‘Hit the other fellow as quick as you can and as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain’t looking.’
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War
General
- War in general. All (competent) warfare has this trope as gospel, as does the development and deployment of any new strategies, tactics, organisations, equipment, or weaponry. Despite all the hubbub about honor and glory, the primary goal is to win while taking the minimal necessary losses - and that is done by making it as unfair as possible to your side's advantage. Yes, there are rules, and there are standards of honor and professionalism that are followed. But even when these are adhered to, the overall point is to still make things as unfair as possible. Insisting only on a fair fight doesn't just hurt your side, it can actually hand victory to your enemies. Sometimes armies would start a large war doing the complete opposite, using very visual but quite atrocious tactics before they learned better, buckled up, and got creative. They'd start to focus only on doing what works really well, and to hell with honour and such. Classic examples include the Prussians during The Napoleonic Wars (though the French started out as this trope, to great success), the governments during the Taiping Rebellion and American Civil War, and the British Commonwealth and French forces during World War One (after a few months, the whole war being a continuous learning process for them). Generally, though it might seem obvious, Armed Forces at the end of long wars are full of very "dishonourable" soldiers and officers who are very, very good at their jobs.
- That said, Values Dissonance and Rule of Symbolism can have a large effect on this. What is and is not considered "fair" or "honorable" in war can be a matter of culture and time. For example, during World War I, the German Empire vowed to execute any American POW found to have fought with a shotgun for war crimes because the shotgun was the weapon of the hunt (for game), and the Germans found it insulting. (American soldiers were using shotguns because they were very effective in clearing out trenches.) To try to substantiate the argument, the Germans claimed that wounds from shotgun shells were not instantly fatal and that victims would die a slow and extremely painful death, though, in reality, that depends on where you get shot (just like any other type of gun). As for time, it used to be a war crime to drop bombs from the air (the Hague Convention of 1899). Admittedly, the German objection to the use of combat shotguns was largely insincere in nature - while they argued that it was inhumane (due to a technicality about firing multiple shots) and undignified, they mostly wished to create legal hassles to slow the use of a weapon that was devastatingly effective. To put this into perspective, while Germany was arguing against the shotgun, they were launching shells filled with chlorine gas.
- The American response to the German threat against shotgun users? "Fine, we'll just kill all of our German prisoners, then!" Unsurprisingly, the Germans decided not to press the matter further.
- The British SOE gleefully invoked this trope in World War II, calling themselves "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" as they conducted commando raids and guerilla operations in Nazi-held territory.
- That said, Values Dissonance and Rule of Symbolism can have a large effect on this. What is and is not considered "fair" or "honorable" in war can be a matter of culture and time. For example, during World War I, the German Empire vowed to execute any American POW found to have fought with a shotgun for war crimes because the shotgun was the weapon of the hunt (for game), and the Germans found it insulting. (American soldiers were using shotguns because they were very effective in clearing out trenches.) To try to substantiate the argument, the Germans claimed that wounds from shotgun shells were not instantly fatal and that victims would die a slow and extremely painful death, though, in reality, that depends on where you get shot (just like any other type of gun). As for time, it used to be a war crime to drop bombs from the air (the Hague Convention of 1899). Admittedly, the German objection to the use of combat shotguns was largely insincere in nature - while they argued that it was inhumane (due to a technicality about firing multiple shots) and undignified, they mostly wished to create legal hassles to slow the use of a weapon that was devastatingly effective. To put this into perspective, while Germany was arguing against the shotgun, they were launching shells filled with chlorine gas.
- Military advancement is basically the study of forcing unequal battle: weapons development is making better ways to neutralize the enemy as efficiently as you can manage; armor development is finding better materials and designs for protecting your soldiers from getting hurt; better strategies, tactics, and organization all made an army more effective at winning wars; various little pieces of equipment had significant impact on the effectiveness of an army (for example, stirrups are small and usually taken for granted nowadays, but they are what allowed cavalry to become dominant throughout Europe).
- Poison. Even if an arrow or blade doesn't kill someone immediately, the poison could certainly finish them off. Even if they just get sick, they still can't fight you at their best, or at all, and their comrades will be spending time and effort on keeping them alive. Poison could also let assassins pick off enemy leaders with small, easily concealed weapons that wouldn't be very dangerous otherwise, or contaminate an enemy army's supplies and make them sick.
- If the enemy can't touch you, they can't hurt you. Darts, javelins, slings, and the bow and arrow were the first weapons developed to kill from a distance, where an opponent couldn't poke holes in you with their melee weapons. As time passed, people focused on ways to get more range than their enemies. Spear-throwers
gave users more leverage to hurl their weapons, which resulted in greater range. Staff slings functioned on the same principle, were easier to use than regular slings, and the stave itself - which was up to two meters long - made for a handy melee weapon if an enemy got close. Bows became larger and more powerful, while arrows went from little more than sharpened sticks to having fletchings for accuracy and stone or metal arrowheads for better damage potential. Then barbed arrowheads were developed which stuck in flesh and would cause further injury when pulled out. - By the same logic as above, a good spear was a way to keep someone at a distance where they couldn't hurt you, and easily paired with a shield for better defense. Entire armies were equipped with this simple combination and almost impossible to fight head-on without taking severe losses. Spears became longer and longer as time passed until they were so long they weren't spears at all, but pikes. While only the first two lines of a spear formation could fight the enemy, using pikes allowed the first six lines of a Macedonian phalanx◊ to present a forest of sharpened metal that was functionally impossible to get past. Or at least it was until the invention of the bill: like a pike, but shorter, more maneuverable, and with a hooked blade as well as a point. However long your enemy's pike might have been, once you chopped the point off, it was just a stick.
- Despite what some popular media might show you, armor was most definitely not useless. As time passed, better metallurgy and experimentation gave rise to suits of armor that could make the wearer all but invincible to someone who wasn't carrying a weapon capable of piercing it. Suits of 16th-century plate armor were nearly impervious to swords and spears, meaning anyone who wasn't packing a warhammer or similar armament — or a gun — was in a great deal of trouble. That said, a single armored warrior trying to take on a group of peasant levies wouldn't be likely to come out of the fight alive because they'd dogpile him and pry open his helmet to stab him in the face, which is also a fine example of this trope.
- Steppe nomads in general. While agricultural nations have fought war, they have usually attempted to outmaneuver the enemy and avoid wanton bloodshed. The nomads themselves saw war as a battle of annihilation, and their tactics were similar to rounding up a herd of animals and culling it, wanton brutality optional.
- One of the single most common (and devastating) steppe nomad tactics was a false retreat. Humans, like any other predators, have an instinctual urge to pursue weak, fleeing prey. Not only were steppe peoples masters of using this to draw out and destroy defensive formations as well as wear out pursuers and lead them into ambushes, but they were masters of shooting backwards while on horseback. Another common tactic learned from herding animals was to give a surrounded enemy an "out" by weakening their formation deliberately. This usually resulted in panicking forces dropping their weapons and fleeing en masse for the "exit," at which point they could easily be harried down instead of fighting desperately with their backs to the wall. Mongols were absolute masters of psychological warfare.
- The Mongols were known to have suffered a defeat by someone carefully out-pragmating them: Executing their envoys to force them to attack a walled city where all large rocks and other siege ammunition had been removed in a large radius, and doing so in a season where their horses would find no fodder.
- Another quality that made the Mongols so effective was their tendency to study the art and culture of the people they were invading, allowing them to get into the enemy's mindset and use their own beliefs against them. When they invaded Japan, they would often respond to Samurai being sent to challenge their leaders to a duel by filling the unlucky samurai with arrows, knowing that that sort of disrespect and lack of honor in combat was a cultural Berserk Button that would either agitate the Japanese into making mistakes or terrify them into surrender.
- Pretty much every air force in the world that gets the chance would rather destroy the enemy air forces on the ground, before they get in the air, rather than let them get in the air and have a fighting chance. A preferred tactic is to hit the runway first, preventing the planes from escaping, and allowing you to destroy them at your leisure. The Israeli Air Force used this to ridiculously great effect during the Six-Day War.
- If you want to be a real bastard about it, mix some delayed-fuse bombs in with the ones that blow up right away. They'll just bury themselves ten or twenty feet under the pavement, and then blow up an hour or two after the attack is over. This keeps the enemy from being able to effectively repair the runway for fear that there are more bombs hidden under it.
- And if you want to start twirling your mustache as well, you can even throw some land mines in with the ordnance as well, further delaying the repairs to the runway as some unfortunate souls have to get out there and clear the mines while crossing their fingers that there aren't any more time-delayed bombs ready to go off, and potentially having their commanders threaten their own lives if they don't get the runway fixed faster. Needless to say, the JP233 combined all of the above into one nice little device.
- Certain types of Combat Pragmatism are illegal by the laws of warfare, not the least of which is not wearing an identifiable uniform. You break the rules, you lose their protection, such as eligibility for Geneva Convention rights. For instance, feigning surrender and then opening fire is very likely to get you shot without trial if you get caught, as the Japanese in World War II would quickly learn.
- Combat engineers are the ultimate Combat Pragmatist troops. Not only are minefields among their specialties, but they also tend to be masters of the Booby Trap, which is not against the Geneva Conventions.
- There's a saying: "If the engineer wants to get you by the balls, he will". There are - for a lack of a better word - downright evil ways to booby trap objects. One memorable story was about a booby trap that was set under a kitchen sink. The electrical circuit to detonate it was set inside the drain, with two metal plates separated by a sugar cube. The moment you turn on the water to wash your hands— boom.
- Combat engineers exaggerate this trope. They are trained in mine warfare, booby-trapping, and improvised munitions. The classical booby trap is to tilt a picture on the wall slightly, then rig an explosive charge with a mercury trigger behind it. When an enemy soldier, usually an officer, attempts to right the harmless-looking picture on the wall— KABOOM!
- In a variant of this theme, Germans retreating on the Eastern Front might leave prominently placed portraits of Hitler behind, knowing no self-respecting Russian would leave those alone. The moment it was torn from the wall...
- On that note, Radio Operators. "Request fire mission on coordinates XXXX-XXXX, full barrage, over." BOOM. "Thank you, TOC, out."
- Note, however, that adhering to certain rules in warfare can be a form of Combat Pragmatism as well. There is a good reason for NOT allowing troops to attack civilian targets at will, achieve objectives through deception, treachery, and sheer terror, alter action plans unpredictably to increase personal safety at any cost, ignore command structure and loot their own army's supplies for additional resources. Arguably, in the course of the war, the troops must be kept controllable and sane. If methodical application of combat pragmatism turns one's own men into dangerous killing machines, and the enemy's civilian population into desperate fighters for survival, the long-term perspectives are not very bright.
- And sometimes adhering to the rules is pragmatic because once you throw out the rule book, the enemy will too. It might seem like a good idea to use a red cross to disguise military actions, but doing so potentially makes all your medical personnel targets.
- This is guerrilla warfare. If the dedication is there, an irregular fighting force will do anything it takes to demoralize a militarily superior foe.
- This is one reason why guerrilla warfare often turns brutal. Conventional rules of war are often thrown out in guerrilla wars in the name of pragmatism until everyone is acting with utter deceptiveness and brutality, with everyone losing out in the end. See above for pragmatism behind rules of war. However, in asymmetric warfare, the descent into utter pragmatism will work against the standing professional army more so than the irregulars; after all, the professionals are trained and expected to abide by the Geneva conventions, while the irregulars are, well, irregular.
- Even closer to the enemy (often with areas they think well secure) is sabotage. Particularly of note is Brigadier Philip Toosey, the real-life senior officer of the British POW construction teams in Thailand. Far and away from Pierre Boulle's Lt. Colonel Nicholson (and in fact, Toosey was pretty much Nicholson's opposite in every way), Toosey actively encouraged sabotage of all kinds to slow down construction of the bridges.
- Firing at enemy aircrew parachuting from their aircraft. Most pilots found this inhumane and unfair, while others justified it, at least over enemy territory, as the enemy pilot could just get another plane. It was only made a war crime in 1949.
- Snipers in general are either this trope, or on the receiving end of this trope. By their nature, they are operating at ranges that mean other small arms cannot retaliate, and/or use stealth to avoid retaliation. Snipers often wait until the target is at its most vulnerable before striking out of nowhere. Many snipers also employ psychological warfare, such as shooting the first in line, to make no one want to lead a patrol.
- He wasn't a full-time sniper, but the real Sergeant York used the opposite technique, learned in his Tennessee hunting days. He picked off six charging German soldiers back to front, reasoning — correctly — that in the noise and chaos of battle, the men wouldn't notice the guy behind them dropping till it was too late.
- A well-known tactic for snipers is to aim for a soldier's leg. This means that the sniper can also kill anyone who tries to help him and that the rest of the platoon is forced to tend to the wounds and carry him, which can seriously hinder their mobility.
- A common counter-sniping tactic is the artillery strike on their position or an Alpha Strike. Usually it's from a mortar carried by infantry (who this way won't expose themselves to the sniper's fire), but when things get really ugly they'll use howitzers (and on D-Day, the full main battery of a battleship). Incidentally, snipers equipped with anti-materiel rifles will shoot the mortars and other heavy weapons first, both to save their own skins and to prevent them from massacring their own infantry.
- This was most notably done by the Red Army in an attempt to end Simo Häyhä's reign of terror in the Winter War... not that it worked, as Häyhä was able to get away and continue picking off Russians until the end of the war.
- Add to this snipers' tactics that include: use of demolition charges for different purposes, booby-trapping, mandatory camouflage and stealth, good old sound-masking, taking full advantage of different electronics and computers (range measuring, satellite communication, thermal scopes for night shooting, lasers, video feeds, etc), strongly encouraged tendency to request for fire mission before demasking their position, double tapping, injuring one of the group to bait others out of cover and increase the pressure, general Awesomeness by Analysis (they even use math, what can be more "anything goes"!), and quite real Eagle-Eye Detection achieved by tough training, and you have the dirty fighter by definition trained that way by the army.
- The Roman Army lived and ruled on this in general, and in particular throwing a brief but intense barrage of two shield-crippling javelins per soldier on the charging enemy before counterchanging, and switching first-line troops in the middle of the battle to allow their combatants to always be relatively fresh. The effect would be akin to a meatgrinder, with the enemy wondering why they're feeling outnumbered when they were the more numerous one before the start of the battle.
- Colonists in the Revolutionary War used what they learned about warfare from the natives. For the most part, warfare as taught by the British was men lining up and marching, readying a hail of bullets for their foes. This, paired with their iconic red coats, led to the urban legend note that it made them easy pickings for the colonist rebels who hid in the trees and foliage in dirt-brown clothing.
- Artillery in general. With most weapons, you at very least have to see who you are attacking, which means that in turn the enemy theoretically could see you as well. Artillery often doesn't even grant this small mercy, firing over obstacles or even over the horizon at grid coordinates on a map, detached from the horror experienced by the unfortunate target.
Specific
- Sun Tzu, general during the Warring States period in China, not only was a warfare pragmatist to put others to shame but quite literally wrote the book on it. It's worth noting that the same book, The Art of War, is still used to teach tactics and strategy (fighting dirty on the strategic scale) to this day.
- This one famous quote by Sun Tzu makes it obvious that there is no place on the battlefield for sentimental values like honor, mercy, love, sympathy, or even honesty.Sun Tzu: All warfare is deception.
- Tangentially related are The Thirty-Six Stratagems, which are sometimes (possibly mistakenly) attributed to Sun Tzu. A careful reading will reveal that none of the Stratagems involve a straight-on, equal, honorable fight, and all of them involve screwing around with your opponents, exploiting their weak points, and if possible ending a fight before your enemy even realizes there even is one.
- This one famous quote by Sun Tzu makes it obvious that there is no place on the battlefield for sentimental values like honor, mercy, love, sympathy, or even honesty.
- The general principle of industrial warfare is this. If the enemy has a gun, then they 'need' a bigger gun. If they can't make a bigger gun, they 'need' faster-firing ones, if you can't do that, have more guns. If there's too many soldiers on the field, send in a tank. Or better yet, smash them with artillery. If the enemy denies the battlefield through territory control, send in planes. If they use AA or their own planes to deny your planes the advantage, build stealth planes. If they've managed to defeat your stealth technology, hit them with a cruise missile. If they intercept the cruise missile, send in special forces.
- In general, American military doctrine has always (and consistently) been about "dishonorable" combat: when entering a battlefield, US forces specifically work to end the conflict as quickly as possible. The last "honorable" offensive the US undertook was Operation Overlord (conducted jointly with the British and Canadians), the attack on Normandy in World War 2, and even then, only by virtue of being too big to properly conceal (and they did it anyway, by convincing the Germans that it was a distraction and the real attack would be elsewhere). Special operations, clandestine operations, sabotage, stealth missions, and subversive activities are how the US operates.The problem with preparing to fight against the Americans is that Americans do not read their manuals, and do not feel obligated to follow their own doctrine.—Attributed to a Soviet intelligence officer during the Cold War
- This is the entire point of Soviet Operational Art. While combat is always just a means to greater Strategic ends in the Red Army's conception of warfare, the best way of making combat unequal is not to field better weapons than the enemy but to be as strong as possible relative to the enemy wherever your forces actually engage them. In theory, a force that is 10% more combat-efficient/'stronger' man-for-man than an enemy force of the same size will inflict minimal losses upon and be utterly destroyed in combat by a force that is twenty times stronger than itself (numbers being the key to this greater strength, of course). All good in theory, but only works against a force that sits there and lets it happen, and has no reserve force or reconnaissance capabilities. In reality, throwing twenty battalions of tanks at one battalion will lead to overly entangled supply lines, bogged together troops heavily vulnerable to artillery and airpower, and comically large losses.
- Contrary to the popular image, the usual means of waging war during The Hundred Years War was by using what is called "indirect warfare"— instead of attacking the French army, the English soldiers attacked the enemy's means of waging war. This is known as chevauchee and meant attacking French towns and setting everything on fire whenever possible. Field battles were considered as an erratic and uncertain way of winning battles, and most field battles occurred either when one of the armies had trapped the other and the other had no way of averting it, or when they blundered into each other unexpectedly. Therefore, two groups would basically rush at each other until one side was weakened enough to become disorganized and wounded. Then the burning of supplies continued.
- On that note, people like to imagine that Medieval wars were mostly a series of glorious battles. Not so. Mostly it was a series of sieges. An attacking army loves a siege because they have a massive advantage. The besieging army can bring food and supplies from elsewhere, but the defenders are stuck with whatever finite supplies they have on hand. As long as the attackers don't do anything stupid, they can just sit and wait for the defenders to deplete their own stores, then accept an honorable surrender. Field battles, by contrast, were rare events. No one wanted to jump into a pitched battle unless they had no other choice or, again, their side had a massive advantage. For every tale of a legendary battle, there is another tale of two armies meeting on the field, waiting a while, and then just deciding a battle wasn't worth the risk.
- And, of course, peasant soldiers fought brutally, rarely if ever taking prisoners and sometimes even delighting in their reputation for unforgiving savagery— the Swiss were the most infamous for this, but so were the Frisians, the Dithmarschers (both from Northern Germany), and the Spanish. Indeed, Spanish Almogavars, specialist light infantry raiders, were notorious for eagerly taking on mounted and armored knights one on one and killing them with contemptuous ease.
- Although starting to transcend the era of "knightly" anyway, the Battle Cry of "hakkaa päälle" of the famed Finnish light cavalry regiments of Gustavus Adolphus' armies was not at all mere bluster. Their entire combat strategy focused on brutalising the enemy as quickly and as efficiently as possible through successive stages of death — charging into range and killing as many troops with a two-step barrage of pistol fire as possible, prior to drawing their sabres and quite literally "hacking them down", using the horses themselves as a battering ram as they slammed into the enemy infantry formation.
- And then there's the modern counterpart to the siege: the blockade. A blockade is simply where you take your fleet, park it just out of range of the enemy, and sink anything trying to enter or leave said port. It has much the same effect but on a larger scale. Rather than starving out a single castle, a blockade attempts to starve an entire nation's economy by restricting its access to trade.
- Similarly, Samurai warfare easily matched European medieval warfare in brutality. The Samurai started as horse archers, letting them fire from a distance and easily run away. Attacking enemy fields were common. Guns were wildly adopted by the Samurai when they were first introduced by the Portuguese. Japanese castle sieges, like their European counterpart, usually involved starving the defenders out.
- Oda Nobunaga was famous for his pragmatic brutality. In the Siege of Mount Hiei, a hill containing Buddhist temple forts, Oda Nobunaga set the hill on fire, with orders to kill anyone who managed to escape the flames. He was also one of the first military leaders to embrace western-made firearms, giving him a significant advantage over his rivals while also changing the course of Japan's history of warfare.
- George Washington was quite the pragmatist when it came to waging war. Launching a major attack on Christmas morning, when the enemy was sure to be drunk/sleeping/both, is only his most infamous act of dishonorable warfare. Many historians have attributed the American victory to this, as there was little chance of them beating a town full of badass mercenaries by any other method available to them.
- They had also heard the Americans were coming, and the Hessian commander put his men on alert after getting warned. However, a few hours later, they were attacked by about a dozen men who inflicted a few casualties and fled. The Hessian commander, Von Rahl, decided that this was the American attack. He told his men that "those wretched peasants" were beaten and told them to stand down and celebrate the holiday. And a few hours later...
- George Washington was also one of the earliest users of biological warfare: Washington and his troops would march through the malaria-infested swamps in Virginia, knowing his enemies were there and would follow them through the swamps. Washington and his men grew up in the area and had largely gained resistance to malaria. His enemies, coming from areas where malaria was absent... were not. Eventually, Washington's people would turn around and face their opponents, and the ones who hadn't already died from malaria were severely weakened and in no condition to fight.
- The North Vietnamese also took advantage of a day that was a holiday when they launched the Tet Offensive on January 30th, 1968. That was Tet, the first day of the New Year, probably the most important holiday in the Vietnamese calendar. On top of that, they had previously announced that they would honor a two-day ceasefire to allow the celebration of the holiday. Given the scope of the attack, they never had any intention of honoring that ceasefire. Worse still, they didn't attack soldiers: they attacked camera crews, hoping that the footage sent back to America would lessen morale at home. It was at that point that the war really started to be perceived negatively by the public.
- They also used many other effective tactics. Littering the woods with booby traps designed to wound soldiers so that when the others came to rescue them, the Vietnamese would shoot them. The tunnel system drew a platoon of Americans with a small force and then had reserves pop up out of the ground and destroy them. They also used prostitutes as spies.
- Amusingly, apart from the propaganda, the Tet Offensive failed utterly. Nearly half of the communist forces involved were killed in the offensive, and they failed to cause a general uprising in the south— indeed, it most likely weakened their positionnote . The use of the offensive in propaganda was purely opportunistic, never part of the original plan.
- The propaganda was, however, quite effective. For the first time, mainstream commentators in the US began to say that the US could not win the war, despite it being far closer to being won at this point than it had ever been.
- Another tactic of theirs was to engage American forces as closely as possible to eliminate the main advantage the Americans had: superior firepower in the form of air support and artillery.
- The Tet Offensive was far from the first time that the Vietnamese attacked during these holidays. 200 years earlier, during the Qing invasion of Vietnam, Vietnamese forces led by Emperor Quang Trung also attacked the unsuspecting Qing army on these days. Unlike the Tet Offensive, this battle was a legendary success, allowing the Vietnamese to defeat the entire 300,000-man Qing invasion in one fell swoop.
- Egypt's invasion of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Not only was it a religious holiday for Jews, it was also during Ramadan— the Muslim fasting month where war is supposed to be ceased. Some Arabs know it as the Ramadan War, by the way, while others call it the October War. In Egypt, it's usually just called '73.
- During Yom Kippur it is traditional to fast from sundown of the previous evening to the next sundown— so not only were they praying, they were also underfed.
- It's generally agreed that this actually backfired on the Egyptians: Attacking on a day when everyone was easily reachable when the roads were empty (Yom Kippur is the one day in the year when even secular Israelis avoid driving) meant that mobilisation of the reserves was very quick. Had the Egyptians attacked on, say, Passover, when everyone's either abroad on holiday or stuck in traffic jams, the result would've been more to their advantage...
- However, it must be admitted that the means by which the Egyptians penetrated the much-vaunted Israeli Bar-Lev Line of defensive barricades fits this trope perfectly. The Line consisted of massive sand fortifications — essentially huge man-made dunes — along the Suez Canal that would be virtually impossible to traverse and against which even the heaviest of conventional artillery and explosives would be useless. The Egyptian solution? Water cannons. The Israelis were apparently really confused at why the Egyptians had ordered a bunch of German high-pressure water pumps...until they found out why, with Egyptian tanks coming at them moments later.
- On the other hand, an Arab will tell you that the ultimate failure was really more because the North Africans didn't pull through with the amphibious assault that Gaddafi suggested. Well, that, and Sadat had purged one of his two competent generals for political reasons, and the second had been killed while visiting the front lines during the War of Attrition.
- On the third hand, it is probably better for the Arab nations that they lost, as Israel is the ultimate combat pragmatist, and had they lost the war they would have used nuclear weapons on the Arab nations.
- Since then, Israel’s policy has been that if they are about to be overrun by any Arab army, they will nuke all of the Arab countries, plus Iran (and possibly Turkey, too, for good measure, though since Turkey is a NATO member that would guarantee a World War 3). Which might have something to do with the fact that no Arab national military has tried to invade Israeli territory since 1973. Terrorist organizations are another story.
- On the fourth hand, it's pretty likely that Egypt never actually intended to win the war, they just wanted to use it to get Israel to the negotiating table to get the Sinai, which they had lost in the Six-Day War (and which Israel had only occupied to get Egypt to negotiate in the first place). In which case, Egypt got exactly what it wanted.
- Speaking of Egypt vs. Israel, Israel's actions during the Six-Day War are all about this. Israel attacked first, even though they had not (yet) been attacked. A large-scale surprise air strike was the opening of the Six-Day War, with Israel destroying pretty much the entire Egyptian air force, which guaranteed Israeli air superiority for the rest of the war.
- The reason for the crushing defeat of the French by the English during the Battle of Crécy.
- Well, one of them, anyway. The main one was that the French knights were too gung-ho for their own good, and started the battle before their army was anywhere near ready.
- Various battles of the Hundred Years War, particularly Agincourt, have earned this reputation for the English. The French expected a civilized battle with knights on horseback and everything, and the English just shot a lot of arrows at them. Whether that's the reality or not, the reputation still stands.
- At Agincourt, the French attacked on foot. The original battle plan was about dismounted knights attacking on foot at center, then when the battle was engaged, the mounted knights attacking at flanks, performing an envelopment operation, and a local knight, Isembard d'Agincourt, attacking at the English rear with his retinue as he knew the local pathways. Because of extremely bad leadership, rain which had turned the fields into mud, and Isembard d'Agincourt being more interested in looting the English baggage than fighting, it all ended up in Total Snafu.
- "Knightly"? Definitely. Civilized? Not so much. Many times the French lost battles because their just-so-proud cavalry charged over their own infantry and crossbowmen, actually making the fight easier for the English. But hey, turns out France had reserves. Many reserves. And from 1400 onward, also lots of gunpowder weapons.
- This happened just twice— at Crecy 1346 and Agincourt 1415. The reason why the English prevailed was that they just had better discipline and better generals. The French eventually learned this, abolished the feudal army, and set up a professional army consisting of competent professionals— knights, infantry, and artillery.
- Legendary Vietnam-era Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock demonstrated this when he was sent to one camp that was being constantly harassed by a good enemy sniper. After observing the terrain and seeing where the enemy's targets were when shot, he figured out where the sniper had to be shooting from. Instead of readying his weapon, Hathcock decides it would be more pragmatic to set up a rocket that's targeted at the sniping position and wait. The next time the sniper attacks, the rocket is fired, and it starts raining sniper chunks. In general, while Sniper Duels may seem cool and honorable in fiction, heavy artillery tends to be the more traditional recourse.
- Also, Hathcock sometimes went out to snipe with an M2 heavy machine gun. Being very accurate and longer-ranged than pretty much any sniper rifle at the time, it allowed him to snipe enemies at longer ranges, and if enemy infantry found where he was and tried to attack... Well, he'd just switch the fire selector and fire full-auto.
- American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, rather than fight it out on the battlefield, had the idea to devastate the South's economy by pillaging and burning everything from Atlanta to Savannah up to Richmond. It worked almost too well. It took years to rebuild the South's economy after the war (though a lot of that was due to people of the South burning infrastructure and supplies that the North would have been happy to have just pillaged). Arguably his actions brought the war to an end earlier, which was his justification.
- In the process, he more or less invented the modern understanding of total war: if they're giving you everything they've got, then everything they've got is fair game. Since most of that stuff is behind their lines, this wasn't very useful in most wars in later years...until World War II, where you could fly over enemy lines if you had air superiority. Lo-and-behold, we now have strategic bombing. Though "strategic bombing" was actually not very effective, thanks to the pure inaccuracy of the bombs used.
- This concept is Older Than Print. The warfare during the Age of Chivalry wasn't particularly chivalrous; rather than risking troops on field battles, knights far more often waged war by attrition— by fighting the enemy's ability to fight, rather than his forces. That meant killing his peasants, burning his crops, and devastating his countryside.
- In the process, he more or less invented the modern understanding of total war: if they're giving you everything they've got, then everything they've got is fair game. Since most of that stuff is behind their lines, this wasn't very useful in most wars in later years...until World War II, where you could fly over enemy lines if you had air superiority. Lo-and-behold, we now have strategic bombing. Though "strategic bombing" was actually not very effective
- Further north in the same war, what gave the Union General Ulysses S. Grant the edge over his nigh-legendary Confederate counterpart Robert E. Lee (who'd outlasted a lot of Grant's predecessors) was the realization that victory in the war would come not from conquering and occupying territory, but from breaking the enemy's will to fight. Some of Grant's late victories in the war were so costly to his army that many could hardly think of them as victories at all; yet they were victories nonetheless because they ground down Lee's army and furthered the ultimate goal of forcing him to surrender, and that was all that mattered. One reason so many of Grant's predecessors didn't last was that they Gave Up Too Soon when Lee managed to beat back their offensives; some of Grant's contemporaries nicknamed him "The Bulldog" because he wouldn't let these setbacks dislodge him from his dogged pursuit of and engagement with the enemy.
- Grant's strategy wasn't explicitly one of attrition by throwing his army at Lee's without regard to his own casualties (although he was often accused of it). By possessing an army roughly twice the size of Lee's, Grant was able to pin Lee down with half of his army, then maneuver with the other half toward Richmond. Lee was then forced to retreat, lest Grant gets between him and the capital of the Confederacy. Each time, the maneuvering part of Grant's army would continue until it engaged Lee in new defensive positions, resulting in an inconclusive battle with high casualties. The strategy continued until Grant ran out of room to maneuver to the east and was forced into trench warfare around Petersburg, the rail hub that supplied food to Richmond. The stalemate was finally broken when Grant finally managed to cut all the rail links and flushed Lee's army out into the countryside where he could be chased down and defeated.
- The Marine Corps LINE Combat program is all about disabling, crippling, and killing your enemy as viciously and quickly as possible. Examples: crushing a throat, breaking the Achilles tendon, then driving your heel into their sternum, then finally crushing their face with your boot. However, it is a bit non-pragmatic in the lack of non-lethal takedowns, which helps if you want people alive to answer questions afterward. If you don't, though...
- Being a mixed martial art, the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program also fits, especially given that Eskrima is one of the styles incorporated into it. In addition to fitness and conditioning tests to make sure recruits are capable of going through it, there's also a special part of the training wherein they are set upon by drill instructors to simulate an actual melee against multiple skilled opponents.
- Richard Marcinko, U.S Navy SEAL. He wrote in his book Rogue Warrior how he was sitting in the Pentagon during Operation Eagle Claw, the 1980 failed attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. Everything went wrong, including a bus full of Iranian civilians accidentally showing up at the landing zone. When the men at the landing zone asked what to do about the civilians, Marcinko said, "Kill them". He got some strange looks for that from his fellow soldiers. Needless to say, they weren't killed.
- In fact, one of his Ten Commandments of SpecWar is: "There Are No Rules— Win At All Costs".
- His attitude crosses the line between Pragmatism and Sociopathic Soldier, and is a major criticism of his books and outlook. Which is why he eventually was marginalized by the DoD.
- Whether he qualifies as a pragmatist or a psychopath is a matter of some debate, though it is worth noting the above example of his suggestion for handling civilians was very much not pragmatic. Slaughtering a bus full of civilians would have been a war crime, and earned America a sharp drop in international reputation, diplomatic penalties, and a reckoning with the UN. To qualify as a pragmatist, you need to actually plan for the long-term impact of your actions.
- Naval mines are the main weapon of the Finnish Navy. Likewise, Finnish warships are basically examples of Glass Cannon— armed as heavily as possible for their size and intended to retreat in the safety of the archipelago immediately once they have delivered their payload. Hiding behind an island is a far better idea than going and exchanging shots in the open.
- This argument has long been used as the defense for the USA's Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, given the choice between (a) killing large numbers of Japanese instantly and convincing the Japanese to surrender quickly or (b) killing even more of them (possibly all of them, as they had declared they would fight to the last) as well as the predicted several-hundred-thousand US dead and crippled (and several hundred thousand more wounded) over the couple of years that Operation Downfall was expected to take. That said, the second bombing and its timing (just a couple of days after the first) has no other explanation than being directed at getting the Junta to hurry up and surrender before the Soviets could take too much Japanese territory (what with them advancing into Japanese-occupied China at the time).
- This was also the reasoning behind the US Strategic Bombing campaign, part of that being the firebombing of Tokyo. The campaign brought up another interpretation of the argument mentioned above. In March of 1945, the US conducted a bombing raid on Tokyo. By itself this was nothing special, however, what was special was the weapon they were using; incendiaries. Keep in mind that most of the buildings in Tokyo at this time were made of wood and tar paper. When incendiaries were dropped all over the city, it didn't just burn; it incinerated. Over 100,000 Japanese were killed in one night, more than were killed at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet this incident gets considerably less attention than the atomic bombings, which brings up issues of morality: is it really more wrong to use one extremely powerful weapon to instantly kill large numbers of people than it is to use less powerful weapons to kill the same number of people, or even more, over a period of time?
- See also the firebombing of Dresden, which killed over 20,000 German citizens in about three days.
- To a certain degree, the second bombing was one of political pragmatism as well. Hiroshima proved the U.S. had a superweapon. Nagasaki proved the ability to produce more than one, and do so reliably. China and the U.S.S.R. were also intended recipients of this implication.
- There's also the fact that, as horrible as the A-bombs were, they were still less bloodthirsty than some of the other plans being more or less seriously discussed. Like the one for using germ and chemical warfare to destroy Japan's rice harvest, or Curtis LeMay's plan for saturation bombing Japan with napalm. Lots and lots and lots of napalm.
- This was also the reasoning behind the US Strategic Bombing campaign, part of that being the firebombing of Tokyo. The campaign brought up another interpretation of the argument mentioned above. In March of 1945, the US conducted a bombing raid on Tokyo. By itself this was nothing special, however, what was special was the weapon they were using; incendiaries. Keep in mind that most of the buildings in Tokyo at this time were made of wood and tar paper. When incendiaries were dropped all over the city, it didn't just burn; it incinerated. Over 100,000 Japanese were killed in one night, more than were killed at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet this incident gets considerably less attention than the atomic bombings, which brings up issues of morality: is it really more wrong to use one extremely powerful weapon to instantly kill large numbers of people than it is to use less powerful weapons to kill the same number of people, or even more, over a period of time?
- Likewise, the Japanese were certainly no strangers to these tactics during the war. This was the reasoning behind the Pearl Harbor attack, both the attack being by surprise and the way the Japanese didn't break off diplomatic relations with the US until minutes before the attack began. During the war, the Japanese used extremely aggressive tactics against Allied troops; booby traps, suicide bombings, kamikaze attacks, pretending to surrender, using civilians as shields, attaching bombs to civilians, and telling their civilians that the Allies would do horrible things to them if they were taken prisoner. It's no wonder that the Allied invasion of Japan was estimated to take another two years and one million Allied casualties.
- At some point, however, their over-dependence on those tactics ended up losing what pragmatism there was. Their refusal to retreat and desperate suicide attacks just ended up depleting their forces of experienced veterans faster.
- The business of telling Japanese civilians that the US soldiers would do horrible things to them wasn't really meant as propaganda, either. The Japanese had not signed the Geneva Conventions (which governs things like the treatment of captured civilians as well as captured soldiers) and, for cultural reasons, had a great deal of difficulty accepting the idea that US troops would treat captured civilians (or soldiers, for that matter) any better than Japanese troops had. When US troops actually did do so, and commanders like General MacArthur gave explicit orders forbidding any degrading treatment of Japanese people and even ordering the destruction of Imperial symbols on captured equipment (to avoid disgracing the Emperor's insignia), it was a bit of a mind breaker for some. These actions constitute being a sort of Occupation Pragmatist on MacArthur's part.
- The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, itself. The Japanese were very aware that their policies were eventually going to result in an armed conflict with the United States and British Commonwealth nations. The surprise attack was the best chance they had of crippling the US Pacific Fleet before it could be used against them. Japan's strategic victory was short-lived, however; the Pacific Fleet was quickly reassembled, and outrage over the attack galvanized the American public into one of the most effective war machines ever seen.
- Knowing they did not have the size or resources to confront the US military directly, the Japanese also trained extensively in night combat, which they used to inflict heavy casualties on the US Navy early in the war.
- On the flip side, Dutch and American submarines in the Pacific War attacked Japanese ships intended to carry more soldiers and equipment to the battlefields, killing the soldiers and destroying their equipment before they even got to their destinations and long before the men were ready to fight.
- Russian militaries have used their country's harsh winter, immense size, and destroying of supplies left behind to aid in invasions; from Charles XII of Sweden during The Great Northern War, Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars, and Adolf Hitler during World War II. Rather than fully engaging the enemy immediately, the Russians retreated back slowly, luring the enemy deeper and deeper into the country (causing the invaders to overextend their supply lines), executing the "Scorched Earth" policy of destroying supplies left behind to prevent the enemies from using them, and waiting for the winter (nicknamed "General Winter") to set in, which would greatly slow down the enemy's advance, badly damage enemy morale, and cause huge amounts of cold weather injuries and deaths.
- During World War II, Josef Stalin issued Order 270, which made it a treasonable offense for a Soviet soldier to be taken prisoner, allowing officers to shoot soldiers even suspected of trying to desert, and made the soldiers' families susceptible to arrest. He also issued Order 227, which required the establishment of penal battalions comprised of soldiers with disciplinary infractions who were ordered to be shot if they retreated.
- The Red Army also had a history of using "blocking units" or "barrier troops" from its inception in 1918— formations behind the front lines meant to act both as a reserve and to shoot at any retreating units from their own side. Stalin re-instituted the practice in 1941 with Order 1919.
- The Finns are the only nation to ever successfully use these tactics against Russian troops. In the Winter War of 1939-40, the Finns pretty much fought the Red Army to a standstill after it invaded with a force vastly larger than the Finns could muster in defense. Pretty much every page on this site that mentions the Winter War has examples of the sheer badass nature of the Finns with Fearsome Forests.
- The reason why the Ninja were so successful as spies and assassins was their complete disregard for the code of honor that almost all warriors in Japan were expected to follow, as well as the social code that civilians followed. Ninja had no issue with running from fights, catching their enemy off guard, and using weapons disguised as farming or gardening implements. They also would disguise themselves as farmers, gardeners, and even geisha and prostitutes. A samurai would literally die before being seen dressed as anything other than a proper nobleman.
- There were also female ninja, called Kunoichi, who did very well in disguise, because who are you expecting to stick a knife in your back? Not the pretty lady in the lovely kimono, the geisha makeup, and the tessen, a fan with metal struts...
- The specialty of the Sardinian military and its Royal Italian successor was more fighting dirty than fighting fair. Some of the most notable examples, chronologically grouped:
- The Kingdom of Sardinia had little money or plains for actual cavalry, so they trained the Bersaglieri, fast-running light infantry trained to quickly form an infantry square, repeal cavalry charges and then charge the cavalry as it pulled back to regroup, possibly on the flank (they actually charged Russian cavalry busy attacking French infantry at the Battle of the Chernaya, routing the Russians, and then continued when they pulled back to regroup. The Russians ran).
- Giuseppe Garibaldi worked for the Kingdom of Sardinia, and his most famous stunt was to invade the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and cause a country-wide insurrection to justify the Sardinian invasion, as they were actually coming to quell down the insurrections and re-establish order after the ruling House of Bourbon proved unable to do so (it mainly worked because nobody was willing to stick up for the Two Sicilies in case the Sardinians could present the international community with a justification. When Garibaldi tried the same with the Papal States, he found the Bersaglieri on his way because what was now Italy knew that France was willing to stick for them).
- It was mentioned above that dropping bombs from air being was originally a war crime. The Italians not only pioneered the art of bombing enemy troops while knowing that, but did this on the technologically-inferior Libyan bedouins. When Turkey (that at the time ruled Libya and was trying to defend it from the Italian invasion) protested, the Italians replied that the ban specified it was forbidden dropping bombs from a blimp or balloon, and they were using airplanes.
- During World War I, the Italian Navy developed a nasty habit of strapping torpedoes on speedboats and sending them to sink Austro-Hungarian warships in harbour. After the first time, the Austro-Hungarians wised up and upped the surveillance, and started placing torpedo nets. This, and shock, saved them the second time: the speedboats still evaded surveillance, but the torpedoes were stopped by the nets, and the fleet being too shocked to give chase (the torpedo nets had been placed against the protests of the captains because the surveillance was believed adequate to thwart another attempt) saved them from being torpedoed by a flotilla of destroyers and other torpedo-armed ships waiting for them at the exit of the bay. Then they sank the Austrian flagship after stumbling on it, with another Austrian ship filming what had happened and nobody realized what the hell had just happened until the Italian radio started bragging about it.
- Oh, and that other ship? Sunk in harbour while the Austro-Hungarian Empire was collapsing and begging for an armistice and after it had been gifted to one of the states born out of the collapse (given the donation had happened earlier that day, the guys who did this couldn't be informed in time). With the brand-new "Mignatta" (leech) torpedo, as the surveillance finally was good enough to deter the speedboats.
- Also during World War I, the Italian Alpini (mountain troops, named after the Alps mountains where they were recruited) were having trouble conquering a fortified Austro-Hungarian position on top of a mountain... So they started digging to put a bomb under it. The war in that sector promptly turned in both sides pulling the trick with bigger bombs until they realized they were literally demolishing the entire mountain range and stopped.
- They made extensive use of commando frogmen, most notably, the Decima Flottiglia MAS, to sabotage enemy ships and installations. Their assault on Alexandria harbour in 1941 with manned torpedoes and limpet mines disabled two Royal Navy battleships and crippling damage to a tanker and a destroyer, the latter as collateral damage, in Alexandria harbour, in a single raid.
- Subversion: being honourable to the boot, Admiral Sir Charles Morgan actually represented the Italian government to award the Medaglia d'Oro al Valor Militare (literally Golden Medal to Military Valour) to the frogman Luigi Durand de la Penne for the above raid, more specifically the HMS Valiant, his own flagship.
- The Royal Italian Navy pioneered the use of purpose-built explosive motorboats.
- The Italians can boast to have been the only ones to breach Gibraltar. How? They rented a house on the coast right on the other side of the Spanish border and adapted as a base a semi-sunk tanker on the bay's entrance and used them for surveillance and to launch attacks from Maiali and swimmers with demolition charges. Both bases were a flagrant violation of Spanish neutrality.
- Recently the Italian Navy started fielding homing shells with their newest multi-purpose 76mm and 127mm guns for point defense (the 76mm one is also used by the French navy). Not to be outdone, the Italian Army is evaluating homing shells for a 155mm howitzer, capable of firing four of them at the same target in such a way they all hit at the same time. Let's face it: when at war, the Italians are assholes.
- British just after the Fall of France in 1940. With France defeated and the BEF having been chased out of Dunkirk with great loss of heavy equipment, the majority of the German command were under the impression that the British would soon come to the peace table for negotiations. While they waited for the British to come to their senses, they scaled back production, cancelled designs that clearly would no longer be needed for the war that was about to end, and went on photo-op tours of Paris. Instead the British chose not to negotiate and that rather than risk French warships being taken over by the Germans and then be used against them, decided it was easier to just attack and destroy the French navy in port. Which they did, much to the anger of the French who were allies only weeks before and to the horror of the Germans who suddenly discovered that Churchill was playing for keeps.
- Even then, the British still fought in accordance with at least some kind of moral direction: If the Germans had actually managed to land on the British mainland, all bets would have been off. Ireland would have been invaded and turned into a giant refugee camp for British evacuees, its industrial bases repurposed for the war. Any German beachhead would be hit with mustard gas, as would German cities. Operation Vegetarian called for the dropping of millions of linseed cakes laced with anthrax onto German fields, which would be eaten by the livestock and spread the anthrax to the population (the island upon which this theory was tested, Gruinard, was not safe to visit until 1990). Expressly abandoning the Geneva Convention was considered.
- Photonics Magazine, around 1996, was all a-twitter about laser dazzle weapons. At a conference, a young infantry captain was confronted with the dire consequence- these weapons could cause permanent eye damage! He replied, “Oh, I don’t want to blind anyone permanently- just long enough to run up and put a bayonet through his guts.”
- USMC Gunfighting rule 11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
- England. 1455, 22nd of May. The First Battle of St. Albans started a mixture of political and combat pragmatism that would characterise thirty years of intermittent conflict; go in, kill their leaders, any way you can. At Barnet, the Earl of Warwick was killed by a common soldier while trying to retrieve his horse. At Wakefield, the Duke of York and his sons were specifically targeted and killed by the Lancastrians. The English had long favoured combat pragmatism ever since Edward III had demonstrated its necessity at Dupplin Moor, up to the moment your opponent was defeated; after which the foe (provided he was noble) was spared and ransomed. After St. Albans? Kill him, kill his sons, eliminate his claim to the throne, and do it by any means necessary. This resulted in the Battle of Towton, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, and Tewkesbury, where Lancastrians were dragged out of a church seeking sanctuary and executed. By the end of thirty years of it? Henry Tudor won, essentially by being the last man standing.
- The Punic Wars had more than a few moments, usually by the Romans:
- During the First, Rome was winning in Sicily but realized that as long as Carthage had control of the sea they would be able to trade, hire mercenaries, and ship them on the frontlines, and while the Romans could build a fleet in a few months they had no experienced combat sailors and were facing the best navy of the Mediterranean. The Romans simply modified their ships with the corvus, allowing them to just board the enemy ships.
- The corvus was extremely heavy and compromised the ship's navigability, so the Romans ditched it as soon as they became better at manouvering warships... But did not forget it, and would deploy a similar but lighter device to devastating effect.
- The corvus was extremely heavy and compromised the ship's navigability, so the Romans ditched it as soon as they became better at manouvering warships... But did not forget it, and would deploy a similar but lighter device
- When the Romans invaded Africa to end the First War, the Carthaginian commander, the Spartan mercenary Xanthippus, took advantage of the Romans' belief in the invincibility of their heavy infantry by having it overran with eight times their numbers of Numidian light cavalry, too fast to be engaged and armed with javelins that could defeat Roman armor, while the Carthaginian phalanx kept the Roman infantry pinned down long enough for the Numidians to do their job and attack the main Roman force from behind. It was a very one-sided battle.
- While abandoned by later Carthaginian commanders of the war, Xanthippus' combined arms tactic was so good that Hannibal would recycle and perfect it and win numerous battles (most notably Cannae), and the Romans could not find a way to defeat it in open combat, only to stall him at most-up until Scipio Africanus invaded Numidia and took away the Numidian cavalry (see below).
- At the start of the Second War Hannibal inflicted two disastrous defeats to Rome, prompting the Romans to elect Quintus Fabius Maximus ("Maximus" being a nickname meaning literally The Magnificent) dictator (basically, he had full control of Rome for six months and there was no way to legally punish him for whatever he did). Instead of meeting him in open battle, Fabius decided to shadow Hannibal's forces and chip away small chunks of his army by eliminating Carthaginian foraging parties whenever they ventured from the main host, which also limited Hannibal's ability to resupply his army. And whenever Hannibal would turn to try and face Fabius, Fabius would simply withdraw his army to defensible higher ground and hold his position until Hannibal got tired and moved on, whereupon he'd resume shadowing him. While Fabius was criticized by the Roman people for not meeting Hannibal in pitched battle, he was largely successful in keeping the Carthaginians from making any serious gains in Italy. This gave the Romans time to replace the forces they'd previously lost and start making gains in other theaters of combat around the Mediterranean, which ultimately forced Hannibal to abandon his campaign in Italy and return to Carthage. Fabius' method wasn't a glorious way to wage war, but it ultimately drove Hannibal off Roman soil. To this day this method of attaining victory through attrition is studied by battle commanders and is known as Fabian strategy.
- How the Romans dealt with the revolt of the Greek cities of Sicily: lay siege to the invincible Syracuse while pillaging everything in the area. At first, it only caused even the neutral and Roman-aligned cities to revolt... But when Syracuse suddenly fell, the Greek cities surrendered wholesale for fear of being next.
- How Roman general Scipio Africanus (Africanus being Roman slang for "he went to Africa and wiped out anyone who dared not to bow at his magnificence") ultimately drove Hannibal out of Italy and took out his Numidian cavalry: he invaded Numidia, took advantage of the Numidians having light cavalry only to install a friendly king, and had him recall his troops in Hannibal's army (a crucial part of his normal tactics) while marching toward Carthage, forcing Hannibal to come back to defend his hometown against unsurmountable odds and having no way to invade Italy again even if he won. Hannibal himself admitted Scipio had won the war with that simple move and he could at best get lenient peace conditions. The final battle was fought because his government could not accept this, resulting in the Roman Senate imposing crushing peace conditions once Scipio won thanks to the Numidian cavalry that had been the key to Hannibal's previous victories (as Hannibal had still found a way to defeat Scipio, but the Numidians ruined it).
- When the Third Punic War started, the Carthaginians, knowing they couldn't win this, offered anything to have peace. The Romans demanded hostages from the noble families and every single weapon and armor in the city, obtained it... And then announced they were going to destroy Carthage anyway, and the inhabitants were to move out and rebuild it at least 16 km inland, away from the sea Carthage depended on for trade. The Carthaginians decided to defend their hometown or die trying... Using the weapons they "forgot" to give up for the initial resistance while they rearmed themselves, and used every trick they had to resist for three years.
- During the First, Rome was winning in Sicily but realized that as long as Carthage had control of the sea they would be able to trade, hire mercenaries, and ship them on the frontlines, and while the Romans could build a fleet in a few months they had no experienced combat sailors and were facing the best navy of the Mediterranean. The Romans simply modified their ships with the corvus
- The Battle of Asal Uttar during the India-Pakistan war of 1965, which decisively turned the tide in India's favour. Pakistani Army thrust its tanks and infantry into Indian territory, and the Indian Army responded by flooding a sugarcane field and luring the Pakistani tanks into the resulting muddy slush.
Martial Arts
- Your basic self-defense class is simply a few "dirty" techniques that will buy the attacked time to run away from the encounter. Assuming you fail to run away as an opener. However, some dirty tricks are considered ill-advised, such as clawing the face, for the other pragmatic reason that if the other guy's face looks like a bloody mess, people might confuse you for the aggressor.
- Perhaps surprisingly, Tai Chi, that meditative martial art-like exercise that old people and hippies do in the park? That's based on a Chinese martial art. Recall that big, flowing, windmill motion you make with your arms where you sink into a crouch as you sweep your hands across and out from you? What you're actually doing is grabbing dirt... and throwing it in your enemy's eyes.
- It is constantly pointed out by other martial artists that Tai Chi "meditation" (especially in Western countries) is only used at "training speed," but using it for combat means you're supposed to get up to FULL SPEED (as seen in Avatar: The Last Airbender). It's not an offshoot of the famously brutal Shaolin style for nothing.
- The founder of the Yang school of Tai Chi, Yang Luchan, taught unarmed combat to the Qing Imperial Bodyguard.
- Major William E. Fairbairn. Taught, among other things, sentry elimination to commandos. See the quotes page.
- Everything taught by Marc "Animal" MacYoung revolves around this while deconstructing the idea of a badass. The key to safety, according to MacYoung, is to be alert, avoid danger, and always back down. In other words, never fight unless there is absolutely no other option; any kind of criminal will want the odds stacked in their favor in every possible way. While he does dismiss any kind of question about how to defend oneself as wishful thinking, he also says that a lot of martial arts moves are either too fancy to use or outright illegal since they can't be argued as self-defense in court.
- The kusarigama was designed with this trope in mind. It takes a weapon that was already rather "dirty" (the kama, which is basically a modified farmer's sickle and was often disguised as such) and puts a chain on it. The chain is not designed to swing or fling the kama around like a flail (though one school teaches one how to do this), the chain is for whipping it at an opponent's sword and tying it up, before jumping in and hacking him to death with the attached kama (or the above-mentioned short sword technique).
- Goju-ryu karate practices many kicks, but in an actual fight, there's only one. All the kicks begin with the same move: bringing the knee forcefully to crotch height.
- Sport Fencing: If you ever notice that fencers wear only one glove, that is because there was a problem in duels with opponents grabbing the blade with their free hand and stabbing violently with their own sword. This led to the popular rapier-and-dagger combination in real life, and the requirement that the off-hand be ungloved in single-blade duels, a tradition that lasts to this day.
- General combat fencing: For hundreds of years, fencing was considered the domain of criminals and ruffians.
- European fencers were well-practiced in a wide variety of practical techniques, such as wrestling and grappling in the midst of a swordfight. Some techniques also involved grasping your sword by the blade and using the handle like a hammer. This strike is often called a "murder strike."
- Masters of the time emphasize there's nothing dishonorable in running away from multiple opponents, advise on kicks to the balls, and begin lectures on grappling by "break his arm and proceed to grappling".
- A tale from Amberger's Secret History of the Sword vividly demonstrates this trope: an older fencing master is challenged to a duel in a bar by a younger, faster, stronger man with more balls than brains. He agrees to a one-on-one duel in a back alley, just the two of them, mano a mano. When the younger man shows up, the old guy points to the alley entrance and complains that the young guy broke the rules by bringing friends: when the kid turns around to look, the fencing master takes his head off from behind. The fencing master then goes back to the tavern, picks up his beer, and tells the other bar patrons he taught the younger man a lesson he won't soon forget.
- The handbook by fifteenth-century master Hans Talhoffer contains advice on how to (amongst other things) boot your opponent in the gut, snatch his sword off him, pull a dagger as a surprise weapon, and how to stab or slice a man from behind.
- Other standard techniques include hitting your foe with your sword's pommel (which was often weighted to improve the overall balance of the sword) without taking your hand off the hilt. It's rather difficult to fight effectively when your opponent has just hit you in the face with what felt like a small hammer. If you're in close, this can be a lot easier and more effective than trying to strike your foe with the blade of the weapon.
- 18th-century soldier, duelist, and adventurer Donald McBane dedicates an entire chapter to "dirty tricks" in his combination autobiography and fencing treatise, The Expert Sword-Man's Companion.
- This anti-bullying video promotes this trope.
- Krav Maga is founded on the concept and designed to have your survival as the highest goal of a fight. Put simply, everything is allowed, including the Groin Attack, going for the eyes, the throat, clawing, and especially biting.
- In fact almost every technique taught in Krav Maga contains a Groin Attack. There is a mantra that if your attacker isn't down yet, apply as many groin shots as needed to get them down. Groin kicks are among the first strikes one learns in the average training program.
- Other techniques in Krav Maga focus on disarming an armed attacker. Unlike most other martial arts that focus on getting the weapon out of the opponent's hands, most Krav Maga instructors will emphasize gaining control of the weapon and then using it either to deter the attack or to strike back. Most instructors also emphasize that if you can start the fight with some kind of weapon in your hand, use it.
- KM is designed to work with the body's natural reactions to attack. Someone's choking you, you grab their wrists. In Krav Maga, you just also try and turn their hands outward to free yourself.
- Any decent Krav Maga instructor will drill practitioners to be aware of the legal consequences of using Krav Maga. Explicitly because "proper" use of KM will end up seriously injuring, crippling, or even killing your assailant, and unlike the movies, even a victimized party will have to account to the law for such use of force.
- This poster on the Jeet Kune Do Talk forum used one of the grossest and embarrassing but effective Improvised Weapon ever when he was attacked while using the urinal: his own piss.
- Capoeira. Depending on who you learn it from, Capoeira can encompass anything from the standard showy but slow acrobatics, sweeps and kicks to slapping opponents' ears to disorient them, headbutts to the groin, concealed weaponry, tackles, takedowns, and more. "Cheapshots" just before a match proper aren't unheard of from savvy Capoeiristas who see an opponent without his guard up at all times.
- Some places teach it the hard way. When someone wants to enter the "roda", the one entering must offer his extended hand to the one already inside, with the insider giving it a tap. After the tap, even before the hands stop touching, the game is on, and is not that rare for one of them to hold the other's hand, pull it, and deliver a punch to the face with the other hand. That's fair game, the one who fell for that should know that Capoeira is, first and foremost, about deception.
- The origin of Savate. When the French government outlawed the human fist as a lethal weapon, French sailors invented a fighting style based on kicks and open-handed slaps instead. Then, when the authorities weren't looking, they still used punches.
- Then Savate got mixed with the wrestling styles from the north, styles that included eye-gouging and other tricks. Paris' criminal gangs known as the Apache practiced this style, and thanks to this, other bits of combat pragmatism (like the infamous Apache revolver) and their numerical superiority over the police, they dominated Paris until World War I.
- How the French government got rid of them is possibly the ultimate example of combat pragmatism: they enrolled them in the army and sent them to fight the German Army. After the war, the Apache (or those who survived, at least) weren't in the mood to cause trouble anymore or even teach someone their style of Savate (hence why modern Savate is more civilized).
- That said, modern sport Savate is still a rather pragmatic style, to the point they codified a groin attack.
- Then Savate got mixed with the wrestling styles from the north, styles that included eye-gouging and other tricks. Paris' criminal gangs known as the Apache practiced this style, and thanks to this, other bits of combat pragmatism (like the infamous Apache revolver
- Flowery flash aside, this is heavily emphasized when it comes to the practical applications of Kung Fu. Your basic Snap Kick, as well as Dragon Head Fist, is a Groin Attack, Tiger Claw involves smashing someone's nose while stabbing their eyes, one application of the Jap Hsiao Ma form involves breaking someone's arm, and so on.
- Taekwondo has some moves that fall under this based on its forms. The flashy spinning and turning kicks are used only if other, more practical techniques haven't already worked. Such techniques include strikes to the back of the head and torso, a leg sweep and low side kick aimed at the opponent's knee.
- Traditional Jiu-Jitsu predominantly makes use of throws and locks, with varying amount of groundwork and strikes based on the style. Outside of competitions, almost anything goes. Eye raking, spinal locks, striking floored opponents, and breaking joints are all considered legitimate tactics. As it originated on the battlefield, it's not surprising that it involves techniques designed to quickly stun, cripple or kill an opponent.
- Muay Thai as well. Specifically, the roundhouse kicks to the legs. See, people need their legs to fight properly, in order to properly shift their weight into their punches and kicks. Muay Thai practitioners deliver a lot of kicks to the legs to specifically stop the opponent from doing that. Eventually, this can cause someone to collapse from continued punishment, especially if they're not conditioned, or didn't train long enough to learn how to properly check kicks. Further, the elbow and knee strikes. They aim to hit with the hard bone in their elbow to at worst, hurt them, or, if delivered with sufficient speed and power, this can open up a cut, creating a target. If they get wise to your tactics and try to clinch you? Knee them in the gut! It's considered one of the most pragmatic striking martial arts for a reason. It may cross over into Boring, but Practical, but then again, so does most of the things on this list.
- The average Sumo Wrestling match opens with two fighters charging at each other before locking arms. There is nothing saying you can't just dodge your opponent by side stepping, causing your opponent to throw themselves out of the dohyou and lose by Ring Out. This is called a henka, and while it is a legal move it is considered dishonorable and won't win you any brownie points with the audience unless you're at a significant size disadvantage from your opponent. Plus, as with any strategy, using it too often will cause your opponents to become significantly warier.
- Kinamutay (commonly but incorrectly spelt as kino mutai) is a very specific section of Filipino Martial Arts (almost all of them qualify on this list), emphasizes "dirty" fighting techniques like pinching, ripping, eye-gouging, and is known especially for it biting techniques. One key principle of the "style" is the concept of uninterrupted biting; where one places oneself in a position that can hold a bite as long as one wants, disabling the opponent from escaping and more importantly preventing opponents from counter attacking using grappling techniques and manipulation of nerve and pressure points. The biting aspect of kinamutay concerns itself with where to bite, how much to bite at a time, and the angle and movement of the bite. Favored targets include sensitive and easily accessible areas such as the face, neck, ears, groin, nipples, and parts of the arms, these targets are also chosen over others because of the difficulty countering a kinamutay practitioner biting them, ensuring an uninterrupted bite can take place to inflict pain and can be used to cut arteries which can cause severe bleeding.
People
- Miyamoto Musashi. Many of his famous fights included pragmatic tricks to give him an advantage.
- His first kill was at the age of 13 when he signed up for a duel with a swordsman who came to the local village looking for duels. When his uncle found out, he arranged to formally apologize to the swordsman for wasting his time. As said uncle was apologizing, the young Musashi charged him with a bo (also called a quarterstaff or "a 6-foot-long stick"), knocked him to the ground, dazed him with a blow to the head, and then beat him to death. That is not how duels are typically supposed to go.
- Musashi considered the arquebus a "must-know" weapon for a samurai and considered it "without equal" when used from a fortified position in his Book of Five Rings. He only dismissed it as a weapon for hand-to-hand combat and for dueling an opponent one-on-one simply because the firearms of the time took too long to reload, and were unwieldy in close quarters. Musashi evaluated an option in terms of its effectiveness and decided where and when it was his best chance for victory - exactly what this trope entails.
- Much of the Book of Five Rings emphasizes that it is foolish to believe you have a single technique that will bring you victory and instead promotes leveraging every possible advantage you can get. Most techniques in the book seem rather too simple and the text appears somehow boring until one realizes Musashi intended the fight to be off from the first cut, the second at worst. Flashy acrobatics were definitely not for the battlefield.
- The details of his famous duel with Sasaki Kojiro are debated, but in many versions, he unnerved Kojiro by showing up to the duel three hours late. He timed his arrival so that it would be around sunset, then stood with his back to the sun, so it blinded Kojiro.
- Colonel Jeff Cooper on the "Fair Fight": "If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!"
- A longtime boxing legend was that Mickey Walker, a champion at welterweight and middleweight, pulled this on Harry Greb, a middleweight champion many experts pick as one of history's greatest boxers. After losing to Greb in a championship bout, the two bumped into each other later in a bar. They drank together for a while until Walker made some comments about Greb's dirty and unsportsmanlike conduct in the ring, which Greb countered by offering to fight for real outside. The original story goes that while the two were standing in the street Walker waited until Greb was tied up in taking off his jacket and vest, and then hit Greb with a monster shot while Greb was constrained. This version of events was repeated for a long time, until about 30 years later Walker, then a painter long since retired from the sport, admitted that it was a wild exaggeration of events, and the fight was stopped before it started when a bystander separated the two.
- Mixed Martial Arts pioneer Bas Rutten himself knows a thing (or twenty) about fighting dirty.
- Bruce Lee. His personally developed fighting style, Jeet Kune Do, is based on the philosophy of doing 'whatever it takes' to win. In one apocryphal case, during a sparring match, he was pinned by a judo practitioner who asked what he'd do if this was a real fight. He responded, "Bite you, of course." Basically, he acknowledges that, if you're fighting for real, you use everything at your disposal, including crotch kicks, eye-gouges, hair-pulling, biting, or even using weapons (he always carried a gun on him, since all the martial arts in the world would be meaningless if your opponent wanted to shoot you). Of course, he was also perfectly capable of fighting 'by the rules' for martial-arts tournaments and movies, but that's another matter.
- This video of a Vale Tudo fight between Gary Goodridge and Pedro Otavio. Seanbaby best described it with this quote: "Gary Goodridge was finding more uses for a human dick than I did during two years of puberty. And I grew up on a farm." Goodridge, incidentally, had complained before the match that two of his favorite techniques, biting and eye-gouging, were banned.
- The Baron of Jarnac, a mediocre fencer, found himself challenged to a duel by the prince's champion, a celebrated swordsman. He hired an Italian fencing master to give him a strategy to survive the duel. The master taught him an unorthodox cut to the back of the knee and had him drill it to perfection in the days preceding the duel. On the day, Jarnac landed the cut, crippling his superior opponent almost immediately. To this day, a "Coup de Jarnac" is a tricky or underhanded action.
- The Red Baron collected his victories this way: he was just decent at flying, but had very good aim and would use every trick in the book to get close to his target from behind, possibly with the sun behind him, before revealing his presence with a burst of machine gun fire.
- During a promotional match between the famous Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki and world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, Inoki spent almost the entire match lying on the mat, kicking Ali in the leg. This came about after Ali's promoters introduced several rules at the last minute to effectively prevent Inoki from using any wrestling techniques in the fight. Unwilling to simply stand around and get pummeled, Inoki exploited a loophole in the rules that allowed him to kick so long as one knee was on the mat. This resulted in the match being declared a draw, instead of the win both fighters were hoping for, an enraged crowd, damage to Inoki's foot, and serious bruising to Ali's leg. This developed into two blood clots, which briefly threatened the boxer with amputation, though he was eventually able to recover.
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko is among the most famous female snipers in the history of warfare, much of which boiled down to doing whatever it took to get an edge and increase her kill count, from killing dogs that could sniff her out to wounding enemies in the legs, essentially turning them into human baits that would attract more enemy targets.
- Youtuber and Content Creator, UberHaxorNova (aka James Wilson) loves his "cheese" moments (when they work, anyway). Like perhaps many Gamers, Nova would mess around, extort, and even outright cheat in order to complete a game. Glitches, bugs, and repeating sequences, while hilarious, are Nova's specialty of sorts to abuse. However, as clever and unorthodox as he is, sometimes the game (or its mechanics) just outright kicks him around.
Other
- Humanity's advancement is a decent amount of testament to this trope, honestly. If there's no way you can kill a larger animal with your bare hands, use a sharp rock. When your opponents are using sharp rocks, tie a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear. When your opponents are using spears, throw the spear, making it a javelin. When your opponents are using javelins, attach feathers and shoot them out of a bow, making them arrows. And so on...
- Humans are some of the best long-distance runners in the world. One hunting technique for early civilizations was to simply chase a large animal until it collapsed from exhaustion.
- Owing largely to our superior body temperature control method: Sweating. There is just about nothing that can outrun a human in a hot climate, and this hunting method is still used by some African tribes.
- And as soon as we invented suitable containers, we could get even nastier by intentionally chasing prey away from water sources. We can carry a waterskin or a canteen into the desert. Antelopes can't.
- Owing largely to our superior body temperature control method: Sweating. There is just about nothing that can outrun a human in a hot climate, and this hunting method is still used by some African tribes.
- Many, many times in nature. It's rare to see an "even" fight between two animals bent on killing each other. Often, a predator will use ambush tactics or superiority in numbers, with some smarter animals taking advantage of their environments. Prey animals meanwhile will often counter this with their own advantages in numbers, or develop self-defense mechanisms such as eating poisonous plants or animals and letting the poison build up in their bodies so that when they are eaten the predator becomes violently ill or even dies.
- One popular tale that shows up occasionally in media is the hyena versus the lion. If the lion brings down a kill, the hyena will want it. But the lion is a master of combat and can easily kill the hyena, and the hyena knows this. So the hyena gets a few friends together, and they harass the lion: surrounding it and attacking it from behind when it tries to confront another hyena or eat its kill. Eventually, the lion realizes that it can't defend against the hyena assault, and leaves, while the hyenas get the kill. Or, if the lion is particularly old or frail, the hyenas get two.
- In actual fact, spotted hyenas are very capable predators and can out-persist the lion on their own with enough skill (they've got a lot more stamina than your average lion and are no slouches in manoeuvrability, however weird their movements might look), let alone with company. Lions occasionally steal their kills, so it's all tit-for-tat. And a juvenile male alone on his own is easy pickings.
- Cats in particular do not like fair fights. This means that, unlike many dangerous animals, staring down a big cat can save your life. Wolves, too, tend to attack in packs, and only when their target is fleeing. To a gorilla or a bear, you're a threat, and staring it down will make it feel like it must defend itself. To a cat, you're a potential meal, and if it doesn't have surprise, it will likely go look for easier prey. To a wolf, if it doesn't have an advantage and/or you aren't fleeing, it wants no part of you.
- Pure carnivores in general have to be this, since even a minor injury can keep them from hunting, causing them to be weakened from hunger. Therefore, it's in their best interest to stay as healthy as possible by avoiding unnecessary fights.
- This is why house cats often "play" with their prey. They're trying to tire it out so that when they go for the kill, there's minimal chance of it fighting back and injuring the cat.
- Unfortunately, public shootings have become more and more common in recent years. In the event of such a thing happening in a business or office, employees (if they can't escape the building or find a safe place to hide) are encouraged to fight the shooter with improvised weapons and every dirty trick they can think of. In this situation, they shouldn't fight fair, they should fight for their life.
