Just wanted to get some opinions. What do you think was the most important battle of WWII? Military or political terms it doesn't matter, but what was the mother of them all?

My 2 cents: I would say it would be a tie and could be argued both ways. Either,
Pearl Harbor: brought the U.S. into the war finally
Stalingrad: Showed resolve of Soviets and that the Germans really could be defeated.

There's so many that could be argued to be critical to the war. I'd say the Battle of Britain, as Germany effectively lost its airforce, allowing the Allies air superiority in Europe, without which D-Day would not have been possible. But Pearl Harbour is another key point in the war, without America I doubt the allies could have won.

Dave

Eh? The Luwtwaffe was eventually beaten in 1944-45 by lack of fuel and resources in general. In 1941, ( the year following the BoB) they were able to deploy an enormous Air-Force for the invasion of Russia. The BoB had no substantive effect on the Luftwaffe whatsoever...

As to 'milestones' El Alamein and Stalingrad...Jim

OK, fair enough, but it did stop Germany from invading England, as they couldn't attack without air superiority, so Germany's defeat in the Battle of Britain probably kept Britain in the war. That's pretty significant.

Dave

-very significant, thereby allowing the U.S. and Britain to prepare it's forces for the invasion of Europe. In this sense, I completely agree with you - 100%, the defeat of the Luftwaffe in 1940, was effectively a Tactical defeat, strategically, keeping Britain in the conflict was a Strategic defeat with enormous (later) consequences...Jim

I don't really count Pearl Harbor as a "battle". More like a sucker puch - one sided. But that's just me.

My picks would be:

* Pacific - Midway. Broke the back of the JIN and splashed most of their experienced pilots.

*Europe - Stalingrad in the East for reasons already stated. D-Day in the West - established true two front war in Europe, took pressure off the Russians.

Kursk would be my pick. The Germans had the previous two years been able to revive and whip up on the Russians during the summers of 1941 and 1942. In 43 at Kursk they lost and lost badly in the greatest tank battle of all times. From that point on Germany was in retreat. I would say Pacific side would be Midway for pretty much the same reason. The Japanese turned to a defensive posture after this.

I hesitate to nominate the Battle of Britain only because I think it's the one battle of World War II that has reached the status of epic myth. Other than that I fully believe that it was one battle that certainly doomed Germany. Barbarosa is another one. While it was a German tactical victory it certainly led to their everntual defeat. Another one not mentioned, but similar to BOB, is the Battle of the Atlantic. As has been mentioned Midway was certainly the one that most led to Japanese defeat.

I think though that honestly the Allies could have lost all these battles mentioned, BOB, Stalingrad, Kursk, D-Day, Midway, and still have won the war. The Axis didn't really lose the war by strictly military losses. They really lost it because they just couldn't compete with the Allies in terms or equipment or manpower. You could say the "battle" that doomed the Axis was the manufacturing battle.

I disagree with the first part of that, Rodger. While it's true that the Axis couldn't keep up in the manufacturing and manpower battles, the reason for this was the strategic bombings and the horrendous casualties in battlefield defeats.

If the BOB had been lost by Britain it's hard to see how the bombing of the Ruhr and other industrial cities could have been carried out. The same goes for Kursk, Stalingrad, D-Day, Midway, etc. These battlefield losses by the Axis led to irreplaceable losses in men and equipment, and brought the Allies within striking range of the Axis home cities. I find it hard to see how the Allies could have won the war without these victories, all of which were the reason for the Axis deficiencies.

Midway. Definantly. Wiped out 4 Carriers and Tojo's best pilots, all at once.

Not sure whether it counts as a 'battle' but my vote goes for Operation Bagration. Destroyed an entire German Army Group and pichforked the Germans completely out of Russia. Made the fighting going on in Normandy at the same time look like a side show. The Germans fell for the Red Army's deception plan in the run-up and were comprehensively out-generalled as well as out-fought.

If I can't have that, then Stalingrad.

I think that the battle was lost on the german homefront, due to the late allout industrial turnaround to wartime production.

The increase in productionnumbers from 1940 to 1945, with 1944 being the "peak", is truly amazing and is largely due to the talent of Speer.

I think we can feel happy that germany didn´t have the industrial output of 1944 allready in 1939 ...

I think the Battle of the Bulge

While for years I had felt that the most signifcant battle in the Pacific Theater was Midway, there has recently been a school of thought that says the true turning point wasn't actually reached until the Japanese actually gave up attempting to defend Guadalcanal.

The reasoning is that while Midway without a doubt dealt a crippling and likely un-recoverable blow to the IJN, what it did was stop further encroachment.

As important as that was, it wasn't until we actually took the offensive and were able to prevail in throwing the Japanese Army out of territory the currently occupied, that the eventual outcome of the contest in the Pacific became essential settled. That campaign was touch and go, and much of the new ships in the Navy (Essex Class carriers and the balance of the "fast battleships") didn't arrive until that campaign was over.

In essence while the Battle of Midway still remains a huge and stunning victory and thus quite significant, it may not necessarily also be considered the "turning point".

As Churchill may have termed it "the end of the beginning" rather than the beginning of the end.



If you were to ask me which "battle" had the most important effect with respect to the eventual outcome, I would say it was "Operation Barbarossa", the decision by Hitler to invade the Soviet Union. While technically not a "battle", in my opinion, once Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union, while it may not have been easy to accomplish nor even obvious at the time, I believe that decison ensured he would eventually lose the war.

The second thing which sealed the eventual outcome of the war wasn't a battle at all. It was Hitler's incredibly stupid decision to declare war on the United States after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

War with Germany would have no doubt been inevitable, but it allowed Roosevelt to say with a clear conscience that he had no choice to but to enter the ETO.

Don't forget, that even with the results of the Pearl Harbor still fresh on everyone's mind, the strategic plan for the war was based on a "Europe first" priority.

That might not have been possible had Roosevelt had to make the decision to fight Hitler on his own.



Tom

West - Battle of Britain - without it what other battles would there have been? BTW, this isn't my opinion only, it was also that of von Rundstedt.
East - Kursk. Stalingrad was a major defeat for Germany, but until Kursk they could still take the offensive. After Kursk it was just retreat.
Pacific - Assuming we can't have Pearl Harbor as the battle that started it all, would have to be Midway, where the Japanese dominance of the Pacific Ocean was smashed. All subsequent battles relied on this factor.

I totally agree with David, the bombing of German troops, supply lines & the strategic bombing of the German Fatherland and it's industries was monumental.
Like the ole' cliche goes; " They were bombed back to the stone age". No country would have endured. The back breaker to win a war is to destroy the industrial might of a nation so it is incapapble of supplying it's military war machine.

It's definitely a combined arms effort in whole ... infantry, armor, naval .. but dominant airpower is a nations or coalition's trump card.


As for my opinion of most impotant battles.

ETO = El Alamein - Kursk - Gustav Line / Monte Cassino - Normandy Invasion - Battle of the Bulge.
PTO = Midway - Guadalcanal - Iwo Jima - Okinawa.

There's really quite a few more. most battles all had some sort of significance in victories & defeats.
The most impotant thing about all battles to remember is the loss of human life on all sides, civilian & soldiers alike.

One of my favorite quotes, if I may, is from Band of Brothers when they found out that Hitler killed himself; " He should have killed himself 6 years ago and saved us all a lot of trouble "

- ralph

I'll go by theatre (Europe vs Japan).

Europe

1) Dunkirk: More accurately actually, IIRC the French fighting on (both in the rearguard there and in fact in general), even though from a military point of view the war against Germany was lost. The Germans had absolute air superiority, and the French positions were completely unhinged, with all effective forces being in the wrong place. In many ways a comparison would be Cannae, where the Romans were lost as soon as Hannibal had stripped them of their cavalry.

The fact that the French and British rearguard action at Dunkirk allowed the British men to escape is IMHO about the most important thing of the war. Because the loss of the (men of) the British Expeditionary Force could possibly have knocked Britain out of the war (certainly when taking later problems with manpower into account).

2) The Italian invasion of Greece. The Italian failure there forced Hitler to invade the Balkans, and delayed the invasion of Russia. In fact, IIRC units which already were in position at the Russian front for the invasion were taken out and sent to the Balkans. IIRC the plans were partially improvised (not to the degree as allegedly the invasion of Denmark), but still. IIRC the original date for Barbarossa was late April 1941. And what a difference these two months could have made.... in particular concerning Moscow and Leningrad.

Asia:

1) Though not really a battle, Pearl Harbor is the obvious choice. For two reasons:
First of all the fact that the Japanese failed to get the carriers. If they had gotten them, the allied position would have been a whole lot more difficult, especially if the Japanese subsequently had invaded the Hawaiian Islands and Midway. Plus they might have gotten much better control over the Pacific islands near Australia (including New Guinea).
Second it brought the US into the war officially, and unleashed American economic power against Germany. Though the US had been an active belligerent since before Pearl Harbor (though not openly),

2) Battle for the Coral Sea. Stopped the Japanese advance southwards, and IMHO was quite instrumental in bringing strategic initiative to the Americans. I am not sure, but it might even be that the whole Japanese plan concerningMidway was partly designed as a reaction to the (strategic) defeat there.

Except that German warproduction was supposedly rising until certainly the summer of 1944 (or even later).
Strategic bombing seems to not have been as effective as often advertised. For a long while because of accuracy problems (simply put the technology was not available to target factories effectively, combined with all the German fire and possibly night time problems); and IMHO at a later stage because of a deliberate policy (at a higher level) to go after the cities rather then industries (the whole break their morale doctrine). Which again seemed to have been rather ineffective untill late 1944. And then it begs the question of what the impact of the defeats in Normandy, Russia, Italy and the airwar was... and my guess is that Normandy and in particular Russia had a far bigger effect).

As far as tactical airpower goes, this seems to have had preedominantly a morale effect... in the sense that as soon as one heared an aircraft, people ducked for cover, rather then real destruction. So more of an effect on morale and disrupting German deployments then anything else.
Nicklas Zetterling, in his book: Normandy 1944, German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness (http://www.jjfpub.mb.ca/campaign_histories.htm)comes up with german records suggesting that the actual destruction caused by aircraft was far smaller then often thought.

While arguably true, I think German production would have risen far more sharply without the bombing. And the rise in late war production was due to Speer insisting that slave labour be used effectively and not wasted the way it had been done, particularly with Jews and Russians being worked to death for no real productive purpose. Also, the strategic bombing shift from industry to city was taken midway in the campaign, and while a mistake in hindsight, was to an extent responsible for reducing the civilian workforce's productivity.

But then, on the other hand the Germans never converted to a war-time economy like the British and Americans did (let alone the USSR). Perhaps one of their biggest mistakes of the war.

And the little I have read on the topic seems to suggest that Speer actually lost power and influence during the war...

The most effective hit might actually be the raid on the dams. I know the targeting of bridges was a nightmare. To just give you an idea, the allies went after the bridges over the Maas-river at Venlo. The hit the town pretty hard, but IIRC not a single bomb hit the bridge (or it was back in use within a day or two). On February 22, 1944 the allies bombed the city of Nijmegen by mistake (it was liberated by the time). Although at night, it was a relatively easy to identify (non-)target due to the Waal-river running next to the city, and having a very distinct bend there (plus the junction with the Rhine 10 miles away, the Maas-river just 10 miles to the south, the Arnhem and the Rhine river just 10 miles to the north, plus the connecting canal between Maas and Rhine are there as well). The actual target supposedly was the mid-German aircraft industry. Which means it was several hundreds of miles of course. Closest would be the Ruhr area, which is still a good 50 miles away.

And as far as bombing shifting to the cities, especially at the moment it was done it was the right decision. IIRC the statistic was that something like 5% of bombs dropped landed within a few miles of the target.

IMHO the big rationale to stress (IMHO it seems more and more to exaggerate) the success of the bombing campaign was the need for the post war USAF (and possibly the RAF) to justify their dominance within their respective militaries and prevalent military doctrine. Basically justify their budget and allocation of resources.
And especially concerning Europe (for the Western allies), it was far easier for the Air Force to claim that "they won the war" then for the army (which had been pretty much out of the fight for a large chunk of the war, who got a lot of bloody noses and whose performance, especially considering what they went up against, was relatively speaking "so - so").

Post WW II military doctrine was dominated by the air forces. And they needed to justify their dominance. And WW II bomber operations could be used to provide the justification (even at the expense of (sub)consciously distorting the facts).