The movie title itself wouldn’t hold much meaning if the Rebels had won. They suffered several losses here. They lost their base, many of their soldiers, not to mention Han.

Of course the Rebels would try to claim it was a victory and see the positives in their escape, but it was a defeat. They were able to retreat and avoid being completely wiped out, but the Empire won the day.

According to the Battle of Hoth's Wookieepedia page, It's a "Imperial tactical victory and psychological victory," because they destroyed Echo Base but a "Rebel startegic victory," because the Rebels evacuate off Hoth and Vader fails to capture Luke.

As mentioned: They lost.

The Imperial Forces set out to destroy their shield generator and take the base..... and they did.

Although Vader wanted Luke, so in that respect it failed.

As a kid, I always found it nerve racking when I thought about those in the command centre and operating the Ion Cannon when that alarm goes off stating that Imperial troops had entered the base. They are literally still at their desks sorting shit out knowing storm troopers are flooding in towards them.

@WriterBuddha that's a great point to bring up.

^^I always saw that as an incredibly heroic thing, Leia commanding the whole battle and practically being the last leader who left the base. But I restate my point: the Empire did destroy the shield generator and did take the base, that is true, but the Rebels decided to leave the base before they arrived. The battle wasn't about to defend the base, it was about to keep it operational as long as they can, so they can finish the evacuation. It wasn't about victory.

The rebels did not “win the battle”.

They were not trying to fight the empire head to head to begin with. Winning was not their objective.

They were only interested in holding off the empire long enough to evacuate. Once the evacuation was complete ( or nearly done) they fell back and evacuated remaining fighters.

One can draw an analogous comparison between the “fight” between Obi Wan and Vader in A New Hope. Obi Wan was not trying to defeat Vader in that engagement either. He was basically buying enough time for the Rebels to make it to the millennium Falcon and escape.

@Dark Lord of the Pith That's basically what I'm saying. The rebels won because they achived their primary objective-hold of the empire long enough to evacuate most if not all of their personnel and equipment off Hoth, avoiding the blockade in the process. They were never trying to fight them head-on.

Primary objective was not get found on Hoth and keep it as a base. They didn't. They couldn't hold it and retreated. Retreat is a loss.

On another note, they also lost due to their appalling tactics against the AT-ATs. Nobody is whacking bombs in the foot mechanisms. Nobody but Luke is attacking from below with magnetic lines. Snowspeeders are attacking from the front, where the guns are, when they could easily sweep round and approach from the rear. The Ion cannon was in a stupid place. It should have been on the peak overlooking both the South and the power generator in the North. And it should have been firing on the AT-AT dropships.

They lost because they had to retreat and they were rubbish.

From the canon material that takes place after the battle of Hoth, both sides viewed the battle as a loss.

The Empire viewed the battle as a loss because they had a chance to crush bulk of the Rebellion while it was in one place, but instead most of the Rebels escaped and the Empire took much heavier casualties than was expected including losing AT-AT’s which were basically seen as unstoppable before the battle.

The Rebel Alliance also saw the battle as a defeat because they lost their base and had their forces scattered which set back their efforts to devote more resources to fighting the Empire directly and less resources keeping the fleet on the run.

From the way I see it I would chalk it up to an Imperial victory since it was objectively a setback to the goals of the Rebel Alliance but it also was not the knock out blow that it could have been so the Rebellion was fortunate and the Empire unfortunate in that regard.