Most Interesting WW2 Battle

Above the Kursk I woudl have to say the battle of "hope" in operation Walkure, mainly because it did show the world that "They were all not like him"

 

Europe- Battle of Stalingrad
Pacific- The Battle of Iwo Jima

 

Lots of great choices listed. I too am enthused by the entire war no matter what the setting is? However, I do favor almost anything dealing with the Eastern Front, almost anything from D-Day @ Normandy onwards, to some Pacific and CBI battles like Imphal-Kohima, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima etc etc etc.

 

Stalingrad. The heroes of the Sixth Army held out for months with minimal supplies, cut off from the Reich, and i haven't mentioned that out of the 600,000 men went into the meat grinder, 5,000 made it back into the now-obliterated Reich (this is after the prison camps. 90,000 men went into there.)

 

Narva and Stalingrad , luckily been to both many times

 

Hi Paul, glad to see you here and will see you on WR soon ;-))

Anyway, glad you also mentioned Narva-which rarely seems to get "press coverage". Same can almost be said about Leningrad IMO.

 

Normandy.

 

Yeah your right Carl not many people seem to name any of the Battles of Army Group North and what they endured , Demjansk , Wolchow , Narva , Kurland and the 900 day siege of Leningrad etc.

Might be because some Historians seem to portray the Northern Front as very static, not much happening which is of course far from the truth and concentrate on the large battles in Southern Russia.

As you know from talking with Remy the Battles around Leningrad were horrendous and fought in the the most terrible conditions , i've been in the forests and swamps in winter , really awful places to try and survive !!!

 

Well The Greatest Battle Was Kursk (Hugest Number of Tanks) Where T-34s Came like a River Against Some Elephants ,Tigers&Panthers (They were Prototypes)
The Technical Problems of Panzers & Outnumbering T-34s made The Soviets Win ,but They didn't Win By Their Tanks (They Used Infantries in Human Waves and Destroyed Nazi Panzers By AT Grenades & Molotovs!!)
AnyWay Michael Wittmann =Tiger Ace Has Fought in This Great Battle And Destroyed 30 T-34s!!

 

The Sixth army heroes at Stalingrad??? The real heroes Chesehead, were not the Germans but the men from the 62nd Army under Chuikov who were defending the city and their homeland from the men who came to destroy it.


If I wasnt familiar with WW2 and read your post, I might get the impression that the men under Paulus were the good guys. Bad guys can't be heroes.

Please be careful posting such remarks as you might very well receive flak for them in the future.

 

Cassino by a mile,stalingrad and kursk were up there too but i got fed up of hearing the same stuff over.
I'll probably be fine once i find a good book.
Battle for the atlantic is good.

Pacific i'd probably go with tarawa.

 

Must have been the greatest battle if Wittmann was involved !!

 

To me it seems odd to speak of a "favorite" battle, like a favorite color, favorite beer or favorite sports team. I think it trivializes events that resulted in a lot of death and destruction. Maybe a better question would be "What battle do you find most interesting or important?"

 

I'm in total agreement with you on that.....

 

My five most interesting battles:
Guadalcanal
The Bulge
Normandy
Midway

Not a battle, but I find The Winter War particularly interesting

On another note, I have a dear friend who is Latvian and his story of how he and his unit fought their way from Latvia, to eventually, American lines in 1945 is facinating.
There are no books that I know of that tell their story.

 

Ive been reading Will Fey's book and some of the stories inside really show how much of a life saver(Or rather life prolonger) the Tiger was for Germany. In small groups, the T-34s seem pathetic compared to 4 Tigers.

Michael Wittman? A great legend. 134 tanks and 120something Other vehicles. Sadly though his gunner dosent get much mention, but least he got a Knights Cross

 

For me...

Kursk, Stalingrad and Battle of Berlin.

There's something special about the battle of Berlin though...not because it was vital as kursk, Normandy etc...but because it was the last gasp of the Reich. Something about the visual of just a handful of king tigers roaming the streets of Berlin against thousands of russian tanks....the feelings and thoughts that were going through the minds of the defenders knowing that this was it...their last battle....

 

Hi Slava, I don't know if you remembered about a photo that Skipper posted for me a few months ago but, in this photo was a totally obliterated German Panzer-somewhere on the outskirts of Leningrad. Some member of your family could well have been the one to knock that tank out ;-) Speaking of the now renamed back to it's original name--City, Author of Penalty Strike-Alexander Pyl'cyn lives there. I'd love to see if his address is findable? I've got a good friend by the name of Vera, who lives there and runs an import-export business.

Forgot to mention that my top choices for favorite battles would have to be: E/Front: Stalingrad, Kursk, Sebastopol, The battles for the Crimea and the Kuban Peninsula, as well as the fights for Mount ZElbrus. Western Front: The Normandy Invasion (aka) The Invasion Front, The Battle of the Bulge, the Battles for the Ruhu Pocket, Courland, E/Prussia and Battle of Berlin including the battles for the Seelowe Heights. Other teater favs: The Kokoda Trail, Imphal and Kohima, Bataan, Midway, Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Iron Botton Sound, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. N/Africa: the battles for Tobruk and El Alamein and Kasserine Pass. Italy, the battles for San Pietro, Monte Cassino, the Rapido River Crossings especially since the 36th I.D. had a tough time there, and finally the Battles for the Gustav Line.

 

Hi Mate, your quite correct on all accounts. Also, one of Remy's favorite stories to tell was of the time he got badly drunk while stationed on the Leningrad Front. He had a great time telling this story. He was supposed to stand two watches, but instead went to a nearby village, got a bottle of Vodka, took a weeks worth of Suger rations mixing it with the Vodka, and proceeded to get blind-staggering drunk. Remy had a great laugh when he told about his Platoon Sergeant who dragged him out of his tent by his feet and dragged him to the COs tent where he was going to press charges. Just imagining the whole thing was really funny ;-))

 

In a way, I have to side with Slava on this. I was absoluitely in awe of reading about the men who made up the Rolik Group. Those men were some tough Sukasinyas (SP?) I think men of both sides deserve an applause for their conduct and surviving such a tough ordeal. The men who made the best impression for me were the German Pioneers, as well as the Russians-like Roliks Group as well as the men serving with Sgt. Pavlov and their famous stand ""Pavlovs House.""