Why 120,000 Chinese Couldn't Destroy 15,000 Mar... #Shorts

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]The Chinese had eight divisions, 120,000 men, and a textbook encirclement, and they still lost more soldiers than the 15,000 Marines they were trying to annihilate. November 27, 1950, North Korea. Temperatures plunged to 40 below zero, cold enough to freeze blood plasma in syringes, and seize the bolt on an M1 rifle.

[00:00:21]In the mountains around the Chosin Reservoir, the entire First Marine Division has been surrounded by the Chinese People's Volunteer Army's elite Ninth Army Group under General Song Shilun.

[00:00:32]Mao Zedong has personally ordered their destruction.

[00:00:35]By the end of this video, you will understand how a single general's quiet act of insubordination turned the worst encirclement in Marine Corps history into one of the greatest fighting withdrawals ever recorded, and why the Chinese Ninth Army would never fight at full strength again.

[00:00:50]Two questions to keep in mind. How did Major General Oliver P. Smith know, weeks before anyone else, that his division