The most hilarious screw ups in history

[Mr.Cynic88]

After the Great Depression hit America, the Fed raised interest rates, which was precisely the wrong thing to do and exacerbated the problem.

The US government refused to listen to the new Keynesian theory about using government spending to restore the economy, and recovery efforts were slow and usually in the hands of private companies or local state governments. The government didn't want to become a "public dole" and tried to spend as little money as possible. That is, until WWII broke out and the US government essentially wrote a blank check for funding the Allies' war effort. When it was all said and done America controlled half the world's wealth and accidentally proved Keynes' theory correct, which has shaped economic theory every since.

Not very funny, but during World War II the American government moved thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast into mandatory camps, despite the fact that an FBI investigation had revealed no evidence of treason. The area closest to Japan and least "American," the island of Hawaii, refused the order because it would have hurt their economy, while innocent American-born Japanese lost over 400 million dollars worth of property after the forced incarceration. It took 40 years for the US government to officially admit they had made a mistake, and they paid $80,000 to the victims - the ones who were still alive at least.

 

[Fisher321]

After the Great Depression hit America, the Fed raised interest rates, which was precisely the wrong thing to do and exacerbated the problem.

The US government refused to listen to the new Keynesian theory about using government spending to restore the economy, and recovery efforts were slow and usually in the hands of private companies or local state governments. The government didn't want to become a "public dole" and tried to spend as little money as possible. That is, until WWII broke out and the US government essentially wrote a blank check for funding the Allies' war effort. When it was all said and done America controlled half the world's wealth and accidentally proved Keynes' theory correct, which has shaped economic theory every since.

Not very funny, but during World War II the American government moved thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast into mandatory camps, despite the fact that an FBI investigation had revealed no evidence of treason. The area closest to Japan and least "American," the island of Hawaii, refused the order because it would have hurt their economy, while innocent American-born Japanese lost over 400 million dollars worth of property after the forced incarceration. It took 40 years for the US government to officially admit they had made a mistake, and they paid $80,000 to the victims - the ones who were still alive at least.

Another thing that's messed up were some Japanese-Americans were in the armed forces and their families still got detained.

 

[Ryotknife]

After the Great Depression hit America, the Fed raised interest rates, which was precisely the wrong thing to do and exacerbated the problem.

The US government refused to listen to the new Keynesian theory about using government spending to restore the economy, and recovery efforts were slow and usually in the hands of private companies or local state governments. The government didn't want to become a "public dole" and tried to spend as little money as possible. That is, until WWII broke out and the US government essentially wrote a blank check for funding the Allies' war effort. When it was all said and done America controlled half the world's wealth and accidentally proved Keynes' theory correct, which has shaped economic theory every since.

Not very funny, but during World War II the American government moved thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast into mandatory camps, despite the fact that an FBI investigation had revealed no evidence of treason. The area closest to Japan and least "American," the island of Hawaii, refused the order because it would have hurt their economy, while innocent American-born Japanese lost over 400 million dollars worth of property after the forced incarceration. It took 40 years for the US government to officially admit they had made a mistake, and they paid $80,000 to the victims - the ones who were still alive at least.

And if I remember correctly, Hawaii actually HAD japanese spies whereas there was no proof that there were any spies on the west coast.

 

[Zhukov]

The Maginot Line.

So in WWI Germany invades France by going through Belgium, thus bypassing the bulk of the French defense on the France-Germany border. (If this confuses you, it's probably because you're American, just... just go look at a map of Europe.)

After the war the French build the Maginot Line, a series of (very expensive) forts and bunkers along their shared border with Germany to guard against the possibility of any future German attacks.

Then WWII happened and, well... obviously it didn't work too well.

The Maginot Line is often criticized with the benefit of hindsight for being ill suited to the kind of warfare that took place in WWII. The French had essentially prepared to fight the first World War all over again. WWII turned out to be a rather different affair. More mobile, less entrenched.

However, that's not what I find hilarious. After all, they weren't to know how methods of warfare would evolve.

No, what I find hilarious is that the Maginot Line only covered the border with Germany. When the Germans invaded for the second time they bypassed the defenses by going through Belgium. Again. Just like the first time. Apparently this possibility did not occur to the French.

 

[Frankster]

Apparently this possibility did not occur to the French.

Thats simply not true.
The possibility of an attack through Belgium did occur to the french big time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France See the Dyle plan. Heck the initial Allied battleplan was to take up positions in Belgium but talks floundered and that plan failed big time.

Big screwups that would be more accurate in the maginot line area:
-The french putting one of their weak reserve units to man the defensive positions at that critical area, as a result their morale was broken by the germans air bombardment (to be fair it is described as the single most intense bombardment operation ever conducated by the luftwaffe in ww2) and they didnt hold their positions when the germans crossed for the most part.
-French defensive artillery limited to 30 rounds per day per gun despite their artillery being their major defensive advantage over the germans (who were limited to 12 rounds a day due to low availability of art supplies)
The french defensive line that would have interecepted this advance panicked due to reports that germans were already behind them (they werent) and became a disorganized shamble that were lambs to the slaughter versus the germans.

So yeh plenty of screwups by the french in ww2, but not having considered the possibility of a german attack through Belgium certainly aint one of them.

 

[Sajuuk_Khar]

Snip

That would be a good alternate history story. Tandey shooting Hitler wouldn't affect the outcome of WWI, and it would be very interesting to play around with that.

Germany is still pissed off about being given full blame over the war, but without a pro-war dictator, do they do anything? What about the USSR? Would Stalin do what Hitler did and just slowly take smaller countries? Does the Cold War start in 1930 except the USSR against France and Britain? After all, those countries wouldn't have been destroyed, and the US would still be pro-isolationist and not a superpower. Is there even a Cold War, or would there be a real war because there's no threat of Atomic weapons? Does Fascism still rise in Italy and Spain?

Do atomic weapons even get developed? After all, if there's no Germanic persecution of Jews, then people like Einstein don't flee for the US, and since Germany hasn't mobilized itself for taking over Europe, it's doubtful the German scientists would be working on the V-Rockets. Say they do get developed though, if there's no dick-swinging by the US to scare the world, are they used more?

And then there's Japan. Do they still attack Pearl Harbor? Would that war only half fix the economy since we wouldn't need such a large scale of mobilization?

There's probably so many more things I'm missing too....

Hitler being killed (By a time-travelling Einstein no less) before WWII is the basic premise of the original C&C Red Alert, the sequels being further alternated time streams stemming from the first. Germany just sides with the Allies against the Soviets (Axis in game). No mention of Japan or America until the sequels.

OT: I'm going to go with DRM that makes game more annoying or difficult to play than a cracked or pirated version.

 

[Urgh76]

BP in the Gulf of Mexico

Spoiler: Also just for fun

Mitt Romney

 

[Hero in a half shell]

The Maginot Line.

So in WWI Germany invades France by going through Belgium, thus bypassing the bulk of the French defense on the France-Germany border. (If this confuses you, it's probably because you're American, just... just go look at a map of Europe.)

After the war the French build the Maginot Line, a series of (very expensive) forts and bunkers along their shared border with Germany to guard against the possibility of any future German attacks.

Then WWII happened and, well... obviously it didn't work too well.

The Maginot Line is often criticized with the benefit of hindsight for being ill suited to the kind of warfare that took place in WWII. The French had essentially prepared to fight the first World War all over again. WWII turned out to be a rather different affair. More mobile, less entrenched.

However, that's not what I find hilarious. After all, they weren't to know how methods of warfare would evolve.

No, what I find hilarious is that the Maginot Line only covered the border with Germany. When the Germans invaded for the second time they bypassed the defenses by going through Belgium. Again. Just like the first time. Apparently this possibility did not occur to the French.

Interestingly enough, that's not strictly true, the Maginot line did it's job really well, because the best way for Germany to attack France was across the area of the maginot line, it was pretty much the perfect countryside for a tank rush, which Germany were planning to do, so the French fortified it with tank traps and machine gun nests until the German's couldn't have directly attacked it without catastrophic loses.

The French knew that the only other way for Germany to get to them was through Belgium, in fact they were counting on it!
An invasion of Belgium would take several days, and maybe even a few weeks until Germany could reorganise supply lines through it, giving France ample warning before an invasion, in which time their armies could be organised to counter the German troops coming out of Belgium and the English troops stationed at Dunkirk (just in case) could be called to mobilise and help them.

Even the German's knew this strategy was pretty foolproof:

From Wikipedia, [small] because why not?[/small]

Fall Gelb ("Case Yellow"), the initial plan for the invasion of France, was prepared... ...in early October 1939.[40] Like the Schlieffen Plan of World War I, it called for an encirclement attack through the Netherlands and Belgium.[41] Hitler was not satisfied, so revisions of the plan continued throughout October. Manstein was not satisfied with the plan either, as it focused heavily on the northern wing; he felt an attack from this direction would lack the element of surprise and would expose the German forces to counterattacks from the south. The terrain in Belgium was not well-suited as a base of operations for further attacks on France, so Manstein felt the operation would fail to wipe out the enemy - like it did in the First World War

France had a brilliant strategy, and they knew it! The only two options to get to France were the Maginot line and Belgium.

What the German's did was rather sneaky, they prepared to invade Belgium as the French expected, and made sure the French knew it, allowing the French army to form up along the Belgium border, and then sent the main force of their army through Luxemburg, between the gap of the Maginot line and the French armed forces, which was across a really hilly, mountainous area called the Ardennes, that had been dismissed originally by both France and Germany as a possible invasion route because it was too mountainous and hostile to drive an army quickly through. (this was highly risky and fricking genius at the time, it's pretty miraculous that they pulled it off)

It worked because the French in the Ardennes frontline had no way of communicating to anyone else that several German tank divisions were racing past the doors of their border patrol huts because the French communication network to their high command was so underdeveloped as to be non-existent.
Once they were in France they were already behind enemy lines, and had the complete run of the country (as shown in this highly professional MS Paint artwork - Blue are the French lines)

The Germans cut behind the French and raced to the coast before the British knew they were coming. Only Hitler's paranoia stopped the German tank divisions at Dunkirk from engaging the British forces directly, allowing most of the British army stranded there to flee across the channel on anything that floated (naturally this is celebrated as an amazing victory for the British army!)

At this point the French forces were still pointing their guns in the direction of Belgium muttering "Any day now" in those humourous French accents from 'Allo 'Allo.
The Germans had a leisurely drive to Paris, and Hitler finally got to see the Eiffel Tower up close.

Don't get me wrong, the French generals were imbeciles who stayed 50 miles behind the frontlines with no direct communication lines to the front, and as you said they had no understanding of the new state of fast vehicular mobile warfare, but the Maginot line did its job perfectly, it was the generals that couldn't adapt.

 

[TheBelgianGuy]

Apparently this possibility did not occur to the French.

Thats simply not true.
The possibility of an attack through Belgium did occur to the french big time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France See the Dyle plan. Heck the initial Allied battleplan was to take up positions in Belgium but talks floundered and that plan failed big time.

Big screwups that would be more accurate in the maginot line area:
-The french putting one of their weak reserve units to man the defensive positions at that critical area, as a result their morale was broken by the germans air bombardment (to be fair it is described as the single most intense bombardment operation ever conducated by the luftwaffe in ww2) and they didnt hold their positions when the germans crossed for the most part.
-French defensive artillery limited to 30 rounds per day per gun despite their artillery being their major defensive advantage over the germans (who were limited to 12 rounds a day due to low availability of art supplies)
The french defensive line that would have interecepted this advance panicked due to reports that germans were already behind them (they werent) and became a disorganized shamble that were lambs to the slaughter versus the germans.

So yeh plenty of screwups by the french in ww2, but not having considered the possibility of a german attack through Belgium certainly aint one of them.

Also, don't forget the British BEF was stationed mainly alongside the Belgian border. (Or was this part of the Dyle plan?)


And on the contrary, the Allies being completely surprised by the Germans last attack through the Belgian Ardennes (ie. the same way they had already attacked France in WW1 and WW2), the Battle of The Bulge. Despite complete air superiority, and having deciphered the German Enigma machine codes, a major offensive managed to catch them by surprise.

 

[Mr.Cynic88]

snip

Another thing that's messed up were some Japanese-Americans were in the armed forces and their families still got detained.

Yeah, fighting in the armed forces was one way to get out of camp life. The 442nd regiment, a unit composed of former detainees, is the most decorated combat unit in American history.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Regalskeppet Vasa. If you are Swedish then this is the first thing you will think of. It was in the 1600s, Sweden was becoming a major power in Europe and to survive a 30-year long war with Russia amongst other countries, we needed a good fleet. So a ship was built was build to lead the fleet, named after the first Swedish King (Gustav Vasa). It had two decks of canons, gold and jewels everywhere... and it was also too heavy on one side.

Long story short: It leaves the dock and sinks after 200 meters from the wind.

Well, that sounds like a titanic mistake on the part of Sweden. . . haha. . . ha? Ok, I will jjust see myself and my bad puns out the door. . .

 

[The Funslinger]

During WW2, when America was at a deadlock with Japan, they had a thought. If they lowered Japanese morale on a huge scale somehow, it could tip the balance in their favour. A sound idea. Their logical conclusion was that the easiest way to achieve this was by vandalizing a Japanese cultural icon. Riiiight...

How did they do this? They tried to use their air force to paint Mt. Fuji red.

Fuck sake, America.

 

[Belaam]

I don't really rate the war ones as hilarious as they led to a lot of death (likewise any that may go up involving people holding evidence-free religious beliefs). However, I'll stick with the military theme that has developed from the OP

Either the oil embargo against Japan in 1941 or Japan's raid on Pearl Harbor (neither went well).

Situation: The U.S. started an oil embargo against Japan (which got 80% of its oil from the U.S.) to force them out of China and do what the U.S. wanted.

How the U.S. screwed up: Japan realized that if they attacked any neighboring countries with oil, the U.S. would attack them, so they decided to take out the U.S.'s fleet all at once. Which they were able to do reasonably easily as the U.S. conveniently put most of their navy in the same place.

Situation: Suffering from a lack of oil, Japan takes out the U.S.'s Navy and hopes to gain oil supplies before the U.S. rebuilds its fleet.

How Japan screwed up: The U.S. rebuilt much faster than expected, getting oil supplies took longer, and, you know, atomic weapons.

Really, any player of the Civ games could have predicted these screw ups: if you make demands of a country that can't fulfill the demands OR if you attack a more developed country to get its supply nodes and fail, you're going to pay for it.

Second Place:
The captain of the Titanic said, "I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that."

 

[Me55enger]

"I have here in my hand a piece of paper..."

 

[Darknacht]

That would be a good alternate history story. Tandey shooting Hitler wouldn't affect the outcome of WWI, and it would be very interesting to play around with that.

Germany is still pissed off about being given full blame over the war, but without a pro-war dictator, do they do anything? What about the USSR? Would Stalin do what Hitler did and just slowly take smaller countries? Does the Cold War start in 1930 except the USSR against France and Britain? After all, those countries wouldn't have been destroyed, and the US would still be pro-isolationist and not a superpower. Is there even a Cold War, or would there be a real war because there's no threat of Atomic weapons? Does Fascism still rise in Italy and Spain?

Do atomic weapons even get developed? After all, if there's no Germanic persecution of Jews, then people like Einstein don't flee for the US, and since Germany hasn't mobilized itself for taking over Europe, it's doubtful the German scientists would be working on the V-Rockets. Say they do get developed though, if there's no dick-swinging by the US to scare the world, are they used more?

And then there's Japan. Do they still attack Pearl Harbor? Would that war only half fix the economy since we wouldn't need such a large scale of mobilization?

There's probably so many more things I'm missing too....

Most likely the Nazis would just find a different person to groom to be their leader and everything would turn out very similar or even worst if they found someone that was not so incompetent in strategic matters.
Also even if the Nazis collapsed before taking power, fascism rose in Italy and then spreads to Germany, so that would not stop the rise and spread of fascism in other countries.
And the Nazis where given the power by the German government to stop the rise of communism so without a strong and aggressive right wing party to counter the Communists they might have taken over and would still have wanted to retake old German, and other, lands in eastern Europe and so would still have invaded and split eastern Europe with the USSR. But now instead of the Germany being against USSR they are with them and as Germany proved they could easily fight and win a war on the western front. The Soviet states did not treat the Jews very well and there was a lot of hate for the Jews in Germany even before the Nazis came to power so it is unlikely that they would have faired much better which would led to people like Einstein fleeing for the US and the fear that the Germans and their communist allies are working on NBC weapons. And while the US and Japan might not have gone to war at this time, since the spread of communism would have likely been seen as a much bigger threat at this point, Japaneses colonialism would still have been in full swing and the desire for Japanese hegemony of the far east would have likely still led to war eventually.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

The French.

If I remember rightly from GCSE history, The Bay of Pigs was a pretty hilarious screw up, if 'hilarious screw up' is synonymous with 'bloody mess'.

 

[Faulty Turmoil]

-snip-

Try and keep it light. The OP did specify "Hilarious" after all.

OT: I can't think of any off of the top of my head but this Cracked article is pretty relevant.

My favorites are number five and number one.

 

[Gavmando]

After Caligula screwed everything up in Rome, the Praetorian guard went looking for a replacement. They found Claudius hiding under a bed. Thinking that he would be an easily controlled pawn, they put him on the throne.
What they didnt realise was that the ugly loner kid used to spend a lot of his time in libraries and was really smart. After they had put him in power, they found out that he wasnt a puppet, and that he was a really good emperor. (Though he did have a weakness for women.)

Also, America putting the whole thing about "the right to bare arms" into their constitution. That didnt work out too well for them.