The Top Ten Battles of All Time.

I am amazed and disappointed.

The battle that saved Democracy in its cradle - SALAMIS! Does not get a mention from a dozen or so posters.

John.

 

be fair ozjohn,i did get close with the peloponnesian wars.

Megiddo,first recorded battle

 

It is very hard to determine which are the Top 10 Battles in history. I think it is the most important criteria that the battle has to be the turning point of an important war or a campaign.
I think that the size of the battle or the skill of the commanders and soldiers comes only second to this (but is still a factor).
Based on these assumptions my 2 cents in chronological order:

Battle Gaugamela 331 BC
The battle brought down the Persian Empire which was the superpower of its time. And the Roman Empire maybe would have never emerged which such a powerful enemy. It is also very interesting in military terms how Alexander managed to defeat his superior enemy.
Battle of Zama 202 BC
This basically marks the end of Carthage which was one of the most dangerous enemies in Roman history. Military also very interesting because of Scipio and Hannibal which were truly brilliant commanders.
Milvian Bridge AD 312
This battle marks the stepping stone of Constantin I rise to power over the Roman Empire, who was the driving force in making Christianity the state religion of the Empire. He was also the founder of Constantinople what ultimatively led to the fragmentation of Rome.
Battle of Nahavand AD 642
The battle brought down the Sassanid Persian Empire and cemented the dominance of the Arabs in the middle East and the whole Mediterranean for centuries to come. This was of course also important in the spreading of the Muslim faith.
Battle of Tours AD 732
One of the most important battles to stop the Arab expansion into Western Europe. And the beginning of the career of Charles Martel ancestor of Charlemagne who brought Frankish rule over most parts of Western and Central Europe.
Battle of Hastings AD 1066
The decisive Battle in the Norman conquest of England, which was the starting point of the rivalry of the British and the French and brought a great amount of cultural changes to the British society.
Defeat of the Spanish Armada AD 1588
The Spanish Armada was one of the greatest threats in British history. The victory was also crucial in Great Britains dominance on the sea,which was the basis of their empire.
Battle of Yorktown AD 1781
After the battle the British recognized the Independence of the United States which are todays most powerful country.
Battle of Waterloo AD 1815
This is Napoleons final defeat and marks the end of a possible French world power and put France on a clear second to Great Britain.
Battle of Sedan AD 1870
With the French defeat the way was clear for the 2nd German Reich, which was one of the the most important states in the 20th century because it escalated WW1 which was the setting for WW2 and the Russian revolution.

Comments and critics are very welcome. I left out the 20th century because there were no classical battles in this time more campaigns (and you can read a lot of it elsewhere in this forum). Also I left out the pre-Antiquity because it is not so well documented.

Grüße
Philipp

 

Hello Milleniumgorilla,

an excellent and well thought through listing,

Being a Bavarian and Lechschwabe I would like to squeeze in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 A.D. inbetween the Battle of Tours and Hastings!, or if necessary replace the (Hasting occurence) with Lechfeld.

Later German Emperor Otto I. (Holy Roman Empire) defeated the Magyars in this battle, thus ridding half Europe of the Magyar threat - the defeated Magyars turned into settlers and thus laying the foundation for todays Hungaria.

Regards
Kruska

 

What is your definition of a battle - a single engagment or can it also include a campaign. I don't think any battle of the American Civil War rises to the level of 10 Most Important. Most of the lessons had to be re-learned in WWI and the military learnings didn't flow to Europe.

Barbarossa completely changed the relationship with Europe and Russia and established the tenor of the decades long Cold War. If not allowed to include the entire campaign, then I suppose 'Battle of Moscow' or 'Battle of Stalingrad.'

 

Seeing as this has been reopened and quite a few good possibilities have been mentioned, I think we need to follow Mussolini’s advice and decide upon a good set of criteria for inclusion. First we should determine battles. I think only single battles should be included as a campaign could include countless numbers of battles in total. And covers far to large of a scope. A single battle can change the outcome of the campaign.

Next we should decide on how to decide a battles importance. All battles are important in their own ways, but which ones truly set the tone for the remainder of battles? For this we need to look at the strategic levels of the conflict to fully decide. What did the battle do that caused subsequent victories? What did the battle do to inspire others?

For example one could suggest the Battle of Midway
Reasons:
Japan lost large number of pilots and four fleet carriers
Was the first major Victory for the US over Japan
Allowed the US to go on the offensive
Inspired the home front and was hailed a great victory amongst the civilian population
Smaller US force defeated a superior Japanese force
Became the “tip of the sword” for Japans downfall

Other members can than debate the merits of such claims with:
Once taking into account the number of planes on Midway itself, along with larger air groups of US carriers the numbers of planes were equal
Japan continued to issue the US crushing defeats at such places as Savo Island etc.
Japans supremacy in destroyer doctrine would not be overcome for another year.

Well, you all get the point. Hopefully we can come up with a good list that can be mostly agreed upon by a vast majority of members.

 

Hello mikebatzel,

well I would say that you have already summond the basic ingredients in order to get going on a thread that is already termed Battle and not campaign.

Milleniumgorilla has already in this regard forwarded an exellent account of historic decisive battels - even though more from a european point of view.

Me might still have to decide if we should restrict this topic onto WWII or throughout history.

Regards
Kruska

 

Hello Kruska. Obviously the thread is titled battle but a question was raised of should we include campaigns. I simply replied my thoughts. I believe Milleniumgorilla's list is superb but should we expand upon it? can't we discuss the merits of each for inclusion. so far from the almost two years I've spent here I've seen many of these types of threads, but none that comes to anything close to a group consensus. I aspire to have a single list, dissected by the forum and agreed upon by the majority.

I would now like to suggest for inclusion The siege of Vienna - 1529
A powerful Ottoman force was defeated by a much smaller force of Austrians. The battle marked the last time that the Ottoman Empire would venture into Europe and guaranteed the culture of the region. Europe no longer saw the Turks as a major threat and went back to fighting among each other. Despite latter victories the battle would be the beginning of the long slow decline of the Ottoman Empire.

 

I think the only criteria shuld be is if the result was different how different would the world be today.

Example,if the muslims won Battle of Tours then we could all be muslim now,a muslim europe,america,australia etc etc.

 

Hello mikebatzel,

I do get your point or idea - and I believe there is a rather direct approach on this by measn of setting up a poll list (I wouldn't how to set up one). we might need the help of a Mod here.

For instance we could start to seperate it into two chapters.

1. forwarding battles of historic dimension - such as Turks at Vienna, Midway, Stalingrad, Hastings etc. etc.

This thread is open for lets say 2 weeks.

2. After that a poll to decide which of these maybe 20/30 or more named battles reaches the top 10 votes, by allowing the particpant to select 10 battles out of the previous named ones, whereas the vote only counts if it is backed by a statement - might make it more save against troll attacks and would give the presiding Mod a tool to decide upon acceptance or not.

A third step could be a voting within the final 10 to even determine a ranking of importance amongst those.

Can anyone understand me?

Regards
Kruska

 

no kursk! the most decisive battle of ww2...

 

the british 100 days battle of 1918,cheers.

 

I think I understand you perfectly. Lets take this thread as the forwarding battles for consideration as it is already established. We can do a poll with up to 100 options.

:headbonk:Ok sniper. Why? A little more background as to why it is so important would be nice.

While the 100 days offensive sounds great, I do not think we can ignore French, US, Belgian, Australian, South African, New Zealand, India or Canada's involvment.

 

I have to chime in with this. IMHO, the Battle of Britain was THE turning point of the entirety of WWII.

Think this through. (This will move around a bit, so bare with me.)

If the Germans had managed to invade the UK, and make it stick, the US would have had to assign more of it's navy and resources to the Atlantic, which would have allowed the Japanese an easier time of it in the Pacific.

What elements of the British fleet might have escaped to Commonwealth countries would have been in disarray for awhile, allowing the Germans to create the fleet Raeder wanted: Four Bismarck class BB's, two improved Bismarck class BB's, three Graf Zeppelin class CV's, and a greater number of u-boats.

Without Britain, no jumping off point for an invasion of Europe, no airfields to mount a bomber offensive. In fact, I would wager the Germans would have found a way to take Iceland next, further locking up the Atlantic.

By taking Britain, the pressure would have been off the western front for a long, long time, and far greater resources could have been marshaled against the Soviets.

The US would have had to create a fleet in the Atlantic comparable to the fleets in the Pacific, IF they decided to fight the Germans at all, and to defend against a German attack.

The Soviets would have gotten no material or help from Britain or the US.

The Japanese now might have been able to take Hawaii if they could have solved the logistics problem. Certainly, Japanese troops could have been self sustaining for a long time on those islands.

Could the UK have fought it's war from the commonwealth countries? Yes, but not effectively.

With a German lock on Europe and the Atlantic in 1940, the US would have been sorely pressed to fight wars on each ocean, practically on the coasts after the Japanese attacked.

 

Hello Gromit801,

how's your lazy friend Wallace?

IMHO your interpretation of the BoB doesn't stick.

1st, it was Churchill who due to obvious reason termed it BoB, the Luftwaffe simply called it Luftkrieg um England (airwar for England)

2nd, despite all these endless Sealion discussions - there was no matured and developed plans by the OKW in regards to invading England seriously, however Hitler had to maintain a certain "demonstration of willingness" in order to get England to agree on ending the hostilities against Germany.

Hitler coudn't even be bothered (everyone knows how furious he used to get if not achieving his goal) when the OKW informed him on 30th of August that the preparations for Sealion were not ready and the envisaged invasion date needed to be postponed till 20th September.

Hitlers intension was to isolate Britain from shipping and ridding them of their airforce capabilities so that the plausability of a feasible "Sealion threat" could be brought up at all.
Churchill knew very well that Hitler had no chance at all to invade England, since it was not on Hitler's agenda - therefore no realistic timeframe for preperations in 1940 at all.
After a sucessfull Barbarossa campaign, Hitler would have turned on England by rather just maintaining an isolation/starvation strategy then invading it.

One can imagine that if the Luftwaffe would have succeeded in annihilating the RAF, that the British public - now defensless against Luftwaffe bombings plus the prevailing mindthreat of an invasion could indeed have caused their government to change Britains policy against Hitler - and that is exactly what Hitler was hoping for.

Thus it was of imminent importance to Churchill to upkeep and to raise fighting moral and to secure the willingness of the military and the British population to support his policy. Churchill therefore highlighted the invasion story and dramatised the battle for supremacy over Englands skies into a BoB.

My uncle was a bomber pilot during the BoB, 70% of his KG 4 activity was to lay mines around the Channelharbours, the Thames and other estuaries(not to the left or right to set up a corridor), 20% was bombing the RAF and 10% bombing industrial targets. Later on it changed to 70% bombing industrial and city targets and 30% laying mines. The entire KG 4 and other Luftwaffe KG's never systematically bombed land and coastal defense installations on Britains shores or implemented large airraids on certain coastal areas so as to divert from the acctuall intended beachheads.

There are even no records in quality and necessary numbers of the Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe/Navy collecting relevent datas in regards to these defence systems, military units and mapping them up in regards to an invasion preperation. The OKW couldn't even decide upon the intended beachheads before 28th of August. Where had been the hundreds of "Liam Devlin's" needed to provide vital information about Englands defenses and it's allocated units?

So no matter if England would have even lost the BoB, an invasion would never have taken place in 1940. The British BoB victory in 1940 helped Churchill to maintain his and therefore Britain's political course towards Hitler. Anticipating that sooner or later the US would get militarily involved and as such saving Britain from future disaster. Churchill in addition masterfully used the "existence of the planing of Sealion" to fabulate an imminent threat against England towards the US, so as to recieve large and fast support from the US. - I would even tend to believe that Churchill was feverishly painting a "desperate picture of England survival" to achieve a war entry on behalf of the USA in 1940.

Regards
Kruska

 

Hello Kruska. IMHO I think it was more US ambassador Kennedy who had painted the bleakest picture of Britain's chances. I feel that at the start it helped keep America out of Europe's war, however as the RAF stood tall it became more and more apparent that Britain could and would out last the Germans, US opinion began to swing toward supporting the Allies more openly.

 

Hello mikebatzel,

you could very well be correct - but maybe Churchill was the artist and Kennedy the purchaser and distributor of Winston Art.

Regards
Kruska

 

Churchill and Kennedy despised each other, the whole Kennedy appointment to the Court of St. James was a mistake which FDR recognized within two years. Kennedy's hatred of the British became more and more obvious as his time in Britain wore on, as the descentent of an Irish Catholic immigrant that is understandable.

In 1938, Roosevelt appointed Kennedy as the United States Ambassador to Britain. Prior to the bombing of Britain in 1940, Kennedy had clashed with Winston Churchill who had opposed efforts to negotiate a compromise with Hitler. Also, without authorization from President Roosevelt, Kennedy (openly) supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.

In 1938, as the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, Kennedy attempted again without FDR’s approval to obtain an audience with Adolf Hitler. In September 1940, shortly before World War II broke out, Kennedy once again without presidential approval sought to negotiate personally with Hitler.

On November 10, 1940 Kennedy told the Boston Sunday Globe that; "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here…" It isn't that [Britain is] fighting for democracy. That's the bunk. She's fighting for self-preservation, just as we will if it comes to us...I know more about the European situation than anybody else, and it's up to me to see that the country gets it."

When President Roosevelt read Kennedy’s quotes he recalled him from Britain, and ordered him to resign or be fired. After Kennedy left the oval office, FDR reportedly told the Secret Service: "Never let that son of a bitch in here again."


From:

Profiles in Treason: Joseph Kennedy, Tyler Kent And Scott McClellan

I don't think Churchill could sell Joe Sr. anything, Kennedy was an Anglophobe of the first water.

 

I would acctually agree with Kennedy's viewpoint - Churchill was indeed declaring a fight for self-preservation (We shall fight them on the Beaches, We shall fight them on .............) - That Churchill disliked the Nazis is understood but I also tend to share the viewpoint, that the Liberation of Europe from the Nazis did not come in before 1943/44 in view to the KZ, masskillings and deportation of as non-arian or sub-human defined people.

So indeed Churchill did manage to sell his painting - The most famous one was called BoB. or "fighting for self-preservation" and I find nothing wrong with that.

Regards
Kruska