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Midway might not make the list because if the US had lost there, the outcome would have been the same perhaps a bit delayed.  It was pivotal in the war effort, no doubt, because Japan went from being on the offensive to be on the defensive almost exactly at that point, they lost the core of their fleet and their experienced aviators.  Subsequent carrier battles showed an abrupt decline in pilot skill, so had for example, the US lost all 3 carriers and the Japanese had one damaged, all their pilots (nearly) would have survived to fight again.  Guadalcanal probably could not have happened.  The US was down to one carrier for a time in the Pacific (Enterprise).

But by late 1943, the US was building up its fleet in a hurry.  So, history would not have changed much, I think.

The same could be argued for Stalingrad had the Germans prevailed, they would have had a lodging there for a while but the Soviet war machine was just getting started.  The danger was if the Germans had managed to secure the Caucusus on its oil supplies.  Stalin MIGHT have made a deal deal.

I would consider the Battle of Britain to be pivotal.  There was considerable pressure in GB to come to terms with Hitler, Churchill of course stood in the way of that, but Hitler was willing to offer generous terms.  It was a close thing, at one point the Germans were hitting airfields and radar, and a Brit raid on Berlin caused Hitler and Goering to shift resources to bombing cities.  Had they continued taking out radar and airfields ....

I don't know if Eagle would have happened anyway, but if the British were defeated in the air, they might well have had to ask for terms to avoid an invasion and further bombing.  Then Hitler could devote all his resources against Russia in 1941 and it could have been sufficient to knock Russia out of the war, perhaps leaving a rump state from the Urals east as "Russia".  All the oil and minerals would flow to Germany at that point, it's a bad look.

The Islamic world was considerably ahead of the Christian world circa 1000 AD, in some part because they welcomed Jews, who pioneered a lot of medical knowledge.  It is called by some the Islamic Golden Age.  Europe was fighting constant wars which gradually meant they became adept at it and developed new tactics and technical advances (though Mehmet subdued Constantinople in part with cannon, hired from the Viennese).

Had I a choice of where to live as a Jew in 1000 AD, I'd probably select an Islamic area.

Europe advanced greatly through colonization of the New World etc.  They gained in navigation and made discoveries as a result in part because they wanted to advance military naval power.  The New World made Europe rich.  And the Reformation led to the Rennaissance, or vice versa.  The center of power shifted from the Ottomans et al. to Europe.  Spain became incredibly wealthy.  Wealth = Power.

The Wahhabi version of Islam is in my view destructive and really bad.  The Muslims in general are not a problem, for me anyway.  Except I enjoy alcohol.

At any rate, the world would have been quite different with an alternative outcome, better or worse is your own judgment.

Midway

I am very interested in WWII history and particularly the Pacific War but I agree with @Cincydawg as to why this shouldn't be included:

Midway might not make the list because if the US had lost there, the outcome would have been the same perhaps a bit delayed.  It was pivotal in the war effort, no doubt, because Japan went from being on the offensive to be on the defensive almost exactly at that point, they lost the core of their fleet and their experienced aviators.  Subsequent carrier battles showed an abrupt decline in pilot skill, so had for example, the US lost all 3 carriers and the Japanese had one damaged, all their pilots (nearly) would have survived to fight again.  Guadalcanal probably could not have happened.  The US was down to one carrier for a time in the Pacific (Enterprise).

But by late 1943, the US was building up its fleet in a hurry.  So, history would not have changed much, I think.

I highly recommend this book by Anthony Tully and Jonathan Parshall.  The two of them also run a website that covers these issues and here is a tab they call "Grim Economic Realities
a tab they call "Grim Economic Realities".  From that page, compared to Japan the US had:

• Twice the population
• Seventeen times the national income
• Five times more steel production
• Seven times more coal production
• Eighty (80, not 8) times more automobile production

Midway is often referred to as the "turning point" and in a way it was, but the outcome of the war was effectively fore-ordained.  The US launched the first of the Essex Class Carriers in July, 1942 and commissioned it in December of that year.  From then through the end of the war the US commissioned a brand new Essex Class Carrier roughly every other month:

• Essex in December, 1942
• Lexington in February, 1943 (renamed from Cabot after the previous Lexington was lost at Coral Sea):  Currently a museum in Corpus Chrisit, TX - I've never visited
• Yorktown in April, 1943 (renamed from Bon Homme Richard after the previous Yorktown was lost at Midway):  Currently a museum in Charleston, SC - I've been and I highly recommend it
• Bunker Hill in May, 1943
• Intrepid in August, 1943:  Currently a museum in NYC - I've been and I highly recommend it
• Hornet in November, 1943:  (renamed from Kearsarge after the previous Hornet was lost near Guadalcanal):  Currently a museum in Alameda, CA - I've never been
• Wasp in November, 1943 (renamed from Oriskany after the previous Wasp was lost near Guadalcanal)
• Franklin in January, 1944
• Hancock in April, 1944
• Ticonderoga in May, 1944
• Bennington in August, 1944
• Shangri-La in September, 1944 (the name of this one is a fascinating story involving an off-hand remark by FDR about Doolittle's raid)
• Randolph in October, 1944
• Bon Homme Richard in November, 1944
• Antietam in January, 1945 (from here on the ships did not get to the Pacific in time to participate in the war)
• Boxer in April, 1945
• Lake Champlain in June, 1945
• Princeton in November, 1945 (after the war ended)
• Tarawa in December, 1945

In total that is:

• One in 1942
• Six in 1943 (one every other month, like I said), seven total
• Seven in 1944 (more than one every other month), 14 total
• Five in 1945 (slowed due to not needing more at that point), 19 total
• Five more from 1946-1950 (all of these could have been completed sooner if the situation had warranted it), 24 total 

Additionally the first of the new and MUCH larger Midway Class Carriers was commissioned within days of the Japanese Surrender and if the situation had warranted the original six planned Midways could all have been completed.  


On that Grim Economic Realities tab that I linked above the authors have a hypothetical comparison of what the carrier situation would have looked like if the US had lost catastrophically at Midway (all three US carriers lost (Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown) and no Japanese losses.  In that case, the comparison would have been bad for the US for a while:

• 2 US CV's carrying 164 planes vs 6 Japanese CV's and 2 Japanese CVL's carrying 562 planes immediately after the hypothetical catastrophic US loss at Midway
• 2 US CV's and 2 US CVL's carrying 321 planes vs 6 Japanese CV's and 2 Japanese CVL's carrying 561 planes by the middle of 1943.  
• 7 US CV's and 7 US CVL's carrying 850 planes vs 6 Japanese CV's and 2 Japanese CVL's carrying 561 planes by the end of 1943.  
• 10 US CV's and 9 US CVL's carrying 1,189 planes vs 6 Japanese CV's and 4 Japanese CVL's carrying 621 planes by the middle of 1944.  
• 14 US CV's and 9 US CVL's carrying 1,553 planes vs 9 Japanese CV's and 4 Japanese CVL's carrying 811 planes by the end of 1944.  
• 17 US CV's and 9 US CVL's carrying 1,826 planes vs 11 Japanese CV's and 4 Japanese CVL's carrying 941 planes by the middle of 1945.  
• 20 US CV's and 9 US CVL's carrying 2,128 planes vs 12 Japanese CV's and 5 Japanese CVL's carrying 1,033 planes by the end of 1945.  
• 25 US CV's and 9 US CVL's carrying 2,612 planes vs 14 Japanese CV's and 5 Japanese CVL's carrying 1,163 planes by the middle of 1946.  

I'll let Parschall and Tully speak for themselves:

• "In other words, even if it had lost catastrophically at the Battle of Midway, the United States Navy still would have broken even with Japan in carriers and naval air power by about September 1943. Nine months later, by the middle of 1944, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed a nearly two-to-one superiority in carrier aircraft capacity! Not only that, but with her newer, better aircraft designs, the U.S. Navy would have enjoyed not only a substantial numeric, but also a critical qualitative advantage as well, starting in late 1943. All this is not to say that losing the Battle of Midway would not have been a serious blow to American fortunes! For instance, the war would almost certainly have been protracted if the U.S. had been unable to mount some sort of a credible counter-stroke in the Solomons during the latter half of 1942. Without carrier-based air power of some sort there would not have been much hope of doing so, meaning that we would most likely have lost the Solomons. However, the long-term implications are clear: the United States could afford to make good losses that the Japanese simply could not. Furthermore, this comparison does not reflect the fact that the United States actually slowed down its carrier building program in late 1944, as it became increasingly evident that there was less need for them. Had the U.S. lost at Midway, it seems likely that those additional carriers (3 Midway-class and 6 more Essex-Class CVs, plus the Saipan-class CVLs) would have been brought on line more quickly. In a macro-economic sense, then, the Battle of Midway was really a non-event. There was no need for the U.S. to seek a single, decisive battle which would 'Doom Japan' -- Japan was doomed by its very decision to make war."

All this is to say that Midway isn't all that important in a macro-historical sense because there really was no way for the Japanese to win so the individual battles do nothing to impact the final result.  

yes the Japanese would have eventually lost even if they had won Midway

But the moral boost of the actual battle is not being considered

this alone makes it a key event which shortened the war by years and saved thousands of lives

The same could be argued for Stalingrad had the Germans prevailed, they would have had a lodging there for a while but the Soviet war machine was just getting started.  The danger was if the Germans had managed to secure the Caucusus on its oil supplies.  Stalin MIGHT have made a deal deal.

I think with this one it is hard to say whether the Battle of Moscow or the Siege of Leningrad or the Battle of Stalingrad was THE pivotal battle.  The Soviets *MIGHT* have persisted without Leningrad and/or Moscow and Stalingrad *MIGHT* be too late because by then, as you pointed out, the Soviet war machine was getting up to speed.  

I guess I'd say that somewhere between Barbarossa and Paulus' surrender was pivotal.  I think it is possible that the Soviets could have collapsed just as Russia collapsed in WWI.  A big part of the reason that they didn't was that the German army had to keep switching targets/focus as Hitler kept changing his mind.  A secondary reason is that the Germans invaded on a HUMONGOUS front stretching from the Baltic Sea in the North to the Black Sea in the South and ultimately expanding from Lake Ladoga in the North nearly to the Caspian Sea in the South.  

If they had focused more on one objective (Leningrad in the North, Moscow in the center, or the Caucuses in the South) they would undoubtedly have been able to achieve that ONE objective in 1941 rather than coming up just short on all three.  Considering the three:

Leningrad:
Taking this City probably wouldn't have mattered much.  In the event they had it surrounded for more than two years, destroyed most of it and caused literally hundreds of thousands of casualties and the Soviets were able to continue the war.  The major impact of taking Leningrad would have been that the German troops surrounding the City would have been freed up for use elsewhere such as . . .

Moscow:
Some people will tell you that losing Moscow wouldn't have been a big deal for the Soviets because they could have just kept retreating and there is famously a LOT of land East of the Ural Mountains.  In some respects that is true but it ignores the fact that as a centrally planned economy everything in the Soviet Union was centered on Moscow.  It was not only their largest City, and Capitol but it was also:

• The hub of their transportation network, all rails led to Moscow.  
• The hub of their communications network.  
• Their largest and most productive industrial City.  
• The equivalent of their banking/financial center.  

Losing Moscow for the Soviets would have been something akin to the US losing Washington, NYC, Detroit, and Chicago all at once.  Additionally there is the psychological impact.  Stalin was hardly a beloved leader in large portions of the Soviet Union and if he had lost his Capitol and communications/transportation hub it isn't all that unlikely that the USSR would have disintegrated into revolution just as Russia did (without losing Moscow) about 30 years earlier.  

Caucuses:
My view is that this would have been the best strategic target for the Germans in 1941.  As I stated above, taking Leningrad wouldn't have been THAT much different that surrounding and destroying it.  Moscow is a big gamble.  If taking Moscow results in the USSR collapsing then that is great for the Germans but if it doesn't then they still have to keep their army fueled and there isn't any oil in Moscow.  There is Oil in the Caucuses, a lot of it.  Getting that oil does two things:

• It provides MUCH-needed Oil for the Wehrmacht, and
• It deprives the Soviet Military of the same.  

#2 is obviously a lot easier than #1.  In order to accomplish #1 the Germans would have needed all of the following:

• Possession of the oil fields in good working order, and
• Possession of a secure method to transport the crude from the fields to refineries somewhere, and
• Possession of refineries, and
• Possession of a secure method to transport the finished petroleum products to where they are needed.  

In order to accomplish goal #2 all that is needed to deprive the Soviets of any one of the four steps to accomplishing goal #1.  

The Soviets did have some minor other oil supplies and certainly the US would have ramped up Lend-Lease Oil but even the US didn't have unlimited transport capacity.  Any ship carrying petroleum products wouldn't have been able to carry whatever else the Soviets needed.  

Getting the Caucuses is much less of a gamble than getting Moscow because even if the Soviets keep fighting, their ability to fight is significantly diminished because T34's don't run on water and meanwhile the German ability to fight is significantly improved because BF109's are much more effective when they have gas.