Now, I can’t can’t quite see it as a turning point. Start of a new chapter in the war, sure, but turning point?
Some better candidates (IMHO) for Turning Point:
Autumn of 1940 (more or less) - the end of the Battle of Britain. Luftwaffe switched to night bombing, Operation Sealion indefinitely postponed. First time Hitler didn’t win.
Operation Barbarossa - beginning June 1941 - Brought USSR into the war as combatant of Germany, instead of just playing spoiler for Poland and Finland. Makes USSR an Allied power. Big mistakes all through Hitler’s Russian campaign.
Battle of Kursk - July 1943 - last of Hitler’s offensive thrusts. Biggest land battle ever. Germany does not win and begins to fall back.
Attack on Pearl Harbour - Dec 1941 - brings USA firmly into the war.
Battle of the Coral Sea - May 1942 - First non win for Japanese naval forces.
Battle of Midway - June 1942 - First major American naval victory in Pacific theatre
North African Campaign - 1941 to 1943 - combined Allied forces defeat combined Axis forces.
I’d nominate the Battle of Stalingrad as another possible “turning point” in the European Theater, though it lasted so long that it probably can’t be considered one “point.”
I consider Midway to have been the turning point in the Pacific.
I’d say the US entering the war was the sort of overall “turning point.” If you’re looking for specific battles and such, I’d say The Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, and Midway.
In January and February, 1943, the Soviets took 22 divisions in Stalingrad, relieved Leningrad, and captured Kursk, Belgorod, Rostov, and Kharkov. They killed or captured half a million Germand or Axis troops in this winter offensive. Add to this the contemporaneous British and American success in North Africa and I think that the first few months of 1943 are the turning point in the European Theater. Although the German Army continued to have major successes after this time, the tide was now running against them.
The turning point in the Pacific is definitely the Battle of Midway, June, 1942.
The turning point in Europe is fuzzier than in the Pacific. Up until the Battle of the Coral Sea, the IJN won every combat it engaged in. From Midway on, they lost every significant battle. This makes the turning point much easier to identify. There was no analagous “point” in the European Theater.
You’re dealing with a two theater war, and the Axis powers hardly acted in concert, so I don’t think there is one definitive turning point.
In the Pacific, Midway was definitely a huge hinge point in where the Big Mo’ went, but it could be argued that the Battle of the Coral Sea was a significant precursor. That does not ignore the intel coup that Midway was.
But that hardly affected the European Theater, where Hitler had neatly got himself into the mistake he’d said he’d avoid - a two front war. While Britain remained an outpost he could not get, a conclusion finalized by the heroic efforts of the RAF in terminating the Battle of Britain (which ultimately, allowing Normandy, sealed his fate on the Western Front), his bigger demon at the time was Russia.
Stalingrad was as much a turning point in the East as Midway was in the West, but I think it similarly had a telling precursor in the bogging down of Hitler’s original offensive during its first Russian winter.
Yeah, PBW, that’s kind of what I see, too. That’s why I put the Battle of Britain, Barbarossa (iow, the bad descision to invade Russia), and the US entering the war as European theatre turning points. (Should I include USAF 8th AF bombing of German cities?) Stalingrad is a consequence of beginning Barbarossa, imho.
The Battles of Coral Sea and Midway occured within less than 2 months of each other, so I link them together as US Navy learning how to first stop and then beat the IJN.
I just had an interesting thought. While I tend to think of the Battle of Stalingrad as the turning point in Europe and the Battle of Midway as the turning point in the Pacific, it’s possible that the two theaters did in fact share one turning point: the Japanese decision to attack the United States and Greater Southeast Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere rather than the Soviet Union.
The consensus here - which I share - seems to be that the war in Europe was won and lost on the Eastern Front (hence the focus on things like Stalingrad and the beginning of Barbarossa as the European turning point). If Japan had struck into the eastern Soviet Union, I think it’s entirely possible that the USSR would have collapsed under the combined onslaught. In a worst-case scenario, Soviet production facilities east of the Urals could have been threatened in short order: it’s a long way from Vladivostok to Magnitogorsk or Krasnoyarsk, but I’m not sure that the Red Army in Siberia was up to the challenge of stopping a concerted Japanese attack.
To make matters worse, Moscow could not have depended on the US and UK to relieve the pressure on it by opening a second front (even a pitiful, second-rate second front like North Africa). The United States, after all, would almost certainly not be in the war - at least not until much later, certainly - and I’m not sure the British would have been able to handle a Torch-sized operation on their own. Even if they could have, would London have been willing to risk it?
If the Japanese had struck Siberia rather than Pearl Harbor and Southeast Asia in December 1941, I think the Soviet Union may well have collapsed and Britain would have been left to fend for itself against two vastly larger enemies with access to a far vaster amount of resources. I don’t think that would have been an encouraging situation for either Great Britain or the United States.
There were the “go north” and “go south” factions of the Japanese military, and the southern conquerors prevailed.
For a bit.
Had they gone full force to meet their, by then, long-time foes in Russia - who knows? That would’ve left the South Pacific to the Europeans and the Americans, and the Pacific Theater would have been quite different.
Since Port Arthur, Russia had been wary of the Japanese.
And their Non-Aggresion Pact was certainly strained by Hitler’s endeavors.
What about the battle of the bulge? Many people think that the Battle of the Bulge was a turning point there.
In the Pacific…
Iwo Jima (sp) or Guadal Canal could be a turning point, but neither of them would have come to pass if American submarines had not been so effective in stopping supplies to all of the Japanese bases in the pacific.
No, the Battle of the Bulge was a more last gasp, not a turning point. The German offensive, while it could have done more than it did, never really had any prospect of seriously altering the course of the war.
No, again, at least in my estimation. Definitely not in the case of Iwo Jima, which was just a nasty grind, but never really was in doubt that late in the war. A case could be made for Guadalcanal jointly with Midway and the Coral Sea, but I’d give pride of place to the latter two. Guadalcanal itself was more of a symbolic victory - Not unimportant, but probably not vital.
While Japanese involvement in Russia would certainly have greatly complicated the situation for the Soviets it wasnt really a viable option. Japan and Russia had fought in both 1937 and again in 1939 and each time the Japanese lost badly. The Japanese army was poorly equipped to fight the Russian army and their unhappy experience doing so soured Japan on the idea and greatly strengthened the strike south faction. The Japanese were content to negotiate their non-aggression pact with the Soviets and then strike at the ‘easier’ southern objectives.
Another complicating factor was the size of the Japanese army, attacking Russia in a major way would have required a heavy commitment of Japanese land forces at a time when most of the Japanese army was already bogged down fighting in China. Striking south capitalised on their naval strength instead so again the south looked a more inviting prospect.
My own view on when the war in Europe turned is somewhere between about July and October of 1941 as that what the window of opportunity for defeating the soviets. After that period it was all over.
Germany and Japan were like sharks. They had to keep conquering new territory; once they were reduced to a strategic defensive, their defeat was just a matter of time. So I’d say Coral Sea and Kursk were the two turning points of the war; both were the occasions when the two powers had to turn back and neither regained the initiative.