History's most decisive battles

[jrandom]

In fact, I'm rather of the opinion that if any single effort can be said to have carried the fate of the world on its shoulders, it could be Turing, et al's work on German ciphers, following on from the initial discoveries by Polish mathematicians in the 1930s, rather than any particular affair of steel, lead and gore.

Had that effort failed, or never occurred, Europe may well have remained in Nazi hands for good.

[sAsLEX]

Bletchley Park


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Go the cryptanalysis!

B atox uxxg wtuuebgz bg vhwx ukxtdbgz tgw pkbmbgz. Vtg tgrhgx vktvd mabl lbfiex vhwx?

[jrandom]

B atox uxxg wtuuebgz bg vhwx ukxtdbgz tgw pkbmbgz. Vtg tgrhgx vktvd mabl lbfiex vhwx?

Of course I can, dude. You should have used a polyalphabetic cipher. Heh.

Do you have a copy of Applied Cryptography? It's required reading.

[steved]

BUT. If we hadn't have kept the Western and African fronts open, what might have been the outcome in Russia if Germany was able to bring all her resources to bear....

To my mind, the question is which is the most decisive battle, not which were the battles that allowed another to be fought. Stalingrad was the first major defeat for the previously invincible Wermacht. It was the perfect definition of, 'The Turning of the Tide'. I fail to see how the Atlantic U-boat War compares in significance.

[Skyryder]

To my mind, the question is which is the most decisive battle, not which were the battles that allowed another to be fought. Stalingrad was the first major defeat for the previously invincible Wermacht. It was the perfect definition of, 'The Turning of the Tide'. I fail to see how the Atlantic U-boat War compares in significance.

There is no doubt that the significance of the Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the eventual defeat of Germany. That must be seen from an allied perspective. Prior to the American entry into the war when Britain was alone, should the Germans have been able to blockade Britain successfully this would have led to it's final collapse.


The U-boat peril

Winston Churchill once wrote that, '... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. In saying this, he correctly identified the importance of the threat posed during World War Two by German submarines (the 'Unterseeboot') to the Atlantic lifeline. This lifeline was Britain's 'centre of gravity' - the loss of which would probably have led to wholesale defeat in the war.

Skyryder

[Skyryder]

No ... the Germans realised they could not invade the UK without defeating the Royal Navy first. Even though the Germans had massive superiority in numbers, they could not take on the Royal Navy to an extent that would have allowed them to ship tens of thousands of soldiers and equipment over the English Channel. It's only 26 miles wide, but it may as well have been a thousand.

The British air force protected, amongst other things, the naval bases that were all-important to the defence of the UK. The Battle of Britain was designed to soften, and test out, those defences. And they almost succeeded. It was only Churchill's rather odd, but in hindsight genius, decision to hand over the responsibility for aircraft manufacture to a newspaper baron, Lord Beaverbrook, with no experience of the aviation industry that kept the RAF in the game.

After Dunkirk Britain was virtualy defenceless. It had short supply of naval armaments, aircraft. It's army was virtualy defeated with low moral. There's plenty of sites that give a comaparison of weapons etc between the two sides. If I get some time I'll look them up. A Blitzkreig attack of British air bases would have prevented a major counter attack by the RAF. Much of the Navy was on escort duty. There is a school of thought that belives that if Hitler had attacked shortly after Dunkirk a successful invasion might have been the result. When you consider the ease in which the Germans invaded all the countries that they were interested in I don't think Britain would have stood a chance. Goring's ego resulted in his decison to impress the Fuhrer by allowing his much vaunted Luftwaafe to engage the RAF. The germans changed tactics midway through the battle and as a result lost.

Skyryder

[Skyryder]

Nonsense. Bush was a vice president at the time, to Reagan. It was 1982. Desert Storm was ten years later.

Mrs Thatcher had a task force ready within days to retake what was/is British Sovereign land. She's the only person that (the formerly Great) Britain has had as PM with a spine for fifty years.

Had she not done this, can you imagine the ramifications?


The argies are making noises again because they know the brit forces are already stretched trying to keep the mudslums down. And, there's hardly any helis left in the RAF. They could easily retake the Falkland Islands, and britain could do precious little about it without SPAM help. I doubt Bush's god would be talking to him much about that..



Decisive Battle? Imagine if Operation Barbarossa had been a success.. We'd be living in a very different world now. I doubt we'd have any mudslums at all to worry about.

Thanks for the recall. Yes it was Reagon. Don't realy think Thatcher had a lot of choices but it did take the reforms (unemployment) that she was instituting out of the public eye.

[Skyryder]

I'm surprised no ones mentioned the Battle of the Coral Sea. Without that the Japanese advance would have continued.

Skyryder

[jrandom]

After Dunkirk Britain was virtualy defenceless... school of thought that belives that if Hitler had attacked shortly after Dunkirk a successful invasion might have been the result... Goring's ego resulted in his decison to impress the Fuhrer by allowing his much vaunted Luftwaafe to engage the RAF.

Don't forget, though, that the RAF was still able to make a significant impression at Dunkirk, defending the evacuation against German bombers. Following Dunkirk, any immediate invasion attempt would have been met with failure due to the German's lack of air supremacy over the Channel.

The Battle of Britain was simply the result of the next logical step for the Germans to take - establishing that air supremacy.

Of course, Goering cocked it up by failing to press home his attacks on various RAF targets. The fact remains that German victory in the air battle over the Channel was a prerequisite to Sea Lion.

[jrandom]

I'm surprised no ones mentioned the Battle of the Coral Sea. Without that the Japanese advance would have continued.

The subsequent battle of Midway was more interesting, inasmuch as it resulted in a permanent shift in the strategic balance of naval power, and was also an example of the power of cryptography and the influence of good intelligence on the disposal of inferior (on the face of it) forces.

[Delerium]

WW2 had several key factors that let it end the way it did. Those benefitting the allied nations were: midway, the germans opening a second front, germans shifting from RAF airfields to cities, and stalingrad to name a few. It was a close thing and could have ended very differently.

[peasea]

I saw a punchup in a pub car park once.

[merv]

I saw a punchup in a pub car park once.

Was it a while ago and was it a decisive battle?

[El Dopa]

No ... the Germans realised they could not invade the UK without defeating the Royal Navy first. Even though the Germans had massive superiority in numbers, they could not take on the Royal Navy to an extent that would have allowed them to ship tens of thousands of soldiers and equipment over the English Channel. It's only 26 miles wide, but it may as well have been a thousand.

Precisely. A sucessful invasion/occupation of the UK would have depended on getting thousands of men, and thousands of tons of supplies across the channel, and keeping those supply lines open.

The germans were depending on barges for all their cross-channel logisitics. The RN would have had a field day.

If we're talking BoB, we need to mention Dowding and Keith Park (who was not incidentally a Kiwi). The weapons (spitfire, hurricane) and command and control strucutre would not have happened if these two had not pushed them through in the teeth of a reactionary establishment.

[El Dopa]

After Dunkirk Britain was virtualy defenceless. It had short supply of naval armaments, aircraft. It's army was virtualy defeated with low moral. There's plenty of sites that give a comaparison of weapons etc between the two sides. If I get some time I'll look them up. A Blitzkreig attack of British air bases would have prevented a major counter attack by the RAF. Much of the Navy was on escort duty. There is a school of thought that belives that if Hitler had attacked shortly after Dunkirk a successful invasion might have been the result. When you consider the ease in which the Germans invaded all the countries that they were interested in I don't think Britain would have stood a chance. Goring's ego resulted in his decison to impress the Fuhrer by allowing his much vaunted Luftwaafe to engage the RAF. The germans changed tactics midway through the battle and as a result lost.

Skyryder

I would disagree.

1) Only France and Britain had anything approaching a 'modern' army in 1940. None of the other European countries the Germans overran did.

2) The German equipment was only slightly better. Their organisation and command/control was FAR better.

3) Blitzkreig relies on holding the initiative at all time and pushing forward as fast as you can to gain territory and keep your opponent off-balance. Very hard to do when you have to supply an army across the width of the english channel, even if you have air superiority and are facing an army with no heavy equipment.

The battle of the atlantic was decisive. Britain could have been starved into submission. The yanks would have retreated into isolation (germany declared war on the US post-Peal Harbour, not the other way round). Conceivably two wars could have been fought completely independently - Atlantic (Germany/UK) and Pacific (US/Japan).