A little history trivia . . .

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

I will let you know if I get the urge to look it up again.

I found it for you. On page 295 of "A War to Be Won", Murray and Millett say that "both sides marshaled massive forces for this climactic battle of World War II - the largest battle in human history." They are referring to Operation Zitadelle.

Chalk a point up for me...

You know, coming from someone who doesn't have respect for homosexuals . . . you were willing to help me on this?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Drogue
in terms of overall impact on the world, I'd say the Somme.

No way - Marathon or Gaugamela.

[GePap]

The definiton of what counts as a battle is key:

For example, the Somme killed rmoe people than verdun, but, according to my spurce on WW1 (The Experience of World War I by JM Winters), a total of 2.1 million men fought at the Somme while a total of 4.3 million men fought at Verdun. the difference is that thet french kept rotating units through the Verdun front while the same units generally stayed the whole time at the Somme, nuless they ceased to exist.

About Citadel: it was an operation carried out over tens, if not hundreads of miles. If you can view Citadel as one single battle, then aren't other operations to be counted the same? Why not treat Barbarossa as one battle? This would certainly make it the biggest battle in history.
Maybe that's to broad, maybe just count operations along more limited fronts. Well, then you could define Operation Blue, the German summer offensive in the east of 1942, which eventually became the battle for Stalindgrad, as the biggest battle.
We might also be forgetting operations such as the Soviet counterattack after Citadel, or Operation Bagration, which intailed the destruction of the Central army group in the East by at least 2 entire Soviet fronts. In just about a month (much shorter than both the Somme or verdun), 1 million + soviet forces destroyed a force of about 980,000 Germans.

What I can say with complete certainty is that the Eastern front in WW2 was the largest, bloodiest land campaign ever waged by man, and may very well remain so.

[GePap]

Let me add another contestant into the Mix, the Final Soviet offensive in the West, the attack on Berlin by the two fronts under Zhukov and Konev. According to Anthony Beevor, that amounted to 2.5 million Soviet forces taking on 1 million german defenders.

[Drake Tungsten]

You know, coming from someone who doesn't have respect for homosexuals . . . you were willing to help me on this?

I appreciate your false judgment of me and my views on homosexuals. It always brightens my day to be falsely accused of bigotry.

You're welcome, BTW.

[monkspider]

Like Drake, I would have guessed Kursk, though Verdun and Somme are good picks as well.

One that I don't think has been considered is Bagration. It has to be right up there, if it fits the criteria at least, it was a broader offensive than say, Verdun.

-edit oops Ge briefly mentioned it earlier.

[GePap]

Nah, the assualt on Berlin. it took 3 weeks and in those three weeks 3.5 million men took part in it. Neither the Somme nor Verdun were nearly as big from the start (the original offensive at the Somme used 120,000 men, half of which went down). And surely the Russians threw more AFV at Berlin in '45 than were engaged at Kursk, total, and then add German AFV.

[Zero]

ancient chinese war has always been ridiculously big even for today's standard. I wouldnt be surprised if happened to be some chinese revolutionary battle that I never heard about.

[Drake Tungsten]

Nah, the assualt on Berlin. it took 3 weeks and in those three weeks 3.5 million men took part in it. Neither the Somme nor Verdun were nearly as big from the start (the original offensive at the Somme used 120,000 men, half of which went down). And surely the Russians threw more AFV at Berlin in '45 than were engaged at Kursk, total, and then add German AFV.

As I said earlier, I've seen sites that claim the Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Berlin, Citadel and Verdun as the biggest battle ever. I think it depends greatly on the criteria you use and as this thread has rather vague criteria, I doubt we'll be able to come to a definitive answer.

[Zero]

I did googling for "Largest battle in history". I got advance to berlin.

[Bosh]

No way - Marathon or Gaugamela.

Nah, Marathon was a skirmish and the Persians didn't have to infastructure to project power into Europe for any real length of time and by Persian Empire was on its last legs well before Gaugamela.

Maybe Teutoburger Wald deserves a nomination? Rome with a long-term frontier on the Elbe would have changed a hell of a lot.

[David Floyd]

I wish I can locate this again, but he claimed that this particular battle was the largest in human history. If I get the urge to go back, I will let you know if I find it again. Unless someone else might know which battle I'm alluding to.

Sorry if this has already been answered, I'm just on the first page. But you are talking about Operation Bagration, the destruction of Army Group Center.

[David Floyd]

Here's a new category: Largest single-day engagment, in terms of a battle that started and ended in a single day, fought on a single battlefield.

Antietam is the first that comes to mind, although I'm sure there are others.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'd wager that Austerlitz has Antietam beat pretty handily...

[David Floyd]

Good point...I thought about Leipzig, but that was a 3 day battle. I suppose both Austerlitz and Waterloo would beat Antietam, though.

Actually, First Borodino was bigger than Austerlitz, though, wasn't it?