James Baquet

When it comes to determining the costliest battles in terms of human lives, things can get a little tricky.

Numbers can be wildly inaccurate, especially as recorded by the victors (underreporting their own losses, and exaggerating the enemy’s). Sometimes counts are not available at all for the losing side. The different sides may give conflicting numbers. Some counts include civilians, while others do not.There is a difference between “classical” battles, where two armies face each other across open terrain in a day or two, and such events as sieges and campaigns, which can be more complex and take place over months or even years.Finally, in more complex actions, it is hard to determine which peripheral actions are part of the main battle, and which should be counted as separate affairs.

So while we cannot say exactly which of history’s many battles was the costliest (or the least costly, for that matter), we can fairly confidently determine which battles are near the top of the list.

One candidate is the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943), which lasted a little over five months and saw nearly two million men dead or wounded. It was the largest confrontation in World War II; the Germans and their allies lost between 647,300 and 868,374 men, and the Russians lost 1,129,619. Yet, it is counted as a Russian victory, because at the end of the conflict, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) remained in Russian hands, and the German Sixth Army was destroyed.

Having failed by early 1942 to defeat the Soviet Union in a single campaign, the Germans attempted to take at least the southern part of the Soviet Union--where Stalingrad, considered quite a prize, was located.

One salient feature of the battle is that it rather quickly deteriorated into close-quarters combat, where the movements of adversaries are restricted to a small area; and house-to-house fighting, in which every house, factory, ruined building and even staircase was won only by hard fighting.

Some consider Stalingradto be the biggest defeat in the history of the German Army. In 1944, Hitler himself blamed this one battle for the Germany’s impending loss of the Second World War.

Vocabulary:

Which word or phrase above means:

1. making larger

2. noticeable, important

3. about to happen

4. possible choice

5. making smaller

6. resulting in the greatest loss

7. face-to-face encounter

8. opponents

9. people not in the military

10. disagreeing