Marathon, Waterloo, and Gettysburg the most famous battles?

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
In the April 2019 issue of Civil War Times magazine it states that Marathon, Waterloo, and Gettysburg are the most famous battles. Would this be accurate? I do wonder how many Americans are all that well informed about the Battle of Marathon. Perhaps Civil War Times is only talking about Americans and residents in other countries might see things different. What do forum members see as the most famous battle of all times?
 
Battle of Thermopylae is the Greeks Alamo... I have noticed some societies have a great military loss against great odds and it is portrayed as a great moral victory and national pride...
Certainly we Brits have a way of turning failure into heroism. The Charge of the Light Brigade for instance. Instantly recognisable but few know it was part of the Battle of Balaclava, best known for the woolly hat i think known as a ski mask in US and beloved of robbers everywhere.

My favourite is the affiar at Nery in 1914. this was where a battery of the Royal Horse Artillery held off the Germans long enough for the rest of the II corps to retreat in good order. This is hardly known at all but saved the BEF. I have a picture of the Nery gun somewhere showing massive battle damage.
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Would part of the answer of what we view as the most famous battles be partly dependent on what age group we are talking about?
like i said in a previous post, the composition of the pool surely influence the final result, so characteristics like age, location (and looking to the US i would imagine it depends also from state to state, because in a vast subcontinet like US, i would assume cultural aspects and tendences differ region to region), .. but at the end, in my opinion, as i try to explain before, the factor which go to influence for the most a top 5 chart of this kind, it's the level of passion for this matter of the interviewed, and this can't be brought back to any other feature or specific peculiarity.
Why Thermopilian enters in a top 5 of this kind in the US, much probably is due to the vision of related movies, but surely the same cause would affect this choise everywhere, so also here in Italy, for example. I don't see why Troy, which movie is in an upper class for me, don't cover the same position.
Anyway, don't think history being abandoned just in the US, worldwide people prefer other no conceptual interests or 'much practice' studies. If an historical fact is studied in all its complexity and readed in its several versions we can dispose in that moment in that place, we could even open the mind instead bring it in the conventional interpretation of that fact, which is in the universal optic the only cold comfort we have to provide. This is a reason why history is basically discouraged, and i would say everywhere, in school first.
 
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My favourite is the affiar at Nery in 1914

Is not Dunkirk consider one of those defeats that was turned into a moral victory of national pride?

The 1842 retreat from Kabul and later the fall of Singapore are consider great defeats. I wonder what causes a defeat to become a center of national pride... like our Alamo or Thermopylae...
 
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here I would argue that the invasion is far more famous to the average citizen than the battles that followed. Everybody knows Hannibal crossed the alps with his army , famously including war elephants, but few know what happened next.

Killing 70,000 romans in a one day battle would be rememberable to me.
 
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Is not Dunkirk consider one of those defeats that was turned into a moral victory of national pride?

The 1842 retreat from Kabul and later the fall of Singapore are consider great defeats. I wonder what causes a defeat to become a center of national pride... like our Alamo or Thermopylae...

Dunkirk was really a major success in embarking a large number of British, France and Belgian Troops from the beaches. the point most people remember is the little ships that saved the army. In fact most were taken home by Naval warships. the german invasion of France was a defeat but by saving a large part of the BEF it was a moral boost.

Another forgotten master stroke embarkation of troops was from Gallipoli in January 1916. Achieved will hardly a casualty unlike the invasion.
 
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Killing 70,000 romans in a one day battle would be rememberable to me.
Maybe , If you knew it in the first place. Take a poll among friends and family, not historians, and ask , “what is Hannibal famous for ? “. I doubt you will get the answer you want. I would venture to say that even if they know of hannibal’s victories they cannot name them. Scipio’s victory at Zama is equally impressive.
 
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Dunkirk was really a major success in embarking a large number of British, France and Belgian Troops from the beaches. the point most people remember is the little ships that saved the army. In fact most were taken home by Naval warships. the german invasion of France was a defeat but by saving a large part of the BEF it was a moral boost.

That's it. Obviously the 1940 campaign overall was a debacle for the Allies, but if we look just at the Dunkirk operation, the British achieved their objective, and is that not the definition of success?
 
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Obviously the 1940 campaign overall was a debacle for the Allies, but if we look just at the Dunkirk operation, the British achieved their objective, and is that not the definition of success?

si vabè .. ahhaha, british could achieved their evacuation at Dunkirk just because germans didn't press too hard the Allies troops on the beaches, making a sort of joking ballet with some dive bombers Ju 87. German armoured forces were near and ready for the total destruction of the Great Britain's army on the french soil, but Hitler though/hoped, as far as i watched on several documentaries about, in a chance to make a compromise peace with Great Britain, not wanting to rage on its forces, before go east, in the Balkans and Russia. Substantially, a political move for a stratetic purpose, over a substantial admiration for the traditional whites empire in the world.
 
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