Tag Archives: History

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (8) Crisis of the Third Century

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Battle between Romans and Goths on the Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus dated to 250-260 AD

 

(8) CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY (235 – 284 AD)

 

Before the Fall came the Crisis…

With the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire deserving first special mention, is it any surprise that the Crisis of the Third Century, that dress rehearsal of the fall, is far behind?

The Crisis of the Third Century – also known as the Military Anarchy or Imperial Crisis – had much the same scope as the decline and fall. Indeed, the Crisis of the Third Century was part of the decline, even if the empire narrowly forestalled its fall for another two centuries. Many of the fundamental problems of the empire from the Crisis endured to the fall, even when in muted form.

Narrowly forestalled its fall, that is, as in the empire “nearly collapsed under the combined pressure of repeated foreign invasions, civil wars, and economic disintegration” – “at the height of the crisis, the Roman state had split into three distinct and competing polities”, the so-called Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire vying with the central Roman Empire in its western and eastern provinces respectively.

Indeed, had it collapsed – or fragmented – it is hard to imagine the eastern half of the empire enduring in quite the same durable form as it did two centuries later. For one thing, the empire was divided into thirds rather than halves – with what was to become the eastern empire, that is, apart from the Palmyrene Empire, more resembling a quarter than half, albeit not unlike the eastern empire after it had rebounded from Arab conquests. It also lacked the capital founded by Constantine – Constantinople, with its nigh impenetrable defenses against all but the most overwhelming siege – or indeed the seat of imperial government founded as its own distinctive new Roman empire.

Although mind you, the eastern empire pulled off its own near miraculous recovery from crises – note that plural, crises – to rival that of the third century, like it looked back at the classical empire’s direst crisis and said hold my beer.

Two things saved the classical empire in the Crisis of the Third Century, even if it went from classical to late empire.

The first was that, as fearsome as the foreign invasions were, they lacked the ability or even intent to conquer territory or form their own states within the empire, rather than raiding it for plunder albeit on a larger scale than ever before. Even the Sassanid Persian Empire – the closest adversary the Roman Empire had to a rival peer state – for all its successes only raided Roman provinces and moved its border slightly away from its capital.

The second was a series of soldier emperors or barracks emperors – mostly the so-called Illyrian emperors originating from that region as the then heartland of the Roman army – who managed to hold the line and turn the tide to restore the empire, “an accomplishment many historians regard as about as unlikely and impressive as any of Rome’s Golden Age achievements in building the empire in the first place”.

Foremost among them of course was Aurelian – Restitutor Orbis or Restorer of the World, who reunited the empire by defeating the rival Palmyrene and Gallic Empires – but he built on the achievements of the emperors who came before him, Claudius Gothicus and arguably also Gallienus, and had successors who consolidated his achievements, notably Probus and the emperor who is credited with finally ending the Crisis, Diocletian.

At the core of the Crisis was the political instability of imperial succession (and usurpation) suggested by the other names used for the Crisis (Military Anarchy and Imperial Crisis).

Tacitus had observed that the ‘secret of the empire’ had been exposed with the succession crisis after Nero in the first century – “that emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome”, a secret that excited “all the legions and their generals”.

Despite this observation, those legions and their generals had mostly followed the various imperial dynastic successions for the first two and a half centuries of empire – its founding Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Flavian dynasty, the adoptive succession of the Five Good Emperors, and the Severan dynasty.

In the Crisis, however, the legions and their generals had become very excited indeed – as one so-called barracks emperor succeeded another, usually by usurpation. And that’s just the line of imperial succession generally regarded as legitimate – beyond that there were literally countless usurpers, some of which we are still discovering through archaeology or coins.

Indeed, it often seems from the Crisis that where even the most minor commanders of a legion or legions had even the barest degree of military success (or were just left outside or stranded by the ebbing tide of imperial authority), they would proclaim themselves as emperor – or their legions would.

Not surprisingly, with Roman commanders and their legions marching either to advance their own imperial claims or against those of others, that saw them abandon the defense of the empire’s borders.

That was compounded by drain on population by the Cyprian Plague that raged through the empire, and which struck military barracks or manpower particularly hard – indeed the capture of Emperor Valerian by the Persians, the first time an emperor was captured by foreign forces, was attributed to his army being laid waste by plague.

The population decline of the empire also compounded its economic instability, characterized by the collapse of its currency and trade.

Through the gaping holes left in the imperial borders poured the empire’s recurring foreign enemies to raid it – further compounding the empire’s economic decline as the empire’s problems became an intense feedback loop as each problem cranked up the others.

Foremost in notoriety as the empire’s recurring enemies were the German barbarian tribes – who had grown in military capability (and relative population) through two centuries of contact with the empire, although they were not yet as capable as they were when they brought about the fall (and mostly replaced those Roman commanders and their legions vying within the empire).

The capabilities of the Germans were increased by forming new tribal coalitions or confederations – particularly the Franks, who raided across the Rhine through Gaul as far as Spain, and the Alemanni, who raided through the Alps into Italy, even threatening the city of Rome itself (the first external threat the city had faced for centuries) and giving Aurelian himself pause, inflicting his only defeat before he rallied to victory against them.

And across the Danube came the Germans who were ultimately to do more than anyone else to bring about the fall of the empire – the Goths, raiding as far as Greece and even Asia Minor because they managed to get themselves a fleet and there’s nothing worse than barbarians with boats.

All these German raiders paled in comparison to the Sassanid Persians – which as I noted was the only state on Rome’s borders that came close to being Rome’s peer – as they raided deep into Rome’s eastern provinces, particularly Syria.

As was typically the case, Rome’s worst enemy was itself as it fractured into three rival empires fighting among themselves. The core empire remained around Italy, fortunately including the Illyrian military heartland of the empire and its breadbasket in north Africa – but it lost its western provinces to the Gallic Empire led by usurpers, and its eastern provinces to the Palmyrene Empire, essentially a client state that had loyally led the defense against the Sassanid Persians but had gone rogue under its queen Zenobia.

Fortunately, along came Aurelian – breathing two centuries of life into the empire before the fall.

 

RATING: A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

Top Tens – History: Top 10 WW2 Combatant Alternate History Rankings

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Alternate (heh) cover for The Man in the High Castle (2018 hardcover Gateway edition) – I keep using covers for this book because it and those covers are so representative of alternate history, in general and for WW2 (fair use)

 

 

WW2 COMBATANT ALTERNATIVE HISTORY RANKINGS

 

I ranked my Top 10 Wars by alternative history scenarios, where I ranked WW2 in wild tier – as prolific or thematic in fantasy or SF rather than historical plausibility.

But how do the WW2 combatants rank by their alternate history, whether in historical plausibility or in fantasy and SF?

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

(1) GERMANY

 

Yes, it’s Germany in god-tier top spot for WW2 combatant alternate history rankings – and it isn’t even close.

WW2 alternate history is Germany. That is, alternate history scenarios for Germany – and particularly German victory – define WW2 alternate history, almost to the exclusion of anything else, albeit in fiction rather than historical plausibility.

You might say that is inherent in the very description as alternate history. After all, alternate history typically involves a different outcome than the actual one, which for WW2 would be Axis rather than Allied victory. Unless of course your alternate history scenarios involve the Allies (or least particular combatants within the Allies) having a better outcome than the one they did, but where’s the fun – or more precisely the dramatic or narrative conflict that is key to fiction – in that?

Alternate history scenarios for German victory in WW2 are the most prolific (and popular) of all alternate history scenarios in fiction, such that it has whole anthologies, tropes and its own entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (“H!tler Wins”), the latter reflecting its thematic importance within the SF genre.

It would be interesting to calculate what proportion of all alternate history fiction is comprised by alternate history scenarios for Germany or German victory in WW2. I don’t think it would quite be a majority as in half or more, but I suspect it would be close – or at least a very substantial proportion.

Interestingly, alternate history scenarios for German victory in WW2 not only come in science fiction flavors – such as giving them technology ahead of its time, a trope dubbed as Stupid Jetpack H!tler in TV Tropes – but also come in fantasy flavors. The best example of the latter is giving them magic or supernatural allies – the trope dubbed as Ghostapo in TV Tropes, although I prefer the title of the Dennis Wheatley novel, They Used Dark Forces.

Alternate history scenarios for German victory in WW2 also have thematic importance within the fantasy genre, albeit as part of the wider importance of that war and indeed both world wars within the genre, reflected in the entries for each in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy.

From the entry for World War II in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy – “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; H!tler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”

And yet, such alternate history scenarios seem so much less plausible than the actual historical outcome of Allied victory – German victory seems an incredible long shot from the outset, only getting longer the further you go into the war.

 

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(2) BRITAIN

 

Let’s face it – WW2 alternate history is primarily German victory, with all other combatants as footnotes.

Britain tops them but it was a close call with my next entry.

First, Britain is one of the two top sources of WW2 alternate history fiction involving German victory. Heck, British writers were writing it even before the war, albeit as cautionary tales at that point, with Swast!ka Night by Katherine Burdekin in 1937.

Reflecting this, Britain as combatant tends to play a predominant role in any WW2 alternate history German victory scenario – but also it also reflects that the latter usually involves the defeat or at least acquiescence of Britain as Germany’s first enduring major adversary. In the darkest and grimmest versions, that involves German occupation of Britain itself, as encapsulated by the title of Len Deighton’s SS-GB, although I have seen the occasional alternate history in which Britain is still at war or cold war with Germany, with the latter having won against the Soviet Union.

There are also alternate history British victory scenarios. The Man in the High Castle is best known for its German and Japanese victory dividing the United States between them, but everyone forgets the alternate history within the alternate history, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy – which is not our world but another timeline of Allied victory in which a resurgent British Empire emerged as the primary global superpower.

When it comes to historical plausibility rather than fictional depictions, Britain would outrank Germany. Perhaps not so much within the Anglo-French or Anglo-American alliances where Britain obviously had less weight than France or the United States respectively,  or even for Britain alone against Germany where it had little prospect of victory, but more for those spheres of the war where its power of decision had more potential impact – in the Mediterranean, and to some extent in Asia against Japan.

And even more, for alternate history scenarios pre-empting the war itself, primarily contrary to appeasement as foreign policy – which is what scores Britain its top tier ranking. Some histories present as virtually catalogues of turning points for alternate history where Britain “won” by pre-empting war with Germany before it even began – not least Churchill in the first volume of his WW2 history, or indeed, his reference to the Second World War as “The Unnecessary War”.

 

(3) USA

 

It was a close call between Britain and the USA for which came next after Germany. Britain just edged out the US because it was more immediate to war with Germany, both in time and space, but the US obviously had more impact as the greater – and some might say decisive – power.

Otherwise, the US is similar to Britain for alternate history rankings.

After Britain, the US is the other of the two top sources of WW2 alternate history fiction involving German victory.

Similarly, the US as combatant tends to play a predominant role in any WW2 alternate history German victory scenario, but as opposed to the defeat or acquiescence usually involved for Britain, the US tends to be eliminated as combatant by its own isolationism or non-interventionism – although thereafter it may be at war or cold war with a victorious Germany.

Sure, one of the most famous WW2 German victory alternate histories, The Man in the High Castle, is not only by an American writer but also has the classic depiction of German and Japanese victory dividing the United States between them. Firstly, it is something of an outlier given the historical improbability of any German (or Japanese) invasion or occupation of the United States – even in the book itself, it has the quality of trippy fantasy. Secondly, its depiction of an occupied and divided United States originated in continued isolationism as a result of President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt being assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara in 1933.

Like Britain, the United States also outranks Germany in alternate history when it comes to historical plausibility rather than fictional depictions. There’s the American supreme command of the Anglo-American alliance in the European theater, as well as its overwhelming predominance in the Pacific War – both of which have potential turning points where the United States could have improved upon the historical outcome.

Again, like Britain, there are alternate history scenarios for the United States pre-empting the war itself, abandoning isolationism at an earlier point or eschewing it altogether as foreign policy after the First World War – or alternatively, avoiding war with Japan but continuing to aid the Allies or join them in the war with Germany.

 

(4) JAPAN

 

As the next major Axis combatant after Germany, Japan looms large in alternate history victory scenarios.

Potentially, Japan could have its own alternate history victory scenarios separate from those for Germany, but let’s face it, Japan’s almost always a footnote to German victory in alternate history, carried along by Germany’s victory or riding Germany’s coattails to victory.

There are alternate history scenarios for Japanese victory in WW2, but they are usually a consequence or side effect of German victory – often with things looking grim between the two of them after their shared victory, as in The Man in the High Castle, where Germany is planning to attack Japan.

In fairness, that reflects their historical plausibility. While one can certainly find turning points where Japan could have done better than in actual history, ultimately none of them, singly or even in combination, seem to have any realistic prospect of a Japanese victory if Germany was defeated. Indeed, to the extent that Japan had any long-term strategy, it assumed German victory. The only exception would seem to be those alternate history scenarios where Japan “wins” by not going to or avoiding war in the first place, at least against the United States (or on the Axis rather than Allied side).

To that effect, one of the most famous alternate history depictions of German victory in WW2, Fatherland by Robert Harris, had Germany win while Japan was defeated as in actual history – something that is so implausible in reverse as to be close to impossible, except for turning points that verge on fantasy.

I have read only one alternate history which indeed verged on fantasy – a short story where prolonged Japanese resistance to invasion (in the absence of the atomic bomb) and Allied war-weariness impossibly combine not only to turn it around for Japan but also for Germany under Allied occupation to revive its war, with both winning.

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(5) USSR

 

The USSR is the elephant in the room – or rather, the bear in the room – for any alternate history German victory scenario.

After all, if the USSR remains intact or present, then it remains as a potential adversary – and the only viable one on the European continent – to challenge or defeat Germany, no matter how much Germany has been victorious elsewhere.

Hence, alternate history Germany victory scenarios usually involve the elimination of the USSR as combatant through defeat or occupation by Germany, albeit often with a remaining rump state or guerilla partisan movement resisting Germany. However, given the Anglo-American perspective or setting for most WW2 alternate histories, this tends to happen offscreen or as backstory.

There are exceptions, such as in Len Deighton’s SS-GB where both Germany and the USSR have continued their pact with each other.

Similarly to the other allies, the USSR outranks Germany in alternate history when it comes to historical plausibility rather than fictional depictions, albeit perhaps more pre-empting the war or at least invasion by Germany than doing better in its strategic options once invaded – although it obviously could have improved on its performance for the latter.

One such pre-emptive scenario has become the stuff of historiographical debate, although I think there is little substance to it – the so-called Soviet offensive plans controversy, with its hypothesis that the Soviets were planning their attack on Germany in 1941 but were beaten to the punch by the Germans.

 

C-TIER (MID TIER)

 

(6) FRANCE

 

Like other WW2 combatants when it comes to alternate history, France is a footnote to German victory scenarios.

That’s because Germany’s defeat and occupation of France, as occurred in actual history, is assumed as background to any German victory scenario (with the turning point for Germany winning the war itself occurring after that).

After all, Germany’s defeat of France is what made German victory scenarios plausible, in actual history as well as fictional depictions. If the Germans don’t even get that far in any alternate history scenario, then it’s usually an early Allied victory scenario.

Germany’s defeat of France in 1940 was essentially a foregone conclusion, in actual history or in alternate history fictional depictions. France was arguably the only major adversary Germany could defeat, because it was in essence a smaller, weaker version of Germany.

Yes, I know that the western allies in 1940 had material parity or even superiority against Germany in key aspects of their armies, notably in tanks, but I’m referring to France as a power with similar primacy of the army within its armed forces – except inferior in population and industrial base to Germany, and above in all, in military doctrine and psyche.

France made critical mistakes in its preparation, disposition of forces, and strategy for defending itself in 1940 – but unlike the other allies, it lacked the time, space or resources to recover from those mistakes.

Hence, unlike the other Allied combatants so far, France doesn’t really have many viable alternate history scenarios for improving its position, at least after commencement of German offensive operations in 1940.

Yes, France could obviously have improved upon its performance in 1940, whether changing the outcome or not, but that really would have been a matter of better disposition and preparation of its forces prior to German offensive operations – and even that seems unlikely given the accumulation of its flawed military doctrine and its psychological weakness over years.

So, for alternate history scenarios for France improving upon the actual outcome and winning against Germany, we’re really talking France taking pre-emptive action against Germany – contrary to the appeasement as foreign policy it shared with Britain – pre-empting any war or at least the German offensive in 1940.

And for that we’re talking a narrow window of opportunity, certainly from 1933 through to Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, and potentially afterwards up until offensive action against Germany in 1939 when most German forces were engaged against Poland.

There are also the intriguing alternate history possibilities of France fighting on against the Axis from its colonies with forces in exile from France, particularly its navy – like a latter-day Athens against Persia in the Battle of Salamis. You know, as opposed to actual history, with French colonies or forces outside France consistently caving to Axis pressure and only showing resistance against the Allies.

 

D-TIER (LOW-TIER)

 

(7) ITALY

 

Italy has many alternate history victory scenarios, both separately and contributing to German victory – I’m sorry, I can’t keep that up with a straight face.

As I’ve said previously for alternate history scenarios of Italian victory in WW2…I’ll just leave it here like the joke it is. Come to think of it, the whole Axis set up seems like the rule of three set-up for a joke, with Italy as the punchline – Germany, Japan, and Italy walk into a war…

Don’t laugh too much, Germany – your alternate history victory scenarios aren’t much more plausible either, arising more from their popularity and profile in fictional depictions. As I like to quip, paraphrasing the Cold War witticism that the Soviet Union was just Upper Volta with rockets, Germany was just Italy with rockets in WW2.

But seriously, as the next major Axis combatant in Europe after Germany, Italy obviously does pop up on occasion in alternate history German victory scenarios – although when it does, it’s consistently as a background feature or side effect of German victory.

That’s even more so than Japan, which usually does at least something on its own to contribute to Germany victory. Similarly to Japan, however, things often look grim between Germany and Italy afterwards, but without the buffer of geographic distance that Japan has for itself or competition with Germany over its sphere of influence.

For example, The Man in the High Castle refers to Germany draining the Mediterranean, which I can’t help but think does not bode well for Italy – and that vibe is even more so for the TV adaptation, which omits reference to Italy.

As for Italy’s military performance, obviously there’s much it could do better – arguably pretty much everything – but even if Italy “won” everything it did, it’s difficult to see much impact, with the obvious exceptions of remaining neutral or joining the Allied side.

 

(8) CHINA

 

We’re reaching the tail-end here – China doesn’t even really feature as a footnote in German victory alternate history scenarios, except to the extent that is part of the background of any Japanese victory.

That’s perhaps a little unfair, since similarly to the Soviet Union for Germany, China is essentially the elephant in the room for any Japanese victory scenario – as Japan widening the war beyond China was essentially driven by the stalemate in its war with China. Hence any Japanese victory scenario usually involves the elimination or at least minimization of continued Chinese resistance.

While China deserves credit for its endurance in that resistance in actual history, few people propose alternate history or counterfactual Chinese victory scenarios against Japan, reflecting their lack of historical plausibility. Instead, more people seem to propose alternate history scenarios for Nationalist China winning the civil war that resumed afterwards.

China certainly could have done better against Japan, but nothing that would seem to plausibly involve defeating or expelling Japan on its own. Anything close to that would seem to have required much larger scale or longer-term preparation – or radically different points of departure from actual history – that were beyond its means as it lurched from revolution through warlord era to civil war.

On the other hand, Japan would also seem to have lacked the means to decisively defeat China or even maintain its occupation of China in the long term, at least without significant points of departure from actual history. It seems far more plausible for Japan’s war with China to have become something like the Vietnam War on a grand scale – ironically as Japan might also have found itself fighting its own version of the Vietnam War had it won the Pacific War.

It’s not a complete wash for China in alternate or counterfactual WW2 history, as there’s at least one interesting proposition- what if Germany had continued to support China instead of switching to its preference for alliance with Japan from 1936 onwards? Could Germany and the United States effectively had found themselves on the same side in their support for China – and not on opposing sides through a German alliance with Japan? And hence could Germany have avoided finding itself at war with the United States through a Japanese attack on the United States?

I suppose there’s also the alternate history scenario if Chiang Kai-shek had accepted the reported offer by FDR for Chinese control over all Indochina – although that’s really alternate history for another war…

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

(9) POLAND

 

Wait, what? Poland? Really?

Yes, really. As casus belli of the European war, Poland is indeed the focus of alternate or at least counterfactual history scenarios, albeit mostly not Polish victory scenarios.

At least not at the commencement of the war (in Europe) on 1 September 1939. Such was the material and positional disadvantage of Poland vis-a-vis Germany that Poland was effectively defeated before firing a shot. Poland’s situation went from hopeless to completely hopeless with the involvement of the Soviet Union. There’s no alternate history Polish victory scenario in 1939.

Or is there? Well, maybe not in 1939 but what about a preventive war by Poland against Germany in 1933? It is commonly reported that Poland sounded out France about a pre-emptive strike in concert against the new regime in Germany (although there doesn’t seem to be any reliable source for this) but then switched to signing a non-aggression pact with Germany on 26 January 1934 due to French inaction. Even without the French, I think Poland would have been able to take on Germany on its own – admittedly only in the narrow window of opportunity in that year prior to any substantial rearmament by Germany. Considering how things turned out for Poland from 1939 onwards, it’s hard to see how things could have turned out any worse if they had done so in 1933.

What if Poland had again sought a preventive war in concert with France against Germany after that, with the greatest and probably last opportunity to do so in reaction to the German militarization of the Rhineland?

What if Poland supported Czechoslovakia in 1938, rather than supported Germany against it – to the extent of effectively aligning with Germany to reclaim territory? Historian Paul Johnson observed that Poland was to do the same with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia three decades later in 1968, when in both cases it was in their longer-term interest to support Czechoslovakia. Harry Turtledove used this in the other direction for Poland as the ally of Germany in his alternate history where the war broke out in 1938, although personally I don’t think Poland would have gone that far.

What if Poland had agreed to Soviet forces on their territory as part of an alliance with Britain and France? I mean, as it turned out that happened anyway without any substantial resistance by Poland but in this scenario the Soviets would have at least been their nominal ally rather than that of Germany.

For that matter, what if Poland had agreed to German demands in 1939, including membership of the Anti-Comintern Pact – and the transit of German forces on Polish territory against the Soviet Union? Although frankly, I have my doubts about how sincere such an offer was – and that Poland rightly rejected it as their position would have been precarious as a client state subservient to Germany.

Even in 1939, what if Poland had properly coordinated better defensive lines behind their borders with a genuine French or Anglo-French offensive into Germany rather than the half-a$$ed French Saar Offensive? Although frankly again, I have my doubts whether the French military command was capable of such an offensive.

There are still alternative history scenarios for Poland after 1939.

Historian H.P. Willmott observed that “it has been argued, and not altogether frivolously, that the crucial German mistake of the Second World War was to have behaved atrociously towards Poland and correctly to France, when the reverse may have served German interests to better effect”.

And what if instead of crushing the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Germany had simply withdrawn to leave it as a thorn in the Soviet side? What if Germany had expanded upon that to revive a genuinely independent Polish state as a buffer against the Soviet advance?

And finally, perhaps the biggest alternate history scenario about Poland doesn’t so much involve Poland but Britain and the historical commencement of the war itself – what if Britain had not made its guarantee to Poland, or at least had not done so unconditionally? After all, without the guarantee being conditional upon Soviet participation, Britain lacked the means to give effect to it, whether to defend Poland, deter Germany, or as it turned out, to successfully wage war against Germany in western Europe – all of which even more so after Germany’s pact with the Soviet Union.

 

(10) AUSTRALIA

 

I’m rounding out a top ten of WW2 combatant alternate history rankings with Australia as wild-tier entry in tenth place.

Not that we’re talking any alternate history scenarios where Australia emerges as the supreme victor of WW2, although I’d pay to see that. Instead, Australia tends to play the same support role to Britain and the United States in alternate history as it did in actual history.

Accordingly, things tend to look not too rosy for Australia in any alternate history scenario that involves the elimination of Britain or the United States as combatants – although Australia is remote enough from Britain to avoid the same sort of invasion or occupation by Germany in such scenarios.

Germany’s ally Japan is another matter, such that alternate history Axis victory scenarios often involve Australia’s occupation or at least invasion by Japan – even if in actual history Japan ruled out an invasion of Australia as too tough and instead aimed at isolating it.

The most famous alternate history scenario for the Japanese invasion of Australia was proposed by the wartime Australian government itself in strategic planning, with the so-called Brisbane Line as its line of defense – or more precisely they were accused of such a proposal abandoning half of Australia, as there was no documentation for it.

Some alternate history scenarios involve Australia (and New Zealand) as lone Allied holdouts with the United States and Canada. On that note, I’d like to see alternate history scenarios which propose British royal exile to Australia as opposed to Canada.

Otherwise, there’s probably not too many alternative victory scenarios that might have been achieved by Australian forces in the war. An exception might be the intriguing possibility of whether Australian forces could have successfully defended Malaya and Singapore if Australia had proposed its role to Britain from the outset as keeping its forces to defend against Japan in the Far East rather than deploying them to the Middle East. That seems feasible given the limited army forces Japan could commit to its campaigns in south-east Asia but the decisive factor probably would be the airpower Australia could deploy.

Australia often pops up in alternate history scenarios, including those of invasion by Japan as in The Bush Soldiers by John Hooker in 1984.

Harry Turtledove also featured Australia in his Worldwar series – in which lizard-like aliens invade Earth during WW2 in 1942. Sadly, Australia ends up occupied by the aliens – after they nuked Sydney and Melbourne. Those lizard ba$tards! What’s worse, the nuclear attacks were ostensibly in retaliation for American nuclear attacks on Lizard forces, but the aliens diverted it to Australia’s two biggest cities to make Australia easier to occupy.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (7) Maneuver & Attrition

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Print of painting “Battle of Gettysburg” showing Pickett’s Charge, by Thure de Thulstrup, restored by Adam Cuerden, Library of Congress (public domain image)

 

 

(7) MANEUVER & ATTRITION

 

Maneuver warfare is how we’d like wars to be, attrition warfare is how they are.

I’m joking and serious. Most works of military strategy, certainly that in classic texts such as the Art of War, boil down to aspirations to maneuver warfare, avoiding the pain and above all costs of attrition. The rule of cool in military history is on the side of maneuver, while attrition is distinctly unglamorous.

And yet maneuver warfare is the exception to the rule of attrition warfare. Yes, some military commanders and forces achieve it, but mostly it’s just an aspiration above attrition – an aspiration that is only occasionally or temporarily achieved, albeit more common in pre-modern history in which wars could be won by a key battle or battles.

Many of the circumstances of war or battles constrain the possibility of maneuver for the reality of attrition – terrain or fortification being prime examples, but the primary example is modern industrialization. As H.P. Willmott observed in his history of the Second World War, an industrial opponent is necessarily defeated only by attrition in depth – ironically, as at the same time industrialization provided the means for mechanized warfare as even more capability for maneuver.

Speaking of the Second World War, the world wars demonstrate both maneuver as the rule of cool in military history and attrition as its reality. Often, the demarcation between the two world wars in military history is that the Second World War is seen as the cool war of maneuver, while the First World War is the boring war of attrition. In reality, the Second World War was as much a war of attrition as the First or even more so, only somewhat more mobile (on occasion). For all their initial flashy success through maneuver, the Germans (and Japanese) ultimately (and inevitably) fought and lost by attrition.

It’s only apt that maneuver and attrition follow strategy and tactics, even if warfare is more clearly demarcated as maneuver or attrition warfare than it is for my proposed dichotomy between strategic and tactical warfare

“Maneuver warfare is a military philosophy that prioritizes rapid movement, psychological dislocation, and adaptability over brute force. Rather than systematically destroying every enemy unit, it seeks to exploit systemic weaknesses and shatter an adversary’s cohesion and will to fight.”

Obviously, that’s opposed to attrition warfare – “where traditional attrition warfare aims to physically grind down the enemy through sheer firepower, maneuver warfare aims to bypass strongholds and paralyze the enemy’s command structure.”

In other words – speed, surprise, and shock.

Speed and tempo are the key elements, not just for the mobility of your forces but also to degrade the ability of the opposing commanders or forces to react – “commanders strive to operate inside the enemy’s decision cycle”, aiding the psychological impact of “shock, confusion and panic”.

Focus on vulnerability is another key element – seeking to bypass enemy strength for “critical vulnerabilities such as supply lines, communication hubs, and leadership”.

Surprise and deception are still more key elements – ” using unpredictable movements, feints, and camouflage to keep the enemy disoriented.”

“Military forces typically execute maneuver warfare through five foundational tactical operations” – envelopment, turning movements, infiltration, penetration, and frontal attack while the other operations are executed.

“Historically, maneuver warfare was stressed by small militaries, more cohesive, better trained, or more technologically advanced than attrition warfare counterparts.”

Attrition warfare on the other hand is all about the grind. It’s in the name after all.

“Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent attempts to wear down an enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material. Victory is achieved not through swift, decisive maneuvers or capturing territory, but by out-producing and out-lasting the adversary’s ability to wage war.”

The enemy’s collapse can either be physical (through loss of forces or capacity) or psychological through breakdown of will or morale).

“These wars are defined by state industrial output, the geographical depth to absorb defeats, and the logistical capacity to constantly replace heavy equipment losses over time.”

Ironically, attrition warfare is fought as much or even more by the weak as it is by the strong – “a combatant facing a significant disadvantage may deliberately adopt an attritional approach to offset the enemy’s superior firepower, mobility, or resources.”  Guerilla warfare is the archetype of attritional warfare fought by the weak against the strong.

 

RATING: S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (7) Peloponnesian War

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Destruction of the Athenian army at Syracuse – illustration from John Steeple Davis, The story of the greatest nations, from the dawn of history to the twentieth century, published 1900 (public domain image used in Wkipedia – “Pelopponesian War”)

 

(7) PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 BC)

 

Greek against Greek – Athens vs Sparta.

There was a point when I cracked during the film 300. It was when Leonidas spoke about the necessity of Sparta fighting Persia because even “those boy-loving philosophers” in Athens were fighting Persia. “Screw you, Leonidas”, I yelled “the Peloponnesian War isn’t over!” And after the ushers bounced me from the cinema, I ruminated on this slur on the Athenians. There was of course the fact that they were the true Greek heroes of the Persian Wars.

But there was also, you know, the Peloponnesian War of Athens against Sparta (or Peloponnesian Wars, as there was first and second war with a brief peace between them).

And we’re still fighting it, in that the war between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlies the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization. Few things may actually have an ideal Platonic form, but Sparta did – Plato’s Republic, with its philosopher-kings or guardians who perceive the Forms of the true reality, trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical and moral regimen) and bound by stricter rules than the rest of the populace.

It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, as Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta, although he and his ideas didn’t do too well when put into practice with attempts at a philosopher-king in Syracuse.

And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s mystical fascism or totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the Fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism, and so on.

Of course, I know this is mostly my projection. I’m not sure if Western political ideology has actually been influenced by Sparta or even Plato and his Republic to that extent (or how much Sparta and Plato influenced each other for that matter). But I’m not the only one to see such parallels and I’m sticking with it – it has a certain mythic resonance. Hence its god-tier special mention entry second to the Trojan War, which might otherwise seem extravagant for a war between Greek city-states.

And what about, you know, the historical Peloponnesian War, you ask? To paraphrase Martin Prince’s sneer from The Simpsons, I’m aware of its work – namely, that Sparta won, with a little help from their Persian friends, albeit to be humbled later by Thebes, before the Macedonians and Romans swept over all the Greek city states.

And that Athenian political ideas didn’t work too well in Syracuse either, with the disastrous Athenian Syracuse Expedition sometimes likened to the American experience in Vietnam, only a lot worse for the ultimate defeat of Athens in their not so cold war against Sparta.

As I said previously, Plato’s ideas – and Plato himself – didn’t fare too well in Syracuse, when he came closest to implementing his Republic and its philosopher-kings in practical reality through Syracuse and its tyrant. Closest that is, as in not at all, founding the time-honored tradition of how intellectuals fare when courting people in power or political tyranny – running afoul of tyrants and narrowly avoiding execution or literal slavery and imprisonment.

Of course, history is a lot messier than our black and white projections of it. Lest we think of the Spartans too much as the bad guys, while their allies wanted Athens destroyed and its population enslaved after its defeat, it was the Spartans with their warrior code of honor who declined to do so – particularly as they regarded that all of Greece owed Athens a debt of honor for its role in the Persian War. And screw you, Thebes and Corinth! I’ve got a letter for the Corinthians and this time there’s no love in it. I’m an Athenian fan.

And for that matter, even the Spartanism or mystical fascism of Plato in my projection may be more nuanced than that, given it has a recurring appeal to or arguments for it. Even I’m a fan of one of the many pop culture versions of Plato’s Republic – Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One. Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. Judge Dredd – he is the Forms!

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (6) Strategy & Tactics

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Map of force movements and major engagements of the Waterloo campaign June 15-18, 1815 – by Ipankonin for Wikipedia “Military Strategy” and licensed for use https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

 

(6) STRATEGY & TACTICS

 

In a nutshell, tactics win battles while strategy wins wars.

Yes, that omits the operational level of war which falls between them – “that connects the details of factics with the goals of strategy” – as I prefer the sharper duality of tactics and strategy without the more nebulous operational level between them.

And yes – strategy and tactics are fundamental elements or levels of war rather than types of war as such, although I’d argue some wars are more strategic in nature while others are more tactical, barely transcending the tactical level if at all.

Hence, strategy and tactics earn their special mention entry for my types of war – indeed each of strategy and tactics could well be the subject of top tens lists of their own, or several top ten lists divided between defensive or offensive strategy and tactics. It’s apt that strategy and tactics – essentially out-thinking your enemy – follow after psychological warfare, but some may query they follow after espionage and intelligence, even as fundamental as the latter are for strategy and tactics. However, I’m going to go out on a limb with a hot take here and speculate that stategy and tactics evolved out of espionage and intelligence rather than the other way round. Prior to drilled infantry fighting in formation, my speculation is that prehistoric or the earliest historical warfare was not particularly strategic or tactical (outside of surprise through ambush or raid) but rather a matter of which combatant had the fiercest or strongest warriors – or probably most of all, the most warriors.

Strategy is not so much concerned with individual battles – indeed Sun Tzu famously propounded strategy or the art of war as winning without fighting – but understanding the nature of war, and above all, your purpose in waging it.

“Military tactics encompasses the art of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefield…the application of four battlefield functions which are closely related – kinetic or firepower, mobility, protection or security, and shock action.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (6) Bronze Age Collapse

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Sea Peoples in their ships during battle with the Egyptians – relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu (public domain image – Wikipedia “Late Bronze Age Collapse”and “Sea Peoples”)

 

(6) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

 

Styled as World War Zero by some historians.

The Bronze Age Collapse – or more precisely Late Bronze Age Collapse – was the widespread societal collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization in the 12th century BC, argued to be worse than the collapse of the western Roman Empire or even the worst case of societal collapse in human history.

Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece – the Greeks of the Trojan War – were among the most famous casualties, ushering in the Greek Dark Ages for a few centuries.

However, they are among about a dozen ancient civilizations that collapsed or declined – foremost among them the Hittite Empire that collapsed in Anatolia, while Egypt’s New Kingdom and the Assyrians clung on by the skin of their teeth, in decline or weakened. “Almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

I don’t know much about the finer details of the Bronze Age Collapse, but then neither does anyone else ultimately, as it remains the subject of argument and theory.

However, war is often cited as the main culprit, typically at the hands of the mysterious and to some extent still hypothetical “Sea Peoples”, seaborne raiders to rival the more usual horse blitzkrieg of nomadic herding tribes in civilization-crushing effect.

I certainly think war played a major part, hence this special mention, although am less clear whether it was the cause of the collapse or an effect – with the latter involving the Sea Peoples and others effectively moving into the void left by collapsing civilizations.

Interestingly, the Sea Peoples are proposed to include a number of ethnic groups – one of which is identified as the ancestors of the Philistines faced by the Israelites in the Bible. The Israelites themselves rose in the vaccuum left behind by the retreat or collapse of Hittites, Egyptians and Assyrians – so that the Bible itself has origins in the Bronze Age Collapse, as does that other landmark of western culture, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Apart from Sea Peoples and war, other causes are proposed for the collapse – political fragmentation or rebellion within societies, drought or famine, natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanic eruption, plagues, and the collapse of trade for manufacture of bronze (or the emergence of iron among adversaries).

Or a combination of all of these – “the civilizations could have endured any one disaster, but not multiple at the same time, especially not when they were feeding into one another”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (5) Espionage & Intelligence

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U-2 aerial recomnaissance image of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba shown to President Kennedy on 16 October 1962 shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (public domain image)

 

 

(5) ESPIONAGE & INTELLIGENCE

 

Knowledge is power – and war.

Espionage and counterespionage, intelligence and counterintelligence, agents and assets, spies and spycraft, black ops and covert ops, codebreaking and cryptanalysis, deception and disinformation, reconnaissance and surveillance, sabotage and subversion, stealth and subterfuge, honeypot and wetwork.

HUMINT or human intelligence as the thing we usually think about as espionage or intelligence, SIGINT or signals intelligence as the thing that usually is espionage or intelligence, and also all the abbreviated forms of intelligence – COMINT, GEOINT, FININT, IMINT, MASINT, OSINT.

Psychological warfare and terror lead naturally to the overlapping subject of espionage and intelligence, in turn incredibly prolific subjects worthy of their own top ten, or indeed several top tens.

Spies have been dubbed the second oldest profession, after pr0stitution as the oldest profession -with considerable overlap between them. Both desciptions as oldest or second oldest professions are more anecdotes than serious analysis, but certainly espionage or spies can be traced back to the Bronze Age ancient history in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

And that’s just because that’s when written records began, as one could almost certainly trace espionage or at least intelligence back to Stone Age prehistory, with the scouting or tracking that can reasonably conjectured to have accompanied prehistoric warfare.

Espionage or spies are mentioned in the two definitive ancient works of Western literature – the Bible and Homer – and very much as a fundamental part of war, as it was in that definitive work of strategy, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

In the Bible, the Israelites didn’t just launch into their conquest of Canaan cold. Not surprisingly given the short distance involved between Egypt and Canaan, part of that famous forty years in the wilderness was spent sending spies into Canaan – once again with that overlap with the oldest profession, as two such spies were aided by Rahab, widely read to be a harl0t.

Espionage or spies are also mentioned in the Iliad, not surprisingly given it is Western literature’s most famous siege – and of course the Trojan War was famously won by an act of deception or subterfuge, orchestrated by one of Western literature’s great deceptive characters, Odysseus (who is essentially characterized by deception and subterfuge throughout the Odyssey as well).

The Art of War identified spies as a fundamental part of war or military strategy – “The Art of War identifies five types of spies that are essential for gathering intelligence and achieving victory: local spies (citizen informants within the enemy’s territory), inward spies (recruited double agents within the enemy ranks), converted spies (recruited defectors converted to serve your side), doomed spies (expendable fabricators used to spread disinformation; acts as decoy for counter-intelligence), and surviving spies (spies that provide accurate intelligence after gathering information from the enemy).”

Espionage and intelligence have been and continued to be as fundamental to war as military force, indeed inextricably intertwined with the disposition and use of military force. Deploying force without adequate espionage or intelligence of enemy forces is effectively going in blind, such that going in naked would be preferable and perhaps less tempting fate for ambush or defeat. It would be interesting to identify how many military failures are ultimately intelligence failures – my own belief is that it would be a substantial proportion or part.

Even so, some might argue that espionage and intelligence are not of themselves types of war or substitutes for military force in war. To which I would respond firstly that these are special mentions but secondly and more fundamentally, that espionage and intelligence have assumed a role of such importance in warfare that they can be regarded as a type of warfare – espionage or spy warfare, intelligence warfare, deception warfare and so on.

A large part of the world wars – arguably a predominant part for signals intelligence, codebreaking, and cryptanalysis – could be called intelligence warfare, with the Cold War even more so, as a war in which espionage or intelligence indeed substituted for or pre-empted military force to large extent.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (5) First World War

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Collage of images from the most iconic front of the war – from Wikipedia “Western Front (First World War”) under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(5) FIRST WORLD WAR (1914-1918)

 

Before it was known as the First World War, it was the Great War – “the biggest, bloodiest, most expensive, most disruptive, most damaging and most traumatizing war the world had ever seen up to that point”.

It also tends to be seen in almost entirely negative terms, as one of the most unpopular and pointless wars in history, particularly when compared to its successor.

In the words of the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, “both World Wars were tragic, but World War I was remembered as an unmitigated tragedy, a grinding apocalyptic process whose outcome was always foreseeable, even though some of the details (like the USA’s entry into the conflict) might have been unexpected at the time”.

“World War II, on the other hand, has been remembered as a melodrama, full of strange and uncanny ups and downs, with terrifying new weapons galore, feats of derring-do on a daily basis, and protagonists who were not only monsters in real life but also, in fictional terms, highly effective icons of villainy”.

It does not help that the First World War was hailed at one point as “the war to end all wars” – an epithet doomed to fail and be replaced by the jaded cynicism that has seen the international agreement that brought it to an end dubbed as “the peace to end all peace”.

A slur for which, as a Treaty of Versailles fan, I will not stand! Well, perhaps fan is overstating it, but I do think the Treaty of Versailles is unjustly maligned, a topic worthy of its own top ten. To put it simply, the Treaty of Versailles was not that bad – while Germany should have spent a lot more time sucking it up and a lot less time bitching about it.

Much the same goes for the First World War itself, particularly in comparison to the Second World War – albeit the former is not so much unjustly maligned, as it earns much of its claim to futility and pointlessness. And much of that is of course the Western Front, the relentless slogging match that remained largely static despite millions of casualties.

Even that, however, is somewhat unfair to the Western Front, which finally showed some dynamism in 1918, although one might observe that took long enough.

More fundamentally, it is the Western Front that provides the enduring imagery of the war, and for that matter of modern war itself, of total war and trench warfare. Its battles, as costly and futile as they were, still read like a roll call of modern military history – with perhaps Verdun and the Somme as the most definitive. Not to mention much of the definitive technology of modern war had its debut or development in the Western Front – notably tanks and aircraft.

There is also the cultural impact of the Western Front – not least on modern literary fantasy (hence the Encyclopedia of Fantasy entry), notably through J.R.R. Tolkien. Such is the cultural impact that it might be summed up by the title of Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory.

And speaking of modern memory, it is the First World War that looms larger in national commemorations honoring the day of its armistice – not to mention, nations such as Australia, for whom their national identity was essentially shaped in battle, even in defeat, during the war at Gallipoli, commemorated by Anzac Day.

The static stalemate of the Western Front obscures the war’s more dynamic nature elsewhere – on the Eastern Front (including the Russian Revolution), in the Balkans, in the Middle East (including the Arab Revolt), at sea, in the air, and my favorite as well as the most impressive military achievement through the entire war, the German guerilla warfare led by von Lettow-Vorbeck in Africa.

Arguably, the Germans fought better in the First World War than they did in the Second, despite succeeding in 1940 where they had failed in 1914 – while the Americans also arguably waged a better war, despite failing to do what they should have done in the peace after the First what they did after the Second. Japan and Italy also chose the better side in the First than in the Second, although that might be attributed more to failures in the interwar years.

But I stand by the First World War being unfairly contrasted with the Second World War – usually in terms of the comparison of casualty rates, with the former seen as pointlessly higher without the greater mobility or movement of the latter to show for it.

Firstly, that is not quite true. In blunt terms, the Western Front was just as static for most of the Second World War – it’s just that the trench was bigger, in the form of the English Channel. And also that the Western allies effectively outsourced their casualties to the Eastern Front, where casualty rates could be very high indeed. Even on the Western front from Normany onwards, casualty rates at the sharp end could also be high enough to compare to the First World War.

And in the air for that matter – it’s ironic that Bomber Harris saw the bombing campaign as a way of avoiding the high casualty rates of the Western Front in the First World War, only for the allies to replicate those rates during the bombing campaign.

Secondly, this comparison belies that, if anything, it was the Second World War that was anomalous, while the First World War was more truly characteristic of twentieth century wars as static wars of attrition – as reflected by my favorite historian, H.P. Willmott, when he quipped, seemingly as a paradox, that WW2 might be regarded as the last war of the nineteenth century and WW1 as the first war of the twentieth century. Partly this is that for a brief shining moment, the technology and technique of offensive mobility won out over defensive firepower, but as Willmott observed, it started swinging back as defensive firepower rebounded from 1942 onwards.

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy continues that “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”.

But it’s the Germans as bad guys – I’m a fan of the Fischer thesis.

 

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

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (4) Terror

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La Terroriste, a 1910 poster depicting a female member of the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party throwing a bomb at a Russian official’s car – public domain image provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Polish Central Archives of Historical Records and used in Wikipedia “Terrorism” – that headless body goes a bit hardcore

 

 

(4) TERR0R

 

Psychological and religious warfare lead naturally to terr0r or terr0rism as a type or at least a means of warfare.

Terr0r or terr0rism is obviously a subset of psychological warfare as a means of targeting an adversary’s morale or collective psyche, particularly of their civilian population or political state through violence against them or other non-combatants.

And modern terr0rism is most often associated with religious warfare – one religion in particular although more than one religion has resorted to it. In fairness, religious extremism has been identified by at least one source to have overtaken nationalist separatism to “become the main driver of terr0rist attacks around the world”, although that remains the subject of debate.

While modern terr0rism is usually traced to “19th revolutionary politics”, an “ancient lineage” of pre-modern religious terr0rism has been proposed – with three particular examples of religiously motivated groups, the Thugs or Thuggees in India (made famous by the second Indiana Jones film), the Order of Assassins in medieval Islam (who sadly lack the same movie treatment), and the Jewish Sicarii Zealots in Roman Judaea.

Terr0r in its broadest sense has always been one of the means, probably the most straightforward means if you have the stomach for it as most pre-modern societies did, to deploy psychological force in a war against an opponent in the form of intimidation or manipulation by fear and shock – whether combatants or non-combatants (or both). And by always, I mean from the prehistoric origins of war itself, if the evidence of prehistoric brutality is to be believed or the inference from historical or contemporary observations from tribal warfare is correctly inferred.

One of the best examples of the use of terr0r in war is not surprisingly by the Mongols, who routinely threatened besieged cities with annihilation if they resisted rather than surrendered – and acted on those threats.

On the other hand, terr0rism is a narrower form of the more general terr0r deployed against opponents in war from prehistory onwards – usually defined as terr0r through violence against non-combatants or civilians and typically identified as a development of modern history.

Terr0rism is “the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims…primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants”.

However, “there are various definitions of terr0rism, with no universal agreement about it. Different definitions of terr0rism emphasized its randomness, its aim to instill fear, and its broader impact beyond its immediate victims”.

Apparently, the terms “terr0rist” and “terr0rism” originated during the French Revolution – perhaps not surprisingly given the political terr0r or notorious reign of terr0r in that revolution. Indeed, modern terr0rism originated in the political ideologies that arose from and after that Revolution, combined with the weapons produced by industrial technology that lent themselves to the assassinations or attacks that characterized 19th century terr0rism – notably the pistol and dynamite.

However, both the terms of terr0rist and terr0rism as well as archetypal form of modern terr0rism “became widely used internationally and gained worldwide attention” from the 1970s onwards.

“Various organizations and countries have used terr0rism to achieve their objectives. These include left-wing and right-wing political organizations, nationalist groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, and ruling governments”. That last is represented by ” state terr0rism, with its institutionalized instrumentation of terr0r tactics through massacres, genocides, forced disappearances, carpet bombings, and torture” and is “is a deadlier form of terr0rism than non-state terr0rism”.

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)