What If US Marines Fought History's Greatest Armies?

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:00]What if a single Marine Platoon got dropped into six different points in history? That's 43 Marines and whatever they're carrying without any backup or resupply coming. Three rifle squads of 13 plus a lieutenant, a staff sergeant, a radioman, and a Navy Corpsman, the only medic they've got. Every Marine runs an M27 rifle accurate to 550 m plus seven 30-round magazines and two M67 frag grenades. Officers and machine gunners carry an M18 pistol. Each squad also carries one Carl Gustav recoilless rifle with eight rounds, one M38 sniper rifle, and three M320 grenade launchers.

[00:00:37]Attached from the weapons Platoon are two M240B machine guns effective to 1,800 m with 1,000 rounds each. Night vision on every Marine, body armor rated to stop most rifle rounds. Six fights, here's what happens.

[00:00:53]Vikings. A midnight century raiding party ran three to six long ships, 30 to 50 warriors per ship. Call it 150 to 300 men. Professional fighters who had terrorized England and France for decades. Their standard approach was a shield wall, the Skjaldborg, closing the distance fast before defenders could organize. Their offensive tactic was the Svinfylking, the heaviest warriors locking shields into a tight wedge driving straight into an enemy line to split it apart. Every army they'd faced was at close range when they hit. The Marines are not at close range. The M240B opens up at 800 m. The Vikings are still forming up on the beach. A Viking bow reaches maybe 200 m under good conditions. The Svinfylking requires crossing 600 m of open ground under sustained machine gun fire. And Viking shields, wooden leather, don't stop a 7.62 mm round. The Platoon burns through maybe 200 rounds of 7.62. It isn't even close. Marines win 97%.

[00:01:53]Aztecs. The Aztec military organized in units of 8,000 men called Shikipeeli.

[00:01:59]For a major campaign, they could mobilize up to 200,000 warriors.

[00:02:03]Standard doctrine opened with a ranged exchange. Atlatl dart throwers, bows, slings, then a massive advance into close combat with elite eagle and jaguar warriors up front carrying the macuahuitl, an obsidian edged sword the Spanish said could decapitate a horse in one swing. But the Aztecs had a deeper problem than weapons. Their entire war doctrine was built around capturing enemies alive for sacrifice. You don't kill the opponent, you grab them and bring them back. That produced extraordinarily skilled individual fighters and catastrophically wrong instincts against a machine gun firing 650 rounds per minute. Atlatl darts were real weapons. Conquistadors confirmed they penetrated Spanish chain mail, but their effective range tops out at around 50 to 70 m. The M240B is already working from 800. The issue for the platoon is the math. The entire platoon is carrying roughly 11,000 rounds combined. If the Aztecs press a full charge without breaking, the Marines run dry and are overrun. The only thing that saves them is that nothing in Aztec military history prepared warriors for invisible casualties, concussive noise, and men dying before anyone can see what's killing them. The charge breaks psychologically before the numbers become fatal. Marines win 95%.

[00:03:22]Samurai. By 1600, a Sengoku era army is not the army most people picture.

[00:03:27]Portuguese traders introduced the matchlock arquebus to Japan in 1543. At Nagashino in 1575, Oda Nobunaga lined up 3,000 arquebusiers in rotating three-line volleys behind wooden palisades and destroyed the Takeda cavalry, the most feared mounted force in Japan in an afternoon. These commanders understood combined arms. A full Sengoku army fields ashigaru soldiers in disciplined spear walls called yaribusuma, cavalry on the flanks, and arquebus units providing cover fire while the spears advance. The arquebus fires one lead ball accurate to about 50 m and takes 30 seconds to reload. The M27 reaches 550 m and fires as fast as you pull the trigger. The gap is still enormous. But these commanders actively use terrain, ravines, tree lines, river crossings to close distance and break marine sight lines. For the first time, the platoon is being outmaneuvered by someone who understands coordinated fire and movement. The Carl Gustaf ends cavalry. The M240B handles spear walls in the open. But the terrain pressure is constant and ammo is draining faster than in any fight before this. Marines win 90%.

[00:04:41]Napoleonic France. Napoleon's Grand Army at its 1805 peak was about 210,000 men organized into self-sufficient corps, each with its own infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The first enemy the platoon faces with real combined arms doctrine.

[00:04:57]The Charleville musket is accurate to about 70 m. Marines are engaging from 500. The columns that broke every European army for a decade march into machine gun fire. French cavalry charges stop when the Carl Gustaf fires. None of that is the problem. The problem is the Gribeauval 12-pounder cannon, effective to 900 m with solid shot. French artillery doesn't need a precise fix, just a rough position in time. The platoon has to keep moving constantly, which burns daylight and burns the one thing they can't replace. Then the voltigeurs appear, French light infantry specifically trained to operate in open order, probe flanks, and fix the enemy in place for the guns. They start working the edges of the platoon's position, keeping the Marines occupied and stationary while the artillery tries to find them. It's the most tactically complex fight so far. They get through it, but it cost them. Marines win 80%.

[00:05:52]Zulu nation. In January 1879, roughly 20,000 Zulu warriors attacked British column of 1,800 men at Isandlwana. The British had Martini-Henry rifles, artillery, and professional training.

[00:06:05]The Zulus destroyed them in an afternoon. The tactic was in the Impondo zenkomo, the horns of the buffalo. A massive chest pins the enemy head-on while two horns of several thousand warriors each sprint wide and curl in behind the enemy simultaneously. Zulu warriors in peak condition covered 5 mi in under an hour. At Isandlwana, the horns had closed behind the British before the commanding officer understood he'd been circled. His force of 1,800 was gone by sundown. The platoon's thermal optics pick up both horns moving before the close. They know what's coming. Knowing doesn't solve the math.

[00:06:41]43 people cannot hold a perimeter against 20,000 from three directions.

[00:06:46]The only option is to break toward the gap before it seals, fighting out rather than getting swallowed. M230 grenade launchers and Carl Gustav rounds drop into the densest formations while the M240B fires until the barrel needs swamping. The Zulus close to spear range on the eastern flank twice. Both times the platoon nearly fragments. They get out. It's extremely close. Marines win 65%.

[00:07:10]World War I Germany. Everything changes here. By 1917, the Germans had developed stormtrooper units built around exactly the same principles the Marines use.

[00:07:21]Small groups, independent decisions, bypass strong points, hit command elements directly. They carried MG08/15 light machine guns, mortars, flamethrowers, and grenades, and trained specifically to move through darkness and find the seams in a defensive position. They had been perfecting this for 2 years on the western front. German field artillery ranges miles accurately.

[00:07:42]Unlike every previous enemy, the Germans resupply indefinitely, rotate fresh units in, and never run out of anything.

[00:07:48]The platoon runs out of everything.

[00:07:51]Then, there's mustard gas, first deployed in 1917. It doesn't kill fast.

[00:07:56]It blinds, blisters, and destroys the respiratory system over hours. Marines carry individual protective masks, not full chemical suits. One successful gas attack doesn't wipe the platoon, but it permanently removes men from a force that was already 43 people. Night vision lets the Marines own the dark. They run the same infiltration tactics the storm troopers invented, hitting artillery positions, cutting supply lines, moving constantly. For 2 days, it works. On day 3, an artillery battery registers their position. Two Marines are dead. Four are down from gas. At 3:00 a.m., storm trooper teams infiltrate from three directions simultaneously, silent, no warning, straight into the position. The Marines fight hand-to-hand in the dark.

[00:08:40]When it gets light, the platoon is alive. Six men can't fight. They have ammunition for one more serious contact.

[00:08:48]Platoon survives, 30% chance of mission success. Check out what happens when history's greatest armies attack a modern military base. It's on your screen now. Thanks for watching.