DECISIVE BATTLES - Pick The Most Decisive and Provide Rationale...
 

What do you think was the most decisive battle in respect to how the outcome shaped a nation, culture or even society at the time?

Battle of Salamis. Naval battle in 480 BC. Greeks destroyed Persian naval force, prevented Persian king Xerxes from conquering Greece. One Persian army remained in Greece and was destroyed the following year, and the Greeks were able to start re-taking their territory. As the roots of Western civilization came from the Greeks, a different outcome at Salamis would have changed Western history.

I thought it was when I learned that I could protect myself by throwing a punch at the bully and busting his nose, and I didn't really need that bodyguard to help me (not that he was much use at that point...)

Very much the most decisive win.

mmmmmm Salami

The victory of the Dear Leader Kim Il-Sung over the US Yankee filthy dog warmonger oppressors invasion leading to the foundation of the land of milk and honey the workers paradise the Democratic Republic....of....oh wait.....that was Dipso's answer.

I'm not sure.

I'm waiting for TABS to weigh in...

Wanna see the invincible Spanish Armada?
Rent a submarine.

I was gonna with something more recent like Kursk or Stalingrad.

This about Stalingrad is, even if Germans had taken the city, the Russians would have kept fighting, the German supply lines would have kept extending, the winter would have kept coming, the US would have kept growing stronger, and the war's outcome would not have changed. Maybe extended for a year. IMO.

Well, I could rephrase that and say the entire Operation Barbarossa was one of the biggest military blunders of all time because it led to battles that Nazi Germany could never win and, had Barbarossa never happened, Germany would probably still control all of Europe today. Ditto for Hitler's declaring war on the U.S.

Midway.

D-Day.

Turning points.

I think the same for Battle of Midway and other great WW2 battles. With the weight of industrial might and population on their side, I think the Allies' victory did not depend on any one battle.

Operation Barbarossa (German invasion of Russia) was not a single battle, it was a huge strategic decision. So it may not count, depending on how broad the question is.

Unless, that is, you posit that an extra year would have allowed Germany to develop the A-bomb. I don't know how close they got.

Even then, suppose Hitler had built two A-bombs and nuked London and Moscow in 1946. The US had two bombs in 1945 and could have had several by 1946. We had no V2 but our bombers were hitting Berlin regularly. What would we have done? Would the fundamental course of history have changed?

Bah!!

The Bride vs O-Ren Ishii

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Pearl Harbor.

If the U.S. carrier fleet had been destroyed, the U.S. would have been fighting a defensive battle with Japan. Japan would have controlled China, Australia and all the airbases in the Pacific. There might have been a Japanese invasion of the western U.S. that we were ill prepared for.

Had Pearl Harbor been a complete Japanese success, our ability to wage war in Europe would have been extremely compromised.

Battle of Hastings....brought civilization to Britain and set the stage for their role as superpower for several hundred years...

Dennis

PS - If Harald would not have gone north....if the Welsh would have held steady...sigh....

The Battle of Marathon, B.C. 490, for all of jyl's reasons but w/o the salami.

For the US - Gettysburg

Cro-Magnon vs Neanderthal

I voted for Tours. The Caliphate was stopped cold. Had it not been....

Battle of France -> Germany outflanks the impregnable Maginot line and uses an unprecedented combination of tactics and technology to conquor France in record time, ushering in a new era of mobile, combined arms warfare and establishing the perimeter for "fortress Europe".