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This is a book that tells the story of World War Two in this particular neighbourhood of the British Empire which had never expected to have been anywhere near the front line: Namely Burma. The British Imperial defences centered around Singapore and assumed of being able to send ships and troops to aid the colonies should any emergency require it. Finding itself immersed in a existential crisis against Germany and Italy in Europe and North Africa, the British Empire simply did not have the resources to defend its Asian Empire against an aggressive and determined rising Japanese Empire when it attacked in December 1941. It had not helped that a pacifist and naively optimistic attitude towards the rising Fascist powers had held sway in the 1930s meaning that even basic investments in training, equipment and defences had not been undertaken. When the Japanese invaded Malaya they soon found that they were pushing at an empire made of cards which rapidly began tumbling. It did not take long before the Burma card began to fall.
But despite the catastrophic defeat in Malaya and the Fall of Singapore, Burma was not quite as easy a campaign as the Japanese had hoped it might be. The initial incursions were successful and the British military forces in Burma found themselves to be hopelessly inadequate to the tasks set for them. It did not help that there was disjuncture in leadership from those commanders on the Front line, to those in Rangoon and most fatefully of all to those in India where General Wavell seemed to be issuing orders that were already out of date by the time he made them. At heart though the fall of Rangoon was due to inadequate forces who were ill equipped and ill prepared to deal with the innovative, ruthless and experienced Japanese soldiers who constantly knocked the defenders off balance as they infiltrated or bypassed defence lines that were no more than figments of their officer's imaginations.
Despite the unfolding disaster, the author explains that a silver lining in the form of Bill Slim and his newly formed Burma Corps of cobbled together surviving formations combined with hastily landed reinforcements appeared and began to fight a determined and relatively effective rear guard action. We learn that the Chinese Nationalist Forces were generally reluctant to fight despite the American Lt-General Stillwell's goading of their commanders as they were more interested in husbanding their resources for the long run rather than waste them on what they assumed was a doomed venture. The long war against Japan since 1931 had made them conservative and risk averse although with one exception at the Battle of Yenangyaung. This remarkable battle saw the Chinese General Sun try to rescue some isolated British forces. Interestingly, this was the first and only time in history when a Chinese commander was given command over forces in the form of British tanks and artillery. In this case the Chinese did help extricate the trapped British troops from the Yenangyaung oilfields. But the Japanese were still relentlessly pushing the British army back towards India where they were ultimately saved by a combination of Monsoon rains and the unbelievably harsh terrain of mountainous jungle with few if any lines of communication through them. It was a defeat, but without the fine leadership of Bill Slim it could have been a much worse disaster than it proved to be. He had at least rescued a nucleus of an army which could provide the foundations for a later campaign.
As ever though, it takes the establishment a few times to get to the right formula of personnel at the top. The author explains the lamentable appointment of Lt-General Irwin with his already impressive track record of failure in France and Dakar to contend with. He and General Wavell as CinC India really brought out the worst of one another. They each were keen to go on to the offensive but were using tactics, equipment and techniques that were more akin to World War One than fighting in the Jungles of Burma. Irwin's Arakan campaign was an unmitigated disaster that reinforced failure far too often and if anything made morale worse as the Japanese appeared impervious to British and Indian attacks and tactics. It is interesting that Bill Slim had been sidelined personally by Irwin in what turned out to be a fortuitous switch of commands as Slim took over the training of the bulk of the ever increasing Indian Army whilst Irwin continued to bang his head against the brick wall of the Japanese who themselves ultimately showed the British general how to infiltrate and turn flanks effectively. Wavell does deserve some credit for appointing Slim in the first place after the two had worked together in the Middle East and also for greenlighting the maverick Orde Wingate and his Chindit operations. Interestingly the author does somewhat rightfully prick the balloon of Wingate's reputation and illustrates that although his ideas were innovative and undoubtedly provided a propaganda boon whilst all was going wrong in Arakan, Wingate's forces never fully capitalised on their sacrifices and hardships by supporting wider strategic imperatives - such as the Arakan operation as Slim had originally planned nor the later Imphal campaign. Indeed their 1944 Operation Thursday sidetracked them even further from their original purpose and ended up barely surviving and contributing little to the crucial fighting in and around Imphal and Kohima.
Training and preparation, largely under Bill Slim's direction, would transform the old Raj army of so-called Martial Race into a modern, confident and ultimately successful 14th Army within which nearly 90% of the personnel were of colonial extraction. As the author explains, this campaign was well and truly an Indian operation with important contributions from African, British and American personnel. They would also receive the great boon of vastly increased air resources which were originally intended to help keep resources flowing to the Nationalist Chinese Government over 'the hump' of the Himalayas after the Burma Road was captured by the Japanese, but soon provided an impressive wider theatre resource. These planes would soon be innovators in dropping supplies and moving troops around the theatre as the training regime emphasised defendable boxes rather than defence lines that could be easily infiltrated. Time and again we see that supplies and reinforcements from planes kept forces going far longer than the Japanese had anticipated. There was no such innovation on the Japanese side.
1943 also saw the jigsaw pieces of command fall in to place with the three appointments of Auchinleck in India, Mountbatten as the newly formed South East Asia Commander in Ceylon and Bill Slim leading the 14th Army. These three would understand one another implicitly and developed an impressive leadership team that the burgeoning Indian Army was more than willing to serve under. I should say that the author gives a compelling explanation as to why two and a half million Indians volunteered to fight for the British compared to the pitiful number who joined Bose and the INA on the Japanese side. His thesis is that the Indians recognised the existential threat of the Japanese on their borders and were willing to fight for the legally constituted government of India but on behalf of India and not of Britain. This unprecedented increase in the size of the Indian Army would also transform the soon to be independent nation into a regional military power benefitting mightily from the resources and training of the Allies. He compares their growing professionalisation and innovation with the stultifying INA which suffered from unimaginative tactics and a tendency to believe their own propaganda. Many of the INA deserted at the first opportunity but those who did not were not treated kindly by the Indians fighting them if they were captured.
The climax of the campaign came with the Japanese invasion of India culminating in their high water mark at Kohima. The Japanese ferocity and ruthlessness could also hide poor leadership decisions and a lamentable logistics chain which made their task needlessly more complicated. There were opportunities for the Japanese to break through as their offensive caught the British somewhat napping as they were in the process of planning their own attacks. But at the end of the day the standard of training and extent of innovation inculcated by Bill Slim repaid itself handsomely. The British and Indian forces fought with a level of confidence, skill and expertise that the Japanese had not anticipated. Japanese bravery was often wasted on 14th Army firepower and Japanese stubbornness often cost them dearly as they became predictable and isolated themselves from their strategic aims. The Indian Army had innovated and improved massively since 1942 whilst the Japanese had barely changed at all. It is telling that in the last stages of the war the Japanese forces lost 13 times the number of casualties of the 14th Army. Ultimately 180,000 Japanese soldiers died in Burma all too often due to poor leadership or in forlorn attempts to retrieve honour or hopeless situations.
This really is a compelling book that was very easy to follow. The author lays out the events in a clear, chronological format. He explains the faults and virtues of the leaders involved and explains how the theatre ended near the bottom of the resource chain in the fight against Fascism. The plural of the title of Empires refers to more than just the clash of the British and Japanese Empires in World War Two. He also explains how the original Burma came under British control and the ambivalent attitude they had to India and Indians. But most importantly of all, it explains how the creation of the largest volunteer army in history played an important role in India gaining its independence as a new generation of Indian commanders were trained and soldiers found an esprit de corps and expertise that not only removed the Japanese as a hostile regional force to be feared but created the backbone of a new Indian Army that would be able to defend its borders and the soon to be created Institutions of the world's largest democratic state. This is a book that shows how military history can and does impact on wider social history but not always in ways that you might expect. Highly recommended.
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