Largest battle in WW2

[Lord Revan]

I was wondering what would be largest (ground) battle during world war 2 according the troops involved in it?

(I was wondering as 1 of the battles from the continuation war (IIRC) was said to be larger then most other battles during WW2 so I started wondering what would be the largest single battle during WW2)

[Isolder74]

That depends what you mean by largest. Largest in area, troops or units involved, operation or single battle.

D-Day would very much qualify as one of the largest single operations.

Single engagement would probably be Kurst

Scope and area might be The Battle of Leyte.

Extended engagement might be Stalingrade.

[MarshalFoch]

I would imagine it would be Operation Bagration in which the Soviets completely annihilated an entire German Army Group in June 1944, or the Battle of Kursk. Bagration involved (According to Keegan's Second World War) 166 Soviet Divisions supported by 2700 tanks, 1300 assault guns, and 4500 aircraft. The Germans could only muster 37 divisions to counter this. Kursk features slightly less soldiers but far greater parity between the opposing forces, though it takes place on a smaller geographical scale.

Though if that is not the case it almost certainly has to have been a battle on the Eastern Front if we are confining this to ground battles. If Barbarossa is considered a single battle it would win out in terms of sheer numbers, while Stalingrad may win out in terms of actual number of troops who participated at one time or another.

[K. A. Pital]

The Kiev cauldron (1941) would be the greatest encirclement of World War II, not Kursk. Though it maybe not the greatest in terms of World War II overall - the Manchurian Offensive of the USSR may be yet greater in terms of scale of operation and scope of armies encircled, although I'm not sure. And certainly all the greatest ground battles are on the Eastern Front.

Kiev, Smolensk, Moscow, Stalingrad, Rzhev, Kursk, Bagration, are all very large battles - it's hard to say which is the largest, because force balance often shifted, and numbers of troops involved at one time and continously are different gauges.

D-Day certainly wins the biggest landing.

[Adrian Laguna]

If we go by number of men involved, which is my preferred gauge, Moscow wins hands down. It's the largest battle of the Second World War and all time, with seven million men having participated in the fighting on both sides. That's almost twice the number that participated in Stalingrad.

[Coyote]

I think "largest" overall battle with regards to territory covered by warring parties would actually be Midway in the Pacific Theatre. I don't know how many men participated, though. I doubt it'd come close to the Moscow battle of ~7mil.

Some of the battles and operations would have to be defined. For example, the landing on Normandy was huge in itself, but it was only a part of the overall 'battle' that was Operation Overlord. If you count Overlord as a whole, it'd be, probably, in the top 10 land battles.

OTOH, there's the largest amount of physical battle space fought over by the smallest number of combatants (given relative size of battle space to other theaters), in which case I'd say all of the North African campaign would win. The entire top of the African continent contested by a few handfuls of divisions on both sides? Of course, that wasn't any one battle but an ongoing theatre... But looking at the vast distrances, sometimes it's amazing to think that the opposing forces even managed to find one another.

But "largest battles of WW2" can be broken down into a number of categories. But the manpower category will be dominated by anything on the Eastern Front.

[Lord Revan]

btw I did define the battle in the OP as ground only and by the standard of men involved in it.

[Coyote]

btw I did define the battle in the OP as ground only and by the standard of men involved in it.

Yeah, but it got me thinkin'. Besides, the title that's visible in the forum is just "largest battle in WW2"

[Isolder74]

btw I did define the battle in the OP as ground only and by the standard of men involved in it.

Not sure that really narrows it down. D-Day is technically a ground battle and includes Naval Units. Leyte is mainly a Naval engagement that includes and invasion army. Guadacanal has naval units as a intricate part of the battle. Unless we limit it only to the eastern front it's hard to find a land only battle that qualifies.

[Bellator]

How do WW2 battles compare to WW1 battles (Verdun, Somme, Ypres) in size/casualties?

[Sea Skimmer]

The First Battle of the Marne saw well over 2 million men engaged at one time and is pretty much the largest single battle of WW1. However many WW1 battles went on for months and saw the troops on the frontline actually rotated as the fighting went on. At Verdun for example the French never had more then about 100,000 men actually engaged at any one time, and yet they suffered over 300,000 losses. In all about 90% of the entire French army fought in the battle at one point or another because of the rotation policy and the horrendous loss rate. I don’t recall the French strength in 1916 but it was something around 2 million men. Really many 'Battles' of both WW1 and WW2 ought to just be labeled as campaigns given the huge number of specific battles recorded within them, but the terminology for such things has really just not been updated in centuries.