10 Sneak Attacks That Started Wars

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

"To be defeated is pardonable; to be surprised—never!”—Napoleon Bonaparte

The sneak attack—aggressors view it as a smart military maneuver, while victims see it as an unsportsmanlike act of cowardice. It’s no wonder, then, that a sneak attack is likely to result in a declaration of war, followed by a full-blown conflict.

Despite the strategic advantage an attacker achieves by a surprise strike, provoking an enemy with a sneak attack does not always ensure victory in the long run. Of the ten examples of war-inciting sneak attacks listed below, an equal number of countries or groups who fell prey to sneak attacks turned the tables on their attackers and won the ensuing war.

10 Invasion of Plataea: Second Peloponnesian War (431 BC)

The Second Peloponnesian War opened with Thebes' sneak attack on Plataea in 431 BC.

According to the Athenian historian and general Thucydides, Naucleides and his fellow traitors within the gates of Plataea hoped to gain power for themselves by assisting the city's enemies. They opened the city's gates to Theban troops during the night. No Plataean guard had been posted, as the attack had been prearranged with the approval of Eurymachus, a citizen of great influence among the Plataeans.

Anticipating war with Plataea, Thebes wanted to conduct a preliminary surprise attack, and this was the means chosen to accomplish this objective. Once the Theban troops entered the city, they stacked their weapons in the marketplace. They refused to kill whoever opposed Thebes' control of their city, as Naucleides and his confederates had intended. Instead, the invaders invited the Plataeans to join them voluntarily, in allegiance to Thebes.

At first, the Plataeans agreed, but, when they discovered they outnumbered the invaders, they decided to overcome them, if possible. To avoid being detected, they tunneled through common walls to gather. They had placed wagons in the streets to form barricades. At first light, the Plataeans rushed from their houses, attacking the enemy. Surprised by the sneak attack, the Theban troops resisted, driving their attackers back several times. However, the Plataeans continued to press their attack, aided by women and slaves, who, from inside their houses, “pelted them with stones and tiles.”

It had rained throughout the night. The streets were muddy. The gate through which the Theban soldiers entered had been shut and barred. Many of the troops did not know any other way out of the city. The early morning light was dim, “the darkness caused by the moon being in her last quarter.” The Plataeans, familiar with their city and its streets, were able to intercept them as they fled, the Thebans' courage failing them.

Some of the troops climbed the city's wall and jumped, often to their deaths. One party found a “deserted gate” and broke it open with an ax taken from a woman, but only a few escaped, having been spotted by the Plataea's citizenry. Other bands of the enemy were 'cut off” as they fled. A large body of the troops rushed into a building adjacent to the city wall, mistaking it for access to a gate. As the citizens debated as to the best course of action to take, some suggesting the building be burned down around the invaders, Thebans surrendered unconditionally. However, many others of them had been killed.

In all, the Theban troops numbered 300, under the command of Pythangelus and Diemporus, both Boeotarchs. A contingent had remained in Thebes, as reinforcements. When news of their failed invasion reached them, they marched at once to aid their comrades in arms. However, Thebes was eight miles north of Plataea, the roads were thick with mud due to the previous night's rain, and the Asopus river had risen and was difficult to ford. By the time they reached their destination, the Plataeans had killed or captured all of the advance force.

To acquire hostages, the Theban reinforcements intended to kidnap local shepherds and other workers in the fields nearby. Through a herald, the Plataeans informed the Theban soldiers that, should they harm any of their fellow citizens, they would kill their 108 captives. According to the Thebans, if they withdrew from the area, the Plataeans would release their prisoners unarmed. However, the Plataeans insist that they agreed only to negotiate with the Thebans if they withdrew, never promising to release their captives. Once the Theban troops withdrew, the Plataeans gathered their men from the countryside and then put their captives to death. 

The Theban troops' sneak attack on Plataea failed, but it ignited the Second Peloponnesian War, as Plataea's ally, Athens, began hostilities against the Peloponnesians, led by Sparta.

9 Attacks on Colonial Settlements: Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622)

The Second Anglo-Powhatan War lasted 10 years, from 1622-1632. The belligerents were English colonists in Virginia and the 28 to 32 “Algonquian-speaking” tribes of “Indians of Tsenacomoco, who were “often called the Powhatan Indians, in honor of their paramount chief.” The Indians were “led by Opitchapam and his brother (or close kinsman) Opechancanough.”

The war started when “Opechancanough led a series of coordinated surprise attacks that concentrated on settlements upriver from Jamestown.” As a result of these lightning-swift strikes, “nearly a third of the English population” was killed. The attacks having come “as a complete shock” to the colonists, they were unable to defend themselves and were soon overcome. In many cases, their corpses were “mutilated.”

The cause of these attacks was the encroachment of the colonists on Indian territory as they moved “up the James River.” The Indians'attack was intended both to repel the colonists and to demonstrate the Indians' “supremacy over the newcomers.”

The colonists' ultimate victory was gained not through military might, but by the destruction of the Indians' food supplies, the acres and acres of corn they relied on for survival.

The Indians made a tactical error in not pressing “their advantage,” and the colonists mounted a prolonged and determined campaign against their adversaries, “repeatedly” attacking “their food supply.” The colonists calculated the Indians' food loss was enough to have fed 4,000 individuals.

Agreeing to a truce with the Indians so that both sides could plant their new corn crops, the colonists toasted the agreement after providing the Indians with poisoned wine. After killing them, the colonists scalped some of the dead. When a full-scale battle in 1624 ended in stalemate, the colonists destroyed more of their adversaries' crops, repeating this tactic for five more years, until Virginia's “new governor finally assigned an agreement” that ended the war.

8 Attacks on Acton Farms and Lower Sioux Agency: U. S.-Dakota War (1862)

The U. S.-Dakota War of 1862 “ended with hundreds dead. The Dakota people exiled from their homeland and the largest mass execution in U. S, history: the hangings of 38 Dakota men in Mankato on Dec. 26, 1862.” It, too, began with a sneak attack.

Treaties between the U. S. government and the Dakota nation called for the Dakotas to cede land to the United States in return for annuities and funds for “trade shops (such as blacksmiths), . . . agricultural tools and supplies” and the payment of “debts claimed by traders.” However, the Dakotas claim that these alleged debts were false or “inflated” and objected “to the traders being paid directly by the U. S. government,” The situation created bad blood between the United States and the Dakotas, as did the government's attempt to force the Dakotas to “acculturate,” rather than retain their own way of life.

Times were hard, and, when annuities were not paid on time, some traders and Indian Agency employees refused to extend credit to the Dakotas. These broken promises and this ill treatment precipitated the war, when Taoyateduta led a band of Dakotas in an attack on the Lower Sioux Agency, killing many civilians, following an attack, the previous day, in which “four Dakota men killed five people” on two farms in Acton. The Dakotas followed the sneak attack with assaults on other towns and army posts. The resulting “war lasted six weeks” and cost the lives of more than 600 civilians and U.S. soldiers, as well as an estimated 75-100 Dakota, who lost their lives.”

Even after the war, “intermittent fighting” continued between the Dakota Indians and the United States throughout the 1880s, until it culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee, on December 29, 1890.

7 Attack on Port Arthur: Russo-Japanese War (1904)

Japan had decided to attack.

It had steadily built up its army, over the 10 years since its 1894 war with China, and, now, as a result, it enjoyed a “marked superiority” over its former adversary. Russia might occupy southern Manchuria's Liaotung Peninsula, and it might have “extended the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Chinese-held Manchuria,” but China was vulnerable. It still lacked the assets needed supply “its limited armed forces in Manchuria.” Russia's refusal to withdraw troops from Manchuria, as it had agreed to do, gave Japan the excuse it needed.

On February 8, 1094, Japan's main fleet “launched a surprise attack and siege on the Russian naval squadron at Port Arthur.” A month later, Japanese troops “overran” Korea. Two months after this, Japan landed another army on the Liaotung Peninsula, cutting Port Arthur off “from the main body of Russian forces in Manchuria.” Russian troops retreated before an advance of Japanese soldiers, and Russia's subsequent attempt to take the offensive proved “indecisive.”

In 1905, Port Arthur's commander surrendered, and the Russians lost the war's final land battle at Mukden. The Japanese victory in the maritime Battle of Tsushima was a turning point, and their victory over Russia's Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima Strait that followed brought Russia to its knees. Japan had won the war, thanks, in part, to its sneak attack on Port Arthur.

6 Attack on Royal Irish Constabulary: Irish War of Independence (1919)

“The only way to start a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war.”

So said Dan Breen, a member of The Irish Republican Army (IRA), who took part in the 1919 sneak attack that left two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary dead—and started the Irish War of Independence.

The mood was right, in Ireland, at this time, for independence from Britain. Leaders of the Easter Rising, or Easter Rebellion, had been executed. Sínn Féin had a “won 70% of the total Irish seats in the 1981 General Election.” Refusing to recognize the authority of the British Parliament, they established their own government body, the Dáil Éireann (Assembly of Ireland), in Dublin, “to govern Ireland from Ireland.”

To start the war of independence they longed for, “IRA members in Tipperary ambushed and killed two unarmed members of the Royal Irish Constabulary.” They got what they wanted, as Britain moved to put down the rebellion.

Against the wishes of his fellow Sínn Féin colleagues, commander MichaelCollins ordered the IRA to conduct guerrilla warfare tactics, using sneak attacks to surprise “small groups of British troops” with “quick ambush attacks” so their victims would not have the opportunity to defend themselves.

Britain responded by organizing two groups, the Black and Tans (so called because of the colors of their uniforms) and the Cairo Gang. The former, consisted of conscripted World War I veterans, whose mission was to “keep order in Ireland.” The former, made up of “former secret agents and spies,” were assigned the tasks of taking “down the IRA networks in Ireland.”

Using “informers within the British forces” and a “squad” of secret assassins, Collins ordered the executions of high-ranking British officials and secret agents. The worst incident of the war, Bloody Sunday, occurred on November 21, 1920, when the IRA dispatched multiple operatives “to several addresses in Dublin to assassinate members of the Cairo Gang . . . . killing fourteen of them and one member of the Black and Tans.”

The same day, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Black and Tans “opened fire on a crowd at a Gaelic football match at Croke Park, killing 14 members of the public, including a woman and a child, and injuring dozens more.”

The violence was not yet over. The same evening, “three imprisoned IRA members were tortured and killed at Dublin Castle after allegedly trying to escape.”

Terroristattacks on police and the public alike resulted in 1,000 deaths within six months (January 1921 through July 1921).

The war ended when Collins, accompanied by IRA negotiator Arthur Griffiths, signed a treaty with British officials, agreeing to end the conflict in exchange for Ireland's independence as “a dominion of the British Empire.” Many IRA members did not accept the terms of the treaty, however, and a civil war ensued.

5 Attack on Pearl Harbor: World War II (1941)

The very idea that the 1941 Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was a sneak attack is controversial. Many believe that the so-called secrecy of the attack was due to nothing more than “fateful accidents and plain bumbling that delayed the delivery of a document to Washington hinting at war.”

Indeed, some conspirators go so far as to insist that U. S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew full well of the Japanese plans, in advance of the attack, but intentionally sat idly by, allowing the Pearl Harbor attack to occur, as an excuse for the United States to declare war on Japan and enter World War II.

Historians and government officials typically contend that communications problems and diplomatic red tape prevented the United States from knowing about Japan's war plans: “Textbookshave dwelt on the problems of transmission and translation of the so-called Final Memorandum, on Dec. 7, 1941—the day Pearl Harbor was attacked,” and other “accounts have focused on the slowness of the Japanese Embassy in Washington to produce a cable of the memorandum from Tokyo, and on delays caused by security rules prohibiting the embassy's American secretary from typing the document.”

However, relatively recently discovered “diplomatic papers” seem to show, quite clearly, a “picture . . . of a breathtakingly cunning deceit by Tokyo aimed at avoiding any hint to the Roosevelt administration of Japan's hostile intentions.” Furthermore, according to Takeo Iguchi, “the researcher who discovered the papers in the Foreign Ministry archives, the draft memorandum, together with the wartime diary of Japan's general staff,” indicate “a vigorous debate inside the [Japanese] government over how, indeed whether, to notify Washington of Japan's intention to break off negotiations and start a war.” Meanwhile, as Japanese military commanders debated the issue, their government's “diplomats in Washington [were] deliberately kept in the dark by their capital,” while they met “with their American counterparts.”

 

Cordell Hull

''The diary shows that the [Japanese] army and navy did not want to give any proper declaration of war, or indeed prior notice even of the termination of negotiations,'' says Iguchi. ''And they clearly prevailed.'' Iguchi says, further, that “the general staff, together with a pliant Foreign Ministry, had controlled not only the content of the message to Washington, but also its timing,” so that the message was not to be “delivered to the State Department” until “1 p.m. Washington time on Dec. 7.” Secretary of State Cordell Hull did not receive the message until “about 2:20 p.m., approximately one hour after the sinking of the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.” The famous delay in delivering the message, he said, was probably the result of deliberate planning,” The New York Times declares.

The sinking of the American navy fleet at Pearl harbor seems, clearly, to have been the result not of a plan known in advance by President Roosevelt or any other U. S. official, civilian or military, but a deliberate sneak attack. From the perspective of the U. S., it started a war which, four years later, Japan and its allies, the Axis Powrs, lost.

4 Invasion of South Korea: Korean War (1950)

Although, in general, the events of the Korean War are familiar to most, many are unaware that it began with a sneak attack.

The circle of latitude 38 degrees north of the equator (known as the “38^thparallel”) marked the border between North Korea and South Korea, so, when the North Korean People's Army (NKPA)

, without provocation, crossed this line on June 25, 1950, they invaded their southern neighbor. This incident started the Korean War.

“Eight divisions and an armored brigade (90,000 soldiers) . . . attacked in three columns,” catching the Republic of Korea (ROK) off guard. The ROK's 98,000-man army's training was “incomplete,” and, with “no tanks and only 89 howitzers” at its command, South Korea's military forces were “no match for the better-equipped,” battle-hardened NKPA. The ROKA was “overwhelmed” and retreated “south in disarray,” leaving Seoul vulnerable to the invaders, who captured South Korea's capital city.

President Harry S. Truman authorized General Douglas MacArthur to “use all forces available to him” to protect Pusan. After securing Pusan, MacArthur landed troops at Inchon, perceiving that the NKPA became “more vulnerable to an amphibious envelopment” the farther south they invaded. MacArthur liberated Seoul after “street-to-street fighting,” returning it to South Korean control. Truman ordered MacArthur to invade North Korea, taking the fight to the enemy. Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) entered the war in support of North Korea.

The war became, more and more, a stalemate, and “armistice negotiations began on July 10, 1951, at Kaesong.” Although CCF intensified its attacks during peace negotiations, the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, and all hostilities ceased. More than 33,600 American military personnel were killed in the war, and over 103,000 were wounded. Enemy forces suffered 1,500,000 casualties, prisoners included, among whom 900,000 were Chinese.

The greatest war, so far in the history of the world that had begun with a sneak attack, was finally over. It ended ambiguously, with neither opponent a clear victor.

3 Attack on Egypt: Six-Day War (1967)

One of the world's shortest wars also began with a sneak attack.

On May 22, 1967, Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran, preventing ships from sailing to or from Israel's southernmost port at Eilat. As a result, Israeli's single “supply route with Asia” was cut off, as was “the flow of oil from” Israel's “main supplier, Iran.”

Although the United Nations, the United States, and other countries supported Israeli's “right of access to the Straits of Tiran,” and the United States tried to negotiate with Egypt, Egypt signed a “defense pact” with Jordan, and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser stated that “the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel . . . to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation.” The “Arabs,” he declared, were “arranged for battle.” Iraq's president, Abdur Rahman Aref, also voiced his nation's support of Egypt and its allies, calling for the eradication of Israel: “The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified,” he said. “This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear—to wipe Israel off the map.”

Surrounded by hostile nations apparently bent on his Israeli's destruction and aware that his nation's military forces could not remain “fully mobilized indefinitely,” as they had been for three weeks, and refusing to “allow its sea lane through the Gulf of Aqaba to be interdicted,” Israel decided to launch a sneak attack on its adversaries.

The United States refused to become involved, declaring itself “neutral in thought, word and deed,” and “imposed an arms embargo on the region,” as did France, while the Soviets supplied “arms to the Arabs” and “the armies of Kuwait, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were contributing troops and arms to the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts.” Isolated, Israel launched a massive sneak attack, dispatching all but a dozen of its Air Force fighters. (Twelve remained behind to guard “Israeli airspace.”)

The plan was to attack “while the Egyptian pilots were eating breakfast.” As a result of this surprise assault, 300 Egyptian aircraft were destroyed within two hours, and “by the end of the first day, nearly the entire Egyptian and Jordanian air forces, and half the Syrians’, had been destroyed on the ground.” The air assaults were followed by ground battles in which Israeli and Egyptian tanks fought it out “in the blast-furnace conditions of the Sinai desert.” 

When Israeli fighters returning to Israeli after destroying Egyptian air force assets on the ground were suspected of launching an attack against Jordan, King Hussein ordered the bombardment of Jerusalem, causing an exodus of Palestinian refugees into Jordan from the West Bank. Having defused the threat to its existence and seeking to avoid a confrontation with the Soviets, who had threatened to intervene on behalf of Israel's opponents, Israeli accepted a cease-fire on June 10. Casualties on both sides were high, as was the loss of military assets, but Israel had survived and had tripled the size of its territory, and a military administration was established, rather than Israel's annexing the West Bank.

2 Invasion of Kuwait: Gulf War (1990)

In a sneak attack, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered “an army of more than 100,000 soldiers and 700 tanks to cross the Iraqi border into Kuwait at 1 a.m. on August 2, 1990.” Aided by air and sea support, these forces approached Kuwait City “from two directions.” Two days after this surprise attack, Kuwait was overwhelmed, and the Iraqi occupation began. When the international community condemned the invasion, Hussein warned that he would make a “graveyard” of Kuwait if any other nations intervened on its behalf. Six days later, he announced his intention of annexing Kuwait as Iraq's “19^th province.”

When Hussein ignored calls for him to withdraw from Kuwait, U. S. president George Bush “issued an “ultimatum on August 28.” If Iraqi forces did not “withdraw within 48 hours,” war would be declared. Hussein ignored the warning, and Iraqi forces began to prepare fortifications and barriers “along the coast and Saudi border.” Hussein also threatened to destroy Kuwait's oil wells and other infrastructure.

Operation Desert Shield began on August 7 and lasted until January 16, 1991, when Operation Desert Storm commenced. The latter lasted for six weeks and involved massive air attacks by Stealth fighters and other aircraft firing stand-off missiles. ( (A guided missile has “stand-off capability” if it can be fired from an aircraft at a great enough distance from its target to be out the range of enemy defenses.) The U. S. sneak attack on Iraqi air defenses removed the enemy's air defense capability, helping ground forces move aggressively, without fear of being attacked from the air by Iraqi warplanes.

Hussein lived up to his threat to destroy Kuwait's oil wells and “pumped oil into the Gulf.” Within a month, “hundreds of oil wells were ablaze and 1.5 million barrels per day of oil were pouring into the Gulf.” Hussein also attempted, unsuccessfully, to invade Khafji, a Saudi Arabian town.

After Hussein defied another ultimatum to withdraw from Kuwait, a ground war, Operation Desert Sabre, commenced. Coalition forces entered Kuwait from the south and dispersed throughout the country. Iraqi forces sought to abduct Kuwaiti citizens and continued to lay waste to the oil fields and to buildings and other structures they'd “pre-wired with explosives.” A Kuwaiti resistance group “barricaded themselves in a house in Kuwait City's Al-Qurain district and battled” Iraqi tanks but were defeated after 10 hours. On February 26, Hussein ordered his troops to withdraw. Two days later, “coalition forces, led by Kuwaiti soldiers, entered the ruins of Kuwait City,” and the war was over. On March 15, the exiled emir returned to Kuwait to resume governing the nation.

1 Attacks on The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93: War on Terror

Various conspiracy theories seek to account for the terrorist attacks that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001. Although there are quite a few such theories, some of the more common ones are that “someone . . . other than Al Qaeda orchestrated the events of 911,” that “the Twin Towers collapsed because of a controlled substance,” that “a missile, not a plane, hit the Pentagon,” and that Flight 93 was shot down by a missile over Pennsylvania.”

The truth of the matter is that 19 Al Qaeda terrorists from Middle Eastern nations conducted secret attacks on three locations: the World Trade Center, in New York City, New York; the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia; and a commercial aircraft, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The airliner had been hijacked by terrorists and is believed to have been en route to Washington, D. C., where it would be used to destroy the White House or the Capitol Building.

These sneak attacks against unarmed civilians resulted in the U. S. invasion of Afghanistan, in 2001, and ignited the Iraq War, which began in 2003. Intelligence reports indicated that the Taliban, a terrorist organization running the government in Afghanistan, “was protecting Al Qaeda's leader [Osama] Bin Ladin and allowing Al Qaeda to run training camps in the country.” Intelligence reports also suggested that Iraq was concealing weaponsof mass destruction to which terrorists might receive access. (Contrary to these reports, no such weapons were found.)

As a result of the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were deposed, and many Al Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed. Bin Laden himself was killed in Pakistan in 2011 by U. S. military forces. 

Hussein was also captured. He was later put to death by an Iraqi court.

Despite the military efforts of the coalition forces, the War on Terror continues.