Napoleon invades Russia, 1812. Among the many flaws that plagued Napoleon, and he had many, was his irrational belief that he could conquer the world militarily. He started in his own back yard, Europe. Not satisfied with his European conquests, he tried conquering Russia. Of the 500,000 French troops that Napoleon sent to Russia, about 5,000 survived; Napoleon being one of them. The Russian campaign was lost not only on the battle field but by the notorious Russian winter, which killed many soldiers. For more details on the Russian campaign click here. One of the hardest challenges for such an endeavor is the difficulty in supplying a huge army in such a huge territory. This proved to be one of the many fatal flaws in the campaign. For a schematic dramatization of the French invasion click here for this YouTube video.
Hitler invades Russia, 1941. Hitler, learned nothing from Napoleon's defeat in Russia for he repeated the same mistakes, with nearly similar results. By 1944 the Germans were crushed in Russia, not just militarily but by the brutal Russian winters, disease and starvation. Hitler was not the only one that did not learn from Napoleon's lesson. Mussolini of Italy committed over 235,000 troops to the German Russian campaign with disastrous results. Italian troops lacked the proper clothing, equipment and military resources to succeed. The Hungarians and the Romanians contributed a similar amount of troops with the same disastrous results. If the military resources did not succeed, the Russian winter did. In short all of the German, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian troops were doomed to death in a place they could not possibly succeed. A terrific book on this subject is a historical novel called "The Red Horse" by Eugenio Corti, who was a surviving Italian veteran of the Russia campaign. For a short article on the Italian catastrophe click here. The Germans alone estimate that they lost 4.3 million soldiers in Russia alone.
The Italian participation in Russia was nothing short of condemning innocent men to death for no reason. First, the Germans never asked them for help. They knew better. They knew that the Italian armed forces were basically useless; badly armed, poorly trained and badly led. The psychotic Mussolini demanded that he participate. He was salivating at the possible territory gain after the Germans conquered Russia, so he thought; but psychotic people have never been known to think straight. He never learned the lesson of World War I. Italy entered the war by promises it would gain territory, but even after being on the winning side it got very little territory: A small slice of Austria (the South Tyrol) and a return of the Italian city of Trieste. All this at the price of 650,000 dead soldiers, not counting civilian deaths. The allies basically renegaded on any promises they made to the Italians. The Italians were basically snookered after WWI. Again, they did not learn from history. All told, it is estimated that of the 235,000 Italian troops sent to Russia 115,000 were killed.
French Indochina War, 1945-54. The French ruled what was called French Indochina, which included modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The French controlled French Indochina from 1860 to 1954. From 1945 to 1954 the French fought a war with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese fighting for independence from France. The Viet Minh were led by the brilliant military commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, who later fought the Americans. The French fought brilliantly, but they were doomed from the start. With the help of American arms, the French did all they could do but it was a losing battle. Defeat came on 8 May 1954 at the now legendary Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It is hard to get hard figures but estimates are that 500,000 Vietnamese were killed and 46,800 French troops died in the war. In 2010 a terrific article appeared in the American weekly magazine, "The Weekly Standard" on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Click here to read it. This article paints a great picture of the dire circumstances of the doomed French fighters. At Dien Bien Phu, the French fought heroically; they gave their lives for a lost cause that should have been seen long before the war started, but again, learning from history is a lesson rarely learned.The American War in Vietnam, 1959-1975. I was a participant in this war from 1968-69 with the U.S. Army. Over 59,000 Americans were killed and about 304,000 wounded in this war. With 550,000 American troops in Vietnam, the Vietnamese could not be defeated. The Americans won most military engagements but they were all Pyrrhic victories. As with the French, the Americans were doomed from the start. There is a brilliant recently published book by a Canadian historian, Geoffrey Shaw, called "The Lost Mandate of Heaven." This book details the mindless decisions made by the early U.S. Administrations of Kennedy and Johnson which basically doomed the operation before one combat soldier arrived. The Americans refused to consider the opinions of the Vietnamese in preparing a war strategy. The arrogance of the advisers of President Kennedy was stunning. The biggest villain of Kennedy's advisers was Averill Harriman, the former Governor of New York. President Kennedy is shown as incompetent and easily led by bad advice. About half of Kennedy's advisers were correct, such as his military advisers, General Maxwell Taylor, CIA Saigon Station Chief, William Colby and his Vietnam ambassador, Frederick Nolting; Kennedy chose to follow Harriman and his acolytes into the abyss. The seeds of destruction were planted by Kennedy between 1960 and 1963. The fatal blow was Kennedy's support of the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. Following his murder South Vietnam unravelled, as his good advisers had predicted, never to recover. As we've seen recently in Muslin countries like Iraq, once the strong leader is removed, chaos follows; this is what happened in South Vietnam after the death of Diem. Again, if you don't learn from history, you're bound to repeat it.
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