Pivotal Battles

[Raven]

Originally Posted by Lon

On the European Front, the "Battle of Kursk" between the Russians and Germans, May 4th, 1943 was pivotal. It was the biggest clash of Armour in history, with 900,000 Germans & 1,300,000 Russians. Oddly enough, not many have ever heard of it.


http://zhukov.mitsi.com/Kursk.htm

We just saw a program on it.

[gmc]

posted by Raven

okay.......since we're 'nit-picking'
I'd say the most pivotal would be the battle of the bulge. That began the end for Germany.
As the US was fighting a war on two fronts, I would say Midway turned the tide in the Pacific.

Actually there are many that if lost would have changed the course of the war, Cape Matapan, Taranto, Battle for Malta, If those had been lost there would have been no victory in the mediterranean or middle east (oil, sound familiar) therefore no El Alemain or invasion of North Africa, sicily, Italy.

Battle of the North Atlantic, if that had been lost we'd have had it. There would have been no Normandy invasion or battle of the bulge the latter was a last fling for Hitler it bwould only have delayed the inevitable if he'd won.

Agree with you about Midway and also battle of the coral sea. On paper the Japanese advantage was so great they should have walked it.

How about Taranto? that's what supposedly convinced the Japanese an attack on Pearl Harbour would work and they set about designing shallow water torpedoes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwt...atlantic.shtml

Have fun

[Wild Weasil]

Market Garden, the allied airborne invasion of Holland September 1944.

If it would have succeded then the way to the Rhur and Berlin would have been opened, the western allies would have been able to finish the war further east and possibly thwarted Soviet influence in Europe.

Market Garden could have worked, but it did'nt. The fact that it failed condemned eastern Europe to decades of tyrany.

[Scrat]

This is actually a tough question.

Essentially there were 2 theatres of war. The European and the Pacific.

There were many battles in the theatres concerned in different places at different times. There is a rule in war that says. "You can lose battles and still win wars, it was done by the Greeks at Thermopolae. You can win all the battles and still lose the war as Napoleon did."

I think that it is easier to look at the question from the standpoint of "campaignes" or series of battles, in Russia the city of Kharkov changed hands 5 times in 3 years. 5 battles fought for the city in 3 years. These battles were part of a larger, year long campaign (summer 1942-summer 1943) called the Donetsk Campaign.
It started in the summer of 1942 with the German Wehrmacht pushing the Russian army into the Don basin, along the Blacksea coast into the Caucasus and by August to the city of Stalingrad. This is the first pivotal battle of the campaign.

Western sources talk about how inept the Russian army was. The retreat from the Don basin was in fact one of the most brilliant retreats in history. The old "grab them by the nose and kick them in the ass" trick and it was executed brilliantly.

They ran from the Don as fast as they could with the german army hot on their heels. Taking their heavy artillery with them, to the other side of the Volga. They then dug holes in Stalingrad and with the help of the artillery bled the german army white until that winter when they encircled the 6th army and destroyed it.

Thru the winter the Russians pushed the Germans back out of the Don to the line roughly Kharkov, Byelgorod, Kursk, Orel, Veliki Luki, Leningrad by the spring 1943. With the BATTLE of Stalingrad the Germans had lost the initiative.

The next battle was Kursk, it was the last chance the Germans had to regain the initiative. The Russians knew that and set a trap. The germans were desperate so they took the bait and got their necks broken. Kursk was the biggest battle on the Eastern front and the conclusion of the Don campaign. The germans could only react to what the growing and more experienced Russian army did from this point onward.

The allies won the war in Europe because of what the Russians absorbed. D-day would have been a slaughter if a large part of the German airforce was not over the Russian front.

The Russians pulling themselves up by their shoestrings and changing the course of the war in Europe was the most pivotal series of battles in the war and in the last century of warfare.

Imho.

[Raven]

Originally Posted by gmc

posted by Raven


Actually there are many that if lost would have changed the course of the war, Cape Matapan, Taranto, Battle for Malta, If those had been lost there would have been no victory in the mediterranean or middle east (oil, sound familiar) therefore no El Alemain or invasion of North Africa, sicily, Italy.

Battle of the North Atlantic, if that had been lost we'd have had it. There would have been no Normandy invasion or battle of the bulge the latter was a last fling for Hitler it bwould only have delayed the inevitable if he'd won.

Agree with you about Midway and also battle of the coral sea. On paper the Japanese advantage was so great they should have walked it.

How about Taranto? that's what supposedly convinced the Japanese an attack on Pearl Harbour would work and they set about designing shallow water torpedoes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwt...atlantic.shtml

Have fun

I've really been thinking about this.
The MOST pivotal, IMO, would be the battle of Britain. If Britain would have lost that,........we would probably be discussing this in german. It was only by luck, the US deciphered the plans for midway. When Japan bombed Pearl, Hawaii wasnt a state yet. But when the US declared war on Japan, Germany, in turn declared war on the US. If Britain had lost the sky to the luftwaffe, Germany would have invaded Britain first, instead of Russia. The US didnt have the ability to wage war on both fronts alone. Thankfully the redcoats prevailed!

[Scrat]

I can't agree Raven. The battle of Britain was significant in the fact that Britain served as a staging area for events such as D-Day and serving as the other half of the vise on the Reich.

If Hitler had been bombing your airfields instead of London and setting the wolfpacks off of your ports you would have been starved into submission by 1942 but even then Hitler could not discount the need for resources from the east. Britiain had very little economic value to his war efforts other than your holdings in the mideast and even those were of dubious value.


Hitler would not have invaded Britain, he would have starved you into submission and put a token force there to control you politically. Much like Norway, you would have had your Quizzling.

What Hitler needed was not conquest, but security and stability in order to consolidate and exploit the gains of conquest. I doubt very much the Reich would have been secure with a new and modern Russian army on the approaches of europe in 1943. I certainly know Russia would not have felt secure with the Reich next door either so I feel safe in saying that there would have been conflict at some point on a massive scale by 1950.

Russia was the tarbaby that Hitler could not get away from whether he embraced it or not. He could not subdue Russia and remove the threat politically or militarily so once again Russia played the key role in the winning of WWII.

[gmc]

posted by scrat

If Hitler had been bombing your airfields instead of London and setting the wolfpacks off of your ports you would have been starved into submission by 1942 but even then Hitler could not discount the need for resources from the east. Britiain had very little economic value to his war efforts other than your holdings in the mideast and even those were of dubious value.

Actually he did bomb the airfields, it was a close run thing as the saying goes, The switch away from the airfields was fortuitous but we still had plenty up north out of range that had'nt been touched so the squadrons could be rotated. As to the ports you forget we still had the Royal Navy if it was possible for him to station U-boats off our ports successfully what makes you think he wouldn't have done so? The atlantic ports are on the west of Britain to get to them they had to go through the North sea, which is why Scapa flow was so important as a naval base. The channel was too narrow that's why they used e-boats there instead. By 1942 we were beginning to turn the tide in in the North Atlantic. As to the middle east it was all about oil, if we had lost there Hitler would have had all the oil he needed.

Hitler was convinced we wouldn't fight on alone.

I doubt very much the Reich would have been secure with a new and modern Russian army on the approaches of europe in 1943. I certainly know Russia would not have felt secure with the Reich next door either so I feel safe in saying that there would have been conflict at some point on a massive scale by 1950.

I do agree with you there. I have seen it suggested that the success of the finns in holding of the Russians was one of the things that convinced him he could take on Russia by the same token the Russians had a rethink after the war with the finns.

[Scrat]

Actually he did bomb the airfields, it was a close run thing as the saying goes

Yes on a few occasions they did, they even obliterated some of them but the key was air superiority which the Luftwaffe never attained. This was why they could not put the wolfpacks in the channel and around the ports and had to keep them at sea. A submarine can be spotted and killed very easily from the air in shallow water whereas a ship has little if any chance of spotting the sub that kills it.

Had they gained the dominance of the air and sea Britains Navy would have been helpless along with the whole island.

Germany observed the Finnish war very closely and knew that the Russian army would learn from it and change the outmoded French style of warfare that they used. Russia did learn and were caught flat footed right at the middle of their transition. When the Germans attacked there was total confusion in the army and almost the entire airforce was wiped out in the first 3 days. But they also found a few of these that made some people think twice about the whole deal.



This phase of the war (Russo-German) and the Donetsk campaign were pivotal in the war. If Hitler had kept his word with Stalin the face of this world would be different than it is now. America would have never gotten a foothold in Europe.
We would have finished off the Japanese though.

[gmc]

posted by scrat

Yes on a few occasions they did, they even obliterated some of them but the key was air superiority which the Luftwaffe never attained. This was why they could not put the wolfpacks in the channel and around the ports and had to keep them at sea. A submarine can be spotted and killed very easily from the air in shallow water whereas a ship has little if any chance of spotting the sub that kills it.

Had they gained the dominance of the air and sea Britains Navy would have been helpless along with the whole island

That is rather the point of why the battle of britain was so significant, if we had lost air superiority we would have been in deeper trouble than we were.

It's a bit pointless debating what would have happened had we lost since we didn't.

Do bear in mind at this point we were on our own with no one giving much for our chances.

This phase of the war (Russo-German) and the Donetsk campaign were pivotal in the war. If Hitler had kept his word with Stalin the face of this world would be different than it is now. America would have never gotten a foothold in Europe.
We would have finished off the Japanese though.

Very true, but if the US had lost at Midway it would have taken an awful lot longer. That was an amazing achievement-at that point in the war the Japanese outclassed the US with better aircraft and more of them.

[Scrat]

Okay back on track here. Britain played a significant part in WWII but I do not believe that the battle of Britain was THE pivotal battle. As I stated earlier individual battles can be lost and wars still won because they are part of campaigns.

There were hundreds of battles fought in Russia, the most significant IMO were fought on the Don and Volga at Stalingrad and Kursk. These battles destroyed the best that the German Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe had to offer. Enmass.