Largest Encirclement in military history?

[Sunforged General]

So I know its often been held that the Battle of Kiev, where the Germans encircled and destroyed & captured over 500,000 soviet troops, was the largest encirclement in history. But I question this. During the Battle of France, when the Germans invaded through Belgium and did their "sickle cut" as Churchill called it, cutting to the coast of France and trapping the allied armies in Belgium, would this not be the largest encirclement in history?

If I'm not mistaken there were over 1 million allied troops that became trapped in Belgium.

 

[AjayAlcos]

Largest in terms of geographic area or "poor sods" entrapped?

 

[Sunforged General]

Largest in terms of geographic area or "poor sods" entrapped?

The Latter is probably the more important.

 

[Premu]

So I know its often been held that the Battle of Kiev, where the Germans encircled and destroyed & captured over 500,000 soviet troops, was the largest encirclement in history. But I question this. During the Battle of France, when the Germans invaded through Belgium and did their "sickle cut" as Churchill called it, cutting to the coast of France and trapping the allied armies in Belgium, would this not be the largest encirclement in history?

If I'm not mistaken there were over 1 million allied troops that became trapped in Belgium.

If you mean Dunkirk: There were approximately 400 000 troops trapped there. So it is not larger than Kiev.

 

[Sunforged General]

If you mean Dunkirk: There were approximately 400 000 troops trapped there. So it is not larger than Kiev.

When the Germans first advanced into Belgium, the French forces that moved into Belgium were the majority of the French forces. Seeing as how the French fielded approximately 2.7 million men, the amount of troops that became trapped in Belgium (not just Dunkerque). When the Germans reached the coast, had to have been over 1 million French troops trapped in Belgium. Thats not even counting the BEF and Belgian army.

 

[bz249]

If you mean Dunkirk: There were approximately 400 000 troops trapped there. So it is not larger than Kiev.

330k escaped from Dunkerque, 20k killed 35k captured, smaller encirclements (e.g. Lille 35k captured) plus the whole Belgian Army of about 400k. So probably 1M+ encircled and 500k+ killed or captured

 

[Premu]

Several groups of allied soldiers were encircled separately. While the overall number was higher than 500k, non of the pockets had so many soldiers in it. Also many French units still managed to withdraw from Belgium into France, but they were in such a disarray after the retreat that the Wehrmacht could exploit it by doing more breakthroughs after Dunkirk, which ended in further, smaller pockets.

So this 500k Soviet soldiers might simply be the largest number of soldiers actually encircled in a single pocket. Otherwise, you'd have to count all the other Soviet soldiers who were cut off before Kiev in operation Barabarossa, too.

 

[Sunforged General]

Several groups of allied soldiers were encircled separately. While the overall number was higher than 500k, non of the pockets had so many soldiers in it. Also many French units still managed to withdraw from Belgium into France, but they were in such a disarray after the retreat that the Wehrmacht could exploit it by doing more breakthroughs after Dunkirk, which ended in further, smaller pockets.

So this 500k Soviet soldiers might simply be the largest number of soldiers actually encircled in a single pocket. Otherwise, you'd have to count all the other Soviet soldiers who were cut off before Kiev in operation Barabarossa, too.

While many smaller pockets later developed, I still think its not out of the realm of logic to count the entire sickle cut as one massive encirclement. After all, that was the intended purpose of the operation. Meanwhile Operation Barbarossa was not one giant encirclement. It involved many smaller ones, but the operation as a whole was just a massive offensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Belgium#/media/File:16May-21May_Battle_of_Belgium.PNG

If we look at the Manstein plans execution, its clear the overall goal was to trap the allied armies against the coast, hence one massive encirclement.

 

[cpreston5]

It's a matter of perspective I guess. Within every encirclement there are bound to be sub-pockets, and you could even characterise the chipping-away of a pocket as being a process of re-pocketing. At some arbitrary point you stop counting the sub-encirclements.

I would agree that the sickle-cut counts as an encirclement, but I don't know if most people consider it a "proper" encirclement since it was anchored on the sea, and the Germans didn't control the sea. Battles like Kiev and Uman fit the definition much more neatly.

 

[Osteles]

Relatively speaking, based on % of world population: Cannae

 

[Acheron]

I would agree that the sickle-cut counts as an encirclement, but I don't know if most people consider it a "proper" encirclement since it was anchored on the sea, and the Germans didn't control the sea. Battles like Kiev and Uman fit the definition much more neatly.

That might be the problem. The allies were cut off by land,, but they were not encircled in the sense that in every direction of them, there were German forces. And with the Royal Navy, the difference turned out far from academic.
Though when Dunkirk is mentioned I lately feel the need to mention this http://i.imgur.com/YCyaCuf.png

 

[cpreston5]

That might be the problem. The allies were cut off by land,, but they were not encircled in the sense that in every direction of them, there were German forces. And with the Royal Navy, the difference turned out far from academic.
Though when Dunkirk is mentioned I lately feel the need to mention this http://i.imgur.com/YCyaCuf.png

Again, it's something which raises a question of arbitrariness. The sea was obviously not a total barrier since the Allies controlled the sea and so there was a route of escape. By that argument, yeah you might begin to accept it's not an encirclement. But the Allies could only really evacuate manpower, as opposed to armour and heavy equipment.

Personally for me the reason I fall into your conclusion about the sickle-cut is that you could ask then whether this is not analogous to the situation in many classic encirclements in the East, where large formations were destroyed, but tens of thousands of stragglers were able to slip out through various gaps? Even in those classic examples, there weren't German forces perfectly positioned at all avenues of escape. If you were a small enough force, and found a lucky spot, you had some chance of slipping out and slipping back to your lines or joining the partisans.

How "airtight" does an encirclement need to be to count? It's not possible to completely, inescapably trap tens of thousands of people across areas of hundreds of square kms. Even at Cannae some Romans got out. As far as I'm concerned, if you place an enemy force in a position where the organised extraction of any consequential fighting formation is impossible, you've encircled them.

So for me, Dunkirk was an encirclement. A large and heavily mechanised force was trapped and destroyed, and the trapped side managed to extract some manpower which was eventually fed back into the fight.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Dunkirk was indeed by its very nature an encirclement battle

 

[lila-laune-bär]

Obviously the Central Powers in WW1 were the largest encirclement in history

 

[Pyoro]

If Cannae counts, the Battle of Changping should probably count too. It's a Warring States Period battle, where Qin forces faked a retreat, luring Zhou forces out, then cutting them off (and also in two) and basically sieging them down over the following weeks (then murdering everyone). Supposedly there's some 400-500k troops involved on both sides, but you know how it is with those ancient battles ... well. It's China. At least it's hypothetically possible and doesn't exceed total population estimates ^^

Also, of course, there's the time your father first met your mother ...

 

[cpreston5]

Obviously the Central Powers in WW1 were the largest encirclement in history

No - the central powers just failed to see the opening. They obviously should have retreated out the obvious route into Iran.

 

[olm]

Megapocket Japanese Empire:

 

[cpreston5]

No army has the ability to evacuate into orbit so this is actually the biggest encirclement in history:

 

[bz249]

No army has the ability to evacuate into orbit so this is actually the biggest encirclement in history:

Well at least no army escaped that encirclement forever... there was an attempt for a continued existence of the Soviet Union in Space after its dissolution in 1991
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Krikalev

 

[Acheron]

Obviously the Central Powers in WW1 were the largest encirclement in history

You got it backwards.
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