Most significant battle of the 20th Century?

[daveymck]

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The Somme
It's plausible to argue No Somme == No WWII. The carnage and waste of human life was greater than any WWII battle, and left all the participants (understandably) so traumatized that they spawned large influential pacificism movements back in their homelands afterwards.

Had France and Britain not been gripped by pacifism after WWI, they may have stopped Hitler before it was too late.

The Battle of the Atlantic
Before Hitler invaded Russia, he was after Britain. And Britain almost certainly would have fallen without U.S. support via transports of supplies across the Atlantic. And German U-boats did their damndest to sink them all... and lost. We got the upper hand on the U-Boats and we supplied the Brits with enough to survive. They held off Germany until Hitler got frustrated and turned East.

If Britain falls.... well we might all be speaking German right now.



natedogg

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I think the battle/war that more changed the face of europe in the second half of the last century was the civil war in russia, had the white army won then there may not have been a cold war and who knows how the world would be now.

With regard to the Battle of the Atlantic, being British we would argue the Battle of Britain going on at the time was of more improtance as it held back any potential invasion. One thing we were taught in history is that Hitler was not that keen to invade Britain as we were part of the pure race he was wanting to take forward, he would have much rather we surrendered without an invasion.

I think Pearl Harbour is a key moment as well as it finally forced the US hand to actually do activlly fight instead of just lending support.

I dont think it was just the Somme that led to the change in politics, World War 1 overall was a mass butchering and also was the first probably in the media spolight with the public getting a feel for what war was about, as well as whole communities having their menfolk wiped out due to the way the army was organised.

Hitler could have been nipped in the bud but the British and French didnt come down on him they let him inch forward testing them all the way but no resistance came so he was able to invade Poland.