How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders

by Bill Fawcett

A remarkable compendium of the worst military decisions and the men who made them.

The annals of history are littered with horribly bad military leaders. These combat incompetents found amazing ways to ensure their army's defeat. Whether it was a lack of proper planning, miscalculation, ego, bad luck, or just plain stupidity, certain wartime stratagems should never have left the drawing board. Written with wit, intelligence, and eminent readability, How to Lose a Battle pays dubious homage to these momentous and bloody blunders, including:

Cannae, 216 B.C.; the bumbling Romans lose 80,000 troops to Hannibal's forces. The Second Crusade; an entire Christian army is slaughtered when it stops for a drink of water. The Battle of Britain; Hitler's dreaded Luftwaffe blows it big-time. Pearl Harbor; more than one warning of the impending attack is there, but nobody listens.

How to Lose a Battle includes more than thirty-five chapters worth of astonishing (and avoidable) disasters, both infamous and obscure; a treasure trove of trivia, history, and jaw-dropping facts about the most costly military missteps ever taken.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military History, Military Fiction, War, World History, World War II

336 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2006

About the author

Bill Fawcett has been a professor, teacher, corporate executive, and college dean. His entire life has been spent in the creative fields and managing other creative individuals. He is one of the founders of Mayfair Games, a board and role-play gaming company. As an author, Fawcett has written or coauthored over a dozen books and dozens of articles and short stories. As a book packager, a person who prepares series of books from concept to production for major publishers, his company, Bill Fawcett & Associates, has packaged more than 250 titles for virtually every major publisher. He founded, and later sold, what is now the largest hobby shop in Northern Illinois.

Fawcett’s first commercial writing appeared as articles in the Dragon magazine and include some of the earliest appearances of classes and monster types for Dungeons & Dragons. With Mayfair Games he created, wrote, and edited many of the Role Aides role-playing game modules and supplements released in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, he also designed almost a dozen board games, including several Charles Roberts Award (gaming's Emmy) winners, such as Empire Builder and Sanctuary.

Reviews

[Mohamed · Rating 2 out of 5]

فكرة الكتاب جيدة ومفيدة ولكن الترجمة أسوء من سيئة ولو كانت جيدة لكانت قراءة الكتاب أسهل بكثير
كما ان الترجمة ليست فقط غير مفهمومة ولكن بها الكثير من الغلطات المركبة كأن تجد مثل تلك العبارة على سبيل المثال

" واجهت الكتيبة الفرنسية القوات الفرنسية الجديدة التي وصلت إلى الميدان"
مما قد يثير سخريتك وليس فقط خنقك من المترجم والمراجع الذي سمح بكل هذا الهراء

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dedicado a los hombres y mujeres que sirvieron a las órdenes de los comandantes aquí descritos. Son un recuerdo constante de que, bien mirado, el valor, la profesionalidad y la resolución del soldado son los que ganan las guerras.

2,5🌟

Recopilación de varios de los errores más estrepitosos y garrafales de distintas batallas, unas más conocidas que otras, a lo largo de la historia. Eso sí, todas ocurren en Occidente, uno de los motivos por los que este libro se lleva tan poca nota. O sea, ¿me estás diciendo que en ninguna batalla de Asia Oriental se cometieron errores? Quitando el siglo XIX con batallas entre orientales vs occidentales/aka EEUU, nunca batallas entre orientales vs orientales, ¿qué pasa con los siglos anteriores? Entiendo que no se pueden incluir todas las meteduras de pata en un único libro, pero entonces que se especifique que solo se va a tratar de Occidente.

Otro punto negativo es que varios de los errores que se mencionan a mí no me parecen errores, sino casualidades, hechos fortuitos, producto de la mala suerte o la única opción viable que había. Además, como se centra en los fallos que llevaron a un determinado bando a la derrota, ignora que tal vez perdieran porque el otro era mejor. Al ganador, si es que alguien sale vencedor de una batalla, le quita mérito.

Asimismo, en la mayoría de capítulos me faltan esquemas que representen los movimientos de las tropas. ¿Por qué unos capítulos si los incluían y otros no? Debido a esto y al tedioso estilo de narración que alargaba momentos innecesarios (esto tal vez se deba a la traducción, no lo sé), perdía frecuentemente el hilo de lo que estaba leyendo. Al final de los capítulos, donde los errores están resumidos, me solía preguntar: “Vale, pero ¿cómo se ha llegado hasta aquí?” No obstante, los capítulos que no están escritos por el autor/editor me han gustado muchísimo más, pues están redactados de una forma atrayente y que mantienen tu atención a la vez que te sumergen de lleno en la batalla.

Por otra parte, el contenido es interesante y curioso; el problema es que la forma no lo es. He aprendido algunas cosillas, aunque hubiera preferido que en ciertas batallas se ahondara en su contexto histórico, y, rara vez pero pasaba, me divertía con las pullas que dejaba caer sutilmente el autor.

En conclusión, es un libro que me ha decepcionado bastante. Pasados los primeros capítulos, los que se centran en batallas del mundo antiguo, los más entretenidos, ya estaba deseando que el libro se acabara. Bill Fawcet me ha agotado, sobre todo cuando le dedica cuatro o cinco capítulos seguidos a las batallitas de la guerra civil estadounidense (dedícale un libro entero si toda te parece un error) y uno a un pasaje bíblico que es más una persecución que una batalla.

En fin, que la idea es muy buena, pero está resuelta de un modo pésimo.

No hay que hacer planes acerca de lo que el enemigo hará, sino de lo que el enemigo es capaz de hacer.

[kartik narayanan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an okayish book.

On the positive side, it is entertaining and teaches a little bit of history.
On the negative, it is too western focused (especially the US) and most of the lessons come from hind sight, without empathy for the generals and leaders who had to make decisions on the ground and in the moment.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is aimed at Americans with only a passing knowledge of history. It can not be considered even remotely academic, from the lack of any sources/citations to the incredibly informal tone. And the battles picked are so extremely American-centric that they choose to omit details/basics that anyone outside of the United States probably needs.
My biggest issue was with the chapters on the American Civil War. They omit important details and context because everyone globally is supposed to be a civil war historian? The tone is incredibly condescending and in some places wildly biased. And the author of these chapters consistently shills his own works.
Some of the chapters on colonial battles uses racist rhetoric to refer to the indigenous peoples and some of these chapters are very pro-colonialists. The chapter on Agincourt contains some basic myths and misconceptions. And there's a chapter on the biblical Exodus that's just that part of the Bible transposed with a few paragraphs of 'analysis' afterwards.
I do not recommend this book to anyone who cares about history. Perhaps an American teenager or someone who just needs a book to read on a flight is the ideal intended audience.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, and often detailed, study of several major battles that were lost, for the most part, due to inadequate planning or adaptability. Whilst an interesting read, there is a distinct lack of cited sources and many areas fall under the opinions of the author. Definitely suitable as a first foray into the history of the listed battles, but should not be relied upon in a scholarly context.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile read. The author (actually the editor and author of some, but not all, of the content) has done a good job of describing a dismal series of, as the subtitle says, foolish plans and great military blunders. He omitted some I'd have covered, but over the millennia there have just been so many - to even come close to analyzing them all would take an encyclopedia instead of one book. I also appreciated the fact that the authors debunked a number of myths about some of these events. The tone was often too breezy for my taste in a book about events that caused so many deaths, but as an old grunt I identify with the poor bastards who were unlucky enough to get stuck with these stupid and/or irresponsible leaders.

[Alkoot · Rating 3 out of 5]

موضوع الكتاب جدا رائع ولكن فيه بعض الإطالة الغير لازمة والترجمة رديئة ومؤذية ، عنوان الكتاب عندي "استنساخ الفشل" وهو نفس هذا الكتاب ونفص الواجهة مع اختلاف العنوان .
يتحدث المؤلف عن أشهر الأخطاء وأعظمها التي منيت بها البشرية وسجلها المؤرخون من غزو البلدان واستعمارها والتعامل مع الإرهاب ، فرض اللغة على الشعوب ، الإقتصاد (الفقاعات) ، العملة ، الركود الاقتصادي ، البطالة ، الأوبئةوغيرها .
يستغرب الكاتب كيف لانتعلم من تلكم الأخطاء وقد عقلناها ، كحكومات وأيضا كشعوب وأفراد.

[Aniela Smoczyńska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strasznie ciekawa i zabawna.
Najlepsze roasty:

„His brilliance proven, to himself at least, Crassus never made another good decision”
“One Roman commander being consistently and arrogantly dense”
“Guy of Outremer, being big on courage and short of wisdom”
“Would be much easier to list what, the French king John did right rather what he did wrong”
“Charles d’Albert had to make about every mistake an army commander could … and he did”
“Strangely, the sounds of volleying muskets and even cannon failed to awaken Colonel Rall”
“Forage (read find and steal)”
“The British army was blessed with no one but four different individuals who managed between them to destroy in minutes the best cavalry regiment in the world”
“He died a few minutes later, so his motives are lost”
“Of course he blew it, wasting a day more boasting about impending victory”
“(Yes, the f-word was definitely around back then)”
“Meade role in the army was largely that of fifth wheel”
“One helluva big explosion”
“He loathed these men and claimed they were worse than useless, which in fact they were”
“Lee with a fighter’s instinct, had come to the conclusion that something “was up””
“In this author’s opinion, one of the most disgusting acts of commander failure, childishness, and cowardice of the entire war”
“Charles George “Chinese” Gordon was the closest thing Victorian England had to military superstar”
“His death therefore winds up being more of a mistake than a tragedy”
“General Gordon himself, possibly, fluttering in some remote Nirvana might have ventured a satirical smirk”
“As is often the case, some people resent when you play war in their backyard rather than your own”
“It’s a funny thing - sometimes other countries don’t take kindly to major influxes of foreign interests taking control of their fate”
“When a cakewalk into a bush turned into turkey shoot”
“Seymour had fooled himself into believing that their mission was indeed a humanitarian one”
“Goering was an incompetent blowhard”

Wiem, że tego dużo, ale wszystko było tak złote.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

An easy almost entertaining read, but historically accurate? No, not really. There appears to be no selection criteria for inclusion in this anthology, so the appellation of 'great' and ' worst' and even 'battles' appear to be more a means of selling an easy to produce but poorly written book and making money rather than truth in advertising. Come on! For instance, the minor skirmish in the Philippines and the misfortunes of Bainbridge cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be labeled as battles. Moreover the book is decidedly skewed toward American past stories. I say 'past stories' because this can hardly be said to be history. The editor and author of many of the pieces while purportedly having once (it is understandable why he is no longer there) risen to the ranks of college dean is the kind of sloppy populist revisionist that leaves actual history and historians with a bad impression upon the masses, particularly since it is likely the masses are more likely to read this than actual history. I can maybe recommend this to other historians who are in need of a good laugh, but it would be difficult to recommend it to anyone else, being as it is a prime example of how rapacity changes history.

[Solitudes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading about how to win a battle or how a battle was won is interesting, but I am finding it much more interesting to know how someone manages to lose one when all the factors were in his favor. Just one example: WW2, Soviet Russia is in big deep shit and it needs all the weapons and supplies that the Allied Powers can supply (and it is interesting to know that even trivial things like buttons were supplied by the US) and the easiest quickest way is by sea, using the North Route. But the ships are mercilessly hunted by Nazi airplanes and submarines and you need military ships to provide cover and defense against Nazis. And everything goes well, the convoy is halfway on its route when some lunatic politician some thousand miles away decides against all logic and military advice to play chicken and withdraws the military ships from the allied convoy and in the next hours' dozens of commercial defenseless ships are sunk, hundreds of lives are lost and the needed supplies are lost forever in the ocean. How in the hell this happened? Well, you can read this book to find out why.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders by Bill Fawcett was a nice read for me. The writers selected battles throughout history where blunders led to failures that were not foreseen beforehand. Armies that were expected to win lost due to blindingly bad decisions, incompetence, teams that didn’t trust each other, or any other number of reasons.

If the subject interests one, but you’re concerned that maybe this book is a deep and very historical analysis, don’t worry. Most of the essays are under 10 pages and many times just 5. This makes the book a nice skim through military history. I’m sure experts on the battles might roll their eyes a bit and want to add further details, but that’s not the point here. Just a high-level overview to give one a gist of how a sure-thing can go terribly wrong. And with that, history turns on its heels and plays out differently.

It's sometimes scary to see how easily things can go wrong.

[Boyke Rahardian · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book has several problems.

The authors put too much emphasize on blunders made by, of course, the losing sides and somehow understated the masterful strategies that brought the victories. Alexander at Gaugamela, Napoleon at Austerlitz, Zhuikov at Stalingrad, Vo Nguyen Giap at Dien Bien Phu to name a few, undeniably put together brilliant battle plans and executed them almost flawlessly. Battle is always a messy business; miscommunication, morale condition even weather and simple bad luck play important roles that affect the results. They are not, in my opinion, strategic blunders. Thus some of the battles in this book were won because the victors really deserved them rather than because of their opponents’ blunders.

Second: where are the famous blunders? Napoleon at Boridino, Custer at Little Big Horn, Operation Market Garden during WW2. These are unwinnable battles whichever you look at them, even with a hindsight. Should be included in any book discussing blunders.

Third: historical inaccuracy. (1) Yasser Arafat is not the nephew of Jerusalem Grand Mufti, hence not radicalized by him. (2) Guy of Lusignan became King of Jerusalem by right of marriage; he was not elected and not the King of all Outremer region as described in this book.

[Eric J. Hartsfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needed a good editor and proof reader

While I understand that this is by means a serious examination of failures in military history, the spelling and grammatical errors are unacceptable. Now I was reading the Kindle version of the book and perhaps there was a problem with the formatting .

[Edward D. Bowling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well done!

Short, to the point, filled with the right amount of details; this book analyzes battles that were truly "world changing." Taking the perspective of how the battles were lost versus how the were won is not a new idea, but a very important one. Extremely well done!

[Max Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fawcett breaks it down! Want to lose a battle? He shows you how. From missed, ambiguous commands given during a fight, to inappropriate tactics in the wrong terrain, and disasters due to just plain old "stupidity" (as he puts it), the author showcases a chronological compendium of legendary defeats. These guys were all LOSERS, with a capital L!

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, if depressing, view on major fails of battle. It makes you realize a lot of people in power refuse to listen to anyone below them and often leads to Doom. I enjoyed the WW2 inclusions since I generally don't read as much on that.

[Alexandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected it to be entertaining or at least witty. It was not. It did have some good lines here and there but the storytelling just wasn’t there. I read three or four chapters and I gave up, and I almost never give up on a book.

[Sarah Deeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few really good battles in here, some entertaining chapters, and some I just didn't care about. Overall, I think you could some up the whole thing by saying that if you're over confident, you don't do your research and stick to the plan no matter what, you're probably going to lose the battle.

[Paul B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun enough.

[SALAH · Rating 1 out of 5]

ملخص لعدة معارك

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good lessons.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it was going to be funny, but it was boring.

[Chaz Chiclana · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a drag just a lot of the same reason behind these lost battles. Some battles were interesting

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

While an entertaining read, this book should be seen as no more than an introduction to some of history's worst military blunders. As a collection of short pieces by several different authors, each battle gets its own chapter, and there are a lot of them; 37 different battles and military engagements are tackled in just 316 pages. As with any collection by different writers, the quality of each chapter varies; some chapters give an excellent analysis and description of the situation, the personalities involved, the battle itself, and what went wrong, while others merely offer a summary that could easily be read online on a site like Wikipedia. Of course, it's hard to write compelling history when some of the chapters are as little as five pages long.

The book tackles battles from ancient and biblical times, all the way up until the modern era, ending with the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. It contains most of the standard battles and blunders that inevitably find their way into books like these (Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg, Cannae), but it also mentions some lesser known battles and even a few that aren't immediately familiar (such as one from the First Boer War). A word of warning, however: almost a third of the book (page-wise) is devoted to the U.S. Civil War. While having a basic background in military concepts and terms and knowing the history behind each battle helps the reader in knowing what's going on, this book is still very readable without any of that knowledge.

The advanced historical or military reader won't find much that isn't already known in this book, but as a basic introduction to all these historical blunders, this collection is a fun read.

[Ian Kemp]

Lightweight but entertaining book - the sheer enjoyment of being able to use 20-20 hindsight to loftily criticise major historical figures is what makes it worth the read.

Most of the contributions are written by Fawcett and generally pretty objective, though some of the chapters by other authors are of variable quality, especially the one on the 6-day war which falls woefully short of being an objective analysis.

The book is heavily US-oriented in that it includes some very minor US events while missing some of the other major howlers with non-European/US heritage.

Finally a number of chapters seem to be included either as padding or just out of some capricious personal foible of the editor. For example why is Okinawa included when the battle was not in fact lost by the side that made all the mistakes? If the purpose of the book is to help us learn from other people's mistakes, how about Leyte Gulf, where a breathtaking and bizarre display of arrogance and self-aggrandisment on the part of one of the US admirals almost led to total disaster. The US won the battle but it's surely more of a learning point than Okinawa or the 19th century battle for Samoa.

Good fun to read though, use it to while away some travel time!

[Bibliovoracious · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light analysis of multiple battles from the 4th century BC to 1954 notable for ineptitude of leadership and pointless loss of life. Chapter by chapter it draws an arc of technological advance and cultural change as it hops around the world.

Overall it is a very accessible book for the non-expert with the multiple authors clearly setting the stage for each chapter's conflict, but the middle chapters written by William R Forstchen covering the American civil war were pretty well unreadable. They lacked background information and repeatedly assumed the reader already knew the outcome of many events, therefore not bothering to describe them, using phrases like "and everyone knows how that turned out" (well, no...that's why I'm reading the book). Maddening. Without an American high school education, which only some Americans have, one is not going to be intimately familiar with details of the American civil war, actually.

Apart from that complaint, I was startled to learn how history many times stood on a knife edge and could and should have turned out so very differently (Battle of Britain, Ireland, Agincourt, Trenton, Pearl Harbour), but turned out the way it did because of some or one individual's massive idiocy. Very sobering.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

My expectations of this book were neither high nor low, but in the end I expected it to be a rather quick and amusing read. I got what I wanted in some of the battle descriptions but I was left feeling like some battles deserved more insight.

I was not surprised to find that most of these battles were western-centric though I would have liked to know the criteria for choosing a battle to write about. I mean could the Battle of Marathon not also be included?

Some battle descriptions seemed to drag on as well, and it very quickly turned from amusing at points to rather boring at others, and I think the writing is to blame for this. I also found some of the battle descriptions rather confusing with the lack of explanation for military terminology especially considering that this book looks to target the more casual of history readers.

Overall though, I found the content to be interesting even though it was hard to follow at times but this is not a book I plan to return to and read again in the near future – someone else can pick it up and perhaps enjoy it more than I did.

[Leonardo]

Para un marxista radical, la historia real que vivimos es en sí misma una cierta clase de historia alternativa realizada, es la realidad en la que tenemos que vivir porque en el pasado fracasamos en aprovechar el momento y actuar. Los historiadores de los hechos militares han demostrado que los confederados perdieron la batalla de Gettysburg porque el general Lee cometió una serie de equivocaciones totalmente impropias: «Gettysburg fue la única batalla librada por Lee que parece de ficción. En otras palabras, si hubo alguna batalla en la que Lee no se comportara como Lee, fue allí, en el sur de Pensilvania». Para cada uno de los movimientos equivocados, uno puede jugar al juego de «¿qué hubiera hecho Lee en esta situación?»; en otras palabras, fue como si, en la batalla de Gettysburg, la historia alternativa se hiciera realidad.

Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.100

[Bruno Di Giandomenico · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly a modest book, slightly interesting because there is a list of famous battles which are dealt with in a very short way, just no more than 20 ebook pages at most. Every battle from remote antiquity to the more modern battle of the six days war (indeed more a war than a battle).
The author is slightly presuming to know a lot about how a battle should be conducete and where the faults were, but foreknowledge is a difficult thing to manage.expecially in hindsight.
The book honestly does not add to history, it is a quiet list of events which are interesting,and short, quick to read.
Not for the seriously history buff.

[mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you go into this book expecting a detailed accounting of every battle it covers you will be disappointed. If however you understand that it's just over 300 pages and covering over 30 events then you should find yourself as pretty amused. If nothing else you'll walk away with a better idea of how to lose a battle. I've studied history quite a bit and some of these stories were news to me. Bill Fawcett's book should be used as a jumping off point if you want to know more about each individual battle and the tactics deployed within them. This should be viewed as a light-hearted glance into several events that helped shape the world we live in today.