S.Peelman said:
Well the Mongols are an easy choice.
But what did they actually conquer? Sure, they did manage to get the greatest (continuous) Empire the world has ever seen, but is was nearly all empty plains. Their expanse was still halted by the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire, so aren't they stronger? Conquering the steppes and oriental cultures was no problem, bu this means that the second the Mongols encountered a nation with advanced technologies, things didn't go so easy anymore.
Not dismissing the Mongol achievement of-course, I mean they did manage overthrow the mighty Chinese Empire at the time, but just to put that out there.
While being formidable warriors, all the Spartans did was lose. They just didn't do enough with their military knowledge to be nominated I think.
I think there are only three forces in history which realistically could be considered to be the "Best Military Force of all Time."
These three have all showed to overcome overwhelming odds, trekked through and conquered massive populated areas while encountering great resistance. Naturally, they were decisively victorious, if only for a time:
- Alexander the Great's Macedonian army against the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire.
- Napoleon Bonaparte's French army during the French Revolutionary Wars against the superior powers of Europe overthrowing all of them.
- The Allies invasion army during the final stage of WWII against Nazi Germany starting at D-Day in 1944.
Arguably, the Nazi German army at the start of the war could be included as they swept across Europe undisturbed, but they never achieved full victory. The second arguable nominee are the Romans, but they had only a very sound global strategy. There was not one single campaign which overcame all hardships. Thirdly, the armies of the Crusades might be considered. While they encountered great resistance, these armies never conquered any land beyond the immediate surroundings of the target city.
EDIT: I prefer to declare Alexander the Great the winner. Macedonia was tiny, when the Persian Empire was massive. Realistically he had zero chance to win, but did so anyway.
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They weren't stopped by the Germans. They kicked the asses of the heavily armored (slow) European Knights. It was just that they thought Europe wasn't worth conquering (their grand invasion of Europe happened before they finished conquering the Mid-East or China, both regions that were doing much better culturally and economically at the time), for one, and 2 (which was the real weakness of the mongols) they didn't do well in high-humidity environments, which the further West you go in Europe, the wetter it gets. That's also what kept them out of South China for a long time (their final victory over the Song was more like a normal Chinese war than the rest of Mongol conquests).
Plus they had the best engineers of the conquered Jurched Chinese. They were not technologically backwards.
