The Battles that Changed History (After 1900)

Which battle that you think is the most decisive and influential to world history?

  • Battle of Tsushima (1905)

    Votes: 13 11.7%
  • Battle of Marne (1914)

    Votes: 30 27.0%
  • Battle of Dublin (1916)

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Battle of Petrograd (1917)

    Votes: 13 11.7%
  • Battle of France (1918)

    Votes: 6 5.4%
  • Battle of the Atlantic (1939)

    Votes: 8 7.2%
  • Battle of Britain (1940)

    Votes: 9 8.1%
  • Battle of Midway (1942)

    Votes: 8 7.2%
  • Battle of Stalingrad (1942)

    Votes: 21 18.9%
  • Tet Offensive (1968)

    Votes: 2 1.8%

  • Total voters
    111
I went with the Battle of Tsuhima. Mostly because It would ensure Japanese dominance on the Far East, help to destabilize Russia, cause the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, and would lead to the mentality that help lead to the Pacific Campaigns in WWII.

It certifiably shuffled the deck in the east.
 
Battle of the Atlantic, with the Marne a close runner-up. Things like Stalingrad or Midway aren't really that important, when you look at the sheer size of the Allies compared to the Axis. Losing them would have been bitter blows, but they would have by no means been war-ending. In the Atlantic, on the other hand, Britain could easily have starved, a much heavier loss than a blasted wreck or a few carriers.
 
Point. However, this type of argument can be badly misused, extending causation to the beginning of time. Butterflies, don't ya know;).

I understand what you mean, it's just that in my mind, the Cold War id what dominated the 20th Century more than anything else, so Pterograd seem like the most logical pick.
 
I voted for the Marne; most of the others simply confirmed existing trends, as noted above.

This is doubly true for Midway: http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
It would have probably prolonged the war by a year or so if the Japanese had won. Shattered Sword makes a good case that they wouldn't have successfully captured the island even if they'd flipped the loss ratios in the naval battle.

Ditto Stalingrad; Germany was already loosing, Stalingrad just determined how far West the USSR would get before they met the Allies coming east.

Shattered Sword: http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Swo...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283963146&sr=8-1
 
So...the highest votes were Marne and Stalingrad...
I know that for Germany, victory in Marne = victory in WWI, while victory in Stalingrad = victory in WWII...but then the real question is which one that more profoundly changes present day, German victory in WWI, or in WWII...?

If you mean a Phillip K. Dick Nazi-victory world, the generally agreed opinion on this board isthat is ASB. A CP win after a victory at the Marne would have changed the world we live in tremendously. No USSR, no Hitler, no Fascism, no Holocaust,the old multinational European empires persist longer as does the Ottoman Empire. America remains isolationist, and the (probable) non-occurrence of the Great Depression radically changes the course of American internal politics. Actually not a bad world to live in...
 
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

You don't change history, you make it. So unless we are talking about time travel and changing historical events there are no battles that changed history. :mad::mad::mad::mad:
 

Markus

Banned
There's beer?????

Don´t despair, the RAF comes to the rescue:

spitale1.jpg
 
Saying that the Battle of the Marne caused Hitler is like saying that The Battle of Tsushima directly caused the October Revolution: German defeat doesn't neccessarily mean the rise of Hitler. The Weimar Republic could have survived and remained as a democracy, just as the Tsarist regime could have ground on through its reforms had it not been for the First World War. (But it could also have remained as a nasty, oppressive, but not USSR level of nastiness, state. Nicky was not a great reformer.) *sighs*

Still, whatever the AH speculation, the Germans, even if they had captured Stalingrad (not beyond the realms of possibility), could never have subdued the USSR, whereas if the German Army has taken Paris, the Great War would have came to a rapid Central Powers victory, which would have resulted in a radically different world today.

EDIT: And in terms of actual fighting, the Oktober Revolution was frankly a bit rubbish. A bunch of hilariously incompetent Bolsheviks supported by a cruiser with dud shells, led by Commissars who couldn't tell broken down artillery from clean pieces and lost their signal lanterns (source: "Young Stalin") vs the Provisional Government defended by, as a group of deserting Cossacks called it, a "bunch of Jews and wenches": a handful of Cossacks, a Women's Batallion (who posed for photographs on their barricade), and some military cadets who left the Winter palace for supper, never to be seen again. More people died in the making of Eisenstein's film than in the actual engagement (although several of the Women's Batallion ended up being raped, and the entire old Tsarist wine cellar was looted, despite repeated attempts by Lenin to stop the massive orgy of boozing that raged on, with wine literally running through the streets.) It wasn't, as revolutions go, a very good omen for the government that would follow...
 
But an early CP win after a Marne victory results in a far more traditionalist polity in the CP nations. the Kaiser's government policies would have been vindicated. The political trends in central Europe were trending towards a Bismarkian state socialism and this would probably have continued. Radicals and revolutionaries like Hitler, Roehm, et al. would have remained either as nobodies or as jailbirds. Goering would have remained a military man and Himmler would have continued to be a chicken farmer. Without a long war, it seems likely that the Okhrana could have easily dealt with the Bolshies.
 
Indeed. A Central Powers victory would have definitely meant no Hitler. (Although European Empires could get unpleasant at times, as could the Ottomans, albiet not to Nazi/Stalinist levels.) What I'm fed up about is that everyone automatically believes that a postwar Entente victory had to end up with an ex Austrian corporal, disabled by a gas attack when the war ended (not a particularly healthy situation for anyone) rising to power in Germany.
 
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