Worst Military Underperformance

The french had plenty of advantages of their own that they failed to properly utilize due to their inferior general staff, they didn't win a single battle. That sounds like underperormance to me.
But part of this thread was that it takes into account the relative competence of both armies and then it is ones underperforming from there. The French army's disastrous inferior general staff, institutionally fatally inferior compared to the Prussian one, must be taken into account in deciding whether it "underperformed" or not. The French also did win some victories, such as Borny-Colombey, Coulmiers, Villepion, Villersexel, and Belfort.

Huh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gembloux_(1940)
I mean the Germans didn't destroy the French, they were fought to a standstill, but it wasn't what anyone should call an ass whooping.
You are wrong. There were battle wons. The Germans had their arse thoroughly kicked in Gembloux and Namur. While Sedan collapsed miserably, only 10 miles in Stonne and Le Mont Dieu another battle raged for three weeks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sedan_(1940)#Battle_of_Stonne
All very nice but the topic was not 1940 but instead 1870...
 

nbcman

Donor
The humiliating and very costly performance of the US 8th Army in the fall of 1950 north of the 38th Parallel has always struck me as among the worst. That the UN forces managed to escape is about the only positive thing that happened.
I'd add the US Army initial performance in Korea. There is a reason why when I was in basic training that there was a training class titled 'No More Task Force Smiths' to illustrate how absolutely FUBAR the TF Smith deployment and performance was and how the US Army wanted to never let it happen again.
 
I'd add the US Army initial performance in Korea. There is a reason why when I was in basic training that there was a training class titled 'No More Task Force Smiths' to illustrate how absolutely FUBAR the TF Smith deployment and performance was and how the US Army wanted to never let it happen again.

I thought about as well, but decided after months of combat, a stunningly successful operational victory and months to weed out the incompetent and the ineffective that the US Army in particular should have done better than it did.
 

longsword14

Banned
Calling 1940 French performance underwhelming is wrong when you actually look at how little training the troops had.
 
No, that would qualify as the best underperformance. The worst underperformance would be akin to Finland vs. the USSR, with the worst underperformer being the Finns.

Is this not too much senantics. We are talking about who did the worst, arguably on a sliding scale combining the gravity of the performance and the significance of the battle.

Calling 1940 French performance underwhelming is wrong when you actually look at how little training the troops had.
Sitting there during the phony war without training is part of the performance IMHO.

I'll take the battle of france as my pick. It was the largest war ever which could have ended shortly afterwards with nazi defeat. In stead it took the nazis 6 weeks and it was really over in 2 weeks.
 
Looking at modern examples, the clear winners are the Kingdom of Italy, and all Arab countries in the post World War II era, though you can argue that Egypt should be excepted from the latter. Iraq is particularly horrible but none of the others are anything to write home about. The Italian World War II performance is (in) famous, but the same problems showed up in World War I, in their colonial wars, and in the 1866 war against Austria.

After those two, there is a big gap, though mention should be made of Mexico in the Mexican-American War, and the Republic of Vietnam.

Earlier, its harder to tell, because we don't have enough sources of information to determine who "should" be winning. The Song dynasty under performed, given what they could have put into action. Alexander the Great, the Arabs during the "righteously guided Caliphate" period, and the Mongols pretty much made everyone encountered look bad, the Mamlukes and the Byzantines being the exceptions.
IMO the only arab country that didn't underperform militarily during and post WW2 was Morocco. They underperformed politicaly.
 
Regarding the French cult of the offensive, what brought about this doctrinal (idiocy) change? And what was the actual doctrine apart from 'attack with dash and elan!'
 

Deleted member 94680

The British at Singapore.

My all-time, number one, never-to-be-improved-on, top of the pops, is the Italians at Adowa though.
 
Calling 1940 French performance underwhelming is wrong when you actually look at how little training the troops had.
They had months while sitting around and doing NOTHING. Germany had almost nothing in place to oppose the French but France pissed away all its time.
 
Sitting there during the phony war without training is part of the performance IMHO.

They had months while sitting around and doing NOTHING. Germany had almost nothing in place to oppose the French but France pissed away all its time.
That isn't really true. The French were training their troops throughout the Phony War. It happened that the Category B units were the last on the list for such training and the particular divisions attacked at Sedan had not yet gone through the training planned. Instead they had built up their fortifications. Now, they could have been trained instead, but I'm not sure that even a fully trained category B division would have been able to stop the elite armored units of the German army supported by a hefty portion of the full size of the German air force, without fortifications.... Ultimately the situation at Sedan could have gone better if the French had some additional troops there, maybe they position a 2nd Category B division, take council on the reports issued about the vulnerability of the Ardennes sector, and send some additional cavalry units into the Ardennes to make sure that contact is maintained with any German advance, but as it stood, the troops at Sedan were screwed regardless their level of training. And once they were gone, and the French counter-attack defeated, the problems of the French army meant that regardless of the quality of the troops it was difficult to coordinate an effective counter-response.

If we're referring to the Saar offensive, neither is the idea that the Germans had "nothing" accurate. The Germans were extremely outnumbered in tanks, it is true, and in troops it was around 2v1. But there were from my knowledge enough aircraft positioned in the region to prevent the French from gaining air superiority, the Germans had a defensive line with impressive amounts of innovative mines, and the French army, with its mobilization orders issued on... September 1st? or 3rd? would take far too long to mobilize and attack while still hoping to be able to make a decisive impact before the fall of Poland. A Saar offensive could have achieved success, but the French would have to issue mobilization orders a long time previously, and preferably the Poles would have to put up a longer defense.
 
Would the Arab conquests count? While the Arabs were more motivated, they still attacked two superpowers who had armies blooded by a generation of war. Persia and Rome should not have collapsed like a house of cards.
 
Regarding the French cult of the offensive, what brought about this doctrinal (idiocy) change? And what was the actual doctrine apart from 'attack with dash and elan!'
What's tragical about it is that even Grandmaison ( the zealous supporter of "the offensive at the utmost") knew and said many times that an offensive would not work without a locally superior artillery which would cover the infantry the whole time during its charge. And Joffre was really good at establishing defensive lines ( since he was an engineer officer). But the sacking of Constant in 1911 ruined the credit of a defensive plan. If he wanted to last, Joffre HAD to think "offensive". It was more a "political" matter than a military one. Joffre wanted to keep his position and he gave the government and the newspapers what they wanted.

But about the worst military underperformance: Prussia in 1806. The army and the whole country crumbled after 40 days and two battles. And Agincourt. Because this battle would have been won if those upper nobility nutjobs had listened to Boucicaut for only 3 bloody seconds.
 
As we seem to have strayed away from the OP 1900.

I offer the performance of the British against the English. Regularly defeated by the English. From Hengist in the 5th century to Hingston Down in 838.

I note reference to Agincourt but who won the war? A swap from occasional huge mobs of noble hooligans to a more professional bite and hold which did not provoke an arrival of an English (or 'other French') army until Castillon in 1453 finished the issue.
 
Top