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@@xvoidfight1889 I live in the US, most people assume when they talk about their grandpas in the war they were on the allied side, so when they say My grandpa downed 10 German fighters they think the persons grandpa as an allied fighter pilot. The joke ends up being one of those unexpected twist endings.
Best joke by far he helped Austria Hungary way more than his country italy just enlist innthe Austro-Hungarian army at that point ....or actually dont 😂
I kinda expected Konrad von Hötzendorf to be on this list, but when I saw Cadorna being there I remembered "Oh yeah, there was that one guy that made him look almost competent" XD
Well if the threat to your life is that a torpedo might be hitting the ship you are on, up on deck is probably safer than inside. Going overboard and treading water until rescued is probably a better strategy for him than being stuck inside a room he can't get out of. He did a lot of swimming after his legs stopped working as a means of getting at least some type of exercise in.
To put things in perspective, I cannot think of any dreadnought that was sunk by a single torpedo hit. I mean, had the torpedo hit, it was not funny business and probably many men could have died. But it would have been very unlikely that the ship would have been sunk. And even in that case it was probably safe to assume that FDR could have been safely evacuated in a raft.
@@Manco65 All torpedo ordnance during WWII was designed by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and manufactured at government ordnance plants. The Mark 14 torpedo had some design flaws, but it was not because it was 'built by the lowest bidder', it was because of the technology at the time.
Not really an idiot, but more of an arogant fool, was Augustus Adolphus of Sweden, who was killed because he refused to wear glasses. During a battle he lost sight of his own troops and rode on his horse towards what he assumed were friendly soldiers. They were not.
To be fair, glasses with corrective lenses were just appearing at the time meaning he probably wouldn't have access to them and glasses before that were just not worth the risk of loosing your eyes if they broke during battle.
11:13 I love the fact that even when the Mongols were bloodthirty, they weren't shy to use a pen. Which makes the dumbass emperor killing their messenger even dumber
To be fair, he may not have known how destructive they were. Also, when you lead a major country or empire back then, you always wanted to project strength and make your enemies see you as too dangerous and cruel to quarrel with. Obviously that only works till someone calls your bluff.
@@Taistelukalkkuna The Mongols were fine with people submitting to them. It was when they didn't that they turned to other methods. And disrespecting messengers let alone killing them would get you on the naughty list.
Fun fact: Brazil and Argentina went to war multiple times over Uruguay before Paraguay decided to piss both of them. After that both countries never fought angain. Solano should at least have waited until the next war before atacking one of the larger countries.
My dude got 70% of the population of Paraguay (and like 90% of the men!) killed because he refused to surrender even when it was obvious victory was impossible Solano singlehandedly turned Paraguay from a promising regional power into a backwater
The truth is that he could have won if GB and France didn't support the Empire of Brazil at the time the arrival of Artillery and specially steam boats from this two countries balanced the actions and gave the mobility upper hand Brazil was very close to lose Good part of Matto Grosso Parana and all Rio Grande do sul if the Paraguayan plan would had succeeded . Remember that internally Brazil at the time had huge problems with the Farropo Movement ( southern Brazil independence movement) and anti slavery internal movements and anti monarchy movements as well made the Brazilian Empire at that time not so solid before the conflict, without British and French intervention and if Argentina didn't join ranks with Brazil perhaps the story would had been different
@@edgardogarcia2719 Source??? None of these things are confirmed. France wasn't involved in the war. And there is no proof UK was involved, also you shouldn't make assumptions based on "If". Welp, Germany could have won WW2 *IF* the U.S didn't existed...
@@Chr.Monika6469 I didnt said they intervene directly I said supported and in these case they wanted Paraguay to be lowered, but Solano Lopez had another idea about what his country should look like in the future. this is a situation like the one the japanesse faced prior Pearl Harbor with the exception that Paraguay didnt invade no one at the time and was not committing atrocities in China already but the situation was similar they were cutting off their access to teh sea through Uruguay Remember that at the time of Independence War Uruguay had a population of 30 000 inhabitants Paraguay more than half million even if we fought and expel Brazilian troops from our country they always had two more new armies coming our way however after the sacrifice of Paraguay Brazil never again threaten our land so for Uruguayan we always have a significant appreciation for Paraguayans . Justice in this world takes time but with gods helps it comes. The current Uruguayan Government has given one of our port terminals in the Uruguayan river in the city of rio Negro to Paraguay for their soveraign use so after almost 200 years a terrible war in which they bleed to defend our sovereignty they got their sovereign access to the atlantic ocean. I guess the French and the Brits have done something like that for the US and Canada after WWI and WWII haven't they?
Camp followers were common practice in pre-industrial wars. They took care of logistics - foraging/preparing food, repairing clothes/weapons/shoes, medical care, etc. The Romans also had relatively good relations with the Germanic tribes in the area at the time, they thought they were still in friendly territory.
All major nations did that back then. Look up the Briton’s revolt. They did the same thing when facing the Romans. Modern logistics did not exist back then. So having servants and families along allowed for maintenance and support for the Soldiers.
18:30 The battle of Caporetto was so terrible that even today, "una Caporetto" is used as an idiom for an unmitigated, terrible disaster in Italian language. Interestingly, Hungarians also have a similar, yet less common idiom, "a Doberdo" to a terrible mess or chaos, referring to another WW1 battle with Italy.
Varus wasn't really as incompetent as this video makes him out to be. He was more of a governor than a general with a decent track record. Rather than him failing it was Arminius and his genius trap that got the 20 legions destroyed.
Yeah he was legally considered a traitor to the people of Paraguay but during the Liberal Era (Not the same as modern day liberals) he was pardoned by the liberal government as a means to create a distraction for the paraguayans and blame their government's failures and mismanagement on exterior forces "like it happened with FSL"
Yeah, or Santa Ana. Even Crassus, who just defeated Spartacus but met his end with the Parthian Empire. He was a very wealthy man it is like the owners of Tesla, Facebook, and Microsoft were given an army to do due battle.
Francisco Solano Lopez doesn’t belong on this list! He had a smaller, more elite force than Argentina and Brazil and his plan, on paper, was sound. Also, he suffered regular casualties for the time period but is seen as a butcher because Paraguay already had a small population!
Just to note how stupid Solano was: Uruguay didn't allied itself with Paraguay, it was Solano who took side in an ongoing civil war to oppose Brazil. What makes it stupid is that up to that point Brazil and Paraguay where allies themselves, since Argentina intended to annex Paraguay and Uruguay to reform the Viceroyalty of La Plata original territory before independece from Spain; Brazil oposed that because it also included parts of Brazil. When Paraguay declared war on Brazil, it was not just backstabbing but by declaring war also on Argentina he forced the two former rivals into an alliance themselves. While some say "divide and conquer", Solano was quite literally uniting his enemies to defeat him.
It was a crunching defeat, but if you was in Varus situation, why wouldn't you trust a senior Roman-Germanic auxiliary pathfinder/scout leader, and his men, that served Rome faithful during 15 years time, with a excellent track record. Shall you carry out a campaign, without pathfinders/scouts with local knowledge?
@@Tripact_of_fire Rome have loots of auxiliary Cohorts, even the Emperor have a Germanic bodyguard. So your plane is to carry out the campaign, without pathfinders/scouts with local knowledge?
What they kinda forget to include is the reason WHY Varus trusted Armenius he might have grown up as a hostage but he had through LONG serviced shown him self as a loyal soldier of Rome through many campaigns so when warned by a stranger whom would you trust? The man whom have fought at your side for years and even saved your life a number of times. OR the stranger whom come in and tell you that he is a traitor?
Props to FDR for pardoning Dawson. Dude didn't deserve 14 years in prison for a mistake, just let him do nothing but swab the deck for the rest of his enlistment.
Nah, I'm sure FDR would've agreed that he shouldn't be allowed within 1000 yards of any military installation. But hard labor for a mistake? He knew that wasn't cool either.
@@VerdeMorte Source? From what I can find he reduced in rank, but was otherwise unpunished, at FDR's insistence. www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2021/june/fact-or-fiction
Stalin did that in 1937, Hitler invaded in 1941. 4 years is not exactly what i would call "right before". And those generals were plotting treason against Stalin so in that context it was a good decision. Besides..did Russia ever really had good generals? Zhukov is bassicaly the only Russian general that anyone can think of and even he won his battles by throwing waves and waves of cannonfodder against the Germans.
Brazil did not exactly invade Uruguay, Emperor Pedro II supported the Colorados in the civil war and Solano Lopez supported the Blancos. The Colorados won and joined the Triple Alliance due to a debt with Brazil.
Soooo... Brazil invaded and colonized Uruguay claiming their Colorados, which is LITERALLY WHAT WE CALL RUSSIAN GREEN MEN, were "local Donbas miners and tractor drivers"? Putin is just a copycat.
But the Brazilian Imperial Army did invade Uruguay, though technically not as the main force but as a support for the main force that was the Colorados
Right. That private was not resposible for that incident. Often during training exercises you give tasks to the least trained cadet, so they can learn. But, he should be supervised, Such a decision, to fire a live (or training round, anything with lethal potential) during any excercise is taken seriously and should be supervised by NCOs. Whoever his sergeant, or squad leader, or petty officer(whatever the NCO class rank in the navy here would be) is definitely the one responsible for this operation. They really threw some who knows strait out of basic private under the bus. What a great leader FDR was to pardon him like that. His own chain of command on the other hand, left him out to dry because they didn't want to take responsibility, which they absolutely were on the line for.
Tbf 2 years is a reasonable amount of time to judge someone's ruling. Considering, you probably wouldn't want to deal with putting down rebellions in a middle of war.
Cadorna was a General made by political friends in Rome, so he was first and foremost a Roman politician. A lot of people wanted him to stay in command just a bit longer in the hopes to prove that they were not incompetent for putting him in the position, much less about proving Cadorna's competency. The series of Isonzo was THE prime example of what not to do as a commander, he kept pressing his men into the same area that was getting increasingly difficult to push due to the ever-strengthening defenses. Also because Cadorna believed Trench warfare was cowardice he very rarely ever allowed the construction or entrenchments of proper defenses. It wasn't until Diaz came into command that the Italian front was finally stabilized and the Italians actually managed to preform so much more efficiently being able to use elastic defensive tactics and proper fortifications. Diaz basically put the life of an Italian soldier to hold more worth than Cadorna ever could.
The Italian political class was clueless about war. The general they sent to conquer Abyssinia in 1896, Oreste Baratieri, did a good job wearing down the numerically superior Abyssinian forces through a Fabian strategy, but the politicans demanded he fight and win a glorious victory so they would look good to the voters. Instead, he waged the most disastrous battle ever for a European army in Africa, the Battle of Adwa, losing 11,000 out of 17,000 men. Abyssinia would remain free from European colonialism until 1936 as a result. And if you think a Fascist would do better than these inept democrats, let's talk about Mussolini's shitshow during WW2.
Not stupidity, but: * You do not want to fire generals just because of lost battles. Sometimes battles cannot just be won. And sometimes even mediocre generals win battles through numbers and luck. Certainly a defeat should cause some concern and research, but then the people at the top would have been given information from Cadorna and his entourage. * It is not that other countries'offensives in the war were doing great, either. It was assumed that the defendant would have massive advantages. * And, even after you have realized the man is stupid, firing him reflects poorly on those who chose it. So they may try just to "wait a little more" to see if something changes and there is a victory that validates the choice, or even provides for an opportunity for replacing him without linking to his incompetence ("due to health reasons the General has asked to be granted leave.")
Correction: Longbows did NOT exist during the Roman Empire. It was a Medieval era invention (about 1,200 years after Publius was even born). The best bow during the Roman Empire was the composite bow... considerably shorter range than the medieval longbow. In fact, Roman Legions rarely used bows at all and Publius would not have had many at all in his ranks, if any. The pilum and javelin were the preferred ranged weapon of Roman Legions in his time.
If you are talking about Welsh Longbow, maybe yes. But bows have existed thousands of years. See Holmegaard Bow for example. You are correct that bow was not standard weapon in legions, yet.
@@Taistelukalkkuna I referred specifically to the "Longbow". Historically they don't exist until around 633AD (Welsh) and not become more wide spread across some parts of Europe until 1,200 AD. Bows prior to that were short bows, composite bows, self bows, etc - all of which were substantially shorter in range than the earliest Welsh longbow and had drastically less armor penetration due to draw strength. Rome had NO longbows as this video stated. They had composite bows at best and archers comprised less than 5% of a typical Legion (Rome was still mostly using Pilums and Javelins for ranged combat as it was built into their tactics and formations. Archers were usually not legion soldiers themselves but mercenaries / peasants etc and were exceedingly uncommon at this point in history for Rome. It would be another 110 years before Rome began utilizing bowmen as a larger part of their army than they do here). It's important to differentiate because the Longbow is closer in time to history to Muskets (separated by only 500 to 600 years) vs 2,000+ years for Rome's composite, recurve and self bows at this time in history. The longbow to a Roman would've been almost as far fetched as the musket would've been, considering even their "artillery" mangonels would've struggled to match the range of a longbow.
How did a guy who just missed the arming device on one of three torpedoes (and maybe a few other things) end up on a list with these far greater disaster makers? I'm not sure which side is to be insulted by the combination, but somebody is being snubbed!
The way history and animation are combined is brilliant, and the storytelling keeps you hooked until the very end. Thank you for making history this exciting! 🏛🔥good job man
I can add even more! 1. General James Hewitt Ledlie - possibly the worst general of the American Civil War. He spent most of the wartime commanding coastal artillery but in 1864 somehow got a brigade and later a division under his lead. And it was a horrible appointment because Ledlie simply didn't command his unit in battles. At the Battle of the Crater his division was massacred by the Confederates - and what did Gen. Ledlie do during the battle? He was absent because he was drinking! At last Ledlie was tried and kicked out of the army. 2. Basiliscus - yes, it was his name. This moron led the gigantic Eastern Roman expedition against the Vandal Kingdom. Both the army and the fleet were so huge the Vandals didn't stand a chance... but started negotiating with Romans and later burned half of their fleet trapping the invaders without supplies! And Basiliscus was never even tried for that disaster. In fact, he become an Emperor later. 3. Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky - this fool led the 2nd Pacific Squadron into the Battle of Tsushima. The Russians were heavily outnumbered and outmaneuvered. It was a disaster with lots of Russian ships destroyed or captured. Rozhestvensky himself was wounded and later captured by Japanese.
Rozhestvensky didn't have much say in the matter and he would have liked nothing more than not do the voyage. Or at least without some of his older ships and incompetent captains. Oh, and without the Kamchatka. Certainly without the Kamchatka
It is I think. Not to mention that all the advances in science, medicine and philosophy was lost. They put them back in the Stone Age. And the Middle East never really recovered.
@@micg7282 I always see this advancement in science, medicine and philosophy, so what did they bring to the table, that the Greeks already hadn't thought of 2000 years prior? I'll give the middle east the idea of the telescope, but that's pretty much it.
There are other reasons that Ghengis Khan for this of course. First off the numbers given are difficult to substantiate. Estimates range from 2 to 15 million killed though. Secondly the region isn't as fertile as it once was I think and trade routes have shifted. Thirdly Iran's population is almost 90 million.
@@DuckAllMighty first the Greeks didn't think anything other civilizations also did. Pythagoras's Theorem is at least as old as the 1st Egyptian Empire and studies involving square and pi were also discovered by the Indians and Chinese around the same time. The reason Greece is considering a mathematical center in the West is because of a)Pythagoras was actually a cult leader who made his cult centered around maths and; b) Euler had a massive Greek fetish. With that said, the Middle East is where algebra was born and developed (if you didn't realize by the Arabic name it has), because until the late 17th century Western mathematics was purely centered around geometry, and no practical use for algebra was researched in the West until the late 18th-early 19th Century. From what we have from archaeological data the Islamics had an earlier start in what would become in the 17th Century linear algebra and set theory, besides some small advantages in Astronomy, but less advanved in geometry compared to Europe and obviously way below anything India had at the time
Even if some people say the estimate of Paraguayan loss is too much to believe,the minimum estimates of population lost ( in general, not only male) was around 30% , with most of it being male. To put into perspective, is a percentage bigger than the population loss of Germany and the Soviet Union combined in the Second World War. And remember, it was a xix century war. No machine guns, no air strikes. Just muskets, cannons and good old cholera and malaria casualties.
Remember that those numbers include losses outside of battle. Famine and desease often cost a lot more than battles. In the Thirty Years War Germany lost about 30% as well. In some places 60% and more.
Solano basically thought he was in HOI4 and could declare war on everyone and win somehow. Yet, that dude is still considered a hero for some in Paraguay... YIKES 🤮
I mean to be fair, he did order to make the simulation that eventually lead to the accidental firing of a live torpedo so i guess he felt somewhat responsible xD
@@blackfox7448 the dutch face death as a friend and they forgive their foe. Roose velt. Old dutch for Rose field. Dont listen to the english version of dutch courage. This is dutch courage. Our boys in indonesia masked a ship so well the japaneese thought it was an island. They joined the ausies and fought the whole war out.
Uruguay was having a civil war, brazil intervened after rumours of brazillians being targeted by one of the sides, they didnt invade uruguay Then Solano invaded brazil and tried to send his troops to uruguay via argentina to help his allied side of the uruguayan civil war
Uruguay was NOT having a civil war. Brazil provided support to a uruguayan general to start one, due to Uruguay trying to leave Brazil's sphere of influence. The rest is correct.
@Vinlaand how so? What about the blancos vs colorados? It was a political unrest that then turned into a civil war. In wich Brazil supported the colorados... While Solano the blancos. He invaded Brazil becaused he feared that if the colorados won, uruguay would stop giving paraguay access to the sea by the plata river
LMAO I knew nothing about that war but your comment was enough for me to conclude that Brazil invaded Uruguay under pretext of "civil war" like Israel does with Syria now or Orkistan does with my home country, Ukraine.
@@KasumiRINA understandable. But keep in mind that brazil wanst that united back then, multiple revolts across the country and separatists in the south, the army at the time was small and under equiped since the navy was the one that would get the job done back then, so the government was slow to put them down So if brazil did invade uruguay, it wasnt the government, but the separatist republic of juliana, wich occupied the entire south of brazil, cutting off brazil from uruguay through land BUT, its also been years since i studied about this, so i recommend that you look it up, research and study yourself, maybe you will have a better understanding about this then i do '-')b yee
Yeah in solano's mind it would be Paraguay and rebels from other countries vs triple alliance. But didn't happened That's why we end up saying "what the heck was he thinking?!" 😂
Have you noticed some of the worst idiots placed in command are "daddy's boys". They never develop strategies nor are trained under harsh conditions. Their synonymous to the coach's son being the quarterback of the team. Lose every time.
Outta curiosity, how would you have broken the stalemate at Isonzo? Shouldn't be too hard since you have over 1000 years of military doctrine and tactics to draw on, unlike our historic leaders.
@@bruceanthony3357 Great! Then it shouldn't be so hard to explain to me how these generals were so severely incompetent and how you could have easily done better. I'll pick since you won't. The western front in WW1, how would you have broken the stalemate? I'm looking forward with eager expectations on how your superior military mind can dunk on these incompetent 'daddy's boys'.
3:48 yes Cadorna was a huge Baffoon. He literally tried to attack Austria in the worst places. Now if he attacked Tyrol that does bring up harder challenges due to the very poor terrain but Italy was not prepared to attack such a position on the isonzo. Cadorna could’ve possibly just waited for proper siege artillery then do anything but a frontal assault. One of his generals Armando Diaz and his army was the only one to make progress in the isonzo river battles but Diaz was able to bring victory Edit: also I should mention prince emanuale Filiberto the Duke of Aosta who was the kings cousin and was a very good general
@ I mean there is a Caporetto map which is wish was a shock operations map but caporetto was still a big disaster that could have been prevented or reduced losses. Like this battle nearly led to the collapse of the Italian army and that would’ve been disastrous because that opens another front France has to deal with who were already dealing with Germanys spring offensive
Napoleon killed more of his own men than that of all of his enemies. He was exiled twice just to get him to stop killing his own men. but here he is glorified.
Dude, you did Varus dirty 😂. Varus was a reasonable competent administrator and general. The terrible reality is that there were many commanders it could have happened to.
At that time no one else was tricked like him though. Except... Marcus Licinius Crassus who led seven legions into a slaughter of Carrhae against Parthia. Varus was fooled as a general but Crassus was way worse.
@@kristaskrastina2863 I'm pretty sure Rome lost battles in the border territories all the time. And whilst this is one of the larger losses of life in their recorded battles, everything leading up to it was done according to standard roman military doctrine.
@@kristaskrastina2863 also Publius Juventius Thalna during the Fourth Macedonian War. In 149 BC he and his army of 16000 Romans and allies were killed and annihilated
Just few word in defence of Cadorna: 1) The Isonzo is 1 of the 2 passages throug the Alps, the second one were too tight for an army passage 2) On that front were the strongest, so make sense to attack the enemy in the only place just that large to support a campaign battle 3) Cadorna use the same strategy that every WW1 general uses (frontal attack with artillery), what other strategy he can use. With that im not defending Cadorna, but i want to show to you that, yes is cruel, very cruel, but is not entirely his fault.
Cadorna could prepare his attacks better for them to be more effective. Austrians managed to break through at Caporetto - why couldn't the Italians do that before?
Just for the record caporetto was so disastrous because of the competence and clever tactic of the german division have broke the incompetent led italian line from behind and not for particular skill or ability of the austrians.
There's also Colonel Johann Rahl, commander of the Hessian troops at the Battle of Trenton, NJ, on December 26th, 1776. Prior to the battle, a Loyalist sent Rahl a note informing him of Washington's impending attack on the Hessians at Trenton. However, Rahl couldn't read it since it was in english, and Rahl REFUSED TO INTERRUPT HIS CARD GAME to find somebody to read it to him. After Colonel Rahl died from mortal wounds relieved in the battle, the note was found still in his pocket.
In truth Custer was one the Union army most skilled commanders winning lots of battles. In the war against the Indians, Custer pushed for diplomacy and integration than outright hostility, but was overruled by the War office. In Little Big Horn, Col. Custer was leading the initial patrol group when he got surrounded by Sitting Bulls forces. He was expecting the main US Union forces down the hill to come and releave his trapped forces, as was planned, but the commanding General opt to stay put and sent a smaller group to try to rescue Custer, obviously it failed. Custer then ordered his remaining troops to try to break through from the encirclment and reach the main Army group. Only one survived.
The Dawnson I think can be excused due to it being an acident and atempting to fix his mistake, but hes still an idiot. Everyone else on this list? Absolutly pathetic and infuriating, to the point they activly dont seem to think on the posisble consequences.
Well, the William D. Porter is often referred to as one of the most incompetent ships in US Navy history for a reason as the torpedo incident wasn't the only one the crew was responsible for. When the Porter first left port to join in the Iowa's escort, the crew failed to raise anchor properly and ended up causing severe damage to the ship next to them. Later on, an unsecured depthcharge rolled off the deck and exploded, scaring the other three ships into taking evasive action before the Porter broke radio silence (this was before the torpedo) in order to tell the rest of the fleet what happened. The William D. Porter would eventually be partially responsible for its own demise. During the Battle of Okinawa, the Porter shot down a Japanese Kamikaze plane and ended up sailing right over the wreck, which then exploded. The damage would cause the Porter to sink around 3 hours later.
@@kenneth9874 You actually do expect another result, you keep trying and trying until you get better at something. I.e. lifting a higher weight, improving your time, or playing that complex music part faster. Insanity is more about knowing when you reached the limit and banging your head against the wall is futile... Like USA spending another TRILLION in Afghanistan, instead of arming Ukraine. That was insanity. Or trying to make peace with putin or assad, do you know that A MONTH AGO they tried to give assad concessions and US and Turkey BOTH send envoys to give him offers to lift sanctions? So yeah, INSANE people keep trying to reason with psychopaths whose army collapses in a week.
I do not understand how someone without having any idea about history dares to judge historical figures, without having any idea of who they were, the events that preceded their actions and their historical context. The creator of this video has set up a new competition, one that could elevate this competition to the level of the Guinness World Record for Biggest Idiot Making Videos...
It’s interesting that in Italy, many squares and streets are still named after Luigi Cadorna. Historians have mixed opinions on his contributions during the war.
3:41 what a miracle 😂!!! President Roosevelt stood up despite being paralysed from the waist down just to interven and save the fool from getting punished, who apparently tried to unalive him accidentally 😂😂 MIRACLE MIRACLE!!😂😂
I'm issuing ANOTHER PARDON for that private that fired the torpedo. That private was not responsible for that incident. Often during training exercises you give tasks to the least trained cadet, so they can learn. But, he should be supervised, Such a decision, to fire a live (or training round, anything with lethal potential) during any exercise is taken seriously and should be supervised by NCOs. Whoever his sergeant, or squad leader, or petty officer(whatever the NCO class rank in the navy here would be) is definitely the one responsible for this operation. They really threw some who knows strait out of basic private under the bus. What a great leader FDR was to pardon him like that. His own chain of command on the other hand, left him out to dry because they didn't want to take responsibility, which they absolutely were on the line for.
Thank you Simple History for all your hard work. This is one of my favourite videos. As always wars can bring the stupidity out of people even Today. Keep up the good work Simple History.
There's also the british noble who sent one of the most infamous awful orders in a letter now presented at a museum. He basically pointed up on a hill and said: Attack the cannons. Not realizing the men below couldn't see the enemy. And had the letter sent of the order. They marched straight into cannon fire on all three sides. He of course, blamed it on the one who wrote the letter for him.
You're thinking of Field Marshal Lord Raglan. A collosal failure in communication not helped by the rashness of Raglan's subordinate, Major General Lord Lucan's Aide de Camp, Captain Lewis Nolan, who was brash, impatient, and quick to anger. If anything, I blame Nolan more than anything else, his brashness and abruptness to Lucan, who was his commanding officer, is what made the disastrous charge. All Lucan wanted to know was where the guns where, because he couldn't see them. Unfortunately he was killed in the charge, so we only have Raglan and Lucan's accounts to go by.
Crimean War, 1850's...... Charge of the Light Brigade. The guy on the hill, issuing the orders, was Lord Raglan. Several of the 'higher ups' of his and allied armies were observing from there. The Light Brigade received the order from a messenger, and it was mis-interpreted, being unclear and the troops not being able to clearly see the situation from their assembly point at the foot of the hill. The 'Light Brigade" a light cavalry brigade, rode, then galloped through a valley, directly at an assembly of Russian cannons... which blew the crap out of the 'Light Brigade". An interesting story, all of it's own account. This route to confront the Russian guns was not what Lord Raglan intended and turned into a 'he said, she said' type of argument regarding the blame and also caused a lot of argument in the British Parliament. It was an absolute scandal.
11:59 “not unreasonable” Genghis Khan literally sent them a diplomat that said give up your sovereignty you king and he’s supposed to do that. You don’t understand what a king is
Killing an ambassador has always been considered one of the hugest international crimes and an act of war declaration. From Genghis's his point of view they had it coming. After the mob murdered Russian ambassador Griboyedov after attacking Rusiian embassy in Tehran, the Shah sent his grandson to Saint Petersburg to avoid another war with Tsar Nicholas I and gifted to the Tsar the one of his most valuable crown jewels - the Shah Diamond.
maybe, maybe not....... but being a live king beats being a dead king. Also convention from way back, is not to kill messengers. That went down like a lead balloon with Ghenghis & Co. Ghenghis wasn't after his Kingdom.... just pay penalties for killing off his traders.
I always joked on these guys, but I understand now the urge to comment first😂 you just dont have any material to base a joke on but want to seize the opportunity.
I take issue with the depiction of Solano and Paraguay. Don Eduardo Galeano lays it out in Open Veins of Latin America. The Triple Alliance was organized by Spain, because Paraguay had become a self-sustaining economy that refused to pay tribute to Spain. Lozano was not an idiot, he was just too audacious for the empire.
6:07: Is it any wonder why anyone would quote Vaas? He's one of the most iconic video game villains ever, up there with the likes of Senator Armstrong and Handsome Jack.
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i’m broke 😭😭😭
Those dumb bastards
Like video
starting with the willy d
😊
This reminds me of the old joke, During WWII my grandpa downed 10 German fighters, worst mechanic they ever had.
I don't get it
@@xvoidfight1889 He was a German mechanic.
That's hilarious! Love it!
@@xvoidfight1889 I live in the US, most people assume when they talk about their grandpas in the war they were on the allied side, so when they say My grandpa downed 10 German fighters they think the persons grandpa as an allied fighter pilot. The joke ends up being one of those unexpected twist endings.
@kevindavidson8802 Oh, now it sense 🤣
*_"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."_*
- Napoleon Bonaparte
i feel like he learned that from experience.
@@linuxsuperuser Most likely from Russia 🇷🇺
Goes still Hard 🔥🔥🔥
@@PaintingWithLindy Unlikely as Napoleon allegedly said it or something very similar in 1805 at Austerlitz.
I think Sun Tzu said that.
And Napoleon you want to talk about mistakes? Let's have a war with Russia. How did that turn out?
Okay but imagine going down in history as the man who saved the president who ended WW2, by shooting a moving torpedo with a pistol
wait what??
@@liamhashmi7750 Didn't watch the video and went straight to the comments, huh?
Some guy tracked the torpedo with his pistol but didn't shoot
@@cartoonraccoon2078 yea pretty much lol
@@pfiction2453Technically he didn't, Truman did 🤓
Luigi Cadorna would be an excellent lesson for aspiring officers so that they can learn everything NOT to do.
If you can't be a good example, try to be AN example?
in the same way as aspiring tank designers are shown the british Valiant tank ( in Bovington museum ?) to try and find all of the many flaws.
He is in fact studied in Italian military academies with a big red lettering of "Do NOT do this, it is dumb, and if you do it you are even dumber"
Haig is worse than cadorna
As an Italian, I fully agree whit you
Luigi Cardona was the best Austro-Hungarian general ever.
Best joke by far he helped Austria Hungary way more than his country italy just enlist innthe Austro-Hungarian army at that point ....or actually dont 😂
They should made him a national hero lol.
CadoRna, not CaRdona...
Mama mia
We must thank cadorna on failing 12 times on a insignificant river😊😊
I kinda expected Konrad von Hötzendorf to be on this list, but when I saw Cadorna being there I remembered "Oh yeah, there was that one guy that made him look almost competent" XD
Konrad has been stained in my head from WW1 day by day
“Wheel him to the deck for a better view”, man they don’t make em like FDR anymore.
Well if the threat to your life is that a torpedo might be hitting the ship you are on, up on deck is probably safer than inside. Going overboard and treading water until rescued is probably a better strategy for him than being stuck inside a room he can't get out of. He did a lot of swimming after his legs stopped working as a means of getting at least some type of exercise in.
To put things in perspective, I cannot think of any dreadnought that was sunk by a single torpedo hit.
I mean, had the torpedo hit, it was not funny business and probably many men could have died. But it would have been very unlikely that the ship would have been sunk. And even in that case it was probably safe to assume that FDR could have been safely evacuated in a raft.
If it was like most of the torpedoes we had at that time built by the lowest bidder it probably wouldn't have went off anyway.
@@Manco65 All torpedo ordnance during WWII was designed by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and manufactured at government ordnance plants. The Mark 14 torpedo had some design flaws, but it was not because it was 'built by the lowest bidder', it was because of the technology at the time.
I mean getting shot in the ear and standing up and yelling, "Fight Fight Fight"! is pretty Bravo Alpha.
"I'm surrounded by idiots"-Scar The Lion King
"I've got morons on my team!"
- Megatron, Transformers Generation 1
"I'm surrounded by assholes!"
-Dark Helmet, Spaceballs
@@TheOneManWhoBeatYou
“Keep firing, Assholes!”
I thought you were surrounded by gumdrops and ice cream!
@@Scrapyard24c Actually, I thought that was Strother Martin in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Not really an idiot, but more of an arogant fool, was Augustus Adolphus of Sweden, who was killed because he refused to wear glasses. During a battle he lost sight of his own troops and rode on his horse towards what he assumed were friendly soldiers. They were not.
100% he was a very good leader that just made a fatal mistake that cost of him his life and more.
To be fair, glasses with corrective lenses were just appearing at the time meaning he probably wouldn't have access to them and glasses before that were just not worth the risk of loosing your eyes if they broke during battle.
He also did not wear his armor during that battle.
I was taught that it was because of a thick fog that rolled in that made him get lost and accidentally ride into enemy lines.
Guy sounds near sighted
11:13 I love the fact that even when the Mongols were bloodthirty, they weren't shy to use a pen. Which makes the dumbass emperor killing their messenger even dumber
Well, if there ever was a real-life case for 'Never kill the messenger' ...
They needed to have excuse to invade. Shah provided it.
To be fair, he may not have known how destructive they were. Also, when you lead a major country or empire back then, you always wanted to project strength and make your enemies see you as too dangerous and cruel to quarrel with. Obviously that only works till someone calls your bluff.
@@Taistelukalkkuna In the video its explained they wantes trading partners first
@@Taistelukalkkuna The Mongols were fine with people submitting to them. It was when they didn't that they turned to other methods.
And disrespecting messengers let alone killing them would get you on the naughty list.
Fun fact: Brazil and Argentina went to war multiple times over Uruguay before Paraguay decided to piss both of them. After that both countries never fought angain. Solano should at least have waited until the next war before atacking one of the larger countries.
My dude got 70% of the population of Paraguay (and like 90% of the men!) killed because he refused to surrender even when it was obvious victory was impossible
Solano singlehandedly turned Paraguay from a promising regional power into a backwater
@@rdrrr Into a backwater, except for the water.
The truth is that he could have won if GB and France didn't support the Empire of Brazil at the time the arrival of Artillery and specially steam boats from this two countries balanced the actions and gave the mobility upper hand Brazil was very close to lose Good part of Matto Grosso Parana and all Rio Grande do sul if the Paraguayan plan would had succeeded .
Remember that internally Brazil at the time had huge problems with the Farropo Movement ( southern Brazil independence movement) and anti slavery internal movements and anti monarchy movements as well made the Brazilian Empire at that time not so solid before the conflict, without British and French intervention and if Argentina didn't join ranks with Brazil perhaps the story would had been different
@@edgardogarcia2719 Source??? None of these things are confirmed. France wasn't involved in the war. And there is no proof UK was involved, also you shouldn't make assumptions based on "If".
Welp, Germany could have won WW2 *IF* the U.S didn't existed...
@@Chr.Monika6469 I didnt said they intervene directly I said supported and in these case they wanted Paraguay to be lowered, but Solano Lopez had another idea about what his country should look like in the future.
this is a situation like the one the japanesse faced prior Pearl Harbor with the exception that Paraguay didnt invade no one at the time and was not committing atrocities in China already but the situation was similar they were cutting off their access to teh sea through Uruguay
Remember that at the time of Independence War Uruguay had a population of 30 000 inhabitants Paraguay more than half million even if we fought and expel Brazilian troops from our country they always had two more new armies coming our way however after the sacrifice of Paraguay Brazil never again threaten our land so for Uruguayan we always have a significant appreciation for Paraguayans .
Justice in this world takes time but with gods helps it comes.
The current Uruguayan Government
has given one of our port terminals in the Uruguayan river in the city
of rio Negro to Paraguay for their soveraign use so after almost 200 years a terrible war in which they bleed to defend our sovereignty they got their sovereign access to the atlantic ocean.
I guess the French and the Brits have done something like that for the US and Canada after WWI and WWII haven't they?
For the military: Luigi Cadorna and Conrad Von Hötzendorf
In general: The Politicians
Muhammad II of Kwarazm AND Francisco Solano Lopez are in
BOTH categories!!!
Hotzendorf is largely to blame for WW1
Like Churchill, Roosvelt and Stalin?
@@hernanuliana9111 that would be ww2...
I'd have paid to see the two of them in a boxing ring.
Letting soldiers take their families with them on a large-scale suicide mission is just peak idiocracy.
1863 Civil War watchouts in a nutshell.
Camp followers were common practice in pre-industrial wars. They took care of logistics - foraging/preparing food, repairing clothes/weapons/shoes, medical care, etc.
The Romans also had relatively good relations with the Germanic tribes in the area at the time, they thought they were still in friendly territory.
Idiocy***
All major nations did that back then.
Look up the Briton’s revolt. They did the same thing when facing the Romans.
Modern logistics did not exist back then. So having servants and families along allowed for maintenance and support for the Soldiers.
Boudica did that and Lost 200,000 to 10,000 Romans trapped in a Ravine, in a Battle that would have made Nero Withdraw from Britannia if she Won.
90% is crazy but at least he died in battle and not hiding inside a bunker.
That kinda feels like put how good he is from 1 to 1.01
@@fiyahquacker2835 truuuu lulllll
Then again bunkers didn't really exist at the time
@@PohEnYuDariusBssstrue but caves did and fortresses kinda do the same idea
@@SymphonyZach fair point
18:30 The battle of Caporetto was so terrible that even today, "una Caporetto" is used as an idiom for an unmitigated, terrible disaster in Italian language. Interestingly, Hungarians also have a similar, yet less common idiom, "a Doberdo" to a terrible mess or chaos, referring to another WW1 battle with Italy.
To this day, Varus still hasn't given back his 3 Legions.
Varus wasn't really as incompetent as this video makes him out to be. He was more of a governor than a general with a decent track record. Rather than him failing it was Arminius and his genius trap that got the 20 legions destroyed.
Nor his imaginary Roman longbowmen.
The Romans... Famed for their archery and longbows.
@@sidgrg280 Where did you get the number 20 legions? Varus led 3 into Germany out of the 5 he had available.
Pretty difficult to give back dead people. The Romans did get the eagles back and also some of the prisoners in the following years.
And for some reasons, F. Solano Lopez still have monuments in Paraguay and his portrait can be found in President's Palace...
Yep, somehow he's still seen as the national hero of Paraguay.
Yeah he was legally considered a traitor to the people of Paraguay but during the Liberal Era (Not the same as modern day liberals) he was pardoned by the liberal government as a means to create a distraction for the paraguayans and blame their government's failures and mismanagement on exterior forces "like it happened with FSL"
In Paraguay he is considered a hero and simbol of national unity
I'm surprised you didn't include U.S. General George A. Custer, considering the fact that he was a glory seeking egotist.
Yeah, or Santa Ana. Even Crassus, who just defeated Spartacus but met his end with the Parthian Empire. He was a very wealthy man it is like the owners of Tesla, Facebook, and Microsoft were given an army to do due battle.
Well, at least Custer was never president and did some good work in the American Civil War before.... That
Yeah you're clearly no history major lol pipe down
Francisco Solano Lopez doesn’t belong on this list! He had a smaller, more elite force than Argentina and Brazil and his plan, on paper, was sound. Also, he suffered regular casualties for the time period but is seen as a butcher because Paraguay already had a small population!
@@thomassabino13 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just to note how stupid Solano was:
Uruguay didn't allied itself with Paraguay, it was Solano who took side in an ongoing civil war to oppose Brazil. What makes it stupid is that up to that point Brazil and Paraguay where allies themselves, since Argentina intended to annex Paraguay and Uruguay to reform the Viceroyalty of La Plata original territory before independece from Spain; Brazil oposed that because it also included parts of Brazil.
When Paraguay declared war on Brazil, it was not just backstabbing but by declaring war also on Argentina he forced the two former rivals into an alliance themselves. While some say "divide and conquer", Solano was quite literally uniting his enemies to defeat him.
Immediately when i saw the name of Varus i said oh no. "Quinctilius Varus give me back my legions"
It was a crunching defeat, but if you was in Varus situation, why wouldn't you trust a senior Roman-Germanic auxiliary pathfinder/scout leader, and his men, that served Rome faithful during 15 years time, with a excellent track record.
Shall you carry out a campaign, without pathfinders/scouts with local knowledge?
@kirgan1000 one word "Germanic"
@@Tripact_of_fire Rome have loots of auxiliary Cohorts, even the Emperor have a Germanic bodyguard.
So your plane is to carry out the campaign, without pathfinders/scouts with local knowledge?
@@kirgan1000 i know but i think it was a mistake to do so
As soon as I heard one of them was told he was walking into a trap but went anyways, I knew it must be varus.
Varus! Oh Quinctilius Varus! Give me back my legions!
Damn varus
"Armenius? A traitor? I think not"
What they kinda forget to include is the reason WHY Varus trusted Armenius he might have grown up as a hostage but he had through LONG serviced shown him self as a loyal soldier of Rome through many campaigns so when warned by a stranger whom would you trust? The man whom have fought at your side for years and even saved your life a number of times. OR the stranger whom come in and tell you that he is a traitor?
Where are muh Eagles:@
Varus was a governor though not a General
Corruption kills your own side faster than the enemy could possibly imagine.
I second this
Donald Trump
@@Wes-x9p idiot
@@Wes-x9pHere, here Trump and Bidden on the list.😅
Props to FDR for pardoning Dawson. Dude didn't deserve 14 years in prison for a mistake, just let him do nothing but swab the deck for the rest of his enlistment.
Nah, I'm sure FDR would've agreed that he shouldn't be allowed within 1000 yards of any military installation. But hard labor for a mistake? He knew that wasn't cool either.
He was still dishonorable discharged
@@VerdeMorte Source? From what I can find he reduced in rank, but was otherwise unpunished, at FDR's insistence.
www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2021/june/fact-or-fiction
I would add British general William George Keith Elphinstone and his adventure to Kabul during 19th century to this list.
Stalin firing all his best generals right before Hitler invaded Russia deserves a mention.
"firing"... that's one way to put it...
he had 90% of his military leadership killed...
How could he know Germany will invade him?
Tuchachevsky's conspiracy. Google it idk
Yeah, 'firing'; that's kinda accurate he had them shot. 900 officers in total.
Stalin did that in 1937, Hitler invaded in 1941. 4 years is not exactly what i would call "right before". And those generals were plotting treason against Stalin so in that context it was a good decision. Besides..did Russia ever really had good generals? Zhukov is bassicaly the only Russian general that anyone can think of and even he won his battles by throwing waves and waves of cannonfodder against the Germans.
Brazil did not exactly invade Uruguay, Emperor Pedro II supported the Colorados in the civil war and Solano Lopez supported the Blancos. The Colorados won and joined the Triple Alliance due to a debt with Brazil.
Soooo... Brazil invaded and colonized Uruguay claiming their Colorados, which is LITERALLY WHAT WE CALL RUSSIAN GREEN MEN, were "local Donbas miners and tractor drivers"? Putin is just a copycat.
But the Brazilian Imperial Army did invade Uruguay, though technically not as the main force but as a support for the main force that was the Colorados
The torpedo man made a rather common mistake on the torpedo launcher. Not exactly a dunce but it was a fly in the ointment.
Right. That private was not resposible for that incident. Often during training exercises you give tasks to the least trained cadet, so they can learn. But, he should be supervised, Such a decision, to fire a live (or training round, anything with lethal potential) during any excercise is taken seriously and should be supervised by NCOs. Whoever his sergeant, or squad leader, or petty officer(whatever the NCO class rank in the navy here would be) is definitely the one responsible for this operation. They really threw some who knows strait out of basic private under the bus. What a great leader FDR was to pardon him like that. His own chain of command on the other hand, left him out to dry because they didn't want to take responsibility, which they absolutely were on the line for.
Atleast they didnt comitted martial law at 3am
Oh give it time the day is still young
South korea moment
I agreed!
At least they knew how to use language properly...
17:08 The war was so absurdly costly that the narrator broke the 4th wall!
Who was more stupid though, Cadorna or the people who took two whole years to relieve him 🤔
Tbf 2 years is a reasonable amount of time to judge someone's ruling. Considering, you probably wouldn't want to deal with putting down rebellions in a middle of war.
Cadorna was a General made by political friends in Rome, so he was first and foremost a Roman politician.
A lot of people wanted him to stay in command just a bit longer in the hopes to prove that they were not incompetent for putting him in the position, much less about proving Cadorna's competency.
The series of Isonzo was THE prime example of what not to do as a commander, he kept pressing his men into the same area that was getting increasingly difficult to push due to the ever-strengthening defenses.
Also because Cadorna believed Trench warfare was cowardice he very rarely ever allowed the construction or entrenchments of proper defenses.
It wasn't until Diaz came into command that the Italian front was finally stabilized and the Italians actually managed to preform so much more efficiently being able to use elastic defensive tactics and proper fortifications. Diaz basically put the life of an Italian soldier to hold more worth than Cadorna ever could.
The Italian political class was clueless about war. The general they sent to conquer Abyssinia in 1896, Oreste Baratieri, did a good job wearing down the numerically superior Abyssinian forces through a Fabian strategy, but the politicans demanded he fight and win a glorious victory so they would look good to the voters. Instead, he waged the most disastrous battle ever for a European army in Africa, the Battle of Adwa, losing 11,000 out of 17,000 men. Abyssinia would remain free from European colonialism until 1936 as a result.
And if you think a Fascist would do better than these inept democrats, let's talk about Mussolini's shitshow during WW2.
Not stupidity, but:
* You do not want to fire generals just because of lost battles. Sometimes battles cannot just be won. And sometimes even mediocre generals win battles through numbers and luck. Certainly a defeat should cause some concern and research, but then the people at the top would have been given information from Cadorna and his entourage.
* It is not that other countries'offensives in the war were doing great, either. It was assumed that the defendant would have massive advantages.
* And, even after you have realized the man is stupid, firing him reflects poorly on those who chose it. So they may try just to "wait a little more" to see if something changes and there is a victory that validates the choice, or even provides for an opportunity for replacing him without linking to his incompetence ("due to health reasons the General has asked to be granted leave.")
What's your problem??!! That was a decision of the king, it was not democratic or something
Theodore Roosevelt: You should be ashamed of your military honor!
👏
I won't find a better comment today this is it for sure....has never rolling ima go back and rewatch it
"Everyone know you were back home saying Thank God for Pearl Hahbar!"
You comment this on every video, and on this one it fits perfectly. I admire the perseverance.
Did he really say that?
Correction: Longbows did NOT exist during the Roman Empire. It was a Medieval era invention (about 1,200 years after Publius was even born). The best bow during the Roman Empire was the composite bow... considerably shorter range than the medieval longbow. In fact, Roman Legions rarely used bows at all and Publius would not have had many at all in his ranks, if any. The pilum and javelin were the preferred ranged weapon of Roman Legions in his time.
Slings outranged bows anyways.
The Romans had auxiliaries (non-citizen soldiers) who served as archers.
If you are talking about Welsh Longbow, maybe yes. But bows have existed thousands of years. See Holmegaard Bow for example. You are correct that bow was not standard weapon in legions, yet.
@@Taistelukalkkuna I referred specifically to the "Longbow". Historically they don't exist until around 633AD (Welsh) and not become more wide spread across some parts of Europe until 1,200 AD. Bows prior to that were short bows, composite bows, self bows, etc - all of which were substantially shorter in range than the earliest Welsh longbow and had drastically less armor penetration due to draw strength.
Rome had NO longbows as this video stated. They had composite bows at best and archers comprised less than 5% of a typical Legion (Rome was still mostly using Pilums and Javelins for ranged combat as it was built into their tactics and formations. Archers were usually not legion soldiers themselves but mercenaries / peasants etc and were exceedingly uncommon at this point in history for Rome. It would be another 110 years before Rome began utilizing bowmen as a larger part of their army than they do here).
It's important to differentiate because the Longbow is closer in time to history to Muskets (separated by only 500 to 600 years) vs 2,000+ years for Rome's composite, recurve and self bows at this time in history. The longbow to a Roman would've been almost as far fetched as the musket would've been, considering even their "artillery" mangonels would've struggled to match the range of a longbow.
Composite bows outrange longbows
0:30 ”peabrained prat” 😂
That tickled me to 😂😂😂😂
Honorable mention-Sir William Elphinstone
Impressive he was able to keep his forces loyal while suffering 90% loses.
How did a guy who just missed the arming device on one of three torpedoes (and maybe a few other things) end up on a list with these far greater disaster makers? I'm not sure which side is to be insulted by the combination, but somebody is being snubbed!
Luigi Cadorna wasn't a great general; but at least his brother Mario was a very successful plumber.
Luigi's got a good mansion, though.
@@ItsMeHassan98nepotism at its best
I agree Simple History, in war there are heroes and fools and these guys fit the the latter category.
The way history and animation are combined is brilliant, and the storytelling keeps you hooked until the very end. Thank you for making history this exciting! 🏛🔥good job man
Bedankt
I can add even more!
1. General James Hewitt Ledlie - possibly the worst general of the American Civil War. He spent most of the wartime commanding coastal artillery but in 1864 somehow got a brigade and later a division under his lead. And it was a horrible appointment because Ledlie simply didn't command his unit in battles. At the Battle of the Crater his division was massacred by the Confederates - and what did Gen. Ledlie do during the battle? He was absent because he was drinking! At last Ledlie was tried and kicked out of the army.
2. Basiliscus - yes, it was his name. This moron led the gigantic Eastern Roman expedition against the Vandal Kingdom. Both the army and the fleet were so huge the Vandals didn't stand a chance... but started negotiating with Romans and later burned half of their fleet trapping the invaders without supplies! And Basiliscus was never even tried for that disaster. In fact, he become an Emperor later.
3. Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky - this fool led the 2nd Pacific Squadron into the Battle of Tsushima. The Russians were heavily outnumbered and outmaneuvered. It was a disaster with lots of Russian ships destroyed or captured. Rozhestvensky himself was wounded and later captured by Japanese.
Rozhestvensky didn't have much say in the matter and he would have liked nothing more than not do the voyage. Or at least without some of his older ships and incompetent captains. Oh, and without the Kamchatka. Certainly without the Kamchatka
7:09 I'd like to imagine he actually ran away like that 😂
13:10 low end estimate indeed, I’ve heard the population of modern day Iran is still lower than it was before Ghengis Khan invaded
Good.
It is I think. Not to mention that all the advances in science, medicine and philosophy was lost. They put them back in the Stone Age. And the Middle East never really recovered.
@@micg7282 I always see this advancement in science, medicine and philosophy, so what did they bring to the table, that the Greeks already hadn't thought of 2000 years prior? I'll give the middle east the idea of the telescope, but that's pretty much it.
There are other reasons that Ghengis Khan for this of course.
First off the numbers given are difficult to substantiate. Estimates range from 2 to 15 million killed though.
Secondly the region isn't as fertile as it once was I think and trade routes have shifted.
Thirdly Iran's population is almost 90 million.
@@DuckAllMighty first the Greeks didn't think anything other civilizations also did. Pythagoras's Theorem is at least as old as the 1st Egyptian Empire and studies involving square and pi were also discovered by the Indians and Chinese around the same time. The reason Greece is considering a mathematical center in the West is because of a)Pythagoras was actually a cult leader who made his cult centered around maths and; b) Euler had a massive Greek fetish.
With that said, the Middle East is where algebra was born and developed (if you didn't realize by the Arabic name it has), because until the late 17th century Western mathematics was purely centered around geometry, and no practical use for algebra was researched in the West until the late 18th-early 19th Century. From what we have from archaeological data the Islamics had an earlier start in what would become in the 17th Century linear algebra and set theory, besides some small advantages in Astronomy, but less advanved in geometry compared to Europe and obviously way below anything India had at the time
Even if some people say the estimate of Paraguayan loss is too much to believe,the minimum estimates of population lost ( in general, not only male) was around 30% , with most of it being male. To put into perspective, is a percentage bigger than the population loss of Germany and the Soviet Union combined in the Second World War. And remember, it was a xix century war. No machine guns, no air strikes. Just muskets, cannons and good old cholera and malaria casualties.
Also in terms of territory it was equivalent to South korea invading the north and also declaring war on Russia and China
Remember that those numbers include losses outside of battle. Famine and desease often cost a lot more than battles.
In the Thirty Years War Germany lost about 30% as well. In some places 60% and more.
Just imagine being among the 10% of men that survived, yet you are still not able to get any matches on Tinder...
17:08 The war was so absurdly costly that the narrator broke the 4th wall!
"There's a torpedo coming!"
FDR: "My time has come."
😞You forgot George Custer. 🤨Does Little Bighorn ring a bell.
Solano basically thought he was in HOI4 and could declare war on everyone and win somehow.
Yet, that dude is still considered a hero for some in Paraguay... YIKES 🤮
the military academy has his name
3:41 bro stood up for the torpedo man dawson
I mean to be fair, he did order to make the simulation that eventually lead to the accidental firing of a live torpedo so i guess he felt somewhat responsible xD
Quite literally
@@blackfox7448 the dutch face death as a friend and they forgive their foe. Roose velt. Old dutch for Rose field. Dont listen to the english version of dutch courage. This is dutch courage. Our boys in indonesia masked a ship so well the japaneese thought it was an island. They joined the ausies and fought the whole war out.
@@blackfox7448yeah but he literally stood!
Uruguay was having a civil war, brazil intervened after rumours of brazillians being targeted by one of the sides, they didnt invade uruguay
Then Solano invaded brazil and tried to send his troops to uruguay via argentina to help his allied side of the uruguayan civil war
Uruguay was NOT having a civil war. Brazil provided support to a uruguayan general to start one, due to Uruguay trying to leave Brazil's sphere of influence. The rest is correct.
@Vinlaand how so?
What about the blancos vs colorados?
It was a political unrest that then turned into a civil war.
In wich Brazil supported the colorados...
While Solano the blancos.
He invaded Brazil becaused he feared that if the colorados won, uruguay would stop giving paraguay access to the sea by the plata river
LMAO I knew nothing about that war but your comment was enough for me to conclude that Brazil invaded Uruguay under pretext of "civil war" like Israel does with Syria now or Orkistan does with my home country, Ukraine.
@@KasumiRINA understandable.
But keep in mind that brazil wanst that united back then, multiple revolts across the country and separatists in the south, the army at the time was small and under equiped since the navy was the one that would get the job done back then, so the government was slow to put them down
So if brazil did invade uruguay, it wasnt the government, but the separatist republic of juliana, wich occupied the entire south of brazil, cutting off brazil from uruguay through land
BUT, its also been years since i studied about this, so i recommend that you look it up, research and study yourself, maybe you will have a better understanding about this then i do
'-')b yee
Yeah in solano's mind it would be Paraguay and rebels from other countries vs triple alliance. But didn't happened
That's why we end up saying "what the heck was he thinking?!" 😂
I knew the first one was gonna be a banger when I heard "USS William D. Porter", everyone on that ship was so incompetent it was actually kinda funny.
Have you noticed some of the worst idiots placed in command are "daddy's boys". They never develop strategies nor are trained under harsh conditions. Their synonymous to the coach's son being the quarterback of the team. Lose every time.
Outta curiosity, how would you have broken the stalemate at Isonzo? Shouldn't be too hard since you have over 1000 years of military doctrine and tactics to draw on, unlike our historic leaders.
@fen3311 have you served? Then give me an answer. I'm waiting. By the way, I've got 20 years experience with the navy.
@@bruceanthony3357 Great! Then it shouldn't be so hard to explain to me how these generals were so severely incompetent and how you could have easily done better. I'll pick since you won't. The western front in WW1, how would you have broken the stalemate? I'm looking forward with eager expectations on how your superior military mind can dunk on these incompetent 'daddy's boys'.
3:48 yes Cadorna was a huge Baffoon. He literally tried to attack Austria in the worst places. Now if he attacked Tyrol that does bring up harder challenges due to the very poor terrain but Italy was not prepared to attack such a position on the isonzo. Cadorna could’ve possibly just waited for proper siege artillery then do anything but a frontal assault. One of his generals Armando Diaz and his army was the only one to make progress in the isonzo river battles but Diaz was able to bring victory
Edit: also I should mention prince emanuale Filiberto the Duke of Aosta who was the kings cousin and was a very good general
I'm pretty sure I played a similar battle in Battlefield 1. It was a tough fight... Damn you, Cadorna!
More like Italian idiot general
@ I mean there is a Caporetto map which is wish was a shock operations map but caporetto was still a big disaster that could have been prevented or reduced losses. Like this battle nearly led to the collapse of the Italian army and that would’ve been disastrous because that opens another front France has to deal with who were already dealing with Germanys spring offensive
The ONE thing I will say about Lopez is that at least he fought to the end and died with his men.
Like Gaddafi, both megalomaniacs
Napoleon killed more of his own men than that of all of his enemies.
He was exiled twice just to get him to stop killing his own men.
but here he is glorified.
The thumbnail is truly amazing
Genghis khan when his trade offerers get massacred:
Come on let's try again
King: kills the diplomat
Genshin khan: so you have chosen death
Which is fair enough. The king was just being an A-hole at that point. They could have negotiated something 💀
From what I remember from the Sam O'Nella video about the USS Porter, the entire ship's crew was utterly incompetent.
That whole ship was a comedy of errors
that ship was just straight cursed.
"Fool of a took"-Gadalf the white
Thought he was grey at that point.
@@TrevDri ... well, everyone's hair changes as they get older.
Guys give Gadalfs hair a break.
@@littleblackcat2273 yea but your name usually doesn't thats pretty unique.
Dude, you did Varus dirty 😂. Varus was a reasonable competent administrator and general. The terrible reality is that there were many commanders it could have happened to.
This is just a poorly researched clickbait piece.
At that time no one else was tricked like him though. Except... Marcus Licinius Crassus who led seven legions into a slaughter of Carrhae against Parthia. Varus was fooled as a general but Crassus was way worse.
@@kristaskrastina2863 I'm pretty sure Rome lost battles in the border territories all the time. And whilst this is one of the larger losses of life in their recorded battles, everything leading up to it was done according to standard roman military doctrine.
@@kristaskrastina2863 also Publius Juventius Thalna during the Fourth Macedonian War. In 149 BC he and his army of 16000 Romans and allies were killed and annihilated
1:41
"Say. You guys remembered to remove the primers from the torpedoes, right?"
"Yep."
"Yes sir."
*Eating glue.* "What?"
"FFFFFFFFFFFFF"
Just few word in defence of Cadorna: 1) The Isonzo is 1 of the 2 passages throug the Alps, the second one were too tight for an army passage 2) On that front were the strongest, so make sense to attack the enemy in the only place just that large to support a campaign battle 3) Cadorna use the same strategy that every WW1 general uses (frontal attack with artillery), what other strategy he can use.
With that im not defending Cadorna, but i want to show to you that, yes is cruel, very cruel, but is not entirely his fault.
Cadorna could prepare his attacks better for them to be more effective. Austrians managed to break through at Caporetto - why couldn't the Italians do that before?
Just for the record caporetto was so disastrous because of the competence and clever tactic of the german division have broke the incompetent led italian line from behind and not for particular skill or ability of the austrians.
@@kristaskrastina2863 They did. In 1916. And it would have ended the war had not Germans intervened
There's also Colonel Johann Rahl, commander of the Hessian troops at the Battle of Trenton, NJ, on December 26th, 1776.
Prior to the battle, a Loyalist sent Rahl a note informing him of Washington's impending attack on the Hessians at Trenton. However, Rahl couldn't read it since it was in english, and Rahl REFUSED TO INTERRUPT HIS CARD GAME to find somebody to read it to him. After Colonel Rahl died from mortal wounds relieved in the battle, the note was found still in his pocket.
This kind of stuff also plagued the Austro-Hungarians during WWI.
“Don’t shoot we’re republicans!”
Other ships in the Pacific fleet to the “Willie D”
The Fat Electrician?
There is also General Pétain, the sole responsable for the saying "french will surrender easily. "
Ngl, surprised Custer didn't make it on this list for his idiocy at Little Big Horn 😅
In truth Custer was one the Union army most skilled commanders winning lots of battles. In the war against the Indians, Custer pushed for diplomacy and integration than outright hostility, but was overruled by the War office. In Little Big Horn, Col. Custer was leading the initial patrol group when he got surrounded by Sitting Bulls forces. He was expecting the main US Union forces down the hill to come and releave his trapped forces, as was planned, but the commanding General opt to stay put and sent a smaller group to try to rescue Custer, obviously it failed. Custer then ordered his remaining troops to try to break through from the encirclment and reach the main Army group. Only one survived.
They named a guy after atari pron game lmao?
@@KasumiRINA General Custer was a real person. The game that you're referring to was named after this guy.
one of the "funniest" facts about Luigi Cardonna is that in Italy we still have many streets named after him, as if he were a hero
3:46
A man unimaginative martinet who was ruthless with his troops and dismissive of his country's political authorities.
LMAO .. The animation for the first "Idiot" ... hahahaha
0:40 is that a CIWS on a WW2 battleship?
Looks like someone used the modernized version as a reference picture
Nope you're tripping.
Its armored turrets for aa fire. Not ciws lol
Looks like Vulcan Phalanx to me
Yall are taking this too personal. 😂
An italian officer: "how much do you want to attack the same place, with the same strategy?"
Cardona:"yes"
The Dawnson I think can be excused due to it being an acident and atempting to fix his mistake, but hes still an idiot.
Everyone else on this list? Absolutly pathetic and infuriating, to the point they activly dont seem to think on the posisble consequences.
Well, the William D. Porter is often referred to as one of the most incompetent ships in US Navy history for a reason as the torpedo incident wasn't the only one the crew was responsible for.
When the Porter first left port to join in the Iowa's escort, the crew failed to raise anchor properly and ended up causing severe damage to the ship next to them.
Later on, an unsecured depthcharge rolled off the deck and exploded, scaring the other three ships into taking evasive action before the Porter broke radio silence (this was before the torpedo) in order to tell the rest of the fleet what happened.
The William D. Porter would eventually be partially responsible for its own demise.
During the Battle of Okinawa, the Porter shot down a Japanese Kamikaze plane and ended up sailing right over the wreck, which then exploded.
The damage would cause the Porter to sink around 3 hours later.
@@Scrapyard24c Actually, only the torpedo incident and her sinking actually happened; the rest are 1990s fabrications.
I'm not sure if anyone tells you this but man your thumbnails are getting better and better, Makes me laugh everytime a new vid comes out.
I really hate that “definition” of insanity, is that what you do when you practice something??
Yes, but you don't expect different results.....
@@kenneth9874 You actually do expect another result, you keep trying and trying until you get better at something. I.e. lifting a higher weight, improving your time, or playing that complex music part faster.
Insanity is more about knowing when you reached the limit and banging your head against the wall is futile... Like USA spending another TRILLION in Afghanistan, instead of arming Ukraine. That was insanity.
Or trying to make peace with putin or assad, do you know that A MONTH AGO they tried to give assad concessions and US and Turkey BOTH send envoys to give him offers to lift sanctions? So yeah, INSANE people keep trying to reason with psychopaths whose army collapses in a week.
@KasumiRINA but you're not doing the small thing.....
@@KasumiRINA but that's not doing the same thing....
@@KasumiRINA it appears that you have some experience of insanity......
3:41 you made him stand up for the guy, when he was paralyzed. Lol
General Dentz, he surrendered Paris to the Germans in 1940, then he surrendered Syria and Lebanon to the Australians in 1941. He was a buffoon.
I do not understand how someone without having any idea about history dares to judge historical figures, without having any idea of who they were, the events that preceded their actions and their historical context. The creator of this video has set up a new competition, one that could elevate this competition to the level of the Guinness World Record for Biggest Idiot Making Videos...
It’s interesting that in Italy, many squares and streets are still named after Luigi Cadorna. Historians have mixed opinions on his contributions during the war.
Italians are terrible at war so it makes sense they still honor a idiot
Roosevelt goes to the edge of the deck to get a better look at the torpedo that almost blew him up, then says, "haha, you silly goose... pardoned."
I have a feeling we can soon add Putin to this list.
3:41 what a miracle 😂!!! President Roosevelt stood up despite being paralysed from the waist down just to interven and save the fool from getting punished, who apparently tried to unalive him accidentally 😂😂 MIRACLE MIRACLE!!😂😂
I wish I was lucky enough to be a famous military idiot
I'm issuing ANOTHER PARDON for that private that fired the torpedo. That private was not responsible for that incident. Often during training exercises you give tasks to the least trained cadet, so they can learn. But, he should be supervised, Such a decision, to fire a live (or training round, anything with lethal potential) during any exercise is taken seriously and should be supervised by NCOs. Whoever his sergeant, or squad leader, or petty officer(whatever the NCO class rank in the navy here would be) is definitely the one responsible for this operation. They really threw some who knows strait out of basic private under the bus. What a great leader FDR was to pardon him like that. His own chain of command on the other hand, left him out to dry because they didn't want to take responsibility, which they absolutely were on the line for.
i like how the candidates fart as they die. south park style.
Cardona: punishes soldiers for running from certain defeat
7:08
Also Cardona: runs like Usain Bolt when he is losing
Honorable mentions go to numerous WW1 generals who needlessly threw away 10s of thousands of lives.
Love this meme, how would you have done things differently?
Thank you Simple History for all your hard work. This is one of my favourite videos. As always wars can bring the stupidity out of people even Today. Keep up the good work Simple History.
The guy who enlisted after exiting the bar.
So most of the US military
@wesleasanchez8701 ai
There's also the british noble who sent one of the most infamous awful orders in a letter now presented at a museum.
He basically pointed up on a hill and said: Attack the cannons.
Not realizing the men below couldn't see the enemy. And had the letter sent of the order. They marched straight into cannon fire on all three sides.
He of course, blamed it on the one who wrote the letter for him.
You're thinking of Field Marshal Lord Raglan.
A collosal failure in communication not helped by the rashness of Raglan's subordinate, Major General Lord Lucan's Aide de Camp, Captain Lewis Nolan, who was brash, impatient, and quick to anger.
If anything, I blame Nolan more than anything else, his brashness and abruptness to Lucan, who was his commanding officer, is what made the disastrous charge. All Lucan wanted to know was where the guns where, because he couldn't see them.
Unfortunately he was killed in the charge, so we only have Raglan and Lucan's accounts to go by.
Crimean War, 1850's...... Charge of the Light Brigade. The guy on the hill, issuing the orders, was Lord Raglan. Several of the 'higher ups' of his and allied armies were observing from there.
The Light Brigade received the order from a messenger, and it was mis-interpreted, being unclear and the troops not being able to clearly see the situation from their assembly point at the foot of the hill. The 'Light Brigade" a light cavalry brigade, rode, then galloped through a valley, directly at an assembly of Russian cannons... which blew the crap out of the 'Light Brigade". An interesting story, all of it's own account. This route to confront the Russian guns was not what Lord Raglan intended and turned into a 'he said, she said' type of argument regarding the blame and also caused a lot of argument in the British Parliament. It was an absolute scandal.
Just for the Record. The lance that hurted "El supremo" was The lance of a brazilian soldier called "Chico Diabo" (Chico the Devil).
Shame that today his great-grandson is a little twerp
that luigi general is the perfect example of the sentence “so stupid even your enemy concerns”
Actually the enemy hastingly mounted a counteroffensive subordinating itself completely to the germans because they had come to a braking point.
@@luigiduca k got it
11:59 “not unreasonable” Genghis Khan literally sent them a diplomat that said give up your sovereignty you king and he’s supposed to do that. You don’t understand what a king is
Killing an ambassador has always been considered one of the hugest international crimes and an act of war declaration. From Genghis's his point of view they had it coming. After the mob murdered Russian ambassador Griboyedov after attacking Rusiian embassy in Tehran, the Shah sent his grandson to Saint Petersburg to avoid another war with Tsar Nicholas I and gifted to the Tsar the one of his most valuable crown jewels - the Shah Diamond.
Well he followed your advice and got annihilated, is that what a king is too?
@ yes. you should never ever give up the sovereignty of a nation.
@joshcompton1693 ah yes better that everyone dies so a ruler can keep their dignity(?)
What kind of insane, self-destructive philosophy is that?
maybe, maybe not....... but being a live king beats being a dead king. Also convention from way back, is not to kill messengers. That went down like a lead balloon with Ghenghis & Co.
Ghenghis wasn't after his Kingdom.... just pay penalties for killing off his traders.
When I saw "Biggest idiots in war" I expected it to be far longer than eighteen and a half minutes. History is replete with them.
There are only a few genius in history compared to the idiots
Oh man sam o nella doing the fdr torpedo one was also funny
The monkey with the cymbals is an excellent touch 😅
I always joked on these guys, but I understand now the urge to comment first😂 you just dont have any material to base a joke on but want to seize the opportunity.
I take issue with the depiction of Solano and Paraguay. Don Eduardo Galeano lays it out in Open Veins of Latin America. The Triple Alliance was organized by Spain, because Paraguay had become a self-sustaining economy that refused to pay tribute to Spain. Lozano was not an idiot, he was just too audacious for the empire.
so a idiot
6:07: Is it any wonder why anyone would quote Vaas? He's one of the most iconic video game villains ever, up there with the likes of Senator Armstrong and Handsome Jack.
Bro, the quote is way older than that game. It was even (most likely falsely) attributed to Einstein.
@@skrahnha some say it originated around ww1
0:01 = 7:09
Meme Man : *KOMEDY 100*
**Pizza time stops**
3:06 classic 4 arm Tony