"Most important battle of WWII (ETO)?" Topic

Obviously "important" is very subjective and I leave its definition up to you.

European & African theaters only.

Mine:
1) D-Day,
2) Battle of Britain,
3) Stalingrad
4) Kursk
5) Operation Torch

3 and 1

I would state that the 'Battle of Britain' was the most important one fought, for it showed the allies just how easily that Hitler & his minions could be distracted from key fighting areas to going after political gains & revenge for prior attacks.

We see this time & again during the early & mid stages of the war, another example being turning his armies south to capture Kiev instead of preparing for the final push onto Moscow.

Yes as Uesugi states this is subjective, & perhaps i am only able to do so in hindsight, but it does show an indication of his future decisions.

The most important battle of wwii was fought in wwi at the marne.

Think about it…

Greetings and have fun
:)

None of them was most, each flowed with the other to make the whole.

Of those, the Battle of Britain, although I'd argue the Battle of Moscow a year and a half later was nearly as important, if not more so.

In Western Europe it would have to be The Battle of Britain. The Germans were handed their first major defeat after a long string of successes.

Failure to take "the island" from those pesky British and their commonwealth bothers gave the allies a place to build up for, and eventually launch an invasion of the mainland. There would have been no D-Day without Bob.

There would have been no Operation Torch without an allied victory in North Africa, and that wasn't going to happen without Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and other commonwealth troops delivering their victory. Without Bob, remove those forces opposing the axis and you have an axis victory.

In Eastern Europe, I'd say Stalingrad. The Germans were ground to a halt, and no matter what they threw at the Russians, they didn't back down. There was no more giving up of ground. It became the first major meat-grinder for the Germans.

Battle for Moscow and Russian Dec. counterattack.

I would've thought the first.

My vote goes for Kursk.

Amiacalement
Armand

I'm with Armand on this one – Kursk.

El Alamein – without it the British would not have had the victory to enable them to direct strategy in Europe for the next few years. Without that an abortive invasion earlier may have been forced through by the Americans & Russians.

Stalingrad – after that the war in the East was won bar the shouting.

One way of looking at this is to consider what might have happened if things had gone the other way. On that basis I would go with either the Battle of Britain – possibly leading to a negotiated peace between UK and Germany (in which case Hitler would have no need to declare war on America in December 1941) or the defence of Moscow – without the Russians staying in the war tying up the bulk of the German army there would never have been a D-Day invasion.

Most important battle?

The last one.

WWII is one big battle of attrition in which the Axis manages to outmaneuver everyone at first and make huge territorial gains without knocking out the major powers of the day, once they are fully committed to war, the Axis stands no chance in the long run.

If you have to pick a key moment it must be Moscow, most of the German effort was aimed at the east, if the USSR falls then the Germans can free more than enough resources to wrestle the British Empire into submission and tell the US to "back off".

Moscow concentrated too many of the USSR's logistic and political assets, without Moscow the Red Army is crippled and Germany can grab the Oil fields and get a springboard to the Middle East.

Moscow '41 without a doubt. Had the Germans succeeded in taking Moscow (and likely bringing an end to the war in the east if Soviet archives are to be believed), every other theatre of war in Europe and NA would have been merely a sideshow. Guess we can thank Mussolini, Yugoslavia and Greece for the delay in Barbarossa…..

North Africa could have been heavily reinforced, and the likelihood of an Allied invasion of western Europe with the Soviets knocked out of the war would have been nigh impossible IMHO. But who knows, maybe Sea Lion '42 becomes a major victory for the Allies, crushing the German elite forces and opening the front door of Europe to invasion…..

Stalingrad or El Alemain

All of the battles were significant but to say that a single battle was the most significant is an almost impossible task.

Some of these were tactically battles and would have only delayed not changed strategic efforts by the allies.

To answer this one you have to think like General marshall and the other allied majot leaders.

El Alamein would seem strategic in nature but a German victory would not have gained the Suez. The British would have stopped them after a limited penetration. The Germans did not have the logistics to continue. The British defenses were substancial in Egypt.

So from a strategic nature you have to look at campaigns rather than battles. Convoy battles in the Atlantic; The Strategic bombing effort. I could name others but this is only my opinion.

I would say probably Kursk. I think Stalingrad was the point which erased the German's chances for any success in the East and lost the initiative in strategic terms but there were still possible options. They could have tightened up their lines and gone on the defensive(I believe that was Guderian's suggestion), could have attempted to negotiate a cease fire or truce, could have initiated a series of limited offenses, etc. Now, it is likely none of that would have been any more successful than the Kursk offensive but after that battle there were no more 'coulds'. The Russians were coming and that was that.

Stalingrad

Re above answers, Moscow would have been my #6, El Alamaen my #7.

On another thread Arras was mentioned. It was the battle that led to the halt order for the panzers in May 1940. Thus the BEF escaped enabling the UK to stay in the war. I believe we could have stayed in even if we had lost the BEF but the psychological blow would have been too much.
If Arras had been a catastrophe there would have been no halt order and the BEF would have been destroyed. Churchill could not have come back from that and Britain would almost certainly have sought peace. No Britain means no threat from the West and the USSR falls.
And I fail to see Kursk as important as anything other than confirmation the Germans had lost. Even if Kursk had been a major German victory it would, at best, have given them another six months.

France 1940? What if the Germans fail to break the French Army and there is a rerun of WWI.

Battle for the Atlantic.

Hagen has it. If the Germans do not win in France then it is a whole different ball game. Otherwise Moscow 41 because that is where the Germans lost the battle of attrition.

I never regarded Stalingrad as the most significant battle even on the Eastern Front. I have not seen any sources indicating that if the Germans had won in that grinder, that they would have defeated the Russians.

The Germans were stretched too thin with Allies holding key sectors for them to push any furtehr into Russia.

I think with Stalingrad it is more about the sum of the effects. The Russians winning and their growing martial confidence, the continued centralizing of operational issues with Hitler, the expose of the Nazi regime's propaganda machine, the loss/abandonment of Sixth Army and Paulus(spelling?)not committing suicide, etc. all of these little cracks. I don't thing Germany would have defeated the Russians, perhaps ever, but having Stalingrad as a bargaining chip possibly, as vague a possibility as it would have been,could have led to cease fire or some sort of negotiations which may have taken some pressure off the Germans. I still think Kursk was the final straw though. :)

Guess we can thank Mussolini, Yugoslavia and Greece for the delay in Barbarossa…..

I'm not sure the weather and the condition of the roads would have allowed Barbarossa to begin much earlier that it did, regardless of the detour to the Balkans.

Yep, Battle Of The Atlantic must warrant a mention. Losing that would have probably forced Britain to negotiate, kept America out of Europe and massively reduced lend-lease to the Soviets.

I think with Stalingrad it is more about the sum of the effects.

Stalingrad was indeed a bigger issue than just the battle (or campaign).

First, the German loss at Stalingrad marked not just the success of Operation Saturn (the Russian counter-offensive at Stalingrad), but also the failure of Operation Blau (the German offensive into the Caucasus).

We should recall that Stalingrad was not the strategic objective. Or at least, not the objective that the strategy was formulated to take. Rather, it was only a flanking position intended to protect the much larger German operation to seize the Soviet's petroleum production regions around Maikop and Baku deep in the Caucasus. While 6th Army at Stalingrad was a strong formation, it was only a small fraction of the Blau force, which was formed from the majority of three Army Groups (A, B, and South), which included not only 6th Army, but also the German 1st Panzer Army, 4th Panzer Army, 2nd Army, and 17th Army, as well as the Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies and the Italian 8th Army.

Once Stalingrad was encircled, the entirety of Operation Blau was no longer tenable, and Axis forces were forced to make a hasty withdrawal from the Caucasus back to the Don. Without the defeat of Operation Blau, Germany's chronic petroleum deficit might well have become the Soviet's deficit.

So it was not just the Battle of Stalingrad that the Germans lost. It was also their 1942 Summer Offensive. By February of 1943 it was clear that the Germans had failed at their strategic imperative of 1942.

Secondly, Operation Saturn removed Germany's two largest allies from the war on the Eastern Front. Not only did it knock Italy permanently out of the Eastern Front, but made a very strong contribution to knocking Italy out of the war altogether. It also knocked Romania out of the war for about a year.

The loss of these two allies had the effect of taking over 1 million soldiers OUT of the Axis order of battle against the Soviets. We often speak of how many Germans were lost at Stalingrad, and how the Germans could not replace those losses, without giving proper place to this much larger loss of troop strength to the German cause.

And finally, the magnitude of the propaganda victory should not be under-estimated. It was not a tactical victory. It was a massive strategic/operational victory. The first time that the Nazis had not only been stopped, but beaten.

The impact of this propaganda loss went far beyond morale on the street (whether on the street in Germany, in occupied countries, or among enemies). The impact was quite tangible in terms of international politics.

Until Stalingrad, US policy makers were convinced that the Soviets would not survive the war. US Lend-Lease stepped up significantly after Stalingrad, when it was finally clear that weapons sent to the Soviets would in fact be used against the Axis, rather than potentially used for the Axis (as weapons sent to Finland, France, and Holland had been). Prior to Stalingrad the majority of aid flowing to the Soviets was British/Commonwealth produced. After it was overwhelmingly American-made.

Also, until Stalingrad there was a very real potential of Turkey entering the war on the Axis side. This would have been a disaster to the British positions in the Eastern Med/ Middle East, and by extension of the risk to Suez to the British position in India, as well as the joint British/Soviet position in Persia. After Stalingrad this was no longer a realistic consideration among Axis or Allied policy makers.

So when we look at the German defeat at Stalingrad, we can see it as the loss of 6th Army, or we can see it as the loss of 6th Army plus a whole year of effort plus Germany's 2 largest allies and the potential for a 3rd large ally.

It was a shockingly important battle.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

From the list above, battle of Britain without a doubt. The likes of Kursk would be mitigated by the fact Germany wouldn't of had the reserves to finish off the Ruskies anyway I'd expect, even if they did have the 6th army left (as well as many other factors)

If Britain had fallen then the European southern flank would have been open and no jump off point for the allies in Europe, and then 100% of the werhmacht would have been focused on Russia. With britain always in the background the Luftwaffe could never filly commit to the east so there army had so much more air support, etc etc

Certainly not Kursk, a battle with a very limited objective that was never quite finished anyway.

Battle of Britain and Battle of the Atlantic were far more decisive, in keeping Britain in the war. (And without it, the US and the Commonwealth countries had no way to get at Germany in force.)

The Battle for Moscow was the real turning point on the Russian Front. Midway in the Pacific.

I think Kursk is so important as it is a battle which probably should not have happened. That is why it looms so large. The Germans may, and it is a big may, have been able to hold the Russians at bay if they hadn't gambled on Kursk. They certainly were aware that they were running out of chips, the Russians knew they were coming, and it was an obvious place for an attack. It is at Kursk that we really see the regime banging its head against a wall and expecting a different outcome.

The Africian campaign.
It helped the stranglehold on oil.

From the list above, battle of Britain without a doubt.
…
If Britain had fallen then the European southern flank would have been open and no jump off point for the allies in Europe, and then 100% of the werhmacht would have been focused on Russia.

Looking at this, I would observe four key premises that I find hardly credible:

1) Losing the Battle of Britain = Britain falls.
Non-sense. Even if RAF Fighter Command had been beaten-back from the south-eastern advanced fields (the only issue in doubt in the BoB), I see no indication that Britain would have caved-in. See-Lowe would have been a great opportunity for Germany to experience their first major loss in a ground campaign. Nothing more. The reality of German naval and amphibious capabilities made Operation See-Lowe a non-starter, a political-propaganda exercise to put pressure on a British government that was not in the mood to be bullied.

2) Britain was needed in North Africa to contain the Axis southern flank.
Say what? The only reason for all that fighting in North Africa was the British need for the Suez Canal. There was nothing else of value between Gibraltar and the Persian Gulf, and the Soviets were far better positioned to project force into the Persian Gulf than the British or the Germans.

3) Without Britain there was no other jumping-off point for the invasion of Europe by the U.S.
U.S. warplans formed in the summer of 1941 did not count on Britain. The US would have been ready by 1945 to take the war to Germany with or without British bases. It would have required some work around the periphery (as was done in 1942/43), but the US, with more than 50% of the world's industrial capacity by 1943, was more than capable of seizing outpost and building bases where/as needed. And recall that the B-29 was only intended to be an interim design … the B-32 and B-36 bomber programs were launched in 1940/41 to provide trans-continental strike capability, and the Manhattan Project was targeted at Germany, not Japan. It would have been a tough fight for both sides, but even as it was it was a tough fight for both sides.

4) Without Britain the Wehrmacht would have focused on Russia and won that campaign.
Backwards. As it was, the Wehrmacht focused on Russia, and lost that campaign. The forces dispatched to Rommel in North Africa in the critical years of 1941/42 were trivial (154 German Divisions in Barbarossa in June of 1941, vs. 2 in North Africa!). The Germans stationed larger forces to guard their northern flank, in France, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries, than they committed to action on their southern flank of North Africa. Add the requirement to pacify the English, Welsh and Scots (never a docile set of peoples to start with!) and you have even MORE forces, not less, devoted to Western Europe.

Yes, the Battle of Britain was important … to the British. But in the total picture of the defeat of the Axis, it is just one entry on the list of perhaps 10 important battles. It pales in comparison to Stalingrad.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Pearl Harbor. US enters war in Europe.

I agree with Hagen
France '40,
and specificly the Battle of Sedan and Stonne.
France had a fair chance of taking the bridgeheads
at Sedan and cutting off the Panzer drive to the sea

Pearl Harbor was going to be my answer, too (even though it says ETO in the thread title, I still think this was the battle that had the most impact on the war in Europe). The Japanese attack and the subseqeunt German declaration of war on the US, brought the Americans into the conflict; without them, no second front in Europe and the Germans can focus on the USSR to the exclusion of all else.

The Germans stationed larger forces to guard their northern flank, in France, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries, than they committed to action on their southern flank of North Africa.

And who were those forces guarding against?

Mark 1

"Also, until Stalingrad there was a very real potential of Turkey entering the war on the Axis side"

I have often thought about the possibilities of Turkish involvement, but have not read anything which suggests Turkey was keen to enter the war – can you please point me in the right direction so I can do some reading on the subject?

OK, let's try this again. Shorter this time… so if it all goes off into never-never-land, I won't feel so grumpy.

I have often thought about the possibilities of Turkish involvement, but have not read anything which suggests Turkey was keen to enter the war – can you please point me in the right direction so I can do some reading on the subject?

I probably over-stated the case of Turkey's potential entry on the Axis side. Historically it is pretty clear that Turkey was not likely to enter the war as an Axis player, but Turkey's position was the focus of much intense diplomacy from both sides, while the Turks played an interesting game, balancing both sides against each other and shifting their leanings as the war progressed.

Here is a quick review of diplomatic highlights:

1) June 1939: As tensions rise in Europe, Britain and Turkey sign the Anglo-Turkish Alliance.

2) October 1939: As the Germans and Soviets completed their conquest of Poland, Turkey signed the Tripartite Alliance with Britain and France.

2) June 1940: As the Germans neared completion of their campaign against France, Turkey publicly declared itself a "Non-Belligerent".

3) June 1941: Even as Germany (and Italy) consolidated their positions in Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, and prepared for their campaign against the Soviets, a German diplomatic mission led to the signing of a Mutual Friendship Agreement with Turkey -- just 4 days before launching the war against the Russians.

4) 1942: US and British foreign policies towards Turkey focused on providing limited military aid (some surplus US artillery, provided to the British, but which, it was agreed, could be forwarded to the Turks) and civilian aid, to retain good will and keep Turkey neutral.

5) January 1943: Turkey became one of the topics for discussion between Roosevelt and Churchill at their conference in Casablanca. At this time the tone of the diplomacy changed. A US State Department report* says: "After the tide of war turned in favor of the Allies, with major victories in North Africa and at Stalingrad, the issue of aiding Turkey and inducing it to enter the War became ever more important …. The Casablanca military conferees agreed that efforts should be made to induce Turkey to enlist on the side of the Allies…" It was agreed that Britain's interests dominated the issue, and so "negotiations involving the provision of arms assistance to Turkey as a persuasion would be left to the British."

5) Just one week after the Casablanca conference, at the end of January, 1943, Churchill made a personal trip to Adana, Turkey. He met with Turkish leaders including Premier Inonu. Still per the US State Dept report*: "Turkey would require large quantities of military equipment before it could consider entering the War. Furthermore, the Turks were even more alarmed by the growing might of their traditional adversary, Russia. Turkish Prime Minister Saracoglu warned … that a Soviet victory would bring chaos to Europe".

6) At the Churchill-Roosevelt meeting at Quebec in August of 1943, the US JCS stated the expectation that regardless of how much aid was provided, Turkey would only enter the war in the closing months in order to obtain a voice in the post-war negotiations. This turned out to be true.

* Excerpts from the U.S. Department of State report titled: Allied Relations and Negotiations with Turkey

I don't really have much in the way of public writings to recommend on the subject. It is a fairly arcane, but I think interesting, piece of the whole WW2 picture.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

All good input so far. Thanks for participating.

These do not settle anything but they are intersting to compare with the above results:
link
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On a cause – effect factor the battle for Poland.
For a turning point then Stalingrad.

The Battle for the Atlantic. The longest campaign of the war.