Moment of Battle

[pbrower2a]

My material from an old forum. It is general history specific to many times and places. Not all of these battles have a 4T quality about them...but some do. Some may have defined significant aspects of times from antiquity to now. Here is a start for discussion:

‘Moment of Battle’ author James Lacey on the most pivotal military battles in history.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/24804...mp=sem_outloud

Lacey's choices?

Marathon 490 BC (First Greco-Persian War -- unlikely Greek victory, prevented the Persian conquest of Greece)
Gaugamela 331 BC (Alexander's campaign against Persia-- caused the swift disintegration of the Persian Army)
Zama 202 BC (Second Punic War -- Carthage broken to a client state)
Teutoburger Wald 9 AD (Early Germanic tribes destroy the Roman XVII Legion and stop Roman expansion into northern Germany)
Adrianople 376 AD (Huge defeat of Imperial Rome, gross weakening of Roman authority and power in the west).
Yarmuk 636 AD (allows Arab/Muslim conquest of the Levant, North Africa, Sicily, and Spain)
Hastings 1066 AD (Allowed Norman conquest of England)
Spanish Armada 1588 (Thwarted Spanish hegemony in western Europe)
Breitenfeld 1631 (First Protestant victory in the Thirty Years War, established a continuing Protestant-Catholic division in German lands)
Annus Mirabilis 1759 (several British victories in the Seven-Years War worldwide)
Saratoga 1777 (First Continental victory, American War of Independence)
Trafalgar 1805 (British naval victory over France, thwarted Napoleonic hegemony in southwest Europe and led him eastward to his ruin)
Vicksburg 1863 (Severed the Confederate States of America)
Battle of the Marne 1914 (Stopped a swift German thrust into France that would have decided the war)
Battle of Britain 1940 (Prevented a Nazi invasion of Great Britain, inspired Hitler to go east to his ruin)
Midway 1942 (First US victory against Imperial Japan -- unambiguous turning point)
Kursk 1943 (German offensive stalled, German tank capacities gutted, Soviet advance into central Europe effectively unstoppable)
Normandy 1944 (Arguable death-blow to the Third Reich)
Dien Bien Phu 1954 (Forced French departure from Vietnam)
Objective Peach 2003 (Allowed the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein)

I will give my comment on these choices and give some of my alternatives.

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The most important of those battles may be the earliest ones for determining what cultural possibilities remain and what ethnic or religious identity is possible. Marathon is obvious because it prevents a Persian conquest that would have suppressed the rise of classical Greek culture with incalculable change afterward. Maybe the Golden Age of Greece still happens -- but I would not bet on it. Gaugamela allows Hellenistic culture to expand beyond the Levant as far as western India, with the spread of Greek esthetic norms into India and the fertilization of Indian culture (on effect being on the philosophical basis of Buddhism) with effects beyond India.



Zama? I would have chosen some other Punic defeat. A Punic conquest of Rome would have left a very different world -- one in which Semitic languages dominate in southwestern Europe. There would probably be no French, Spanish, or Portuguese language. Rome might be a micro-state of marginal interest to historians. The Punic Wars are of course critical to world history.

Teutoburger Wald? It prevented Roman expansion into the forested zones of central Europe. Germany would be German. German-speaking peoples soon came to dominate the middle of Europe, for better or worse.

Adrianople? The eastern part of the Roman Empire recovered, but at the expense of the stability of the West. In 100 years the Western Roman Empire would be no more.

Yarmuk? I can't overestimate that one. The still-powerful Byzantine Army was effectively severed, and the southern shore of the Mediterranean would be lost forever to the Classical World. Arab influence upon culture would spread in places from which it was finally ousted (Sicily, Spain, and Portugal). The Christian presence from Morocco to Libya would be destroyed, and once-influential Coptic Christianity would begin to dwindle.

Hastings? The final definition of English nationhood with the decisive transformation of the English language into the speech with a hybrid vocabulary (sheep/mutton).

Spanish Armada? The great storm that weakened the Spanish fleet allowed England to keep its independence and its Protestant identity -- and become the master of the High Seas. Without this victory, the British colonies from Newfoundland to Georgia never exist, and neither do the United States nor Canada.

Breitenfeld? This Protestant victory allowed northern Germany to remain Protestant. Germany would be ruled largely from Berlin and not from Vienna in the end. It also left some deep religious bigotry, much of which would be projected upon a people often identified with the letter "J", and we know how that ends.

Annus Mirabilis? I disqualify this one. Those were impressive victories, but they were many. We are looking at one victory and not several.

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Quote:Saratoga? I concur. Without this victory, the American struggle for independence withers and dies much like the anti-colonial revolt of Tupac Amaru II in Peru.
 
 Trafalgar? Enough said.
 
 Vicksburg? Better choice than Gettysburg (Confederate overreach), but I would have chosen some battle leading to Sherman's march through Georgia. My criteria involve a situation in which a powerful entity has a chance to win to one in which one of those entities is doomed. The American Civil War was more likely decided in eastern Tennessee. Chattanooga was the "Foundry of the South", and once it was gone the Confederacy lost much of its capacity to make weapons. The Confederacy would have done well enough without the rough frontier of Texas, insignificant Arkansas. and western Louisiana once it had lost New Orleans.
 
 Victory of the Marne? That prevented a rapid German thrust into France and swift victory in the West. In view of the collapse of Russia in the East, a German victory over France would have made Germany the arbiter of all in Europe.
 
 Battle of Britain? Probably more important than the Battle of Hastings. Reeling from a succession of defeats, the British finally got some victories that kept it from being consumed in the Devil's Reich. Hitler could not invade Britain; the Holocaust would be prevented in England through military force alone. Britain would eventually get an ally which would use the country as a collection of air bases for bombers and fighters -- and of course the final death-blow to the Evil Empire through the Normandy invasion.
 
 To give some idea of the cultural impact -- Star Wars IV: A New Hope seems heavily modeled after this death struggle between nearly-pure good and nearly-pure evil.
 
 Kursk? Germany had just been defeated badly at Stalingrad, but this offensive quickly led to a complete Soviet victory after which the Wehrmacht could only retreat -- sometimes with some order, and sometimes in complete disarray. Before Kursk, the Wehrmacht seemed to have a chance at the least to recover and get a stable line somewhere well to the east of the border of the Soviet Union at the start of Operation Barbarossa. Within a year the Third Reich was dead.
 
 Midway? I can hardly imagine more critical battle of the Pacific. If the United States lost Midway it would have lost Hawaii and had at most a defensive perimeter on the Pacific Coast. The Japanese would have conquered isolated Australia and New Zealand, perhaps while facing ferocious resistance by people who expected to be enslaved or slaughtered upon defeat. But those people would be defeated and decimated if not exterminated. Australia and New Zealand would probably be nearly depopulated and made 'magically' available for settlement by Japanese. Considering how badly the thug Japanese Empire treated people such as Koreans and Chinese similar to themselves in general appearance, let alone such people as the Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Burmese who could be starved if the Japanese military wanted the foodstocks, one can only imagine a Japanese-Australian war as a succession of massacres resembling Wounded Knee. Midway determined the fate of a continent -- even if that continent was 'only' Australia.
 
 The Normandy Invasion? That was several giant battles, strictly speaking. It proved the death-blow to the Third Reich, but only after the Reich was reeling in Italy and in Russia. The Allies broke out slowly and made decisive progress only after George Patton forced an assault to the south of German troops inland of the beachheads and destroyed those in the Falaise pocket, creating a disaster as severe as Stalingrad for the German Army and causing the German position in France to disintegrate. Within a year, the war was over. But was it the difference between a powerful Third Reich and a doomed Third Reich? Hardly. By then the Soviet armed forces were roughly at positions closely described by the Soviet border as of 1938 -- and Finland had been knocked out of the war.
 
 Dien Bien Phu? I can't figure why the French tried to stay in Indochina any longer than they did. They were disgraced there in World War II. But it was one colony. All of the former French Indochina would eventually fall to Commie rule -- but over twenty-some years after Dien Bien Phu.
 
 Operation Peach? Just look at the continuing presence of US forces in Iraq. Whoops!

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 12-01-2015 at 07:44 PM.

OK -- my criteria are:
 
1. That both sides are considered powerful and so look before, but one side is utterly defeated, either being eventually absorbed by the victor of that battle (Gaugamela) or being stripped of  a huge chunk of its territory which it can never recover (Battle of Yarmuk) .

2. One side seems doomed, yet survives to become an eventual victor (Battle of Britain).

3. It is one distinct battle, let it be disqualified. The Normandy Invasion may have been a masterpiece of planning and execution -- and of course bravery of well-motivated troops -- but it is multiple beachheads. Likewise Annus Mirabilis.

4. Victory by an unexpected survivor allows that survivor to become a Great Power (Yarmuk again, Spanish Armada).

5. Genocide is committed in its wake or seems likely to be committed in its wake lest one side win. The British avoided both the Spanish Inquisition (Spanish Armada) and the Holocaust as well as a program of murderous repression (Battle of Britain).

6. Victory implies the survival of a people and its culture (as I see Midway for Australia or New Zealand) or defines what cultural and religious identity is possible (the Punic Wars -- is the western Mediterranean basin Punic or Roman in late classical times? Marathon, certainly, because if the Greeks did not win that battle there might never have been a Golden Age of Greece.

7. A political entity imperial in scale forms (Saratoga -- USA within six years) or is thwarted (Battle of the Marne).

8. A people or peoples scheduled for subjection maintain independence after the decisive defeat of would-be conquerors who choose not to return. Failure of the colonizer to return is the difference between Teutoburger Wald and Little Big Horn.

9. The struggle is not fore-ordained. Poland was doomed to defeat by its geometry in 1939. The battle is not simply the end of a doomed entity (let us say the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

10. The battle isn't noteworthy solely for its bloodiness.

B Butler;472959 Wrote:I have a soft spot for Vicksburg, not the siege, and not for taking the last major bastion on the Mississippi, but for Grant's marching a big army away from its chain of supply.  Grant took something of a risk, crossing the river south of Vicksburg and marching on the offensive without leaving troops behind to guard a supply train.  This allowed him to march fast and hit hard.  Prior to that crossing, even though the north had advantages in numbers, they were seldom able to exploit them as they spent too much of their force anchoring themselves to their supply route.

Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana in fact mattered little to whether the Confederacy thrived as a military power or failed. What mattered more was the Confederate ability to produce weapons, and once the Confederacy lost the foundries of Chattanooga it could never have the artillery necessary for then-modern warfare. It's easy to overestimate the significance of cutting off Texas because Texas is so important today. But the Confederacy was not operating on oil.

Quote:Without that first experiment in marching a large force out of supply, I doubt the March to the Sea would have happened.

It was easier after Vicksburg for the Union to enforce the naval blockade of the South because it had the Mississippi as a supply line for New Orleans. But if the Union capture of Vicksburg was a psychological blow, the campaign through eastern Tennessee and Sherman's march through Georgia effectively cut the South in two equal and ineffective halves politically and militarily and deprived the South of supplies and munitions. The Confederacy still had the desire in which to fight, but its communications were severed and its key supplies of food and munitions were cut off.

Quote:Also, prior to Vicksburg, the Army of the Potomac averaged about 6 miles a day on the road.  In the marches just prior to Gettysburg, General Mead parked the wagon trains to allow the troops priority on the roads.  Thirty miles a day was common.  The histories don't mention this change in marching doctrine save in describing how hungry and exhausted the Union forces were as the Battle of Gettysburg started.  Still, I see it as crucial.  Stuart was unable to execute a clean ride around the Union rear as the federal troops moved must faster than expected and got in his way.  Lee took the offensive on the second and third days of fighting because he knew where the Union forces were several days prior, knew they couldn't possibly have reached Gettysburg in numbers yet.  Lee thought he had a numbers advantage that didn't exist.

Gettysburg looks like a Confederate blunder. It looks like a pincer movement intended to cut the Union in half, but such would have failed. Those who know the topography of Pennsylvania recognize that once one leaves the fertile southeast of Pennsylvania near Harrisburg one enters some rough terrain. The only natural route north from Harrisburg is through a canyon. March through a canyon only if survival of troops and victory don't matter much because the enemy will have natural emplacements for picking off any advancing army and wagon trains with the artillery weapons of the day, whether javelins or Katyusha rockets. The Confederacy would have been wiser to turn east in an attempt to take Baltimore and cut off the formal chain of leadership.       

Quote:But the above is way down in the details.  How often does a battle really turn a war?  If Gettysburg and Vicksburg were decisive it was in giving Lincoln the victories he needed to win the election.

He could have suspended the election on the pretext that many of the States were unable to vote. Such is a choice that he was glad not to need to make. Winning the war mattered more to him than did the formality of an election.    

Quote:Midway was no doubt a big important battle that took the wind out of Japan's major offensive operations, but when the Essex class carriers started hitting the sea and the Hellcats took to the air, whatever happened earlier wouldn't have mattered a lot.  The Pacific War was one of attrition.  Japan was walking a doomed path from the start.

Hawaii is the last landmass in the Pacific Ocean on any naval route between Australia and New Zealand in the southwest and either Canada, the western United States, or Mexico in the northeast. If the Japanese naval forces could take Midway they were in position to take Hawaii and effectively cut off any possible Allied defense of the South Pacific from the US. Such would not have ended the Pacific War as such, but it would have cut off Australia and New Zealand. Australians and New Zealanders would have put up spirited defenses much like the Plains Indians did to the US Army -- but with a similar result in the end. Nobody could have been able to aid them in stopping a more powerful enemy with greater resources and more ammunition by the Japanese Armed Forces. The US would have been able to defend the Pacific Coast with comparative ease, but the Japanese would have never had to wage a naval battle of attrition against the USA because it could avoid it. Considering how badly the Japanese armed forces treated any captured Caucasians during WWII the Japanese conquests of Australia and New Zealand would have resulted in one Wounded Knee-style battle after another all the way to Perth, Hobart, and Wellington. Australia and New Zealand would be gone forever as large outposts of Western civilization and become part of the Far East indefinitely. That was potentially the naval equivalent of the Battle of Yarmuk, the battle that defined the Middle Ages. Just think: without the Battle of Yarmuk going as it did for the Arab Muslim armies, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt could be Christian countries.       

Quote:In a similar way, I am somewhat dubious about the entire list.  Did the battles listed actually turn the war involved, or were they just the most important incidents in conflicts that would have ended as they ended anyway even if a given battle went the other way.  D-Day was for sure important, but if the allies had been repulsed on the beaches could freeing up German Western Front troops and sending them back east have decisively defeated the Russians before the allies geared up to try again?

The United States was developing the atom bomb, and so long as it could deliver one to a German city, it could have destroyed the chain of command within the Reich. That would have taken until August 1945... but the Allies had a pretext for such -- the Holocaust. The German people were spared such a result not because they were white (something that Allied propaganda deliberately underplayed) but instead that Japan was still fighting in August 1945.  In any event, the D-day invasion was not enough to defeat the Third Reich. One of two things would have happened had the Normandy invasion failed: the Soviet Armies would have chased the German Armed Forces all the way to the Franco-Spanish border with "socialist republics" on the Continent except for Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Portugal (Stalin would have invaded Spain if given a chance) or the Allies would have had the atom bomb to decide things.  The Normandy did not so much defeat Nazi Germany as keep the Iron Curtain somewhere in the middle of Europe instead of at the English Channel and Gibraltar.

The Allies did have most of Italy under control, having taken Rome on June 4, 1944. British and American forces might have still landed in the Balkans with devastating effect upon the Reich. But that requires a battle that Lacey does not put in his list.

Quote:But playing games like "important battles" can keep an armchair historian amused.

Indeed.   I notice that none of the battles were in the Far East (ethnocentrism?) except for Midway, which ensured that the Far East did not include Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand, and Dien Bien Phu. None involved the Spanish conquest of the Inca and Aztec empires -- permanent destruction of impressive political orders. Not one is involved in any war for independence from Spain in the New World. Not one is in sub-Saharan Africa. I can think of two critical battles that Lacey neglected for their effects upon two medieval Empires. I will discuss those choices in my next post.

The Battle of Britain, Kursk, and Midway are toward the top of my list. World War II will have decided much that is possible from then. The colonial order withered and died; World War Ii was heavily a contest over colonial empires that now no longer exist.

There might again be wars as bloody as World War II, most likely between the Great Powers of the time (let us say India vs. Russia), but the colonial empires over which much of World War II was waged will not re-appear -- new material by PB).

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Quote: Some that I would include:
 
 al-Qadisiya, 636. It shattered any meaningful resistance of the Sassanid (Zoroastrian Persian) Empire and allowed the Islamification of Persia, Central Asia, Sind, Afghanistan, Bengal, and Indonesia. Zoroastrianism quickly disappeared as a major religion. As important as the Battle of Yarmuk for its consequences. The impressive Sassanid Empire disintegrated quickly as a political entity.
 
 (Is there any question that ad 636 is one of the critical years of human history?)
 
 Tours/Poitiers (probably somewhere between them), 732 -- Charles Martel stops and reverses the Arab invasion of Western Europe. Carolingian Empire (source of modern France and Germany alike) can form. Historical details are murky in the extreme.
 
 Manzikert, 1071. Effectively gutted the Byzantine Empire which until then was a major power. Although the Seljuk Turks would only start the process and others (the Crusaders and the Serbs) would contribute to its demise, the Byzantine Empire lost its breadbasket. Asia Minor went from being Christian and predominantly Greek and Armenian to Islamic and Turkish. The Ottomans might have been a different tribe of Turks, but they became the effective heirs of the Byzantine Empire and a superpower in southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and North Africa.
 
 Siege of Vienna, 1683. The high-water mark of Turkish expansion into central Europe. The Ottoman Empire had a chance to win; had it done so it would have knocked out the Hapsburg monarchy. As a music lover I note this for a cultural effect: in the real historical timeline, Vienna becomes the center of the musical world. Would the great flowering of post-baroque music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert have occurred had the Turks conquered Vienna had Turkish rule continued for a century there? Add such people as Liszt, Smetana, Dvorak, Schoenberg, and even Bartok. A huge chunk of the repertory of Classical music might not appear, which would be a huge difference.
 
 Adowa, 1896. Italy had designs on the Ethiopian Empire... and failed catastrophically. This was the only major defeat of European colonialists, and the Ethiopian Empire would survive until 1975 with the exception of a few years of Italian Rule -- ended by British liberators who chose to restore the empire. For the first time in a long time, European colonists were shown as something other than invincible.
 
 Tannenburg, 1914 -- if the Battle of the Marne prevented the swift German conquest of France, the German victory at Tannenberg sealed the doom of Imperial Russia. By February 1917 a revolution toppled Tsar Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty -- likely forever. In November 1917 Lenin would stage his coup and establish the world's first Socialist state, his Bolshevik dictatorship and the first totalitarian state. Even though World War I would not end as a German victory it would not end without political chaos. Lenin would dispossess aristocrats, financiers, and plutocrats; he would also offend holders of traditional values with his militant atheism as official policy. Aping Lenin, extreme socialists saw the post-war chaos as an opportunity for revolutions that would topple capitalism and Christianity. The Hard Right in central and eastern Europe established their own counter-revolution in fascism and National Socialism which would adopt the totalitarian repression of Bolshevism in the service of entrenched elites while using Bolshevism as a pretext for right-wing, anti-democratic revolutions. Because persons of Jewish origin figured heavily in Bolshevism, the European Right which had never shown much sympathy toward Jews became extremely hostile to all Jews under any circumstances. Such hostility would culminate in Babi Yar and Auschwitz.
 
 Many of the current borders in Europe exist as defined in 1919, with practically all of the States coming into existence in the aftermath of World War I now in existence even if they have been subjugated at some time in the mean. The collapse of the tsarist order made such possible. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Moldavia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan would not exist without the collapse of the Romanov Dynasty -- made possible by the Battle of Tannenberg.
 
 One consequence is that Paul von Hindenburg became a war hero even after Germany capitulated after World War I and became President of the German Republic. As he was going senile in 1933 some charming, charismatic politician pulled the wool over his eyes. Enough said.
 
 Second Battle of El Alamein, 1942. The Axis Powers seemed in a fortuitous position in which to take the Nile Delta (in modern times as in ancient times a rich land of agricultural production) and destroy the British position in the eastern Mediterranean, destroy the inchoate Zionist settlement in Palestine, and connect to an anti-Allied, fascistic regime in Iraq, effectively cutting off Middle Eastern oil from the Allies. The Second Battle of El Alamein put an end to that -- and led to the swift advance of British forces in Libya and Tunisia, where they combined with fresh American troops to eliminate all Axis presence in North Africa with few mortal casualties on either side -- but few escapes of German or Italian troops to continue fighting in Europe -- including Italy.
 
 I give it precedence over the Normandy invasions because without this win and the subsequent success of the Allied invasions of Sicily and the southern mainland of Italy the Allies might have never tried the Normandy invasion.
 
 Two involving Conquistadores through "Trojan Horse" strategies:
 
 Tenochtitlan, 1521 -- Spanish conquest, under Hernán Cortés, of the Aztec Empire after some defeats that the Aztec rulers thought had finished off the Spanish.
 
 Cajamarca, 1532 -- Spanish conquest, under Francisco Pizarro, of the Inca Empire
 
 Native-American dynasties have never resurfaced in the New World.
 
 My guess on the critical battle of the Chinese Revolution/Civil War:
 
 Jinzhao, 1948 -- utter failure of the Nationalist forces to coordinate caused the Maoist capture of whole divisions and their war materiel, and access to much of the armaments industry of China. Part of the Lioshan Campaign, it reversed the relative strength of Communist and Nationalist forces. The Communists fully took over Manchuria and its industrial capacity and could soon -- and swiftly -- capture the North China Plain with the near-dissolution of the Nationalist Army in mainland China within a year.
 
 The Chinese Civil War is one of the swiftest overturnings of rule in so large a territory as has ever happened through warfare. One Great Power remains intact, but a political regime diametrically opposed to the previous regime completely supplants the earlier one.

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 06-17-2013 at 06:44 PM.

My choices:

Marathon 490 BC (First Greco-Persian War -- unlikely Greek victory, prevented the Persian conquest of Greece)
Gaugamela 331 BC (Alexander's campaign against Persia-- caused the swift disintegration of the Persian Army, allows the spread of Greek philosophical and esthetic influences into India -- subtle influence upon Buddhism?)
Zama 202 BC (Second Punic War -- Carthage broken to a client state)
Teutoburger Wald 9 AD (Early Germanic tribes destroy the Roman XVII Legion and stop Roman expansion into northern Germany)
Adrianople 376 AD (Huge defeat of Imperial Rome, gross weakening of Roman authority and power in the west).
Yarmuk 636 AD (allows Arab/Muslim conquest of the Levant, North Africa, Sicily, and Spain)
al-Qadisiya 636AD (disintegration of the Sassanid Empire, Islamization of Persia, Central Asia, Sind, Bengal, and Indonesia possible, Zoroastrianism ruined as a major world religion)
Poitiers 732 AD (Arabs turned back in northwestern France, giving western Europe a chance to develop culturally, politically, and technologically)
Divine Wind, 1281 (prevented Mongol invasion of Japan -- Japan's equivalent of the Spanish Armada)
Spanish Armada 1588 (Thwarted Spanish hegemony in western Europe)
Breitenfeld 1631 (First Protestant victory in the Thirty Years War, established a continuing Protestant-Catholic division in German lands)
Siege of Vienna, 1688 (Cultural effect -- the Austrian victory over the Turks allowed the flourishing of the greatest era of music ever)
Saratoga 1777 (First Continental victory, American War of Independence)
Trafalgar 1805 (British naval victory over France, thwarted Napoleonic hegemony in southwest Europe and led him eastward to his ruin)
Third Battle of Chattanooga, 1863 (Confederacy doomed afterward to Sherman's thrust into Georgia and lost of its  munitions factories)
Battle of the Marne 1914 (Stopped a swift German thrust into France that would have decided the war)
Tannenberg 1914 (Russian early advantages irretrievably lost, Bolshevik Revolution and Nazism made possible)
Battle of Britain 1940 (Prevented a Nazi invasion of Great Britain, inspired Hitler to go east to his ruin, Normandy invasion made possible)
Midway 1942 (First US victory against Imperial Japan -- unambiguous turning point; kept Australia and New Zealand in the West instead of the Far East)
Second battle of El Alamein, 1942 (German and Italians routed from a strong position and forced incessantly out of Africa; fascist Italy made vulnerable)
Kursk 1943 (German offensive stalled, German tank capacities gutted, Soviet advance into central Europe effectively unstoppable)
Jinzhao, 1948 (Nationalists and Communists reversed in relative power in a short time due to Nationalist incompetence; Communists could take China)

Special mention: Siege of Troy, semi-legendary (we get the Illiad and the Odyssey out of that)
Tenochtitlan, 1521; Cajamarca, 1534 -- Spanish conquests, Trojan Horse methods,  of Mexico and Peru, dissolution of Aztec and Inca Empires, no subsequent possibility of any First Peoples tribe to establish dominion over any American state, Christianization of most of Latin America

I'm not putting Adowa on my list. Italy eventually invaded forty years later under a more ruthless regime and with military technology more overpowering. The Ethiopian Empire lasted only 80 years after Adowa.

I may not have twenty. I chose to drop Hastings because the Anglo-Saxons ultimately prevailed in language, and even if the Normans had successfully established Norman French as the permanent language of England... maybe such people as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Orwell would have written as convincingly -- in something resembling the speech of William the Conqueror. I chose El Alamein over the Normandy invasion because it allowed the invasion of Sicily, without which the Allies might have been chary of the Normandy invasion. The Divine Wind that thwarted a Mongol invasion of Japan allowed Japan to maintain its isolation and uniqueness. Tannenburg starts a road to ruin for the decrepit Russian Empire. The Confederacy, the last political entity dedicated primarily to the preservation of slavery, is a viable military power until it loses its ability to produce munitions.
 

A decisive battle in China that allows Mao to take over is far bigger than Dien Bien Phu because China is much bigger and more important in economics and military position than is Vietnam.

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Basically a new interruption in the re-posting of material:

Somewhat new and worthy of contemplation. I happen to like my music long and structured, and I like it to offer a universe of emotions. The  Octet in F by Franz Schubert exemplifies that.





Had the Ottoman Empire defeated Austria in 1683, would music like this ever be written?

Hitler lost the war because of his atrocities, persecutions, and oppression. The Battle of Britain took place about as reports came out from Poland, and had it not been for those even Churchill might have accepted a sauve-qui-peut deal. Keep the colonies, restore pre-war governments in Holland, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway, recognize German hegemony in Poland and the Vichy regime in France... Churchill knew how Britain could be defeated, and even if war is always a zero-sum game it is not always complete loss for the survivors. But such implies a different character as leader of Germany, perhaps one who would have never set upon a course of conquest unless forced into it.

That's before I discuss the Soviet Union, a damnable order that would have fallen to any conqueror who promised free enterprise, freedom of religion, and an end to the brutal political order. Nazi satellite states from Estonia to the Caucasus would have satisfied the national aspirations of people other than the Jews. I can't say how long a puppet state in Russia would have lasted.

Victory comes from sapping the will of the other side to resist, which clearly contrasts Britain, America, and Free France from the Soviet Union and the Axis Powers other than Finland. There are reversals that allow the loser of one battle to survive and subsequently strike back harder or elsewhere. There are also reversals that turn a likely winner into a loser... or turn a stalemate into an irretrievable rout. Kasserine Pass? That was a US defeat... but soon afterward the US Army came back with a larger and better-trained force and within a few months had closed in on Axis forces that had gotten away from the British. Market-Garden? The Allies found better directions of advance than Holland.

Hitler exemplifies the worst sort of leader that a country could get through partially-democratic process: an anger-filled zealot who uses power with the ultimate purpose of self-glorification and the settling of old scores. Once someone is a leader he had better sacrifice some old enmities. Recent rivals could make desirable allies. Lacking caution, conscience, and kindness he could only bring disaster. But without question he had superb military, technological, and economic resources behind him. He signed onto strategies that none but his lackeys would sign onto, and some of those proved brilliant. Some of them turned into the greatest blunders of all time.

I listened to this music at a desperate point in my life. Not that I am that important, of course. Culture gives meaning to life. Without it we can easily have ugly souls.

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Re: World War II

Hitler lost the war because of his atrocities, persecutions, and oppression. The Battle of Britain took place about as reports came out from Poland, and had it not been for those even Churchill might have accepted a sauve-qui-peut deal. Keep the colonies, restore pre-war governments in Holland, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway, recognize German hegemony in Poland and the Vichy regime in France... Churchill knew how Britain could be defeated, and even if war is always a zero-sum game it is not always complete loss for the survivors. But such implies a different character as leader of Germany, perhaps one who would have never set upon a course of conquest unless forced into it.

That's before I discuss the Soviet Union, a damnable order that would have fallen to any conqueror who promised free enterprise, freedom of religion, and an end to the brutal political order. Nazi satellite states from Estonia to the Caucasus would have satisfied the national aspirations of people other than the Jews. I can't say how long a puppet state in Russia would have lasted.

Victory comes from sapping the will of the other side to resist, which clearly contrasts Britain, America, and Free France from the Soviet Union and the Axis Powers other than Finland. There are reversals that allow the loser of one battle to survive and subsequently strike back harder or elsewhere. There are also reversals that turn a likely winner into a loser... or turn a stalemate into an irretrievable rout. Kasserine Pass? That was a US defeat... but soon afterward the US Army came back with a larger and better-trained force and within a few months had closed in on Axis forces that had gotten away from the British. Market-Garden? The Allies found better directions of advance than Holland.

Hitler exemplifies the worst sort of leader that a country could get through partially-democratic process: an anger-filled zealot who uses power with the ultimate purpose of self-glorification and the settling of old scores. Once someone is a leader he had better sacrifice some old enmities. Recent rivals could make desirable allies. Lacking caution, conscience, and kindness he could only bring disaster. But without question he had superb military, technological, and economic resources behind him. He signed onto strategies that none but his lackeys would sign onto, and some of those proved brilliant. Some of them turned into the greatest blunders of all time.