What was the worst terrein a war had been fought in?

Honestly the worst terrains to be fought on have to be a combination of mountains and snow. Picture this. You fighting up steep hill up to your stomach or chest in snow while enemies fire rockets, bullets and other projectiles down at you. The Alpine battles of Northern Italy during WW1 and WW2 were like this.

The battle of Stalingrad is often stated as hell on earth when it came to death, hardship and pain. Nearly 2.5 million soldiers and people died there in 11 months of fighting. German troops who were poorly clothed for the frigid Russian winter froze to ice during the night and had to shoot guns with painfully numb fingers. There was little to eat also.

The Pacific theatre of WW2 was also tough with its dense jungles, hot moist air, and many surprise ambushes.

The Iran Iraq war in the 80s was brutal on the border. Every day for years both side's fired at eachother while dense poison gas was all around. It was truly hellish and millions died.

The trench warfare at the battle of the Somme during WW2 were nasty. Nearly 2 million dead in 3 years of fighting. Poison gas, rats, disease, mud, constant back and forth assaults, killing, constant artillery shell bombing, wave after wave of human dummies being sent into the meat grinder caled the no man's land. It was a depressing sight.

Probably any war fought at sea is in the worst possible terrain. If anything goes wrong, there's nowhere to go but Davy Jones' Locker.

The Winter War in Finland (1939-40) was grim because it was fought in winter in a very cold climate.

The same thing could be said of any of the wars in Russia that took place in winter.

The Battle of Palmito Ranch (also called Palmetto Ranch and Palmito Hill), May 12-13, 1865, was one of the worst, purely in terms of terrain, fought in the U.S. The battle area was a hot, mosquito-ridden cactus and thornbush thicket that was impossible to march through. No drinkable water was available, and many soldiers on both sides died of dysentery. To make matters worse, the whole battle was fought more than a month after Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, making the battle pointless.

I have to agree with answers that give winter snow as being the worse. Stalingrad, the "Winter campaign in Russia: during WW-2, the "winter war in Finland" are all great examples.

The Eastern Front during WW-1 with the trench warfare, especially during winter. Ypes, the Somme, etc are prime examples.

The jungles of Papua and New Guinea (before they became one country) during WW-2, the jungles of Timor along with many of the jungles of the SW Pacific and Pacific theatres of war during WW-2. along with the Burma jungles of the China-Burma-India theatre.

The jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were rare. The terrain was usually open rice paddies or rubber plantations or, at most, wooded areas.

Italian alpine theatre of WWI (high in the snowy alps, where soldiers suffered from altitude sickness and froze despite being in warm Italy. They recently found the mummified corpse of an Italian soldier 8,000 feet up in the air on a sheer mountain slope, just like they found Ötzi the ice man.)

Kashmir border conflicts (same reason as above, hellish conditions high in the mountains.)

Pacific theatre of WWII and the Indochinese wars (sweltering jungle, unseen enemy, bugs, disease, fatigue, booby traps, etc.)

Flanders and Picardy in WWI (Battle of Passchendaele was even worse than normal western front battles because of the mud. Descriptions of the battle tell of conditions that caused men to literally go insane.)

I think it would be the jungles of the Pacific Island and Burma during WWII and the jungles in Vietnam

H-man

The jungles of the Pacific during WW II.

Stalingrad was pretty bad. I was cold and there was no food