History's most decisive battle?

[Ouistreham]

Almost all battles listed in that book are of a mere symbolic value. They didn't change anything to the outcome of the conflicts they were part of.

Enjoy the moronic comments (underlined in bold):

Victory of Arminius over the Roman Legions under Varus, AD 9
Known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Excerpt: ..that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the Teutonic race.

The Battle of Châlons, AD 451
Also called the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields or the Battle of the Catalun.
Excerpt: The victory which the Roman general, Aëtius, with his Gothic allies, had then gained over the Huns, was the last victory of imperial Rome.

The Battle of Tours, AD 732
Also called the Battle of Poitiers.
Excerpt: the great victory won by Charles Martel ... gave a decisive check to the career of Arab conquest in Western Europe.

The Battle of Hastings, AD 1066
Excerpt: ..no one who appreciates the influence of England and her empire upon the destinies of the world will ever rank that victory as one of secondary importance.

Joan of Arc's Victory over the English at Orléans, AD 1429
Known as the Siege of Orléans.
Excerpt: ..the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada, AD 1588
Excerpt: The England of our own days is so strong, and the Spain of our own days is so feeble, that it is not easy, without some reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world.

The Battle of Blenheim, AD 1704
Excerpt: Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.

The Battle of Pultowa, AD 1709
Also called the Battle of Poltava.
Excerpt: The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa was therefore all-important to the world, on account of what it overthrew as well as for what it established

Victory of the Americans over Burgoyne at Saratoga, AD 1777
Excerpt: The ancient Roman boasted, with reason, of the growth of Rome from humble beginnings to the greatest magnitude which the world had then ever witnessed.

The Battle of Valmy, AD 1792
Excerpt: ..the kings of Europe, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, trembled once more before a conquering military republic.

The Battle of Waterloo, AD 1815
Excerpt: The exertions which the allied powers made at this crisis to grapple promptly with the French emperor have truly been termed gigantic, and never were Napoleon's genius and activity more signally displayed than in the celerity and skill by which he brought forward all the military resources of France...

Teutoburger Wald, Champs Catalauniques (Châlons), Poitiers (Tours) and Poltawa are classical instances of overstretched invasion attempts that were due to come to a halt somewhere at some moment.

Blenheim has no importance except in the minds of British jingoists.
Had Napoleon prevailed in Waterloo, he would then have faced much bigger invasion threats with Russians and Austrians, and you cannot win against a coalition made of the rest of the world. Joan of Arc, Saratoga: in both cases the English would have been defeated sooner or later.

Actually I know only two battles that would have made a totally different world had the outcome been another one (and it was very tight): Hastings, and Ludendorff's Michael offensive of March/April 1918.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Marathon and Salamis, the archetypical battles between East and West (Asia and Europe).

Gonna have to go with that, since the others may well have not even been within the realm of possibility without these.

History may have gotten back on track at some point, for example if an invading Persian army were crushed at the Teutoburger Wald, but then it might not have.

[OneWolf]

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest!

My reason-If the Romans had defeated Arminius at the Teutoburg Wald,Germany would have more than likely adopted the Roman Theodosian Law
and likewise,the Roman Language.

Would there have been an Anglo-Saxon invasion to England,that brought with it a Germanic language and the transmission of common law,if the Romans had won the day?

Hermann the Liberator not only preserved the freedom of northern Germany and Scandinavia, he made possible the transmission of the common law to England and, eventually, to America.

And what of American freedom in 2009? The land of the free chafes under the rule of a government that dwarfs that of Rome, under a president who seeks more power than even King John could imagine. Hermann the Liberator, Alfred the Great, Archbishop Langton, George Washington, we need your likeness today!

[Joe McCarthy]

Agrippa deserves credit for interesting arguments he made on my naval battles thread about the relative unimportance of Salamis - and by extension, Marathon. It throws some doubt on this whole idea that an important battle is to be rated according to its spot in the timeline.

[Smaland]

A flight of AVG P-40 Warhawks near the Salween Gorge in May, 1942. Image posted at ww2db.com.

For the Allies in the Second World War, three events find general acceptance as operational-level “turning points,” all occurring in 1942. They are the Battle of Midway in the Pacific (4 Jun); the British breakout from El Alamein, Egypt (Oct-Nov); and the Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad (Nov-Dec). Study of these clearly indicates their importance; however, history has often overlooked a fourth event fully as much an operational turning point as the others, with consequences equally as weighty. This is the American Volunteer Group’s (AVG) action against the Japanese 56th Division at the Salween River gorge in western China (5-7 May). There, a handful of Claire Chennault’s “Flying Tigers,” piloting P-40Es equipped with bombs, executed a series of heavily damaging strikes on an enemy armored column along the Burma Road’s 35-mile descent to the Salween, permanently ending the Japanese advance from Burma into China. Although seemingly a mere tactical victory, the significance was enormous: no effective Chinese resistance remained between the Salween and the wartime capital of chungking. That city’s capture, added to defeats that already saw China hard-pressed to the point of exhaustion, would likely have led to her collapse and surrender. Japan would thus have eliminated one of the Allied Powers, changing the face of the war in at least three theaters.

Complete Research Paper

[Husaria]

Where is the Battle of Vienna?

I would say the Battle of Cer in WW1.

Because Serbia beat Austria in 3 days.

That defeat is what directly lead to WW1. As then Austria tried to get Germans & Ottoman Turks involved which snow balled into WW1.

WW1 directly lead to the Soviet Union as the German Government during WW1 sent the Bolsheviks to Russia to destroy it so they could have a better chance of winning
&
It directly lead to WW2

[Comte Arnau]

No Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa?

It's not as if everyday the 4 nations of Iberia decide to join forces to keep the South-West leg of Europe Christian.






Next July it will be 800 years since The Battle, the true Crusade.

[Sikeliot]

I don't know its name, but the battle that stopped Moorish expansion into France. If it wasn't for this, all of Europe may be Muslim today. o.0

[Libertas]

It's the battle of Tours in the year 732, Safety Pin.

[Husaria]

How about the Anglo Zanzibar war?
IT lasted 40 minutes. LOL