What were some of the most god-awful, hateful, brutal wars to be ever fought in human history?
>Mechanized and Industrialized death and destruction of the Eastern Front like no one has ever seen before or since >Seething hatred between US Marines and Imperial Japanese Soldiers in close quarters combat >Brutal reprisals from anti-German partisans in the Ukraine and Belarus >Civilian Populations giving themselves up/being forced to be used as food during sieges in China >Anti-Communist death squads in Central America >Rome attempting to expunge Carthage from history
The taiping rebellion basically religious conflicts on steroids. Spanish civil war the first full modern ideology war. The bosinan war some good 'ol ethinc cleansing. Of course the sino-japanese war with all the mass executions you'll ever want!
My vote goes to this one, it's absolutely insane how BTFO Paraguay was. Like something out of the fucking bronze age, only it happened more recently than the American civil war.
>The war ended with the total defeat of Paraguay. After it lost in conventional warfare, Paraguay conducted a drawn-out guerrilla resistance, a disastrous strategy that resulted in the further destruction of the Paraguayan military and much of the civilian population through battle casualties, hunger and diseases...According to some estimates, Paraguay's pre-war population of 525,000 was reduced to 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men.
Nicholas Powell
I hate how everyone drops the name 30 Years War, cites that it killed 2/3 of the population in some areas, and that's that.
I'm genuinely interested in the subject, but all I can find is textbook political reasons, some battles, but no firsthand accounts of the brutality carried out that resulted in such devastation.
Michael Edwards
>China massively depopulated from the wars during the Three Memedoms >Ruling Jin Dynasty has a retarded emperor (when he heard frogs croaking, he asked, in all seriousness, "Do they croak because they want to, or because the government ordered them to?") >Everyone around him fighting to use him to get themselves more powerful >Ensuing civil war results in nothing but the weakening of the emperor's clan and massive uncontrollable uprisings by a flood of opportunistic barbarians >Northern China completely collapses into warring kingdoms ruled by the barbarians mainly from five ethnicities (the Wu Hu) >Remnants of the Jin flee south >Han Chinese by the millions fleeing south and west from the slaughterhouse of the Central Plains
>Be Ran Min, of Han ethnicity >Adopted by the Shi family, rulers of the Kingdom of Later Zhao (belonging to one of the five Wu Hu, the Jie) >The Shi family abuses Ran Min, making him detest his adopted family and all barbarians >Somehow manages to seize control of Later Zhao >"Gas the barbarians, race war nao!" >Orders every single Wu Hu within his territory to be put to the sword >Issues edict allowing Han to arbitrarily slaughter barbarians without penalty >Even Han people with slight hairy features killed without trial >Exterminates 200,000 in several days >Declares a new kingdom of Wei and goes on an unstoppable rampage on all surrounding barbarian states >Defeats 100,000 soldiers from Zhao refugees with only a couple thousand cavalry >Other barbarian states pee in their pants at this genocidal maniac >Barbarian coalition sends 300,000 reinforcements, Ran defeats them with only 110,000 >Proceeds to exterminate 400,000 Xiongnu and 320,000 other people >Defeats 100,000 Tangut and Yueshi soldiers >With only 2,000 cavalry crushes 70,000 reinforcements >At this point, countless refugees of all kinds are trying to escape from Ran Min to avoid their death
Ian Walker
>Every barbarian kingdom in the area except one in the northeast demolished, all singlehandedly due to him >After doing nothing but incessantly wage war over four years, Wei is mostly depleted >Goes on a invasion with 10,000 soldiers to raid more supplies >Murong Ke, of the Xianbei ethnicity, surrounds him with 200,000 >After ten battles, Ran Min's army is eventually shattered >Finally captured and executed, ending his reputation of invincibility >Ending score: Over 2 million killed, not including civilians >Total annihilation of the Jie, Xiongnu largely dead >All major barbarians diminished to the point that, except the Xianbei, they all are to never again play a significant role in Chinese history ever again
>only 28,000 were men those men must have been fucking drowning in pussy
Aiden Sullivan
Also see the Warring States Period (475BC-221BC), which was basically an endlessly escalating atrocity between extremely militaristic/warmongering kingdoms with militaries sometimes numbering over even a million. Mass executions in the hundreds of thousands were not unheard of. The first example mass total warfare (that I can think of) in human history.
Nathan Powell
...
Jeremiah Collins
>Iran-Iraq War >Dragged on for 8 long years >Over 1 million dead >Trench warfare >Massive use of poison gas >Suicide bombers >Child soldiers >Iran used squadrons of child suicide soldiers to clear out minefields ("Martyrs") >Iraq took the opportunity to genocide the Kurds >Result after 8 long years and 1 million dead: Statu Quo Ante Bellum
It's like they rolled the worst of WW1, WW2, and the Islamic world into one.
William Robinson
>electrified swamps wiping out multiple infantry platoons, then turning their corpses into road aggregate
Holy fuck this shit is brutal, all over Protestantism?
Man talk about payback, any eyewitness accounts from those campaigns?
David Parker
Holy shit I didn't know that. It gets worse the more I read about it.
Logan Williams
Iraqis repeatedly used gas to isolate and cut off Iranian units from reinforcements and exits, pounded those pockets with ordnance. Those Iranians got fucking slaughtered. Whole units got wiped out and they used young boys in suicide attacks or sapper units.
Christopher Wilson
chechen wars were brutal. russian conscripts who didn't give a fuck, sold guns to get a ticket home. fanatical islamists. tons of "civilians".
Jaxon Murphy
It was fucking insane. >russian military going ballistic trying to keep the scraps of their empire together >the leader of chechenya announcing fucking jihad on Russia >commander in chief of the army saying that each chechen would have to kill 150 russians to make up for their lack of size >both sides going out of their way to kill civilians
Carter Sullivan
Most likely WW1, but there are other contenders
Dylan Fisher
jesus christ
Levi Flores
Any war before Geneva
>In 1570, at the end of the third of France’s Wars of Religion (1562–1598), the king’s troops were at one point crossing the Loire River at the Pont-de-Cé, near Angers. As they went over the bridge, their progress was being cramped by more than eight hundred women, all camp followers. Sometime previously, Piero Strozzi, one of the premier generals of the age, had ordered that the women be dispersed. Now, in an outburst of angry impatience, he passed on the command that they be pushed off the bridge into the waters below. >We can only imagine the ensuing scene of panic, screaming, struggles, and violence. Strozzi was obeyed and the women drowned. >The reporter of this incident, Pierre de Bourdeille, refers to the women as “sluts and whores” (“garces et putains”). Many of them were perhaps prostitutes, but some—in keeping with the age and its customs—must have been companions or even concubines of some of the soldiers. >However, it was a moment of crisis, and although Strozzi’s solution came close to touching off a mutiny, his officers managed to control the exploding commotion. His luck held. He might have had to face a small army run amuck.
Kevin Foster
>In the winter of 1630, a group of Italian villagers, subjects of the Duke of Mantua, caught a few disbanded soldiers out in the Mantuan countryside. The expert on the subject tells us that they proceeded to skin the captured men alive, to roast them, and then to eat what they had cooked. An event like this, belonging to the moral setting of the Thirty Years War (1618– 1648), is bound to trail an immediate, grievous history. And so it did. Floods and bad weather had stymied farming in Lombardy for nearly two years. The Po Valley lay steeped in famine. In September 1629, a few months before the grisly incident, thirtysix thousand Imperial soldiers had trekked down into Italy from Germany, intent on capturing Mantua. Two attacks on the city were bloodily repelled. The siege was lifted in late December. In the meantime, however, the soldiers laid waste to fields, plundered meager food supplies, set fire to houses, and treated peasants like pack animals by tying them to carts, using whips, and forcing them to pull loads. >When the villagers got their hands on the demobbed soldiers, their choking rage and hunger dictated the ensuing savagery. Skinning, roasting, and eating them became a ritual of revenge and nutrition.
Stuff like this was common all throughout the world in pre industrial war. And this is how all war was conducted. Geneva conventions after Napoleon finally put a stop to some of this but as we know it weren't exactly something to romanticize about.
Tyler Murphy
Would the different ethnicities have actually been that distinct from each other?
Yes, each one had a distinct non SInitic ;anguage. Some people think the Jie were turks or even Yenesians (people related to the projenators of the Navajo today)
Ayden Rogers
American-Japanese conflicts in the Pacific in WW2 were pretty bad >Bayonet charges >Flamethrowers >Nuclear weapons >Trophy taking
Andrew Foster
thanks
Evan Phillips
Sounds like a haremshit plot
Ayden Thompson
The Winter War and Lapland war are poignant due to the conditions they were fought. Many consider the Russians to be "masters of the winter" due to G*rman autism in Barbarossa, but forget how BTFO they got by a bunch of Finnish farmers and hunters.
Robert Reed
>Man talk about payback, any eyewitness accounts from those campaigns? None that I know have survived directly, but the historians who compiled the accounts of the period (Book of Jin, Zizhi Tongjian, etc) would have had access to them.
Ethan Sanders
>Holy fuck this shit is brutal, all over Protestantism? It was largely a Catholic vs Protestant issue,but it also had a lot to do with the Holy Roman Emperor's attempts to centralize the government and increase his authority. And as more countries became involved, it eventually became a proxy war between the other great European powers like France and Spain with mercenaries and militias doing much of the fighting in place of their actual armies.
Sebastian Powell
there were so few men that the Pope had to declare polygamy acceptable so they could repopulate
Aiden Phillips
>begone thots
Brandon Sanders
>Russian Civil War >Greek Civil War >Winter War >Bangladesh Liberation War
Kayden Jackson
Thats brutal as fuck
Anthony Hill
...
Carson Jones
do Americans not learn this at school? I am not bashing you guys, I even had to talk for a long time about this for my A-Levels. It was fucked up, especially since I am an Austrian and again have something to offer, where we helped slaughtering a ton of people
Andrew Hughes
Reprisals and pogroms reminiscent of the 30 Years' War on the continent became a staple of Irish warfare from the English reformation right up to the 20th century. But the brutality of both the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War stick out in people's minds because of how recent they were.
The War of Independence (1919-1921): Contrary to what you may have heard, engagements between the IRA and the regular British Army were relatively rare during this period. Instead, the British government (under the advice of Churchill) decided to quell the rebellion in Ireland by raising a paramilitary police force called the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve, better known as the "Black and Tans". This was done to kill two birds with one stone: The vast majority of those who signed up for the new police force were unemployed veterans of the Great War. It was hoped that their combat experience would be useful, and that giving them (very well paid) jobs would prevent them fomenting unrest at home in Britain.
Unfortunately, these men had been hardened by the rigours of trench warfare and quickly became frustrated fighting against guerrilla partisans out in the open. They took their frustrations out on the civilian populace with a sheer brutality that is still firmly burned into the Irish national consciousness to this day. Rape and pillage, looting, burning down of homes, business and entire towns and summary executions of suspects with no evidence were widespread.
Evan Ross
The most infamous episode of such behaviour was the Burning of Cork, which took place 11-12 December 1920. >[...]it followed an Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in the city, which wounded twelve men, one fatally. In retaliation, the Auxiliaries, Black and Tans and British soldiers looted and burnt numerous buildings in the city centre. Many civilians reported being beaten, shot at, and robbed by British forces. Firefighters testified that British forces hindered their attempts to tackle the blazes through intimidation, cutting their hoses and firing bullets at them. >More than 40 business premises, 300 residential properties, the City Hall and Carnegie Library were destroyed by the fire. Over £3 million worth of damage (equivalent to €172 million today) was wrought. 2,000 were left jobless and many more became homeless. Two unarmed IRA volunteers were shot dead in the north of the city. >After the sack of Cork, Black and Tans began wearing burnt corks pinned to their caps while out on patrol
Camden Wilson
>do Americans not learn this at school? No. American public school overwhelmingly focuses on American history to the exclusion of most of the world. I recall that the only history I learned totally separate from America was in middle school, where we had a couple weeks where we just quickly went through various civilizations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, China and so on. And that was it, that was my world history. We didn't even learn about Britain in school beyond what was relevant to America. And when it came to learning about America we learned the key 5 things over and over again: the puritan colonies, the revolutionary war, the civil war, WW2 and the civil rights movement. I remember only learning about WW1, the Great Depression, the Vietnam War etc only once and not spending very much time on them.
Basically I had to get most of my world history from independent study until I went to college and could study it for real. If Americans do not seek out historical knowledge they grow up largely ignorant about the world.
Hunter Morris
>After the sack of Cork, Black and Tans began wearing burnt corks pinned to their caps while out on patrol Top bantz
Christopher Peterson
>turns a swamp into a death trap >repeatedly pushes Iranian troops into it by herding them with artillery >electrocutes them by the hundreds >gathers corpses >uses corpses to build a bridge to cross the swamp to Iranian territory This is some dwarf fortress shit, Jesus Christ.
Brandon Ross
Estimates go from 50% to 70% of Paraguayan male population killed. Child Soldiers on each band. >Paraguayans painted mustaches on kids to make them look like men so the enemy will shoot the, and that will force them to fight. Retarded logistics and disease producing half of the dead.
Adrian Morales
Painting by Cándido López, a painter who served as soldier and lost his right hand by a grenade there. The Allied disaster of Curupaytí.
Carter Rodriguez
>Child Soldiers on each band. Only Paraguayans resorted to that during the last stages of the war. Lopez was insane.
Noah Jenkins
Argentine Child "soldier" they were the ones in the drums. And Brazil used many slaves in their armies, those you can not even tell the age, obviously a big part where underage.
Alexander Murphy
That's a ceremonial drummer not a soldier.
Again, the only nation to use actual child soldiers was Paraguay and at the very end of the war. Stop posting misleading bullshit.
Robert Garcia
Here's an American child drummer from the US Civil War, does this mean they used child soldiers?
Gavin Williams
Why do you post BTFO´d captured Finn then? Finnish army was a a joke, they couldnt execute a single strategic offensive in WW2
>One case in 1811, unrelated to the Paraguayan War, still was a ceremonial drummer No, all you are doing with this revisionist bullshit is painting Paraguayan dictator Lopez as a martyr when he was an insane North Korea tier dictator
Tyler King
Truly, Anglos are the masters of bantz
Colton Rivera
>finnish army was a joke t. vladamir
Easton Davis
>No, all you are doing with this revisionist bullshit is painting Paraguayan dictator Lopez as a martyr when he was an insane North Korea tier dictator Holy shit you fucking autist!
>MUH GLORIOUS ALLIES DID NOTHING WRONG!!!!!! Keep dreaming kiddo. Mitre literally put soldiers into chains to drag them to the battlefield. But I guess it's your hero's way...
The scale was tiny by any standards, but it was still very brutal
Nicholas Collins
per capita the most devastating war in the New World. Obviously the scale was so much smaller but the populations of both colonists and Natives were devastated.
Jace Morales
name one of their successful offensive operations
Charles Thompson
Their initial invasion in the continuation war, after which they stopped and dug in because they'd already taken all the land they wanted.
Levi Peterson
...
Dominic Diaz
>after which they stopped and dug in because they'd already taken all the land they wanted. dank meme, like Kraut at Moscow, right? They simply werent competent enough to break the Soviet lines, both in Leningrad/Karelia and Murmansk
Adam Baker
meant for
Austin Sullivan
Gallic wars. Romans were pretty brutal. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siège_d'Avaricum >At the end of the siege, the population of the city was massacred; Caesar said : « No one thought of the spoils. Excited by the memory of the carnage of Cenabum * (today Orleans) and by the fatigue of the siege, they spared neither the old men nor the women nor the children ». Only 800 of Avaricum's 40,000 inhabitants came out alive from the city. * [here Caesar forgot to mention that he also exterminated the population of Cenabum and burned down the town]
And they didn't have firearms, all these carnages were carried out manually.
Jackson Howard
>over a million >believing ancient sources Ya and I'm sure the Persians totally invaded Greece with 2.5 million men like Herodotus claimed.
Luke Carter
Mongols killed so many people in one city that they had to leave because people were getting ill from the stench.
Not quite as large scale as the other wars mentioned here but I think there is a particularly brutal and depressing feeling about the First Chechen War.
>they simply weren't competent enough to break soviet lines No, they literally just did not have any interest in going further. Why do you think they stopped RIGHT at the pre-ww2 border between finland and russia? The whole point of the offensive was literally just to regain territory they'd lost in the winter war.
Gabriel Sullivan
jap detected
Anthony Scott
>WWI was brutal but atleast the average individual soldier didn't have intense hatred for the enemy individual soldier.
Maybe for Brits and Americans, as they were there only for their countries imperialistic ambitions But French, Belgians or Serbians were fighting off invaders And in Belgium's case, invaders that had committed countless atrocities in their homeland
Jackson White
aren't you supposed to be dead barbara
Angel Cruz
they had committed atrocities, sure, but i wouldnt exactly call them countless. Also Germany did have imperialistic ambitions of varying degree during the war.
Gavin Anderson
The war crimes you read about carried out by ordinary soldiers were still way less common than the wars I mentioned though.
Also I forgot to mention the yugo wars before
Joseph Wilson
Ottomans committed no less than 3 genocides during this war.
Hunter Phillips
I have a feeling they got the idea from the red army on the eastern front. I've read a memoir of a red army soldier describing a road laid with German war dead, then was flooded and frozen into a road. Good way to move tanks and trucks I guess.
Colton Young
>Result after 8 long years and 1 million dead: Statu Quo Ante Bellum
The worst part is that if the Shah had still been in charge, the Iranians would have curb stomped the Iraqis and conquered the entire country in a week…
Leo Brown
Rape of Belgium was bad, but it was exaggerated by allied propaganda. It was pretty tame compared to what the SS and Wehrmacht did all over Eastern Europe.
Julian Stewart
...
Chase Hall
name of this conflict?
Gavin Murphy
Taiping "autism" rebellion
Owen Robinson
>The worst part is that if the Shah had still been in charge, the Iranians would have curb stomped the Iraqis and conquered the entire country in a week…
Go on..
Lucas Long
>8 years >1 million dead not too bad
Ian James
The NEET uprising
David Hall
Based Khomeini.
Luke Wright
Dont need offensive operations, if you are defending en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raate_Road "one Finnish soldier said he saw Soviet soldiers in a frozen campsite and had to poke one in the eye with a stick to see if he was really dead"
Julian Hernandez
Anyone know any good books about the Paraguay War?
Christian Long
Yes, you do nigger. Thats literally definition of warfare. Also this isnt offensive and no way its strategic offensive.
Jordan Johnson
>the definition of warfare is attacking the absolute state of this board tbqhwy and if the finns BTFO'd the enemy with pincer movement, how wasn't it strategic
Aiden Collins
When Finns BTFO enemy that much Red army breaches through the Mannerheim line and they have to cry for peace to save their ass.
Nicholas Flores
why are you so mad, im not even a finn. In no point did i say that "Finland won the war" or that soviets didnt fight bravely. no need to disrespect others, fren.
Ayden Perry
Because iam waiting for you to provide me some proof of Fingols executing successful offensive operation.
"On December 24, Soviet units counterattacked, but failed to break through the surrounding Finnish forces.
Reinforced with two new regiments (JR 64 and JR 65), the Finns again attacked on December 27. This time, they took the village, and the Soviets retreated in panic over the surrounding frozen lakes. A large part of them managed to reach the Russian border along the Kiantajärvi lake.
During this time, the Soviet 44th Rifle Division had advanced from the east towards Suomussalmi. It was entrenched on the road between Suomussalmi and Raate and got caught up in the retreat of the other Soviet forces.
Between January 4 and January 8, 1940, the 44th Rifle Division was divided into isolated groups and destroyed by the Finnish troops (in a tactic known as motti), leaving much heavy equipment for the Finnish troops."
Zachary Wright
Germany essentially became Europe's stomping grounds for 30 years, logistics during this period were primitive so most armies (especially sweden) had to steal food
>cry for peace to save their ass >what is white peace why are you so autistic user
Brody Butler
Do you know what is offensive operation? >what is white peace certainly not loosing 1/3 of your industry and huge part of your territory. Stop learning history from Paradox games nigger.
