – the worst place to be in war is at the front line and the best place to be in war is sitting it out at the sidelines, ideally playing the balance of power and making money through financing or supplying your favored side and entering to tilt the balance of power in your direction (and you know, for your allies to pay you back).

On the other hand, but for American isolationism, the United States might well have preempted the war before it even began, arguably the model way of winning without fighting – or at least emboldened Britain and France to do so.

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(3) USSR

 

Wait, what?

Sure, the USSR won – and won big, the other of the two global superpowers after the war and occupying the other half of Europe to that by the United States.

But it also lost big – with the highest casualties of any combatant – and won hard as opposed to the nearly flawless victory of the United States, doing most of the fighting contrary to Sun Tzu’s maxim of winning without fighting.

As Stalin supposedly said, Russia provided the blood and America provided the money – and I know which I’d prefer to provide.

Still, the Allied victory in general and the Soviet victory in particular demonstrates the limitations of Sun Tzu’s pre-modern art of war, which did not anticipate modern firepower or industrial production – with WW historian H.P. Willmot observing for the latter that a modern industrial state can only be defeated by attrition. Not to mention the improvement of defensive firepower during the war – from about 1942-1943 – that goes to explain the endurance and strength of German resistance when the tide turned.

Despite Sun Tzu’s airy-fairy pseudo-pacifist poetry of winning without fighting, sometimes you can’t avoid fighting – and one of those times is when you’re on the other end of the largest invasion in history. That’s when you’d better know how to win with fighting or at least learn quickly.

It is easy to point out Soviet deficiencies in 1941 but seemingly less easy to give the Soviet Union credit for its resilience in avoiding collapse that evaded its predecessor and for that matter its own nascent state against the Germans in the First World War.

Similarly, it’s easy to attribute Soviet victory to brute force, but not so much the considerable skill with which that force was applied. The Soviets had originated the true ‘blitzkrieg’ – the concept of the ‘deep battle’ or ‘deep space battle’, a strategy aimed at destroying enemy command and control centers as well as lines of communication. They just lacked the means to employ this strategy fully until the fourth year of war, when it had sufficient elite or experienced armored and mechanized formations as well as the logistics and mobility to support them. And oh boy, it showed with the Soviet campaigns from Operation Bagration onwards, among the best of the war – or any war.

H.P. Willmott argues for the complete transposition of the German and Soviet armies in terms of military proficiency by 1945, when “the operational and technical quality of the Soviet army was at least the equal of the Wehrmacht at its peak” while “the German army of 1944-45, for all its reputation, had the characteristics so meticulously catalogued when displayed by the Soviet army in 1941”.

The biggest mistake by the Soviets in the art of war was their pact with Germany. By it the Soviets hoped but failed to achieve one of best ways of winning without fighting – having others do the fighting for you, in its adversarial version of having your enemies fight each other, in this case Germany and the western allies.

But wait a minute Stark After Dark, I hear you say – didn’t you place the Chinese communists in top spot for much the same strategy? The difference is that the Soviets failed where the Chinese communists succeeded.

You see, like most things, there’s a catch. The adversarial version of having your adversaries fight each other needs good judgment – in correctly judging that your adversaries will destroy each other, rather than one defeating the other and becoming stronger or more dangerous to you as a result.

In fairness, everyone else was as surprised as the Soviets by the collapse of France – but then, not everyone else was next in the firing line, let alone left alone on the European continent with the nation that hated them. And that brings us to the lapse of judgement that was very much on them – correctly judging your “adversaries” for how adversarial they actually are to you, where clearly Germany was far more adversarial to the Soviets than Britain and France.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(4) BRITAIN

 

Yes, Britain won but they didn’t win as big as the US or USSR – and like the USSR, they also lost big, not in terms of casualties (which were less than their casualties in WW1) but in global hegemony, which they effectively ceded to the US, as well as the loss of their empire.

Although in fairness that’s probably not as much of a loss as it might seem, as their empire and global hegemony were waning, at least from WW1 but arguably from the late nineteenth century onwards, when their industrial economy that was the foundation for both was eclipsed first by the United States and then by Germany. In reality, the twentieth century was for Britain really just a matter of choice as to which rising power – the United States, Germany, and Russia or the Soviet Union – to align themselves with and their choice to align with the United States is hardly surprising.

When it comes to the art of war in WW2, Britain resembles the US for winning without fighting, only just not as well from reason of being a similar but smaller military power closer to the firing line.

That is, Britain won by allies doing most of the fighting for it, as well through financial or imperial assets and intelligence.

Indeed, when the British did do their own fighting, they were consistently bad at it (until the end of 1942) – which arguably takes their art of war up a notch, to winning even when fighting badly.

WW2 historian Gerhard Weinberg observed that Britain’s consistently poor performance fighting the Germans and Japanese is an issue deserving more attention by historians. Even Churchill observed that the Battle of El Alamein was a turning point for Britain, in that before it they almost never had a victory and after it they almost never had a defeat.

That again just takes their art of war up a notch in my eyes, such that I’ve quipped that in both world wars, the British were lackluster soldiers but excellent diplomats and spies, running rings around their adversaries to win.

Also, fighting in the war may not have involved their traditional “splendid isolationism” but did involve a certain practical isolationism – that is, the practical effect that they sat out most of the fighting in Europe, albeit by fortunate circumstance of their island geography and necessity of being predominantly a naval power. In a sense they improved upon the trench warfare of the first WW1 by sitting behind the bigger trench of the English Channel and accordingly had fewer casualties. Hence their notorious caution and circumspection about opening the second front compared to the Americans.

On the other hand, their biggest mistake essentially involved trying to sit out any military action at all towards Germany prior to the war – appeasement in other words – by which they could readily have preempted the war before it began. Anzar Gat observes a common observation among historians – that the victors of WW1, Britain and France, are unparalleled in forfeiting their overwhelming military advantage that could readily have defeated their German opponent before it even began at effectively no cost to themselves.

That would have been the true art of winning without fighting – and Britain’s failure to do so had to cost it dearly from ranking any higher.

 

C-TIER (MID-TIER)

 

(5) CHINA

 

Yes, it’s the other China – the China that was the primary Chinese combatant in WW2, the China that was (and is) usually recognized as the China of WW2, Nationalist China or Kuomintang China governed by Chiang Kai-shek.

As I observed in my entry for communist China. Nationalist China spent the war being relentlessly pounded into defeat and through no real fault of its own other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time – next to Imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.

I’m still ranking it higher than France.

In fairness, China didn’t do too badly, particularly given it was the weakest of the major combatants, lacking the industrial base of its antagonist Japan or anyone else really.

WW2 historian Gerhard Weinberg thought it a question for historians rivalling that of Britain’s persistent poor military performance as to how China was able to endure as it did.

At least part of it might be attributed to art of war. China was simply too big and populous to fall to Japan, so could resort to what was effectively a passive guerilla strategy, avoiding fighting Japan in open contest (or at all) as much as possible. The result was a stalemate for Japan, forcing Japan into conflict with more powerful nations for the resources to continue the war – nations that would win China’s war for it.

Also, I have to admit blowing up the Yellow River dykes to flood the Japanese out as pretty badass.

 

D-TIER (LOW TIER)

 

(6) FRANCE

 

That’s right, we’ve reached the lowest tier, the losing tier in other words, among the winning side – France.

Put simply, France lost in 1940 and only ranks on the winning side because that defeat was reversed by the victory of the other Allies, liberating it in the process. Sure, some expatriate or exiled French forces fought as part of the Allied forces, as did other defeated European nations. However, the question caustically posed by WW2 historian Gerhard Weinberg remains – why the Vichy French regime or colonial governments submitted so readily to the Germans or Japanese but resisted the Allies.

I suppose you could argue that having other nations liberate your nation and defeat your enemy for you is one way of winning without fighting, but that’s too dependent on their goodwill and strategic interests aligning with yours for it to count in my opinion.

Also, their defeat in 1940 was too big for that, in one blow wiping out French military reputation and substituting the trope of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. As military historian H.P. Willmott observed, it poses the questions of “why the German victory was so rapid and one-sided, or in its alternative form, why it was that the French army for three centuries the warrior host of Europe, and for the previous two decades the most prestigious army in the world, collapsed the way it did”.

The only reason I don’t rank France lower is that it did, after all, end up on the winning side. That’s not as flippant as it sounds but reflects that their longer-term strategic instincts were essentially sound in that Germany would not win the prolonged conflict they anticipated. It’s just that they failed their immediate defense and hence to remain an active part of that prolonged conflict which was then won by others, France lacking the resources, space or time that the other major allied combatants had to recover from defeat.

Their biggest mistake was to forfeit their overwhelming military advantage they held over Germany as victor in the First World War by not pre-empting the war before it began. You know, in those two decades as the most prestigious army in the world – when they could have done it by show of force at no cost to themselves as late as the German reoccupation of the Rhineland.

 

(7) ITALY

 

And from the losing tier of the winning side, we go to the winning tier of the losing side – Italy, which managed to negotiate a conditional surrender and switch sides to the Allies (with far fewer casualties than Germany or Japan).

That is, apart from Finland, which also managed the impressive feat of extracting itself from the war while avoiding Soviet occupation.

Italy is notorious for its lack of military proficiency – a notoriety that is overstated as Italy was not so much universally bad as it was inconsistent in military performance, an inconsistency that is largely explicable from its underlying weaknesses before and during the war.

However, this is not ranking combatants by military proficiency but by art of war, particularly as it involves winning without fighting.

And for that Italy deserves credit for pulling off its massive bluff of being taken far more seriously as a great power despite its weakness. Italy’s biggest mistake was calling its own bluff by, you know, actually getting involved in the war, although even then it tried to win with as little fighting as possible while preserving its one real strength – its navy.

That goes all the way back to its anachronistic policy of trying to revive the Roman Empire, half a millennium too late after the world economy had moved on from the Mediterranean – which in practice involved attacking countries poorer than itself, Abyssinia and Albania, hence of little benefit to itself even when it won.

The war on Abyssinia was particularly ill-advised, doubling down on anachronism with a revival of the Scramble for Africa – alienating its former WW1 allies Britain and France, while leaving its forces exposed by their isolation if Britain did turn against them, as actually happened in WW2.

Italy’s contribution to the Spanish Civil War was a prewar drain on its military with little benefit to itself – while it did see victory for a fellow idealogue regime, that regime was unable and unwilling to reciprocate the favor to Italy or Germany in WW2.

Italy should have taken a leaf from Spain’s book, the latter proving far wiser in its cautious neutrality despite initial German victory. Italy should have stayed sitting it out at the sidelines rather than making the Mediterranean and ultimately itself a front line.

In other words, playing the balance of power and making money through trading with both sides, which probably would have seen it entering the war, if at all, on the winning Allied side later in the war and without turning itself into a battlefield except perhaps at the Alps.

Ironically, the British Cabinet also considered whether Britain’s situation would be better if Italy remained neutral or entered the war on Germany’s side. They concluded the former – narrowly – but they may have underestimated how much Italy would drag Germany down

I’d like to think that Italy was playing the long game against Germany, professing to support Germany’s war while secretly working against it by deliberate incompetence – much like Admiral Canaris and his Abwehr in Germany – but sadly I can’t quite pull off the mental gymnastics and it was just too self-destructive for Italy even if it was true.

 

F-TIER (FAIL TIER)

 

(8) JAPAN

 

This can’t be a surprise. If this was ranking combatants by fighting or military proficiency, Japan would rank higher. In terms of the art of war or waging war as opposed to fighting, Japan was hopelessly outclassed by the Allies – and indeed outranked by every major combatant except one.

Japan literally defined strategy only in the short term, with the concept of the decisive battle, particularly as held by its navy – that is, that war would be won by fighting and winning a single knockout below. First, Pearl Harbor, then Midway, and then, well, never as it forever receded back to the horizon and Japan ever more desperately sought to conserve their fleet – until it was a kamikaze last-ditch defense to somehow knock out the Americans in the invasion of Japan itself.

Japan’s long-term strategy was incoherent, to the extent that it had any at all beyond wishful thinking that the United States would simply give up or relied upon Japan’s allegedly superior martial qualities to overcome the overwhelming material superiority of the United States.

“There was no plan at all to invade America, knock her out of the war or destroy her capacity to wage it. In short, there was no strategic war-winning plan at all. Instead, there was an optimistic assumption that, at some stage, America (and Britain) would negotiate a compromise peace.”

In one of my favorite anecdotes from popular historian Paul Johnson, “on 3 January 1942, H!tler admitted to the Japanese ambassador, General Hiroshi Oshima, that he did not yet know ‘how America could be defeated'” – “That made two of them: the Japanese did not know either.”

Worse, not only did Japan have no long-term strategy, but it also effectively had two bodies for planning any strategy, almost as much in competition with each other as with their external adversaries, in the worst high command arrangements of any combatant – its army and navy.

Even at the most basic tactical level, Japan “had almost completely neglected submarine warfare, both defensive and offensive” – which meant that it had no means for ensuring supplies for its forces scattered across the Pacific “or, conversely, of inhibiting the Allies from moving their own supplies”, such that “in the long run, Japan could not prevent America from developing a war-winning strategy.”

That was a fatal flaw for an island nation almost entirely reliant on maritime trade or supply lines, going to war in a naval contest that was essentially a competition of industrial production against an opponent of overwhelmingly superior economic and industrial capacity.

In what you may detect to be a running theme among the Axis, Japan’s biggest mistake was going to war at all when it should have done everything possible as an alternative to avoid it – “Japan’s decision to go to war made no sense. It was hara-kiri”.

And that went all the way back to every decision to go to war – or to ally itself with the Axis – after the First World War. The occupation of Manchuria in 1931 simply opened up the potential for wider war with the larger nations bordering it, China and the Soviet Union, as indeed occurred. The wider war with China exceeded Japan’s ability to defeat it or achieve anything other than a stalemate – and the need for resources, particularly oil, to continue waging that war forced Japan to the widest war of all in the Pacific against the United States, that was entirely beyond its means for anything but defeat.

 

(9) GERMANY

 

The lowest of low tier – no prizes for guessing Germany as the major combatant ranked lowest for the art of war in WW2.

Japan might otherwise have ranked lower as its strategy was more incoherent, but Germany loses out if only because they pulled this crap twice. As historian H.P. Willmott paraphrased Oscar Wilde, to lose one world war may be regarded as misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.

As for Japan, if this was ranking combatants by fighting or military proficiency, Germany would rank higher – some would argue highest. As Willmott opined, Germany’s military genius lay in fighting, not in war. When it came to understanding war and waging it, Germany was hopelessly outclassed by the Allies – a situation shared by Germany’s ally Japan. All Germany managed to achieve in two world wars was its encirclement and attrition by enemies with superior resources.

As H.P. Willmott opined on his “theme of Germany’s defeat as a result of her inability to understand war” – The failure to understand the limits, both of military force in the conduct of war and of German national  power within the international community characterized Germany’s actions in two world wars, almost as if the very success of the one German leader who had understood both – Bismarck – blinded successive generations of Germans to these realities because they saw only his military victories”.

Their biggest mistake in the art of war? You guessed it – going to war in the first place, although as Willmott observed that went all the way back through successive German leaders screwing things up after Bismarck (which could be the subject of its own list).

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

(10) AUSTRALIA

 

I’m rounding out ten entries for my WW2 combatant art of war rankings with Australia in wild tier, because we all know if I was to rank it anywhere else, it would be in god tier top spot for both military proficiency and art of war.

For military proficiency, Australia was the first to defeat both Germany and Japan on land – with Australia’s Ninth Division stopping Rommel’s Afrika Korps at Tobruk in 1941 and Australian forces stopping the Japanese at Milne Bay in 1942 (as well as along the Kokoda Trail).

And art of war for a small nation (in population) like Australia is essentially a matter of allies – so swapping out Britain for the US as ally in the war against Japan, the only real threat of battle on or invasion of its own home territory that Australia faced in war, is prime art of war.

Rightly so too – Australia has never forgiven Churchill for screwing it over in both world wars, “starting with his habit of borrowing the country’s navy and army whenever world war broke out”. Gallipoli, anyone?

But at least Gallipoli didn’t risk the invasion of Australia itself, as opposed to WW2 where Churchill first sought to retain Australia’s troops in the Middle East, then to divert them to Burma when Australia recalled them to defend itself against Japan.