How many battles were fought in WWII?

Question

I need a rough estimate of how many battles were actually fought in WWII. please & thanks!

Answer 1

That's impossible. In World War II fighting took place constantly on massive fronts that stretched across entire nations and oceans. Breaking it up into individual battles is not easy because battles were not fought in the traditional line formation like in almost every European-style war previous to World War I. We give names like "the Battle of Normandy" to massive campaigns which can also be counted as thousands of separate troop movements, battles, and skirmishes. And the truth is that most small skirmishes and firefights probably went unrecorded. The only way to come to an estimate of how many battles were fought in World War II is to break it up into several arbitrary "campaigns", for which there is really no definition, and even then you will really never be able to come up with a legitimate total.

Tell your teacher that, and if you don't get the extra credit, then your teacher obviously isn't qualified to be teaching history.

** Obviously if your teacher consideres World War II to have begun in 1941,  he shouldn't be teaching...

** There were an estimated 10,000 engagements in the American Civil War including 391 "significant battles", if that helps. And that was a 19th century civil war, albeit a bloody one even if 2/3 of the casualties took place off of the battlefield. World War II was one of the 20th century's two devastating global wars. It was the bloodiest, most widespread and most destructive war in history, so if you're trying to see which one had more battles... World War II, no contest. And your history teacher should know that!

Answer 2

it depends on what time periods you want the answer for.

Answer 3

I gave up counting at 150 - that would be a fair (but low estimate)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mil...

Answer 4

That's a virtual impossibility to answer.  The reason is it is impossible to define one "battle".  For American purposes, we defined specific engagements, such as the Battle for Midway, Battle of Coral Sea, Battle for Okinawa, Battle of the Ardennes (the Bulge), etc.  For the Russians, there was hardly a distinction between one battle and the next as they were constantly engaged with the German Army from 1941 til 1945.  Then you have Japan's engagements in China, India, Burma, etc.  Count them arbitrarily.

For your teacher:  WWII started with the Japanese invasion of China.  Japan annexed Manchuria and called it Manchukuo.

Some historians consider WWII as simply an extension of WWI and that makes a lot of sense as the same alignment was in place.

Answer 5

What's important to you is how many IMPORTANT batles there were.

I think if you list 10-15, you should be ok.

Answer 6

You have to count everything from major campaigns to small patrols shooting at each other.  There is no number.

And when does your teacher assume WWII started?  September 1, 1939?  December 7, 1941?  Most historians feel WWII started with the Japanese invasion of China in 1936.

As a WWII historian, I believe I can safely say your teacher is an idiot.