Who were the greatest defenders of all time?

[Agathon]

Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
I can't believe that no-ones the creator of the poll hasn't mentioned the Spartans at Thermopylae.

That was like... 300 vs... quarter of a million.

Didn't the Persians have archers?

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Didn't the Persians have archers?

Sure they did.

Oddly the Spartans never got killed by them until after they were surrounded on both sides and the Greek Allies had left. Standing their ground under those conditions would be, for us, superhumanly gutsy.

I wonder if Xerxes just never considered using those archers until then.

[Bereta_Eder]

The man who betrayed the Greeks, Ephialtes, has come to mean nightmare in Greek.

[alva]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
Damn.

I thought this was going to be a soccer thread.

Me too dammit, I was already making a list

[Whoha]

The Japanese, we didn't hold anything back from them and they held us off for quite a while.

The same could not be said of the VC.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Whoha
The Japanese, we didn't hold anything back from them and they held us off for quite a while.

Uh, sure, but then they folded like a cheap suit when they started getting nuked. :

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
How about the Germans in the first world war?

They surrendered only when they ran out of food supplies.

But the weren't really defending, were they? They were on French soil at the time...

[Richelieu]

For those of you who haven't read it yet, a short story about Thermopylae written by Laz. It is a gem in my opinion.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75808

[Boris Godunov]

The Alamo was just fanatic stupidity, and they didn't even put up that good of a fight. They lost badly.

[Ned]

Re: Re: Who were the greatest defenders of all time?

Originally posted by MrFun


I was down to a choice between Stalingrad of World War II, and the above choice.

So in the end, I voted for the Vietcong. They were a repressive regime in their own right, but in addition to the strengths you mentioned above, the Vietcong were able to effectively use political propaganda of anti-colonialism in connunction with their military strategy.

Many United States advisors also failed to grasp that this war could not be won by conventional means, and were unable to effectively counteract Vietcong's strategy.

I am sorry Mr. Fun, I think everybody in the Johnson administration knew that we could not win the war without invading North Vietnam. The strategy pursued by Johnson and the military was to not "lose" the war.

McNamara was in favor of pulling out of Vietnam as early as 1963. He apparently knew that there was no way to win the war without an invasion of North Vietnam, which at the time was politically unacceptable not only to North Vietnam's Communist allies, but also to American allies.

[SpencerH]

So did no one get my little joke? Perhaps it wasnt funny? Or perhaps y'all are to ignorant to understand it?

[GePap]

And the American people in general-why risk the US to save the South Vietnamese dictatorship.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by GePap
And the American people in general-why risk the US to save the South Vietnamese dictatorship.

Hadn't you heard? Communism is EvilTM

[Arrian]

The Spartans, followed by the knights in Malta, followed by the RAF in 1940.

-Arrian