On April 30 Hitler Shot Himself: Here's How Indian Soldiers Contributed In Defeating Axis Alliance

It was on 30th April at 3:15 pm when Adolf Hitler shot himself inside his hideout, the F¨¹hrerbunker, in Berlin as the Soviet Red Army marched into the city; thus, bringing an end to a war he and the Axis powers initiated roughly six years ago. Yet while the world honoured those who saved it from the Axis, the contributions of one nation were largely forgotten. That nation was India.

At the onset of the second world war in 1939, the British Indian Army was a small force of roughly 1,60,000 soldiers. Deployed mostly in the arid terrains of Waziristan, this army would eventually swell up to 25,00,000 soldiers by 1945 and as per military historian Harry Fecitt, ¡°It was the largest all-volunteer army in the history of human conflict.¡± The second world war transformed the Indian armed forces from ¡°essentially a national guard to what it is today ¨C a modern fighting machine but one with long regimental stories, honours and colours¡±, says author R Prasannan.

Yet while countless odes and tributes have been paid to the American or British or the Soviet soldier, the Indian soldiers' sacrifices were limited to military records and out of the public conscience. As Professor Annu P Matthew states, ¡°I was astounded by the number of people who sacrificed and died, and the fact that this is not part of our history books in India, South Asia, or globally,¡± in her essay, The Unremembered: Indian Soldiers of WWII.

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ON THE BATTLEFIELD

The first Indian Army formation to participate in the war was Force K6 of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, stationed in France. Interestingly, though not shown in Nolan's war epic, Dunkirk, these four companies were part of the Dunkirk evacuations.

It was then in the December of 1942 when the first Indian forces were pressed into action. The call of war came in from North Africa wherein the British Commonwealth forces attacked Italian positions in Egypt and Libya. The forces then marched onto Italian East Africa and decimated the Italian army under the Duke of Aosta. These operations were the first decisive victories of the Allied forces since the beginning of the war. ¡°The whole empire has been stirred by the achievement of Indian forces in Eritrea,¡± was British PM Churchill's reaction to the victory in a letter to the then-Indian Viceroy Lord Linlithgow.

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Before long the Indian forces would go on to face Field Marshall Erwin 'Desert Fox' Rommel and his Afrika Korps. The Indians and the Allied forces battled Rommel's forces and ultimately secured the strategic Suez Canal supply line. Consequently, the British Indian forces along with the Soviet and Free French forces invaded the western Asian states of Persia, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria while overthrowing Axis-friendly governments to essentially secure one resource ¨C oil.

The North African and Middle Eastern campaigns of the Allies severely limited the supply of petroleum to German forces, thus critically halting German advances. On the contrary, continuous oil supplies to the Soviet Union were ensured by the mostly Indian Persia and Iran Force (PAI Force) which carried over 62000 tonnes of supplies to the USSR through the Persian corridor.

The Indian Army formations were also part of a larger Allied force that attacked the Mediterranean islands as well as the Italian peninsula and pushed northwards into Rome and Greece against a combined force of Italy and Nazi Germany.

While the Indian Army was fighting valiantly on the western battlefields, it was the east where its most critical test lay. The Japanese were fast advancing in Southeast Asia and with the fall of Singapore and Burma, India was staring at a Japanese invasion from the east. The British PM went on to label the fall of Singapore as the ¡°worst disaster¡± in British military history. To repel the advancing Japanese forces in Burma, Indian forces launched the Arakan campaign in December 1943. However, as per author R Prasannan, ¡°with neither the Indian nor the British troops having been trained for jungle warfare, the campaign flopped miserably.¡±

The Indian forces under General William Slim finally dug in at the eastern Indian cities of Imphal and Kohima while, for the first time, fighting not to save the British Empire but their motherland.

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The moment of reckoning came when the Japanese along with SC Bose's Indian National Army met the British Indian Army in the Battle of Admin Box. With the 5th, 7th and 26th Indian Divisions on the ground, the defence of Admin Box was the first major blow to the Japanese in the Southeast Asian theatre. The battle boosted the morale of the Indian forces. The Japanese forces were then annihilated in Imphal and Kohima as they lost roughly 64% of their troops to the Allies, diseases, and starvation, as per Britain's National Army Museum. It was in Kohima that, as per Field Marshall Archibald Wavell, ¡°the Japanese were routed, and their downfall really began.¡±

The Allies subsequently chased the Japanese out of Burma, Malaya and finally, Singapore while taking more than a lakh Japanese prisoners of war. Inspired by the high spirits of his men, the commander of the Indian forces, General William Slim wrote, ¡°My Indian divisions after 1943 were among the best in the world. They [would] go anywhere, do anything, go on doing it, and do it on very little,¡± in his book, Defeat into Victory.

In recognition of their efforts, the British awarded 30 Victoria Cross medals ¨C Britain's highest gallantry award ¨C to Indian soldiers. For perspective, only 181 Victoria Crosses were awarded during the entire second world war.

The Royal Indian Air Force along with the Royal Indian Navy was also an important part of the war effort. While the Royal Indian Navy at first safeguarded the supply lines from India to the Suez, it was later deployed in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean regions to fight the Nazi Kriegsmarine. It also fought against the mighty Japanese Navy to prevent the latter's entry into the Indian Ocean. The Royal Indian Air Force too saw extensive combat operations. RIAF pilots were deployed from India and Burma to Europe and Australia. As per author R Prasnnan, the RIAF flew more than 16,000 sorties involving more than 24,000 flying hours in the Burma campaign, its most crucial theatre.

THE HOMEFRONT

India wasn't just involved in the second world war as a military power, but it was also a major allied logistical and industrial base. By 1945, as per Stephen P Cohen in his book India: Emerging Power, India had come up as the 4th largest industrial power after the USA, the UK and the USSR. Similarly, as per R Prasannan, ¡°the war required 50,000 articles made of cloth and India supplied 37,000 of them.¡± British civil servant Philip Mason also mentions, ¡°Of the four great battle areas¡­two could not have been sustained without India. For the Middle East and still more for Southeast Asia, India was a base, a storehouse, a springboard and a recruiting ground,¡± in his book A Matter of Honour.

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As per Kaushik Roy in his book, India and World War II, the British Indian government rapidly increased wartime production in the country. While the government employed just around 16,600 workers in its Indian ordnance factories in 1939, this number had jumped to 1,16,000 by 1945. While on the other hand, ¡°By 1942, the output of the ordnance factories as regards rifles, machine guns, and bayonets was respectively six times, eight times, and ten times higher than their pre-war output,¡± states Roy.

Eastern Indian airbases like Kolkata, Durgapur and Panagarh were central to 'The Hump' and Ledo Road logistical operations of the US Air Force to provide the Chinese Army with critical wartime supplies.

THE COST

British India mobilized some 2.5 million troops for the war and yet suffered minuscule losses during World War II. In total, the casualties of the Indian Army were 24,000 killed in action, 64,000 wounded in action, 11,000 missing in action, and 70,000 prisoners of war. However, a majority of Indian deaths akin to 15,00,000 were civilian deaths due to the massive Bengal famine among other reasons.

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It has been hotly argued since 1947 if we should be highlighting the role of Indians in the war when they were fighting for their oppressors. Thus, while the National War Memorial has names of martyrs from 1947 onwards and the India Gate commemorates the fallen of the First World War, no memorial in India pays tributes to the Indian soldiers of second world war. It is for this reason that General Slim's 14th Army, which fought in the Burma campaign is often referred to as the Forgotten Army, for their sacrifices were never celebrated and effectively forgotten. Nevertheless the Indian soldiers' wars and valour in World War II saved the world from a ruthless tyrant in the West and an imperial onslaught in the East.