Moscow battle failed Operation Barbossa and is the bloodiest battle in the 20th century. How can you not say it's the most important?

Somme, French front was pretty stationary, no important battles fought there until October-November 1918. They barely even got into Alsace at the war's end!

Smolensk Battle - Maybe we can beat the Germans?
Moscow Battle - I think we can beat the Germans.
Stalingrad Battle - We're going to beat the Germans.
Kursk Battle - LET'S BEAT THE GERMANS!

Edited 5/1/2015 18:51:44

The most important battle in history of our planet is humans vs aliens. It will happen in the future.

The most important battle in history of our planet is humans vs aliens. It will happen in the future.

The most important battle of history happens in the future. You see the problem here?

Time when the battle will happen will be history... someday.

Somme and Verdun were clearly the most decisive battles of ww1, as I said earlier because they deeply impacted the Germans morally and as millions of soldiers were sacrificed, the German front was consequently weakened (as we can see just after Verdun battle, the Germans were finally expelled and they could never go further). How can you say that there were no important battles in the west front, those battles were by far the bloodiest, using the most modern artillery ever of that period and were the battlefront of the 3 major and biggest armies (Germany, France and Great Britain).

As for ww2, I believe (unless you show me reliable figures and serious studies on that topic) that Stalingrad was more important than Moscow, just one fact: If Stalingrad was taken the Germans could have taken the great and vital reserves of oil, gas and raw materials (that was the main reason of the invasion of USSR, increase the German lebensraum and the rich industrial lands of Southern Russia) whereas Moscow was just symbolic, and as we know with Napoleon, even if an army takes Moscow you do not control Russia at all.

Doesn't really matter how bloody the battle is, just what you accomplish with the blood you paid. French front was very stationary - like I said, they just barely got to Germany in November (while much of the French and almost all Belgian land was still German). Vardar Offensive pushed back Bulgaria and soon forced them to surrender, the Third Transjordan Offensive pushed back Turkey, and did not stop until Turkey surrendered.

Stalingrad was a big battle, no denying that. But if the Germans captured Stalingrad without too much trouble, there would be another chance: Astrakhan. Going to Kazakhstani oil fields would be troublesome due to West Kazakhstan terrain.

Moscow, there was no chance. Napoléon captured Moscow, but what was Moscow? Not a capital. Moscow was by far the biggest industrial middle Russia had, and the Germans changed the operation's name to Operation Fuck-up after Moscow Battle (They were very disappointed and considered Operation Barbossa a failure.)

Vardar Offensive pushed back Bulgaria... etc

Don't mention that word! Andreas might come here!

Evil Mongol, pleaze go bak to wher u came frum.

They were all equally important.

One I haven't seen mentioned much:
•Battle of Marathon (490 BC) Athens and Plataea vs Persian Empire. It's impossible to judge the importance of this battle as it was so long ago with many things inbetween. But Greece was definitely the birth of the Western culture, civilisation and democracy. If Persia had occupied Athens, who knows if this culture and democracy would have been stopped or changed. I believe eventually there would have been a revival but this could have fatally effected it. As John Stuart Mills put it "The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings"

I like how this sums it up "Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago, a council of Athenian Officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization."

Battle of Britain was also pretty important in WW2 and has anyone mentioned D-Day.

What do you think about battle of Vienna in 1683? Did it really stop islamic invasion in Europe?

Yes it did. But arguably the Ottomans were never going to beat a Christian coalition. Before or after.

1683 never forget..... Poland saves Europe

With all due respect to Bulgaria, the Vardar Offensive and Bulgaria's surrender was not a decisive factor. As for Turkey it was already a weak state, facing internal revolts and their surrender did not influenced that much the overall course of the war.

Edited 5/2/2015 23:20:04

D-Day wasn't that important militarily. From a political aspect, it would play a role in early cold war politics.

Bulgaria was a weak state, but it gave a big morale victory to the Allies (one down, three to go). Turkey was facing internal revolts, but other than Jerusalem and middle Iraq, the British did not make more progress until 1918 fall. Also, internal revolts were happening in Germany and Austriahungary, too.

Stalingrad, 1942-1943


This is the battle that effectively ended Hitler’s quest for world dominance and started Germany down the long road towards ultimate defeat in World War Two. Fought between July, 1942 and February, 1943, by the time it was over, 1.5 million men had been killed, captured, or wounded, with 91,000 Germans being taken prisoner and an entire German Army being wiped from the face of the Earth. So bad were German losses that the German army never fully recovered and was forced to largely take the defensive for the remainder of the war. (With the possible exceptions of the Battle of Kursk in July, 1943 and the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944, the German Army never mounted a major offensive again.) While it’s unlikely that a German victory at Stalingrad would have cost the Russians the war, it would certainly have extended it by many months, possibly even giving the Germans the time required to perfect their own version of the atomic bomb.

Midway Island, 1942


What Stalingrad was to the Germans, the naval air engagement that raged between Japan and the United States for three days in June, 1942, was for the Japanese. Admiral Yamamoto’s plan was to seize Midway Island—a tiny atoll some four hundred miles west of Hawaii—which he planned to use as a springboard from which to attack the strategic islands later. Much to his surprise, he was met by a taskforce of American carriers under the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz and, in a battle that could have easily gone either way, he lost all four of his aircraft carriers, along with all their aircraft and some of his finest pilots, to Admiral Nimitz’ smaller American fleet. The defeat effectively spelled the end to Japanese expansion across the Pacific and dealt Japan a defeat she would never recover from. This is also one of the few battles in World War Two in which it was the Americans who were outnumbered and outmatched and yet they still won. Way to go, Chester!

Yorktown, 1781


In terms of numbers, this was a pretty puny battle (8,000 American troops, supported by 8,000 French troops, against some 9,000 British troops) but by the time it ended on October 19, 1781, it changed the world forever. The indomitable British Empire, the super power of its day, should have easily defeated the rag-tag colonists under George Washington, and for most of the war, they generally had the upper hand. By 1781, however, the upstart Americans had learned how to fight and, having acquired the assistance of England’s arch enemy, France, had become a small but professional fighting force. As a result, the British under Cornwallis found themselves trapped on a peninsula between the determined Americans on the one side and a French fleet on the other that made escape impossible and so, after a couple of weeks of fighting, they surrendered. In doing so, the Americans defeated the world’s premier military power and gained independence for some backwoods country in the new world called the United States of America.

1. Moscow battle is more important - it failed Operation Barbossa and was the bloodiest battle in history.

2. Why would Japan need Midway island? Japan weren't really trying in the Pacific island front, they were too busy working it in Indonesia and Indochina. The aircraft carriers were pretty much best utilised in the Pacific islands, but that dœsn't mean they wre really trying to keep worthless islands.

3. No, Britain was fighting against two times as many, including highly trained French troops. Also, premier military power then was Russia. Also, the whole war was unimportant, and like you said, the battle was puny.

America's war for independence affected France's revolution. It is by far an important part of history. Of course, America only becomes interesting again after Monroe doctrine and stops being interesting again after manifest destiny, and etc.