War History Buffs. I NEED YOUR HELP!!

[CaliforniaDreamin]

Ok, this is info I need personally. It's not for anyone's homework. I have tried Google and have come up with about a million different answers. Is there any one battle that is considered to be the longest? Not war, but battle. Please help.

 

[NikitaZee]

I'm pretty sure that would be France - Battle of Verdun. WWI - 1916 - 10 months long.

 

[SAHDad]

I'd go with the seige of Leningrad. Started in September of 1941 (when the Axis surrounded the city completely) and lasted until January 1944.

There might have been some really long seiges in the middle ages though. Acre was a couple of years, and supposedly Troy was beseiged by nine years or so.

 

[NotUrsula]

As a previous poster mentioned, it probably depends on whether you consider a siege to be a battle. Most of the time with sieges, actual on-the-ground fighting by armies is intermittant once control of the perimeter is established.

If you are talking about a situation where there is actual pitched combat raging continuously, I'd agree with Verdun. The actual number of casualties during the battle itself is in dispute, but most estimates put it at somewhere between 700K and one million. It was primarily an artillery battle; about 2.5 million shells were fired.

In a way, the Battle of Verdun is still being fought, because of all of the unexploded live ordnance still lying around out there -- about a million acres of forest are still restricted for building and public access, and over 600 bomb disposal personnel have died there since 1945. The estimate is that there are probably still about 12 million live shells on the battlefield.

 

[pigletz]

I'd go with the seige of Leningrad. Started in September of 1941 (when the Axis surrounded the city completely) and lasted until January 1944.

There might have been some really long seiges in the middle ages though. Acre was a couple of years, and supposedly Troy was beseiged by nine years or so.

Can you count seiges though? A seige would consist of several battles, but it's not technically a battle itself. I would have to go with the PP that answered Verdun. It's the answer that I would give if one of my students asked me this question.

 

[SAHDad]

Can you count seiges though? A seige would consist of several battles, but it's not technically a battle itself. I would have to go with the PP that answered Verdun. It's the answer that I would give if one of my students asked me this question.

A medieval seige would mainly be a lot of standing around and waiting, yes. I'd have to go back and double-check some of my books on it, but IIRC, Leningrad has pretty much constant fighting, although much of it was between smaller units (company level, as opposed to battalion).

Again, I would have to look, but even Verdun had periods of relative inactivity. (Both examples would have periods where the only "real" combat was artillery barrages, or periods of quiet, because both sides had to regroup.)

It really comes down to what you consider a "battle" - I don't think any battle has more than a few days of continuous fighting, but areas like Verdun and Leningrad were places where fighting was more or less a constant threat for months.

(I had a more coherent thought, but I think my kids are killing each other. More later.)

 

[EMom]

The Seige of Leningrad lasted for 2 1/2 years and yes, there was fighting. More around the city than inside, but there was fighting. The Germans didn't just camp out there calmly for 2 1/2 years.

It is one of the most horrific events you will ever read about. Official Russian estimates at the time put the death toll of the city's population at over 600,000 or so, but they had their reasons for underestimating that number. When the siege began, Leningrad had slightly over 2.5 million people with refugees pouring in constantly. When it ended, they were at around 1 million.....a little under, I believe. That's well over 1.5 million people unaccounted for. Granted, some managed to flee, but not THAT many. Modern estimates indicate more like 1 million+ civilian inhabitants died during the seige. Yes, it was largely due to starvation, but starvation is an effective military tool. And those are just the civilians who died.

The stories of what the people endured are the stuff of nightmares.....People saving the corpse of one child to feed another. Women deciding it was the lesser of evils to have a young daughter take a job with a high risk of death because that would give the daughter a larger food ration.....one that might actually be enough food to keep her alive. Without the job, the ration was lower and the chance of starvation went way up. What to do? Watch your child die a certain, slow death? Or take a risk on giving her enough food to keep her alive, but in doing so expose her to situations that could kill her instantly? I don't know if any of us can imagine living this way for 2 1/2 years....Watching our friends, neighbors, families and children starve to death before our eyes.

One type of fighting went on outside the city, but another went on inside.

 

[CaliforniaDreamin]

Thank you all for your responses. My dad and I were talking about WW1 ending on Sunday and he mentioned that The Korean Conflict never officially ended. An armisistice was signed, but it never technically ended. There is no combat and hasn't been for years.

Then I started thinking about battles vs war. I couldn't really find an actual definative "worlds longest battle". I don't know much about military history, my dad does. He and his whole family were military. My grandfather fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal and my great uncle founded the US Army Field Band. He was a very high ranking officer. I would have gone into the military if I had not had severe scoliosis. I grew up on army bases all over the place. It's a real shame I don't know more about US Military. I sometimes miss the military life.