Conclusionconclusion 389 Conclusion

ConclusionConclusion 389 Conclusion

The combat/military effectiveness of an army can be described as the capabil- ity of that institution to sustain itself in the battlefield against hostile forces and to inflict casualties on the opponent by adapting to changing conditions and adopting certain techniques. Combat effectiveness depends on several factors, like recruitment, the combat motivation/loyalty mechanism (an amal- gam of morale and discipline), tactical procedures, the training system, the hardware at the disposal of the military machine, the logistical infrastructure, etc. Let us evaluate these elements in the Indian Army, especially for the period between 1941 and 1945. First, let us analyze the combat contribution of the Indian Army. Winston Churchill and Orde Wingate both had a very low opinion of the Indian Army.1 How far their assessments hold water needs to be evaluated. British India cov- ered 1,630,000 square miles. As a point of comparison, the European part of the USSR extended over 2,110,000 square miles with another 6,460,000 square miles in Asia. In September 1939, Germany had a population of 80 million, the USSR 171 million, Italy 43 million2 and Japan 100 million.3 The Indian Army was not only the largest volunteer force but also the biggest colonial force. But its size pales in comparison with the armies raised by the first class powers during World War II. Malnourishment in the rural sector, political demands (the British could not dare to impose conscription in India for fear of adverse political repercussions) and imperial prejudice (the Martial Race theory) prevented massive expansion of the Indian Army. During World War II, India, from a population of roughly 350 million, raised a 2.5 million-strong armed forces whose total casualties came to about 179,935 (including 24,438 KIA, 64,354 WIA, 11,574 missing and 79,489 POWs).4 So the expansion of the Indian Army during the era of Total War was not total. About 4,000 Indian soldiers were captured at

1 Raymond Callahan, ‘Did Winston Matter? Churchill and the Indian Army, 1940 –45’, in Alan Jeffreys and Patrick Rose (eds.), The Indian Army, 1939 –47: Experience and Development (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), p. 65. 2 Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941 –45 (2005, reprint, London: Hodder Arnold, 2007), p. 45. 3 Geoffrey Evans, Slim as Military Commander (1969, reprint, Dehra Dun: Natraj, 1977), p. 153. 4 Pradeep Barua, The Army Officer Corps and Military Modernization in Later Colonial India (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1999), p. 137. Lieutenant-General S.L. Menezes writes that the strength of the Indian Army during World War II consisted of two million men and another half a million non-combatants. See his Fidelity & Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Viking, 1993), p. 367.

Hong Kong. Another 32,000 Indian soldiers became POWs in Singapore. In addition, some 11,000 Indian troops became casualties during the Malaya- Singapore Campaign.5 The total casualties suffered by the Indian Army in World War II were less than the casualties suffered by the Red Army and the Wehrmacht in a single decisive campaign. For instance, the Red Army’s losses during Operation BARBAROSSA and the Wehrmacht’s casualties during Operation BLAU exceeded the total number of casualties suffered by the Indian Army on all the fronts between 1939 and 1945. The Soviet military losses during World War II came to about 10 million (including 3 million POWs). British and American military losses were about 350,000 and 300,000 respectively.6 The Indian Army dominated the Burma theatre by its sheer numbers. The biggest service/branch of the Indian armed forces was the Indian Army. And the bulk of the Indian Army personnel were in the 14th Army, which at its height comprised some one million men, and of them about 700,000 were Indians. When the war ended there were some 13,000 IECOs and some of them had experienced command at brigade and battalion levels.7 By 1945, there were 7,546 Indian officers in the combat arms. Including the medical services, the total number of Indian officers came to about 16,000.8 Between 1941 and 1943, around 75 per cent of the German land and air units were deployed on the Eastern Front. During 1942, only six German divisions were in North Africa.9 In World War II, only four British infantry divisions fought in South-East Asia: the 18th surrendered at Singapore, the 70th was used as Special Force under Orde Wingate, the 2nd was at Kohima and, finally, the 36th was under the SEAC.10 Some 303,501 Japanese soldiers served in Burma between 1941 and 1945 and of them, 118,352 returned to Japan after the war. About 185,149 Japanese died in Burma and 241,000 were killed by US bombing raids in Japan. Louis Allen estimates that British and Commonwealth casualties in Burma numbered 73,909. Of them, 38,803 casualties (or 52.6 per cent of

5 India’s Part in the Third Year of War (New Delhi: GoI, n.d.), p. 1. 6 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 404. 7 Barua, The Army Officer Corps and Military Modernization in Later Colonial India, pp. 138, 149, 152. 8 Daniel P. Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign (Westport, Connecticut/London: Praeger, 2003), p. 227. According to another count, at the end of the Second World War, there were 32,750 British officers and some 14,000 Indian officers in the Indian Army. Menezes, Fidelity & Honour, p. 367. 9 David M. Glantz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995), p. 149. 10 Callahan, ‘Did Winston Matter? Churchill and the Indian Army, 1940 –45’, in Jeffreys and Rose (eds.), The Indian Army, 1939 –47, p. 63.