The Six Most Unheralded Battles of World War II

Midway. Stalingrad. D-Day. These are widely recognized as the seminal, decisive clashes of World War II.

Each has been thoroughly documented and dramatized in countless books and films, and deservedly so, as so much hinged on their outcome. Other gripping struggles with appalling death tolls, from Iwo Jima and Okinawa to the Battles of Britain and the Bulge, have also received due reverence and recognition.

Yet other, more obscure clashes—known to history enthusiasts but few others—also had a profound impact on the trajectory of the war. These blood-soaked contests reshaped the strategic landscape, and each deserves a far greater spotlight in the public sphere.

1. Imphal and Kohima

Throughout 1943 and into 1944, the Japanese suffered a string of defeats in the Pacific, but on the Asian continent, the land war remained a years-long stalemate. That changed in March 1944, when the Japanese launched a new offensive, sending a 85,000-man army into India, the jewel of the British Commonwealth. British-led forces had retreated to India following their expulsion from neighboring Burma in 1942, and the new Japanese offensive was aimed at Imphal, a large base of operations thirty miles from the Burmese border. A secondary force also attacked to the north, hoping to capture the hilltop town of Kohima and cut off the flow of supplies and reinforcements to Imphal.

What followed was some of the most savage and desperate fighting of the war. Though heavily outnumbered, elements of the Royal West Kent Regiment and the 50^th Indian Parachute Brigade each staged extraordinary stands around Kohima that foiled the Japanese advance but decimated their own ranks. It was enough to stall the Japanese offensive, and after weeks of fighting, the starving remnants of the battered Japanese invasion force withdrew to Burma. At the time, it was the single worst defeat of the Imperial Army – 53,000 men dead or missing – from which Japanese forces in Southeast Asia would never recover.

2. New Guinea

Just months into the Pacific War, the Japanese plotted to seize Port Moresby, an Allied base on the coast of New Guinea just 300 miles from Australia. In May 1942, an intelligence coup provided the Allies early warning of the Japanese plan, leading to the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first major naval clash in the Pacific. The result was largely a draw, but two months later, Japanese and Australian troops began skirmishing on New Guinea. The Japanese march to Port Moresby was blocked, and General Douglas MacArthur seized the opportunity to strike back. He launched a counteroffensive in November, hoping to use New Guinea as a springboard to re-capture the Philippines.

It became a prolonged, grueling campaign. The fighting stretched on for endless months as the two armies battled across jungles and swamps and among some of the most unforgiving conditions of the war. Diseases such as malaria and dysentery ravaged both sides, as did monsoon rains, psychological trauma, and utter exhaustion. Victory would come for the Allies, but New Guinea proved a horrific den of misery and suffering for American, Australian, and Japanese troops alike.

3. Monte Cassino

In July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily, capturing the picturesque island in just thirty-eight days and gaining a foothold in Southern Europe. By September, Anglo-American forces were storming ashore in Italy, prompting the Italian government to depose fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and drop out of the Axis alliance. Hitler was infuriated and swiftly moved additional divisions to occupy the peninsula. Led by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, those German forces staged a brilliant defensive campaign that stretched for nineteen months and exacted a crippling toll on Allied armies.

At the peak of fighting in early 1944, an Allied army battling northward to liberate Rome  was blocked by German forces anchored near the mountain town of Cassino. A series of assaults by American, British, French, Indian, and New Zealander troops were repulsed by the entrenched Germans, and the stalemate dragged on for weeks. Polish forces finally captured the blood-soaked ground, but not before the Allies suffered more than 55,000 killed or wounded. The capital was liberated in June, but it proved mostly symbolic, as the Germans evaded defeat in Italy until the very end of the war.

4. The Battle of the Scheldt

In the weeks after D-Day, Allied forces struggled to break out from their Normandy beachheads, but significant advantages in air power and armor eventually overwhelmed the German defenders. By August, Paris had been liberated and Allied armies were sweeping across France, edging closer to Germany until their tanks and trucks literally ran out of gas. With fuel, ammunition, and other critical stores trickling across France by truck, supply lines had become vastly overstretched, slowing the Allied advance to a halt.

A deep-water port at Antwerp, captured by the British in September, would prove vital. The Belgian port was expected to bring considerable relief to the supply crisis, but it was sixty miles inland, and the Germans were still in control of the estuary along the Scheldt River, blocking Allied access to the port from the sea. In October 1944, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery ordered the Canadian First Army to clear the Scheldt, leading to a ferocious struggle against the German Fifteenth Army. After weeks of hard fighting and steep casualties, the Canadians won control of the estuary, and the docks and quays at Antwerp began operations in November. The Canadians paid a steep price for the hard-earned victory, but the port significantly eased Allied supply woes, fueling the final advance into Germany.

5. Battle of Kursk

When Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, his forces swept across Russia with blazing speed, pushing the Red Army to the brink of defeat. But the Germans were turned back at Moscow and Stalingrad, and by early 1943, much of their invasion force was in retreat across the Eastern Front.

In July, Hitler plotted one last grand offensive, aiming to annihilate a Soviet army that had driven a 100-mile wedge in the German lines near Kursk, just 300 miles from Moscow. The Germans assembled more than 400,000 men and 3,000 tanks for the operation, but Hitler postponed the attack so newer model tanks could arrive from German factories. The Soviets took advantage, turning their salient into a stronghold, burying hundreds of thousands of mines, and boosting forces to more than one million men.

Kursk became the largest tank battle in history and a bloodbath for both sides. After Hitler withdrew key divisions to defend Southern Europe, the Soviets mustered a massive counterattack, and from that point on, the Eastern Front became purely a defensive struggle for the Germans. It was a strategic victory for the Soviets, but the number of combined casualties at Kursk was astounding, with the Red Army alone suffering more than 750,000 dead and wounded.

6. Battle of the Huertgen Forest

In September 1944, the first American troops crossed into Germany, eager to drive toward the Rhine River and Hitler’s interior defenses. To protect the flank of the advancing forces, the 9^th Infantry Division was ordered to push German defenders out of the Huertgen Forest, a dense patch of woods stretching across fifty square miles. It was rugged, forbidding terrain, where American advantages of armor and air power were mostly useless. The Germans had also melded their fortifications with trees and foliage, concealing an intricate web of bunkers, machine-gun nests, snipers, and landmines. The 9^th Infantry made little progress, suffering thousands of casualties in what became one of the most harrowing campaigns of the war.

Other divisions were sent in to relieve the 9^th, but only one at a time, and over the course of weeks, each was chewed up by the German defenses. In December 1944, the US First Army at long last opted for a multi-prong attack to envelop the area, but the Germans struck first, launching their immense counteroffensive in the nearby Ardennes region. The Americans won a decisive victory at what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, and by early 1945, the Huertgen had finally been secured. But it came at a terrible price, with more than 24,000 men killed or wounded in the forest, and another 9,000 incapacitated by trench foot, exposure, or psychological trauma.