Why were there relatively view "fortress-battles" in WW2?

Question

Warsaw, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Brest, Sevastopol, Aachen, Budapest, Breslau and Berlin come to mind.

But why not more? Given the scale of the fight, this is surprising to me.

It looks like most cities were abandoned without a fight, most prominently Paris, but also Athens, Rome and many others.

Sorry. Of course "few", not "view". Didn't see that until now.

Answer 1

Well, Leningrad, Sevastopol and Brest were strategically important due to circumstance, and also hard to retreat from once the enemy was there. Surrender was a less attractive option than holding out in the fortifications as long as possible.
Stalingrad, Warsaw, Budapest and Berlin were more political than strategic fortress battles. Aachen and Breslau were kind of a combination of both political and strategic factors. There were other fortress/city battles, like Tobruk, but most of the cities which had been fortified were either captured unexpectedly easily or bypassed to wither on the vine.

Answer 2

Because the battles you mention were less "fortress battles" and more street fighting, relying on irregular forces. A lot closer to guerilla war, than a seige.

Defending a city is a waste of force and the city, given the weapons and tactics of WWII. If you have an army, why waste it defending a non-strategic city? The populace can be evacuated, just like the industry (Stalin did it) so what do you get except hostages when you seize a city?

Answer 3

Fortress battles typically happen when one side is defending themselves against invaders. Except for the final stages of the war, most of the battles took place on other people's territory. The French have taken a lot of criticism for not defending Paris, but it was clear that it would be futile, and Paris would be destroyed to no purpose. The Germans were in full retreat by the time the allies invaded Italy and Greece, and almost all of the locals were thrilled to see them.

And one has to consider the effects of modern weaponry. A castle can be defended against soldiers with longbows, but against modern artillery and bombs from aircraft, there is little point.

Answer 4

In ww2 fortresses were redundant with the use of bombers ,and heavy artillery . The wars were over countries and not over some fortress situated were-ever , fortresses basically were used as prisons of war or a place to pile up armaments , place for soldiers to stay and centers of intelligence gathering , but they would cave in when the enemies would discover them and bomb the hell out .

Answer 5

People in some of these cities did not want their beautiful cities destroyed. On the Eastern Front it was different. Hitler wanted to destroy the Soviet Union. He did not care about these cities. The same was true of Stalin when the Soviets took Berlin. He wanted to punish the Germans for attacking his country. These were very evil men who thrived on destruction.

Answer 6

Mainly due to the fact that there were airplanes and navies; war was on such a large scope and scale. Some armies chose to bypass certain strongholds and attack other targets.
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Answer 7

WWII was characterized by greater mobility therefore armies were reluctant to "dig in". The advent of better planes, tanks and artillery made static warfare suicidal.

Answer 8

ww2 was a mobile war based on mechanized divisions, airborne infantry, and light mobile infantry units, nobody wanted another world war 1 so almost every country by ww2 had created mobile armies except for france, poland, belgium, etc

Answer 9

Airplanes.