What was the most brutal battle in history? I'd say Verdun,

Cannae was pretty brutal. It was an all out slaughterfest, sure, but it also claimed the lives of a huge number of senatorial up and comers, not to mention a Consul. Basically a hell of a lot of the future political class was just wiped out in a day.

>>2431668
Why do you think the battle of Berlin was particularly brutal OP? The mass rapes? The Warsaw uprising was much more violent in terms of rape and civilian deaths. German soldiers described it as a "second Stalingrad". You'd also be hard pressed to find any Russian groups during the battle of Berlin as violent/deranged as oskar dirlewanger penal battalion.

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war poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote: ‘I died in Hell (they called it Passchendaele)’.

On 31st July, after a barrage of an incredible 4 ½ million shells, fired from 3,000 guns, the British advance began. Surrounding woods and villages were obliterated for miles around. But the shellfire turned the upward slopes into a nightmare of shell holes, splintered trees, barbed wire and smashed field drainage systems. Then came the worst rains for thirty years, just as the British infantry attacked. The ground became a sea of mud and corpses. Soldiers floundered in the flooded morass. British tanks bogged down and became useless. Swept by German machine gun fire, gas shells and artillery, Passchendaele entered the lexicon of military horrors.

>>2431668
without technology
Catalaunian Plains in 451 in Chalons where Attila lost half of his army (300.000 kia)
or
Tumu Crisis in 1449 in China where Mongols slaughtered 200.000 chinese soldiers and captured the Emperor Yingzong of Ming

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>>2431668
for the western world it may be, I mostly bring up war crimes such as the allied strategic bombing over Dresden or the aftermath of the Battle of Suiyang China 757 AD; they were on account of military force.

>>2431668
fulkenhyne had set up Verdun to be a bloodbath on purpose for the French. He called it a bloodletting of the French army. He didn't tell his officers that though because he wanted them to look like they were really trying and then he eventually realized he couldn't just walk away from the battle without anything to show but a body count and fell into his own trap for propaganda and moral purposes and eventually the German death rate caught up ot the French.

He could have taken the whole thing really early when there were barely any defenders but didn't want to because it was pointless and he wanted France to send in as many man as they could to his planned meat grinder.

After he decided to try to capture it the place was fully defended.

>>2431820
That's Cologne, not Dresden

>>2431763
His penal battalion gets way to much credit. Yea they did fucked up stuff but it's only a battalion

>>2431668
bloodiest and most brutal one-day battle would probably be Cannae. with over 80,000 dead in just a few hours it took place as a conservative number.

but as for brutal in that it shatters your mental state and leaves people broken through constant fighting, the Somme or Verdun are up there. Just artillery strikes and machine gun fire that never lets up for months at a time would break any man.

>>2431668
I recognize that last quote

Its from Louis barthas Journal

Its a good read for anyone interested in WWI

>>2431668
>>No real winner.

Germans attack fort in an attempt to take it. Fail. Retreat with heavy losses to their best forces.

Sounds like a pretty clear defeat. German generals of the time certainly thought if it as such.

>>2432603
Germans suffered 100,000 fewer casualties, pretty substantial

The land has also been lost to France due to how fucked up it became

>>2432709
The moral losse for Germany was big though

>>2431668
They other fucked up thing about Verdun was that literally both sides planned for the battle to be a "blood mill", meaning that they would try to bleed the enemy nation white from horrendous attrition in order to force them to concede. And, ultimately, it had little strategic value.

Just think. All those men died for almost nothing. I won't say that their sacrifice was completely in vain but...I think there are few causes that have been died for that were less pointless.

>>2431668
Passchendaele

Who would think that mud could be so deadly?

>>2433866
>Who would think that mud could be so deadly?

Those who fought at Verdun (which was basically Passchendaele but much worse)

>The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. Rain, combined with the constant tearing up of the ground, turned the clay of the area to a wasteland of mud full of human remains. Shell craters became filled with a liquid ooze, becoming so slippery that troops who fell into them or took cover in them could drown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun#Aftermath

>>2433870
Verdun was only slightly more deadly than Passchendaele

Verdun:
France: 542,000 casualties
Germany: 434,000 casualties

Passchendaele
Allies: 448,000 casualties
Germany: 410,000 casualties

>>2431766
>After the battle a visiting British general broke into tears and cried, “Good God! Did we really send our men through that?"

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Courland Pocket

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Rzhev

Walter Model used the Waffen-SS as a distraction while he dug the fuck in.When the Waffen-SS pulled back, Zukov decided to keep running his men into the Salient.

>>2433919
Looks like the plot of The Warriors but in Latvia.

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>>2431668
Okinawa
>Only battle of those listed in which small arms, not artillery, was the primary mode of death.
>Close, cave-to-cave combat with an enemy who will not surrender.
>Catastrophic casualty rate.
>25% of all American casualties are psychiatric, most of any battle.
>130,195 dead over 2.5 months (52,078 per month compared to Verdun's 30,400)
>150,000 civilian deaths

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The annual Battle for Kharkov.

>>2433937
>That webm

jesus christ...

"GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER!"

Nivelle Offensive

He may have regretted it, but Nivelle still deserves to burn in hell for that.

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>>2433954

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Not nightmarish casualties like the Somme or Verdun, but Caen. A division of German boys put the hurt on older Canadian and British men.

>>2431668
I would say Stalingrad due to the casualties, but I think you're right. The fighting in some areas around Verdun was so intense that the locations have actually been sealed off and aren't deemed habitable for humans due to the amount of arsenic, human remains, and unexploded munitions still under the soil

>>2431763
This desu
The rapes of German women and in particular the mass suicides in Demmin were horrible but at least the Soviets didn't release convicted child rapists, gypsies, mental asylum patients, and criminals to purposefully terrorize people as the Germans did in Poland

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That one time when the Germans and the Poles pulled a City 17 uprising on Warsaw.

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>>2431820

>>2432051
It was a brigade though

>>2433986

There was a good reason as to why that unit had been activated.Partisans were a serious threat and they needed to fight brutality with brutality. They should have never been used for occupation and civilian pacification however and in all honesty they all should have went into the gas chambers. But manpower is manpower.

>>2433986
>gypsies casually thrown in there as well
Kek.

>>2434010
Initially a brigade size, it turned into a full strength Division.

>>2433919
Honestly reminds me of one HOI3 game I played as Germany.
My border with Russia was weak in some areas at the time, and when Russia decided to declare war on me they trapped about 400,000 of my men in East Prussia and Lithuania. The road to Berlin was basically open, defended only by a few panzer divisions and militia. I had to beg for ships from the Italians to try and evacuate troops from the East Prussia pocket. Eventually, however, the pocket broke and what few divisions I had near Berlin could not hold the Russians off

>>2434016
They literally were part of the unit though

It's true.

Gettysburg, or yorktown.

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>>2431668
>>2433975
Over 200 millions of shells were fired at Verdun, on a relatively small area
I don't know if that record was ever broken since then but I doubt it

>>2431766
>>2433866
>>2433918
I too listen to Dan Carlin