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Catastrophe: History’s Most Disastrous Defeats

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2025 17 min

Catastrophe - Napoleon retreats from Moscow — Napoleon retreats from Moscow. ABC

1. An Arab Catastrophe

Egyptian prisoners captured in the Six Day War. Wikimedia

Faced with catastrophe, Egypt and Jordan accepted a UN ceasefire. However, the Syrians unwisely did not, so the Israelis attacked Syria on June 9^th, and captured the Golan Heights within a day. Syria accepted a cease fire the following day. It was a lopsided Arab catastrophe: about 24,000 Arabs killed vs 800 Israelis, with similarly disproportionate rates for wounded and equipment losses. Nasser’s prestige in the Arab world, which he had sought to burnish with warlike rhetoric and demonstrations short of war, took a severe hit from which it never recovered.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Bellamy, Chris – Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (2007)

British Battles – Battle of Agincourt

Chandler, David G. – The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966)

Clark, Alan – Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45 (1965)

Fall, Bernard B. – Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1967)

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe II, From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome (1994)

Head Stuff – Crassus, the Richest Man in Rome

History Collection – Today in History: Napoleon Bonaparte Dies in Exile (1821)

Jackson, Julian – The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (2003)

Keegan, John – The Face of Battle: Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (1976)

Lieven, Dominic – Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace (2010)

Oren, Michael B. – Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2002)

Plutarch – Parallel Lives: Life of Crassus

Riehn, Richard K. – 1812: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (1990)

Roy, Jules – The Battle of Dienbienphu (1984)

Shirer, William – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1990 Edition)

Warfare History Network – The Sinai Air Strike: June 5, 1967

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.