Greatest Army....

you're right about that. i don't particularly like him, but i can't deny he was a daring explorer and venturer, and an able army commander even. nobody can really take that away from him.

but i have a lot more respect for his father.

 

Respect and trying to decide what's the greatest army in history probably would make me focus on a defensive army, never the agressor (maybe the greek army under Sparta against the persians is a good contender). But I didn't read the question like that.

 

The Hellenistic culture that Alexander spread far and wide was to prove crucial for the subsequent development of western civilization. It also led to many other things. I recently saw a documentary about early Buddhism, and it turns out that the Hellenistic influence can be clearly seen inn some Buddhist architecture, and some early statues (statues again) of Buddha, which then became very influential on subsequent Buddhist sculpture.

 

the prostitute army that was created and led by sun tsu.

 

You have to give mention the Armies of the Crusades.

For nearly 500 yrs they reigned terror throughout Europe.

 

Certainly the Japanese Imperial army needs a mention. Between the years of 1931-1943 they went virtually undefeated in nearly every battle they fought. In early 1942 they were able to capture more territory in 6 months than any other army has in history. The individual soldiers of the Japanese army were some of the most rugged and loyal soldiers of not just the Second World War, but of all time. They were willing to fight to the death and avoid capture at all costs due in part to their belief that one must sacrifice all they can for their Emperor (Hirohito) whom they viewed as a living reincarnation of their god, as according to their religion Shintoism.

The Japanese were absolutely notorious for their treatment of POWs and would treat them with such brutality that many Americans would prefer to be sent to Europe and fight the Nazis and Italians than have to go fight the Japanese in the Pacific. The Japanese code of honour said that surrender was one of the most disgraceful things a soldier could do to their home country, and because of this the Japanese justified their brutality towards POWs as being deserved. The POWs were not just treated horribly, they were also put to use by the military. Some of the POWs would be sent to forced labour to build things such as the infamous Burma Railway, which saw the death of more than 12,000 Allied soldiers, with many more Asian civilian labourers dying. As brutal as the forced labour was, many soldiers would have been considered lucky to have been sent their as opposed to others places they could have gone. The Japanese used many POWs as well as Chinese civilians living in Manchuria as test subjects for medical experiments. These experiments occured in many different places throughout occupied Asia, but the most infamous and brutal was Unit 731 which was located in Harbin, Manchuria. The experiments done on subjects there included live vivisection, being placed in pressure chambers, frostbite experiments, being exposed to various biological and chemical weapons, being infected with various diseases, and many other sadistic experiments, all done without any type of anaesthesia.

Now as far as the surrender of Japan goes, many people in the United States believe that it was the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that forced the Japanese to finally give up. Personally I believe this is part of the reason but not the only reason they surrendered. The bombings occurred on August 6 (Hiroshima) and August 9 (Nagasaki), and the surrender occurred less than 1 week later on August 15. This would lead the average person to logically assume that the surrender was a result of these bombings. Now as much as these bombings devastated those two cities, I don't believe that the Japanese would have surrendered just from those two bombs. The event that I believe was the more important event that led to their surrender was the Soviet Union invasion of Manchuria. This occurred shortly after midnight on August 9, coincidently the same day as the Nagasaki bombing. Many people look at this as a minor event, but I think that it was the most important factor in the final capitulation of Japan. The reason I don't think the atomic bombing is reason for the surrender is because throughout the summer of 1945 the United States carried out a bombing campaign on mainland Japan that resulted in many towns and cities being even more destroyed than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki were. Now if the bombing campaign didn't deter the Japanese into surrender then I doubt the atomic bombing would have either. Now the Soviet invasion on the other hand saw the possibility of complete annihilation and the Japanese realised that if they didn't surrender soon than the Soviet Union would be invading their home islands shortly. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the atomic bombings had nothing to do with the surrender, but I do believe it was both events (Soviet invasion and atomic bombings) that led to the surrender. In other words I don't think the surrender would have happened if only one of the two had happened.

 

Lol, throughout Europe? Sounds like they did something wrong then And.. for 500 years makes it sound like it was continually. Which it wasn't. Furthermore none of the great crusader armies excelled in organisation, motivation, skills or discipline (which is not to say there weren't skilled warriors in those armies but as a whole... no, not the greatest). If you recall right, despite some succes, they usually had a hard time dealing with the armies of their opponents.

 

Not taking the side of the crusaders, but from what I've read it seems that the army of Richard 1 was quite well organized, as was that of Louis 9 of France. The former had what amounts to a 'draw' with Saladin's army,could have retaken Jerusalem but wouldn't have been able to hold it because of supply problems etc, whilst the latter was a complete disaster. But I would argue it wasn't because of poor organization.

Of course, different historians like to interject their opinions, and I have come across divergent accounts of all this.

I know little of the crusades in Europe, other than the Albigensian crusade in the south of France, which was more like a pogrom than an actual war.

 

The 3rd crusade was one of the better ones. It's not an accurate portrayal of the whole 500 years that Europe was busy with crusades. They seriously clowned around in other ones. Surely they weren't completely shit, but in regards to the thread title none of the crusader armies would even be in the top 10.

 

Agreed. And actually, a top 10 or top 5 even would perhaps be a better question. It's very difficult to narrow it down to just one army.

 

I'd edit the question but it won't let me, what would be your top 10/5?

 

But the american armed forces with all their technological superiority in the form of napalm, carpet bombings and so on, were still defeated by the spirited Vietnamese in 1975.

 

That isn't modern day...I was barely able to walk back then.
Modern America has stealth jets and drones with bunker busters. And as an aside...if the idea was to kill all Vietnamese...the result would have been much different.

 

Russia, China & North Korea.

 

north korea is organized, i would never call them great though.

 

True, I guess the greatest army is the one that never fires one shot.

 

so the swiss?

 

If you mean 'greatest' as being victorious against the odds I'd vote for the Maltese Army of 1565. With an army of only 8,500, most of them volunteers, they managed to hold of the Ottomans with a force of 45,000. The siege took place over several months and cost the Maltese 1/3 of their troops, but they were successful in the defense of their island.

 

41 years back is not a major time span.

Modern Vietnam is also correspondingly well equipped. The technological gap maybe even much lower now.

In fact, in terms of pure soldiering skill, I would consider the Vietnamese army at that time quite superior to the American one and probably the greatest defensive force ever.

This because they had already defeated the Vichy French and Japanese in 15 August 1945, the French in 1954, and finally the Americans in 1975. This is really a great military feat of defeating three heavyweights consecutively.

If the idea was to kill all Vietnamese, then the war would have ended earlier in North Vietnam's favour, as the southern Vietnamese would have started fighting the American forces as well instead of supporting them.