THE 11 MOST SIGNIFICANT BATTLES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

A‘battle’ is defined in this piece as an event that occurred in a particular place and over a relatively short time-span; the shortest of these battles lasted 90 minutes, the longest three months. Indeed, the Battle of the Atlantic was extremely significant, but it was not a battle: instead, it was a six-year series of battles, none of which was – in itself – decisive. The same is true of the five-year Allied bomber offensive.

Looking at the war in terms of ‘battles’ tends to increase the apparent importance of the Soviets; they fought more battles, and destroyed most of the German army. For me, the European war was inherently more significant in military and strategic terms than the Asia-Pacific war (this was also the view of the British, American and Soviet war leaders).

Had Hitler knocked Britain or the USSR out of the war he would have made the Third Reich a real