History's list of most decisive battles

fudgester SG

I won't call it decisive. The German offensive was stalled, in part due to the 101st Airborne's amazing ability to hold on to Bastogne even when they were trapped and surrounded. (Who can forget McAuliffe's rebuff to German calls to surrender: 'NUTS!' Laughing )

Even if the offensive had worked and the Germans managed to fight all the way to Antwerp, chances are that the Allies could have still choked off the pencil-like thrust and won.

By the way, that was how the Allies failed in Operation Market Garden. Their supply lines were overextended, and the Germans attacked the flanks of the pencil-like thrust. It's not too hard to imagine that the poorer-equipped Germans would have fared even worse.

Gedanken SG

The key to the German loss at Bastogne was their failure to capture all of the corssroads. Had they done so, they would have cut Allied supply lines and prevented reinforcements.

spartan6 SG

Battle of e bluge

moca SG

Dien Bien Phu

A peasant army decisively defeating a western power in modern day set piece battle.

After DBP, the French basically packed up and left Indochina.

|-|05| SG

And you know it's really sad that the french were winning the commies at one point of time during the whole war.

moca SG

That the Viet Minh subscribed to Communism was really unfortunate. But deeper than ideology the war in Vietnam was for nationalism - it was anti-colonialism, independence and later unification of the entire Vietnam.

In a sense it was the right thing to do. But somehow, every revolutionary war in the 20th century just end up producing more misery. I can't think of one that went well. Maybe China... but they did go through a whole period of hell first. Of all the African countries that fought for their independence from colonials, most seems to have gone from bad to worse. Indonesia did quite well after winning their independence from the Dutch.

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