Approximate map of southern Europe and northern Africa prior to the western Desert Campaign by Jackaranga for Wikipedia “Western Desert Campaign” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(7) GUERRA PARALLELA –

FRANCO-ITALIAN, ANGLO-ITALIAN & GRECO-ITALIAN WAR

(10 JUNE 1940 – 6 APRIL 1941)

It might seem odd to see Italy’s initial role in the Second World War as waging its own ‘guerra parallela’ or parallel war to that fought by Germany, but that was indeed how Mussolini saw it – and what’s more, that is what it effectively was until Italian defeats necessitated German involvement in Italy’s war, at which point Italy became a subordinate in Germany’s war.

It was also of fundamental importance to the Second World War, transforming the Mediterranean from a literal backwater, neutral albeit Axis-friendly, to an active theater of the war – certainly disastrous to Italy itself, ultimately a battlefield in that theater, but arguably to the detriment of everyone involved, hence my favorite epithet for the Mediterranean in the Second World War as the sea of folly.

Apparently prior to Italy entering the war, the British War Cabinet considered whether it was more advantageous for Italy to remain neutral or be a millstone for Germany as ally (or for Germany to be “shackled to a corpse”, using the phrasing for Germany allied to Austria-Hungary in the First World War). They concluded that it would be better for Italy to remain neutral, correctly in my opinion, but by a narrow margin. Italy as active ally to Germany was not the war-breaker for Germany of which Hitler subsequently complained on the eve of final defeat, but it did contribute to German defeat. On the other hand, the Mediterranean was a drain on resources for all involved, arguably delaying Allied victory by at least a year or so, although they could more readily afford that drain on their resources more than a Germany which increasingly could not.

Mussolini initially sought to sit out the war that commenced with Germany’s invasion of Poland – firstly for the sensible practical reason that, as he had confided to Hitler, Italy was not ready for war until 1943 (similarly to German naval commanders who advised Hitler of the same year with respect to the German navy), and secondly for ideological opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

It is unfortunate for Italy and Mussolini personally that he did not maintain this sensible neutrality – as indeed it was that he did not maintain his original opposition to Hitler and Germany, being the only effective such opposition in the period of appeasement by Britain and France, notably by blocking Germany taking over Austria in 1934. It’s why I perceive Mussolini with some sympathy as a tragic figure despite his many flaws, not the least of which was fascism – that he might have redeemed himself in history but for the fatal flaw that he was twice corrupted from his correct initial instincts, firstly of opposition to Germany and secondly of neutrality in the war.

Mussolini abandoned his initial neutrality because he could not resist the temptation of the opportunity from the French defeat by Germany for Italy’s own expansion or empire in the Mediterranean. Although the opportunity came from the French defeat by Germany, Mussolini perceived that Italy could not do so simply by begging crumbs from Germany at the table of victory as a power friendly to it, but would have to assume an active role in the war when it was still meaningful – and what’s more, by its own war effort separate from Germany, hence the ”guerra parallela” or parallel war.

That saw Italy declare war on a dying France and a defeated Britain, although Italy was to find that the latter may have been defeated by Germany in western Europe but was to prove far more robust elsewhere.

Unfortunately for Mussolini and his guerra parallela, Italy’s separate war effort did not shape up to his hopes for it. It was probably inevitable that Italy’s war against Britain in the Mediterranean and Africa would merge with the wider Anglo-German war at some point, but Mussolini might have pulled off his parallel war if Italy had been more successful militarily. Instead, Italy was unsuccessful, infamously and spectacularly so.

Like I did for France in the Franco-German war, I feel obliged to resist the common caricature of Italy’s military performance as execrable, often pumped up as such by contemporary British propaganda – much to the anger of the British personnel who had to do the actual fighting when the Italian military did perform effectively. Italy’s military was not universally bad as so often caricatured but it was inconsistent. The reasons for that inconsistency are manifold, including that Italians did not share Mussolini’s enthusiasm for his guerra parallela on the German side but also the same reason Mussolini himself shared to Hitler – that Italy simply was not ready for war before 1943. Italian military performance often reflected that Italy went to war with a totally inadequate industrial base and wretched equipment to match, particularly outside its most prized military asset – its navy. When Italian forces were buttressed by better equipment and leadership, such as in Rommel’s Afrika Korps, they could fight very effectively indeed.

Mussolini’s parallel war got off to a bad start with the Franco-Italian war, fought in the last fortnight or so (10-25 June 1940) of dying French resistance in the Franco-German war that had commenced fighting in earnest a month before. Albeit Italy did not have the same mechanized or armored strength as Germany – and faced more difficult terrain that would have been a check to it even if it did – for the invasion of south France or the Battle of the Alps as it is called, but the resistance by the few divisions of the French Army of the Alps under General Rene Olry was the one shining light of effective French defense during the Battle of France. I’ve read at least one history that opined the French defensive success effectively preserved south France for the autonomous Vichy regime. I’m not so sure about that, as Vichy’s autonomy seemed more due to the larger bargaining chips of continuing the war through the French navy and colonial possessions, but it probably helped. It certainly limited Italian territorial claims to the minimal territory they had obtained prior to armistice.

Italy’s military performance may have been lackluster in the Franco-Italian war, but that was positively rosy compared to the defeats it suffered in the Anglo-Italian war. Those defeats were, as noted previously, most infamous and spectacular in north Africa where Italy was not only defeated by Britain in its invasion of Egypt but looked in real danger of losing its own territory of Italian Libya to the victorious British forces. However, Britain’s victories against Italian forces in north Africa often overshadow its victories against the Italian forces in east Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) as well as its naval victories in the Mediterranean, most notably the British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in the first carrier strike of history on 11 November 1940. The attack on Taranto was even more notable as a model the Japanese used for their subsequent attack on Pearl Harbor (along with their own attack on Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War) – and that Britain was notoriously deficient when it came to developing carrier aviation, particularly in comparison to Japan or the United States, with the air attack on Taranto being by the biplanes Britain used in naval aviation at that time.

However, the archetypal example of Italy’s parallel war was the Greco-Italian War it launched from 28 October 1940, attacking Greece from Albania. At least Germany was aware of Italian intentions in the Franco-Italian and Anglo-Italian wars, but Mussolini had deliberately not informed Germany of his intentions for the Greco-Italian War, resentful of what he perceived as German encroachment in the Balkans (by Germany negotiating between Hungary and Romania in conflict over Transylvania) as an Italian sphere of influence.

Once again, Italian forces faced difficult terrain, but also in the worst possible season for it, and were defeated by opposing Greek forces, only somewhat less spectacularly than in north Africa. A large part of the reason for the defeat of Italian forces in both Greece and North Africa was Mussolini splitting the Italian war effort between the two, something the British were to repeat in their victories by sending forces from north Africa to aid Greece.

As noted previously, Italy’s parallel war – the Anglo-Italian and Greco-Italian wars – effectively ended with German involvement to aid Italy at the latter’s request, reversing British or Greek victories with defeats by Germany, as well as subordinating Italy and its parallel war to Germany in the wider Anglo-German war. German involvement had commenced earlier in north Africa but commenced in Greece with the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece from 6 April 1941.

The latter has often been attributed as the fatal mistake that lost Germany the whole war, by delaying Operation Barbarossa until 22 June 1941, including by Hitler himself after the fact (and blaming everyone but himself). That has generally been revised by assessments that an unusually wet spring thaw would have delayed Barbarossa in any event, although it certainly didn’t help that the German units involved in their Balkans campaign were delayed in participating in Barbarossa – and the German airborne invasion of Crete deterred Germany from doing so to better effect elsewhere, most notably against Malta.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

The German advance to the English Channel between 16 May and 21 May of 1940, History Department of the US Military Academy, public domain image

(6) FRANCO-GERMAN WAR / THIRD FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 25 JUNE 1940)

This was the big one – until it suddenly and surprisingly wasn’t.

The war that was the focus of everyone’s attention at the outset – the war at the start and the heart of the Second World War in Europe, set to replay the Western Front of the First World War and synonymous with the Battle of France…until France fell and signed an armistice with Germany on 25 June 1940.

After then, it was replaced in western Europe, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean by the Anglo-German war, which ultimately became the Anglo-American war with Germany.

Of course, the Anglo-German war commenced at the same time as the Franco-German war – with the German invasion of Poland – and both were fought side by side, literally with Britain and France as allies in western Europe against Germany. However, the Franco-German war predominated over the Anglo-German war, as France did the heavy lifting in terms of both being the Allied front line in western Europe and fielding the overwhelming majority of the Allied armies against Germany. While Britain did field an expeditionary force to France, its main strength was its navy, as had always historically been the case, as well as the newer addition of its air force.

The Franco-German war effectively ended with German victory and French defeat in the Battle of France, such that the primary contest was no longer between French and German armies but the Anglo-German war until 1941. Britain’s strategic hope relied on the substitution of another power for France as ally that could contribute similar large forces on land against Germany. That hope was understandably focused on the United States, which ultimately did replace France as larger army allied with Britain on the Western Front, but the Soviet Union played the role of France for both Britain and the United States as primary or supreme allied combatant on land, except substituting that role on the Eastern Front for France on the Western Front.

While some French forces fought on against Germany mostly from France’s colonies as the Free French, they effectively did so as a subordinate part of the Anglo-German war or Anglo-American war against Germany – as did the revived French forces after the Anglo-American liberation of France, the core of which were Free French forces in any event. As such, the Franco-German war very much ended with French defeat in the Battle of France.

The Franco-German war was more than just the Battle of France, albeit not much more as indicated by the title of Phoney War, or Sitzkrieg in German as an amusing contrast to blitzkrieg, from about September 1939 to May 1940. This title is a slight misnomer. Britain and France may not have conducted major military operations on the Western Front but they did implement economic warfare and waged naval warfare, including their naval blockade of Germany and targeting German surface raiders. They also planned operations, although the only one that saw any action was in Norway – when they came up against the German plans to invade and occupy that country and Denmark from April 1940.

The biggest lost opportunity by France was at the outset of the Franco-German war with the failure to launch a more robust and potentially decisive offensive against Germany while the latter only had weak forces in the west during its campaign in Poland – that is, other than the abortive Saar Offensive. Had France pursued or expanded that offensive more vigorously, it may well have won the Franco-German war and ended the Second World War right there.

For that matter, the Saar Offensive was simply the last in a long line of French inaction where even the most minimal action against Germany mght have won the war before it started, most notably with Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936.

However, it remains that the Franco-German war is defined by the Battle of France from 10 May 1940 to 25 June 1940 – and the French defeat in it. The reasons for the latter, as well as those for German victory, are perhaps best considered in a closer look at the Battle of France, but at least part of those reasons is from the same pusillanimity as shown by the French leadership in their Saar Offensive or any of their other failures to take more effective action against Germany when they held the advantage.

Although I feel obliged to point out that critique of pusillanimity and psychological defeatism should not extend to French military performance as a whole, unfairly the subject of caricature as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

The Franco-German war was the third such war in seventy years, such that it should be considered the Third Franco-Prussian War, after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871 and the First World War in 1914-1918, albeit the latter involved a Germany that been unified under Prussia and its monarchy after the former. The Prussian monarchy may have been forced to abdicate after the First World War, but Germany and even more so the German military or Wehrmacht effectively remained unified under a Prussian state. The Allies in the Second World War certainly thought so as they abolished the Prussian state after the war, identifying it with the German militarism of both world wars.

Although perhaps the Franco-German war of the Second World War should be considered the Second Franco-Prussian War – as the Germans managed to replay the same quick victory they had won in the Franco-Prussian War, achieving in only six weeks what they could not against France on the Western Front throughout the entire First World War.

That of itself, as well as the repetition of three Franco-German wars in effectively as many generations, is worthy of the Franco-German war being considered as its own separate war within the Second World War

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

CIA map of “dissident activities” in French Indochina as at 3 November 1950, Page 8 of the Pentagon Papers – public domain image

(20) INDOCHINA WARS / VIETNAM WAR

(1940-1979)

“In Indochina, a nativist political movement rose up to oppose the resumption of French colonial rule; one of the factions that struggled for supremacy was the Communist Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh.”

You knew this one was coming – the iconic twentieth century war after 1945 and second only to the Second World War itself as visual image in popular culture or imagination, and as metaphor or archetype in history or politics.

Of course, it serves as the counterpoint to the Second World War in those things, particularly in moral terms, highlighted by the defeat of the United States and its allies in Vietnam, with the diminished number of its allies as further counterpoint to the Second World War.

It also serves as counterpoint in its nature, both as a limited war and as insurgency or guerilla warfare, contrasting with the Second World War as both unlimited and as more straightforward conventional warfare. Indeed, a common criticism of American military proficiency or strategy in the Vietnam War is that it essentially sought to fight an unconventional war by conventional means more suited to the Second World War and hence entirely misplaced in the Vietnam War, resulting or at least contributing to defeat.

Few things encapsulate the unconventional Vietnam War wrongly fought by conventional Second World War strategy in popular culture or imagination more than American bombing during the war, usually seen as futilely dropping bombs on jungle.

In popular culture or imagination, the Vietnam War is typically that involving the United States in varying levels of engagement from about 1954, with the height of its military engagement from about 1965 to 1972. However, that war was actually the Second Indochina War, which followed almost directly from the First Indochina War from 1945 to 1954 against the French colonial regime – and the First Indochina War commenced immediately as the last shots were fired in the Second World War.

The First Indochina War in turn took shape in the Second World War itself. The Vietnamese resistance to French colonial rule predated the Second World War but took its definitive shape in that war – as the Vichy French colonial administration effectively had to concede control to Japanese occupation from 1940 onwards until Japan “had extended its control over the whole of French Indochina”.

Interestingly, the Japanese occupation and control of French Indochina was the trigger point for the United States to embargo Japan, which in turn led to war with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Interestingly that is, because it illuminates Vietnam as another American trigger point for the Cold War in Asia.

During the Pacific War, however, the United States placed little weight on French Indochina – with President Roosevelt even offering it to Chiang Kai-Shek. In fairness, this may have reflected the predominant role of China for Vietnamese resistance – “most of the Vietnamese resistance to Japan, France, or both, including both communist and non-communist groups, remained based over the border, in China”.

One exception was Ho Chi Minh and the underground communist resistance he led within Vietnam from 1941 onwards – gaining mass support from the effects of the 1945 Vietnamese famine on the populace.

In March 1945, the Japanese effectively sought to salt the earth of the remnants of the French colonial administration – which the Japanese revoked, imprisoning French administrators and taking full control of Indochina, nominally under Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai who proclaimed the Empire of Vietnam.

As Japan lurched to its surrender, the communists or Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh launched firstly their August Revolution from Hanoi and secondly declared Vietnamese independence. The latter had little real effect as the Allies had agreed to China occupying north Vietnam while the British occupied the south.

The Viet Minh remained largely intact under Chinese occupation of the north – such that they were even able to purge non-communist nationalist resistance – but British occupation of the south was another matter. I always recall reading how the British, having accepted the surrendering Japanese garrisons laying down their arms, then immediately rearmed them to keep order in Vietnam – which essentially translated to keeping order for the return of French colonial rule.

However, the Vietnamese communist resistance under Ho Chi Minh came out swinging against the restoration of French colonial rule from the outset and the First Indochina War took shape, along similar north-south lines as the postwar occupation and the subsequent Second Indochina War with the United States, with the Third Indochina War against China in 1979 echoing the postwar Chinese occupation of northern Vietnam.

RATING: 4 STARS*****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Spot the difference! Map of the first month and last month of the Korean War taken in screenshots and placed together in collage by me from an animated series of maps through the war by Leomonaci98 for Wikipedia “Korean War” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(19) KOREAN WAR

(1945-1953)

“Korea became a powder keg with the Russians and Americans entangled in its north and south.”

The Korean War may have been its own distinct war, but it directly arose from the circumstances of the Second World War before it, overlaid by the new Cold War of which it was part (and for which it was the first major conflict).

The primary circumstance which gave rise to the Korean War was the occupation of the northern and southern halves of Korea by the Soviet Union and the United States respectively – similarly to the eastern and western halves of Germany in Europe.

Ironically, Japan itself was fortunate to avoid the division of Germany into Europe, because of its sole occupation by the United States (and selected western allies), but its former imperial territory of Korea was not. Indeed, Korea was doubly unfortunate in that, unlike Germany, war was fought along the lines of that division.

Of course, the key distinction between Korea and Germany was that any war along the lines of division in Germany would have involved war directly between the United States and the Soviet Union – the very thing that they sought to avoid in the Cold War, with its potential escalation to nuclear war after 1949.

In Korea, however, the Soviet Union could wage war by proxy – firstly the North Korean communist regime that was already fighting low-level warfare across the border with its non-communist counterpart in South Korea from 1945 onwards, and secondly the new communist government in China on North Korea’s behalf.

The Korean War was also “largely fought by the same commanders and with the same doctrines, weapons, and equipment as the Second World War” – including strategic bombing on the same scale, dropping more bombs than in the whole Pacific War, ranking North Korea as one of the most heavily bombed countries in history.

Some of those weapons were developed from their versions introduced or tested in the last days of the Second World War. Notably, jet aircraft – while the Allies had eschewed replacing their propellor-driven prop counterparts in service at that late stage of the Second World War, they came into their own in the Korean War. Jet aircraft confronted each other in air-to air combat for the first time in history and it was the first war in which jets played the central role in air combat. Similarly, the Korean War also featured the first large-scale deployment of helicopters, which had been developed during the Second World War.

It was also the closest the United States came to using nuclear weapons against an adversary in war since the Second World War, actively contemplating or planning their use against China, or North Korean and Chinese forces.

The Korean War also featured General Macarthur’s daring amphibious invasion behind enemy lines for the Battle of Inchon as the closest comparison to Normandy since the Second World War. The Battle of Inchon has commonly been considered among historians and military scholars as a strategic masterpiece or one of the most decisive military operations in modern warfare, a particularly distinctive accolade for an amphibious operation – “a brilliant success, almost flawlessly executed,” which remained “the only unambiguously successful, large-scale US combat operation” for the next 40 years.

That said, but for its first year which did resemble the more mobile warfare of the Second World War, the Korean War mostly resembled the First World War and the conventional static stalemate of the Western Front, albeit crammed into the narrower space of the Korean peninsula.

Ironically enough, the war stabilized at or close to the original border between South and North Korea. That is where the fighting largely stayed for the next two years – and also where it ended at ceasefire.

In this the Korean War again more closely resembled the First World War than the Second, with their inconclusive armistices or ceasefires that are far more typical of modern war than the Second World War with its decisive victories. The Korean War is still very much with us – with the ceasefire division of the Korean peninsula into opposing North and South Korea, still technically at war with each other, in a frozen conflict like bugs preserved in some strange Cold War amber.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Map of the United States of Indonesia, December 1949 by Milenioscuro for Wikipedia “Indonesian National Revolution” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

(18) INDONESIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

(1942-1949)

And now we come to the focus of my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars after the Second World War, but which took definitive shape during that war – the wars in east or south east Asia.

Of course, we’ve already seen one of the biggest such wars in my previous special mention for the Chinese Civil War, but it is also one that encapsulates many of the features of “the deadly confrontations that broke out–or merely continued–in Asia after peace was proclaimed at the end of World War II”.

“Under occupation by the victorious Allies, this part of the world was plunged into new power struggles or back into old feuds that in some ways were worse than the war itself”, compounded by the circumstance that “the U.S. and Soviet governments, as they secretly vied for influence in liberated lands, were soon at odds”.

“Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, civil war, communal clashes, and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians.”

Unlike British India, Indonesia had to fight a war of independence, also known as the Indonesian National Revolution, against the Netherlands that had ruled it as the Dutch East Indies – expanding from the original holdings of the Dutch East India Company in 1603 through to its full extent under the Dutch government until Japanese occupation in 1942.

There are some ironies here. That was the Dutch government in exile, as the Netherlands had been occupied by Germany in 1940, so the Dutch government found itself exiled twice over with the loss of the Dutch East Indies to Japan. Also, while Indonesia may not have had British India’s more “peaceful” cession of independence, it had fewer casualties from its war for independence than British India had from its partition into two states. Indeed, it was fortunate that its war for independence involved comparatively few casualties among the new or continuing wars that emerged in east or south-east Asia after the Second World War.

The Indonesian independence movement began well before the Second World War, but the occupation by Japan from 1942 to 1945 “was a critical factor in the subsequent revolution”. Firstly, Japan “spread and encouraged Indonesian nationalist sentiment”, even if more for their own advantage. Secondly, the Japanese occupation effectively “destroyed and replaced much of the Dutch-created economic, administrative, and political infrastructure”. Hence I’ve chosen 1942 as the starting date for this special mention.

And the Indonesian independence movement came out swinging straight from the end of the war, with their declaration of independence on 17 August 1945 – only two days after the announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender (and prior to the formal ceremony of surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri).

The Dutch were able to regain some control of major towns or cities when they returned as a significant military force in early 1946. In the interim, other Allied forces occupied Indonesia or at least parts of it, primarily the British as it was assigned to Britain’s South East Asia Command.

Ironically, despite surrendering, the former Japanese occupying forces found themselves on both sides of the war. The overwhelming majority of them complied with the terms of surrender to assist the Allied forces to maintain order, albeit both Japanese and Allied forces often sought to avoid direct confrontation with Indonesian nationalists. However, some Japanese holdouts joined the Indonesian national revolutionaries – as did some defecting Indian soldiers from British forces.

Ultimately, Dutch forces were not able to extend or preserve the control they regained, partly because of the military situation facing “well-organized resistance with popular support”, but primarily because of international diplomatic and political opposition. That opposition came from neighboring Australia – where Australian maritime workers in their characteristic style boycotted loading or unloading Dutch ships – but also India, the Soviet Union, and most significantly, the United States. The opposition from the United States was the most significant because it threatened to cut off economic aid to the Netherlands under the Marshall Plan. The Dutch gave in, ceding sovereignty to Indonesia in 1949.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Map of the partition of India in 1947 for Wikipedia “Partition of India” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(17) INDIA & PAKISTAN – INPEPENDENCE & PARTITION

(1942-1947)

Moving closer to the focus of my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars fought in Asia after the Second World War but which took definitive shape during that war – in this case, in south Asia or the Indian subcontinent.

India may have been fortunate in it did not have to fight a war of independence and Britain effectively ceded independence to it in 1947, but that independence was on the basis of partition into two independent states along religious lines – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan (the latter as west and east Pakistan, with the latter subsequently seceding as Bangladesh).

Independence may have been relatively bloodless but partition brought with it displacement and violence on a large scale – with the former estimated as 12-20 million people displaced or as refugees, and the latter estimated as anywhere between 200,000 and two million people killed by sectarian violence, with the most common estimate as a million.

Both independence and the idea of Hindu-Muslim partition originated well before the Second World War. Indian independence movements arguably originated from resistance or revolts at the very outset of British imperialism in India by the British East India Company. However, the First World War “would prove to be the watershed of the imperial relationship between Britain and India” – as Indian independence movements hoped India’s contribution to that war would be repaid by British political concessions. Indian independence movements took even more definitive shape in the Second World War and India’s contribution to it – particularly with the Quit India Movement in 1942, hence my choice of 1942 as the starting date for this special mention.

My choice of 1947 as the end date for this special mention of course derives from the year of independence for the two new nations of India and Pakistan – with all the displacement and sectarian violence that this partition involved. The former persisted until at least 1951 and while the latter may have largely subsided by 1948, it laid the foundations for hostility and subsequent wars between Indian and Pakistan as well as the 1971 secession of the former east Pakistan as Bangladesh.

While the independence and partition of British India were probably inevitable, at least from the First World War onwards, it became inevitable on an almost immediate basis from the end of the Second World War due to Britain’s inability and unwillingness to maintain its former imperial or global commitments.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 – UN Special Committee on Palestine (3 September 1947) and UN Ad Hoc Committee (25 November 1947) partition plans. The UN Ad Hoc Committee proposal was voted on in the resolution and adopted 29 November 1947 (map – public domain image)

(16) PALESTINE – INSURGENCY, CIVIL WAR & ARAB-ISRAELI WAR

(1939 / 1944-1948)

And now we come to my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars fought after the Second World War, but which took definitive shape during that war – above all in Asia.

Historian Ronald Spector, author of The Eagle Against the Sun, encapsulated this in the titles of his books, The Ruins of Empire and A Continent Erupts, reflecting their subject. In western Europe, the end of the war may have “marked the beginning of decades of unprecedented cooperation and prosperity…labelled the long peace”, but “east and southeast Asia quickly became the most turbulent regions of the globe”.

However, one region of western Asia soon vied as contender for the most turbulent region of the globe – the British mandate of Palestine or Mandatory Palestine, which Britain had administered since the end of the First World War as territory taken from the former Ottoman Empire.

The nascent conflict in Palestine, between Arabs and Jews, originated in the First World War – arguably in 1916-1917, with the Arab Revolt, Sykes-Picot Agreement, and Balfour Agreement in those years, although Palestine as the focus of Zionism or Jewish settlement and a Jewish “national home” originated earlier than that.

During the Mandate, there was further Jewish immigration and the rise of nationalist movements in both Jewish and Arab communities, culminating in the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. Britain ultimately suppressed the Arab Revolt, but in part by means of the 1939 White Paper, severely restricting Jewish immigration and land purchases – hence my choice of 1939 as starting date for this special mention.

The combination of Arab Revolt and White Paper led to the formation of Jewish underground militias, primarily the Haganah which was to become the core of the Israeli Defence Force – as well as increasing Jewish sentiment that they could not achieve their aims in cooperation with the British, particularly after the war. It also contributed to the idea of partition as solution, as it became clear that Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine could not be resolved.

The Second World War saw some suspension of this conflict, as Palestine even came under Axis air attack and within potential reach of Axis armed forces with Rommel’s victories in 1942. That saw British training of forces within the Haganah, as well as the subsequent creation of the Jewish Brigade within British armed forces.

However, the Second World War had not even ended when the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine began in 1944 and persisted through to 1948, albeit in fairness the tide of war had passed well away from Palestine when it began. The primary insurgents were the more radical Jewish militias or underground groups – Lehi (or the Stern Gang) and Irgun. Even the Haganah sought to suppress them in cooperation with Britain or at least avoiding direct confrontation with British armed forces, instead mainly supporting immigration spurred by Jewish refugees from or after the Second World War.

From there, the conflict spiralled out of British control or even its ability to do so, and like many or most of Britain’s commitments elsewhere, Britain could not (or did not want to) maintain it and instead handed it over to someone else – in this case, the newly founded United Nations, which formulated a partition plan.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan – proposing the division of Palestine between Arab and Jewish states – prompted the 1947-1948 civil war between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. In turn, the conflict escalated into the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as five Arab states – Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq – declared war (and lost) against the new state of Israel that Jewish leadership declared when Britain ended the Mandate and withdrew its forces.

Arab-Israeli wars, and even more so Palestinian-Israeli wars have defined the region ever since. While Jewish immigration to and settlement in Palestine predated the Second World War, it gained new impetus from the war – albeit more before and after the war than during the war itself – and it is difficult to see that the formation of the state of Israel would have had the same force or support without the events of the war, one event in particular above all, perhaps to the extent that it may not have been formed at all in Palestine.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

US propaganda poster 1942-1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum / US National Archives & Records Administration – public domain image

(15) PHILIPPINES – WAR OF OCCUPATION & RESISTANCE

(1941-1945)

The fighting Filipinos!

The role of the Philippines in the Pacific War has always struck me as similar to that of Poland in Europe. While not playing the same role as casus belli – which is more properly assigned to Pearl Harbor – it was effectively the front line or ground zero for commencement of the war, and then a center of resistance behind the lines of occupation in that war.

Indeed, the parallel with Poland continues in that, similar to the Anglo-French planning that effectively foresaw writing off Poland to liberate it after German defeat, so too did American planning effectively to write off the Philippines.

As I understand it, particularly from my reading of Ronald Spector’s The Eagle Against the Sun, while War Plan Orange – the original American plan for war against Japan which was largely followed in the actual war – did not explicitly plan to abandon American and Filipino forces in the Philippines, its hope for those forces to hold out on their own until relieved by the American naval counter-offensive was unrealistic.

As it turned out, whatever hope there was of the forces in the Philippines holding out on their own, it was dashed first by the naval losses at Pearl Harbor and then, through bad luck and timing, the loss of US aircraft at Clark Field from Japanese attack in the Philippines itself. The loss of air cover forced the retreat of the American Asiatic Fleet from the Philippines, so that American forces were effectively left stranded without air or naval support except for the limited use of American submarines.

The doomed American campaign from 8 December 1941 to 8 May 1942 to defend the Philippines from the Japanese invasion, with its famous landmarks of Bataan (with the infamous Bataan Death March of American prisoners by Japan that followed) and Corregidor, may be the stuff of heroism but is more properly considered as part of the Pacific War.

Equally, the victorious American campaign from 20 October 1944 to 15 August 1945 to return to and liberate the Philippines is also more properly considered part of the Pacific War.

However, in the two and a half years between those two campaigns was the war of resistance in the Philippines. Indeed, the war of resistance in the Philippines overlapped with both. Significant parts of the resistance came from American or Filipino forces that escaped or did not surrender in the 1941-1942 campaign and instead led or fought as guerillas against Japanese occupation.

Among other American commanders, General MacArthur, who had been ordered to leave his command in the Philippines by submarine, maintained a keen interest in the maintaining or supplying the resistance there, consistent with his declaration that he would return – and indeed, the resistance would also play its part in preparing the ground by sabotage and other means for the 1944-1945 campaign.

The resistance in the Philippines was of no more small scale or effect. “Postwar studies estimate that around 260,000 people were organized under guerilla groups, and that members of anti-Japanese underground organizations were more numerous”. Also, such was their effectiveness that Japan only controlled the key or major islands in their occupation, with their control of the countryside or smaller towns often tenuous at best – “of the 48 provinces, only 12 were in firm control of the Japanese”.

Ironically, some Japanese soldiers took a leaf from the Filipino resistance, with the notorious Japanese holdouts on more remote islands throughout former occupied territory after the Japanese surrender. Many of them, as individuals or in groups, were in the Philippines. Only in Indonesia did one confirmed Japanese soldier endure longer – holding out to 1974! – but unconfirmed reports persisted after that in the Philippines, with  the last report taken seriously by Japanese officials in 2005.

As for the Philippines, while their resistance received mixed or belated recognition from the US government, it at least bore fruit with the US honoring its commitment from 1935 for the independence of the Philippines in 1946.

RATINGS: 4 STARS****

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Map legend shows origins and direction of Russian and British attacks as the two nations invade Iran to protect oil fields from sabotage by German agents who they claim have infiltrated there – Iowa City Press Citizen Newspaper Archives August 26, 1941 Page 1 (public domain image)

(14) ANGLO-SOVIET INVASION OF IRAN & IRAN CRISIS

(1941-1946)

Another part of the Middle Eastern theater that everyone forgets about when it comes to the Second World War. Following on the heels of Britain’s successful campaigns in Iraq and Syria, as well as the new Anglo-Soviet alliance in the wake of Operation Barbarossa, Britain and the Soviet Union jointly invaded and occupied the neutral state of Iran in the six days from 25 August 1941 to 31 August 1941.

Britain invaded from Iraq to the west while the Soviet Union invaded from its border to the north. Hopelessly outmatched, Iran largely did not oppose the Anglo-Soviet invasion and surrendered on 31 August 1941.

Its primary purpose was to secure Allied supply lines to the Soviet Union – and indeed the so-called Persian Corridor turned out to be the most reliable route for Lend-Lease aid to the Soviets.

Other purposes included securing the Iranian oilfields – although the Middle East in general had a lot less prominence for oil during the war than it was to have later – as well as blocking German influence in Iran (understandably enough from the Iranian perspective of a history of being stood over by Britain and Russia) or pre-empting an Axis through Turkey (and later the Caucasus), albeit unlikely.

Not pictured among those purposes – concern for what was, after all, a neutral nation, or for the effects of the occupation on Iran, which manifested primarily in that recurring handmaiden of both British and Soviet empires, famine, with the disruption of food supplies and transport.

For their part, the Soviet Union and Britain signed a treaty with Iran ruling that Iran was not to be considered occupied by the Allies, but in alliance with them. They also declared that they would remain in Iran until six months after the end of the war. Once in the war, the Americans were also drawn into Iran, helping to man the Persian Corridor (and providing Lend-Lease to Iran itself) while effectively guaranteeing the Anglo-Soviet withdrawal from Iran after the war.

That led to the Iran Crisis in 1946 – the first crisis of the Cold War and one in which the Americans succeeded in forcing the Soviets to back down. While the British withdrew according to schedule after the war, the Soviets did not – refusing to relinquish their occupied territory, and worse, supporting pro-Soviet separatist states of the Azerbaijan’s People’s Government and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad.

Those states actually fought against Iran, but ultimately intense pressure from the United States forced Soviet withdrawal and the dissolution of the Azerbaijani and Kurdish separatist states.

RATINGS: 4 STARS****

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Map of Iraq during WWII by Kirrages for Wikipedia “Anglo-Iraqi War” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(13) ANGLO-IRAQI WAR

(1941)

Everyone forgets about the Middle Eastern theater in the Second World War. Granted, it wasn’t much of a theater in terms of actual fighting, but that was because Britain moved quickly behind the scenes to secure the Middle East under its control – behind the scenes that is, of Britain’s defeats fighting Germany elsewhere in the Mediterranean at the same time.

One part of that was the British taking over Syria from the Vichy French government in the successful Syrian campaign in June-July 1941. However, before that was the Anglo-Iraqi war in May 1941 which was the central part or ground zero of the Middle Eastern theater – not least because it then enabled (and led to) both the Syrian campaign as well as my next special mention entry.

Britain had taken over Iraq from the former Ottoman Empire, ostensibly as a mandate under the League of Nations, but effectively in real terms as a colony or protectorate. Iraq nominally became independent in 1932 but the British had been careful to lock in a pro-British government with the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930.

Iraqi nationalists as well as the Axis nations of Germany and Italy saw the opportunity of the war for a coup to oust the pro-British government in April 1941. As usual, German political diplomacy and material support counted for little beyond the effective projection of its military power, although it (and Italy) did supply material and even aircraft through Vichy French Syria (hence the subsequent Syrian campaign).

If it’s one thing Britain could still do well, even at this late stage of empire, it was to crush colonial revolts – which it did by quickly mobilizing forces from the neighboring parts of its empire, notably including Indian troops, and stamping out the Iraqi coup in four weeks from 2 May 1941 to 31 May 1941.

Thereafter, Iraq served Britain as its base of operations within the Middle Eastern Theater.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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