death ride

A "death ride" is a self-inflicted determination to start or continue on a course of action which will either literally end in one's death or more abstractly, result in the complete and total failure of the course of action. It is used as well to describe a course of action in which one is included without having an opportunity to decline.

When Hitler's armies began to lose WW II c. 1943 given the failure to take Moscow in the winter campaign in the East and the loss of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, Hitler's failure to recognize and accept the situation (namely, that his direction of the war was bound to result in the destruction of Germany) and his continuing to persist when others could see that the war was lost, is sometimes referred to as his taking the "Third Reich" on a death ride.

Japanese Kamikaze pilots were also embarked on death rides, when they knowingly and purposely flew their aircraft into Allied ships during WW II.

Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn is another example.

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