Forgotten Battles
Major engagements that history has largely overlooked
3 facts in this category
What was the Siege of Changde and why does Chinese WW2 history regard it as heroic?
In late 1943, approximately 57,000 Japanese troops besieged 8,000 Chinese defenders at Changde. The garrison was reduced to 83 survivors but held long enough for relief forces to recapture the city within days
The Chinese 57th Division fought to near-total annihilation with full knowledge they were sacrificing themselves as a delaying action. General Yu Chengwan, who ordered the last-stand defense, survived and was honored as a national hero. The story is barely known outside China.
What was Operation Bagration and why is it barely known in the West despite being possibly the largest German defeat of WW2?
The massive Soviet summer offensive of June-August 1944 that destroyed Army Group Centre — the Germans lost over 350,000 men and 25 divisions were annihilated, more than at Stalingrad
Operation Bagration is barely known in Western history because it coincided exactly with D-Day. Yet it may have been the most decisive military event of 1944. The Soviets advanced 350 miles in two months, permanently shattering the myth of German military superiority.
What happened when 35,000 Allied troops landed on Kiska Island in the Aleutians in 1943?
They found the island completely empty — the Japanese had secretly evacuated 5,183 troops under cover of Arctic fog two weeks earlier without Allied intelligence detecting it
The Allied landing on Kiska resulted in 92 casualties from friendly fire incidents and booby traps — against no enemy. The Japanese evacuation was a masterpiece of operational secrecy. The entire episode remains one of the most embarrassing intelligence failures of the Pacific War.