Turning points during World War II

Turning points during World War II are points when the momentum of the war significantly moved against the Axis Powers and are considered as milestones on the path to their defeat. The term has its origin in the war itself; several individuals, including Erwin Rommel and Winston Churchill referenced the idea of a turning point, or a 'beginning of the end'. There is no academic consensus on a singular turning point, but historians generally agree on a small handful.

Background

The notion of a turning point in warfare has historical precedent and previous conflicts have had single events that marked unambiguous turning points. Examples include the battles of Waterloo, Gettysburg and Tsushima. In all these instances, the victorious force was able to achieve a clear result, establishing pressure and able to conduct warfare on its own terms, not its enemy's.

Turning points in World War II

Battle of Britain (1940)

Main article: Battle of Britain

By mid 1940, Nazi Germany had had a series of unbroken victories in Poland; Denmark and Norway; and the Low Countries and France; the only nation that stood in opposition was the United Kingdom (UK). To prepare for Operation Sealion, the impending seaborne invasion of the UK, the Luftwaffe attempted to gain air supremacy in the skies over South-East England. The battle was a complete failure for the Luftwaffe, owing somewhat to Hermann Göring's bravado - he intended to use the battle as an opportunity to prove the power of the Luftwaffe, gaining personal prestige in the process, but he had very little idea as to how to orchestrate his forces. In the British military, and especially the public, there was a huge boost in morale after the battle. Winston Churchill contributed to this boost in morale with his famous Never was so much owed by so many to so few speech. As a result of the battle, Germany aborted its invasion plans, and Britain would be the point from which Operation Overlord would be conducted 4 years later.

Battle of Midway (1942)

IJN Hiryu burning during Midway

Main article: Battle of Midway

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Imperial Japan desired a single battle that would completely eradicate the fighting ability of its enemy, similar to the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Japan had no intention of fighting a protracted war, and intended for the Pacific War to last no more than 150 days. Additionally, Japan expected Germany to force the British to surrender, which would by extension cause the United States to bring an end to the war on Japan's terms. After Pearl Harbor, Isoroku Yamamoto claimed that after six months of combat with the United States, he had "no expectation of success", which was a prophetic statement, as the Battle of Midway was an exact six months after Pearl Harbor.

The attack was led by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who was also the commander behind Pearl Harbor, and was present in a minor capacity at Tsushima. His intention was to attack Midway Atoll with a deceptively large force that would surprise the United States Pacific Fleet and destroy it as it approached. However, the United States Navy was prepared for the attack - Admiral Nimitz was able to deduce quite accurately the size of the Japanese fleet, as well as Japan's intentions. As a result, the US was able to inflict devastating losses - Japan committed four aircraft carriers with 248 embarked aircraft to the battle and lost all of them. John Keegan stated that "within exactly five minutes, the whole course of the war in the Pacific had been reversed." The battle forced Japan to assume a defensive position, fighting battles that were incrementally closer to the Japanese homeland, and it lacked the resources to stage a large scale counter-offensive that would have repelled the U.S. forces.

Second Battle of El Alamein (1942)

Main article: Second Battle of El Alamein

The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October – 11 November 1942) took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. The First Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Alam el Halfa had prevented the Axis forces from advancing further into Egypt. The Allied victory was the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields. The battle revived the morale of the Allies, being the first big success against the Axis since Operation Crusader in late 1941. The battle coincided with the Allied invasion of French North Africa in Operation Torch on 8 November, the Battle of Stalingrad and the Guadalcanal Campaign.

Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943)

Soldiers of Nazi Germany's 24th Panzer Division armed with MP40s in Stalingrad, September 1942

Main article: Battle of Stalingrad

Generally argued to be the most significant turning point of the war, the Battle of Stalingrad was one of the Wehrmacht's most ambitious operations, in which it committed – and eventually lost – more than 400,000 soldiers. The invasion of the Soviet Union had a promising beginning, with some instances, such as the Battle of Kiev providing astounding German victories, but progress had begun to slow down after the failure of the Battle of Moscow, for reasons such as the rasputitsa, American Lend-Lease support for the Soviet Union and problems with German supply lines. As part of the wider Fall Blau, the main purpose of the capture of Stalingrad was to acquire the oil in the Caucasus region, as well as securing an encirclement which would allow them to advance further. Additionally, Germany's leader Adolf Hitler attached a propagandistic value to the city, as it was named after the Soviet Union's leader Joseph Stalin; Stalin reciprocated with Order No. 227, which stated that Soviet soldiers were to take "not one step back" in their defence of the city. The Soviet Union used women, children and the elderly to build fortifications and otherwise prepare themselves for the German invasion. Those who deserted or refused orders would be shot by commissars.

The weakness of the Red Army in previous battles (as well as previous conflicts, such as the Winter War and Polish-Soviet War) led Hitler to remark that "We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." In actuality, the strength and especially the size of the Soviets was far greater than the Wehrmacht had expected, or prepared to fight - on 11 August, General Franz Halder wrote in his diary "At the outset of the war, we reckoned on about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360." The fighting in Stalingrad was vicious and incorporated a lot of close-quarter urban combat, which Germany had plentiful experience with, both in previous battles in the Soviet Union and earlier in Western Europe. However, Germany was greatly lacking in tanks (and fuel to drive them) and had lost the strategic decisiveness of previous campaigns, attacking broadly and haphazardly across the entire Stalingrad front. This lack of decisiveness is perhaps exemplified by the encirclement of the 6th Army. In November 1942, during Operation Uranus, the 6th Army was encircled, with no ammunition to fight back, or food, some of its members resorting to killing their horses and eating their uncooked flesh just to survive. Hermann Göring promised Hitler that he could enact an airlift to keep the 6th Army in a fighting condition, but the Luftwaffe simply was not in a position to do so. The 6th Army was promised a minimum of 300 tons of supplies a day, but from 24 November-1 December, it received only 350 tons over the course of the whole week – and only 14 of those were food. The next week, it received 512 tons total, only 24 of which were food. As the 6th Army's situation began to look hopeless, Hitler promoted its commander, Friedrich Paulus, to Field Marshal as no German field marshal had ever surrendered to the enemy before, expecting either a victory or suicide. Paulus chose to surrender. Ultimately, Stalingrad was an astounding defeat for the Wehrmacht. The battle of Stalingrad gave the Red Army the momentum to advance further west, killing German soldiers by the millions in the process.

Invasion of Normandy (1944)

American soldiers in an LCVP landing craft, preparing to attack Omaha Beach.

Main articles: Operation Overlord, Normandy landings, and Liberation of France

Before 1944, Germany's control of France was almost entirely uncontested, as Britain and the United States had only attacked its ground forces in North Africa and Italy, based on Winston Churchill's belief that Italy was "the soft underbelly of the Axis Powers". However, following pressure from the Soviet Union to open a second front, plans were devised to liberate France, which, after much delay, would ultimately be conducted on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944, following deception efforts that convinced the OKW the invasion was actually at Calais, the shortest point to France from the UK.

At midnight, the battle began with airborne forces, consisting of pathfinders, glider-borne troops and paratroopers. These landed in Normandy, marking locations for Allied bombers and naval gunfire support, securing bridges and disabling enemy guns and other assets that may have impeded the coming naval invasion. This was the only nighttime airborne operation conducted during the war and, though the paratroopers were very badly scattered (some units taking several days to fully reorganize), it was an operational success, with the deployed forces suffering relatively low casualties.

Next, the main attack began, with five main beachheads being attacked: American forces landed on beaches codenamed Utah and Omaha; the British on Sword and Gold beaches; and the Canadians on Juno Beach. With the singular exception of Omaha, the invading forces were able to get through with ease, losing only 10,000 of the 156,000 men deployed, an exceptionally low figure for a naval invasion. One reason for this was that the German commander Erwin Rommel was absent from the battle, as he was busy celebrating his wife's birthday; and his chief of staff, Friedrich Dollmann, was at a practice wargame in Rennes. Rommel himself had accurately predicted that a naval invasion was coming and that the battle for the coast would only last a few hours, yet was absent as it happened. The response to the invasion was worsened by the fact that Hitler was of the belief that the attack was a diversion, meant to divert Germany's forces from the real landing site, Calais, which was untrue - he had fallen victim to British counterintelligence. By the morning of 7 June, the forces from each of the beachheads had linked up, Bayeux had been liberated and the Wehrmacht was in disarray, continually losing ground, which Rommel attributed to four main factors: enemy air supremacy, naval gunfire support, superior materiel and an abundance of paratroopers that further disorganised his own forces.

Though British Field Marshal Montgomery did not achieve his ambitious goal of Caen, the capture of Normandy, alongside Saint-Lo, Carentan and Brittany was a tremendous success. It was one of the most successful naval invasions in history and allowed the Western Allies to easily capture the rest of France and, subsequently, Germany. Historian Stephen Badsey writes "Too much discussion on Normandy has centred on the controversial decisions of the Allied commanders. It was not good enough, apparently, to win such a complete and spectacular victory over an enemy that had conquered most of Europe unless it was done perfectly. Most of the blame for this lies with Montgomery, who was foolish enough to insist that it had been done perfectly."

Academic answers

Historian Laurence Rees asked a total of 14 historians what they believed the turning point was. The below table gives their answers. However, many of the respondents had difficulty choosing a singular event that could be classified as a turning point, including Rees, who said "of course, there is no right answer."

Event	Selected by	Total votes
Battle of France	Adam Tooze	1
Operation Barbarossa	Omer Bartov, David Reynolds (historian)	2
Battle of Moscow	Robert M. Citino, Richard J. Evans, Ian Kershaw	3
Attack on Pearl Harbor	Conrad C. Crane, Geoffrey Wawro, Akira Iriye	3
Battle of Stalingrad	Robert Dallek, Max Hastings, William I. Hitchcock, Antony Beevor	4
Stalin refusing to leave Moscow	Laurence Rees	1
The Allies not bombing Auschwitz	Norbert Frei	1

See also

• Timeline of World War II
• Outline of World War II
• List of World War II battles

Further reading

• Arquilla, J., & Hanson, V. D. (2020). Why the Axis Lost: An Analysis of Strategic Errors. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
• Atkinson, R. (2002). An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
• Beevor, A. (2017). Stalingrad. London: Penguin Books.
• Craig, W. (2001). Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad. New York: Penguin Books.
• Fuchida, M., Okumiya, M., Kawakami, C. H., & Pineau, R. (2001). Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
• Nagorski, A. (2007). The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II. New York Simon & Schuster.
• Nagorski, A. (2019). 1941: The Year Germany lost the War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Overy, R. J. (2006). Why the Allies Won. London: Pimlico.
• Parshall, J. B., & Tully, A. (2006). Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. Washington, DC: Potomac Books.
• Stahel, D. (2012). Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Stahel, D. (2015). Operation Typhoon: Hitler's March on Moscow, October 1941. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

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