What was the most successful terrorist attack of the 20th century?

Question

Hint: It was NOT 9/11. 10 points to whoever gives the correct answer.

To clarify, I realize 2001 is the 21st century, but I put that in there to keep people from saying it anyway.


I'm going to give a hint - feel free to go back and re-edit your answers, you have ~4 hours.



A hint for everyone: It was not an attack against the US.

Answer 1

The answer will depend on how loosely you define "success" and "terrorist."

I'd say the Reichstag fire of 1933. It was an act designed to provoke fear in the German public and was meant to further political aims...thus making it a terrorist attack. It was successful in securing Hitler's ultimate rule of Germany, which in turn would dramatically affect the rest of the century.

Answer 2

By far Pearl Harbor.

It was a suprise attack. Whether an attack like this was military or not it's still a terrorist attack because of it's causes and effects.

The whole world around the US was really at war already with Germany and it's allies at the time but of course we had to pretend that nothing was going to hit us and then BAM!!

Here's the list of casualties/losses from the Wikipedia entry for the attack:

"2,335 military and 68 civilians killed,
1,143 military and 35 civilians wounded,
4 battleships sunk,
4 battleships damaged,
3 cruisers damaged,
3 destroyers sunk,
2 other ships sunk,
188 planes destroyed,
155 planes damaged 55 airmen, 9 submariners killed and 1 captured,
29 planes destroyed,
4 mini-submarines sunk" -Wikipedia: "Attack on Pearl Harbor"

The main point that made this worse than 9/11 was that this was an attack on the nation's military. If you attack a nation's military it is very vulnerable from it's lack of defense. If you attack it's economy like the 9/11 attacks planned to do the government could come back from it (ex: the Great Depression). This attack also came financially as the dead had to be burried; ships, planes, buildings all needed to be reconstructed; the media went balistic over the whole thing and just as with 9/11 we wanted revenge on the people who did it to us.

Answer 3

Of course it wasn't 9/11, that was in the 21st century.

It would have to be the attack at the 1972 olymic games in Munich

Answer 4

9/11 didn't even happen in the 20th century, after 1999 it was the 21st century.

so in the 20th century, it has to be a tie between three...
the holocaust
the KKK movement
or the Weatherman Underground which really isn't comparible to the other two, but it was pretty successful.

Answer 5

Are you talking about only strikes against the US?
OK City building bomb, I think.

Worldwide, you've have to be very careful about the definition of teror. Probably Stalin's acts if those count. If not, maybe the CIA coup in 1953 that placed the Shah of iran in power, or maybe the murder of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Answer 6

Hiroshima.

An attack on civilians for political/military/ideological gains and objectives. To spread a "rain of terror" as Truman said.

Served it's purpose. But was an act of terrorism all the same.

Answer 7

Any in which the US was an agressor.... & its stuck up little side-kick England. The sorry azz losers never seem to have any objections to doing harm to other nations that dont agree with "the American freedom"; which, unfortunately, no longer exists. ALL HAIL THE U AZZ A.

PS Pardon the typos; gotta love censorship

Answer 8

hmm... depends on what you call "terror attack"

some consider the atomic bomb a terroirsts attack on Japan... I don't really consider warfare between two countries to be terrorist attacks though... same with Pearl Harbor...

probably something a long time ago that no one remembers in some country... maybe OKC... for the U.S. at least...

Answer 9

The Florida fiasco of 2000.

Answer 10

Barbarossa

Biggest attack
Largest line of Attack
Highest body count.

Go big Red Go

More killed than in the Nanking Massacre

Nangking