Why did Japan perform so poorly in WW2?

[ChaserGrey]

I consider that statement to be highly offensive. The Indian army, far from not being motivated, fought hard for the King (or King-Emperor) throughout the war, from the western desert to Malaya.

That's your privilege, but their record in the Singapore campaign shows low morale and generally poor performance.

[Simon_Jester]

The Singapore campaign was probably the worst possible conditions you could judge an army's morale under. The Indians had limited equipment (compared to the Japanese, who even got some use out of their tanks for a change, let alone the disparity in quality and quantity of air cover). They had mediocre leadership (unless there are some shining instances of British generalship in the campaign I'm missing). Their supporting arms were systematically being hacked to bits, leaving them vulnerable to naval and air attack. They were far from any reasonable hope of reinforcements. And they were (for all these reasons) continuously falling back, which saps the morale of all but the best armies.

So would it really be any wonder if Indian troops fought less bravely and effectively at Singapore than similar troops fighting in the 1943-44 Burma campaign, or against the Italians during Operation Compass?

[Spoonist]

Also, singling out the indians really isn't fair either is it?
It's not like the aussies or brits or malay in Indonesia performed any better.

[Captain Seafort]

How silly, you'd have to reach pretty far for that one. He prefaced the statement immediately with 'in the Singapore campaign'. I don't know how you got that far reaching critique of the Indian Army from that, but oh well.

Because his comment about the Singapore campaign specifically claimed that one reason for the poor performance of Malaya Command was because a significant proportion were Indian Army.

That's your privilege, but their record in the Singapore campaign shows low morale and generally poor performance.

And in every virtually other campaign the Indian Army was involved in their morale and performance was as good as any fighting force in the war. The units involved the Malayan campaign were poor, certainly, but that poor performance was because they were inexperienced, incompletely trained, and inadequately led, along with various other problems Simon Jester lists. It was not because they were Indian.

[Sea Skimmer]

And? By that standard, one can point to French, British, American, Norwegian, Benelux, etc. volunteers serving in SS Divisions. Especially to that French SS unit destroyed defending Hitler's bunker.

Most of those guys were not released prisoners who had formally been trained soldiers; low and behold the largest source of former POWs was among those listed were the French who don't have the best fighting reputation around either deserved or not. Even then the SS never had more then a few thousand at any one time, in spite of having the entire French population to recruit from as well as having taken nearly two million Frenchmen prisoner. The largest Nazi source overall was various Soviet minorities, most of whom I don't think anyone would argue were strongly motivated to fight for anyone, like the Mongols the US captured in Normandy. Of course the SS were going to keep fighting to the end once encircled, that's kind of linked into the Soviets, as well as the western allies, having a strong reputation for kill them to the last man.

On the flip side, many colonial units are considered to be best British units of the war, heck, colonial white troops from Canada and Anzac were considered to be better motivated and harder fighting than most British mainland units.

That would be because they were all volunteer while the British were conscripting people people to age 51. The Indian Army was also all volunteer which makes the defection of so many a little more glaring. Of course in the end many defected simply to get better conditions, which you can also say about many people joining the Waffen SS out of prisoner camps, but that's kind of adefinition of lacking loyalty. If say, the French had defected at the same rate, we should see at least a whole army corps of French Waffen SS instead of a division the size of a big regiment given how many more French were Nazi prisoners as opposed to Indian Japanese prisoners. Maybe an even bigger formation, but people dispute how big the Indian National Army really was. I have no universal problem with the Indians myself, did as well as I'd expect, but I don't really disagree with what ChaserGrey said either and Seafort is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

[Captain Seafort]

I don't really disagree with what ChaserGrey said either and Seafort is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Why? He's arguing that a major cause of the fall of Singapore was because the bulk of the troops were Indian. Not because they were poor quality, but because they were lacking motivation due to their nationality. As has been widely pointed out, this suggestion is ludicrous, based on the performance of Indian troops in every other campaign they participated in.

low and behold the largest source of former POWs was among those listed were the French who don't have the best fighting reputation around either deserved or not. Even then the SS never had more then a few thousand at any one time, in spite of having the entire French population to recruit from as well as having taken nearly two million Frenchmen prisoner. The largest Nazi source overall was various Soviet minorities, most of whom I don't think anyone would argue were strongly motivated to fight for anyone, like the Mongols the US captured in Normandy.

I think the conditions in said POW camps has to be considered as well. If German POW camps had resembled Japanese ones, I expect the SS would have had far more success in recruiting from them.

[PainRack]

I consider that statement to be highly offensive. The Indian army, far from not being motivated, fought hard for the King (or King-Emperor) throughout the war, from the western desert to Malaya.

That's your privilege, but their record in the Singapore campaign shows low morale and generally poor performance.

No joke.. Throwing utterly green and untrained Indian units,some which had been in existence for less than a year performed worse than their Imperial counterparts. Strange that once you threw in similar green Australian units,they also disintergrated days after the Singapore landings.

Hell,considering that the Indian Army again successfully withdrew from Perak to Johore,even winning temporary victories at the Battle of Kempah,the fact that they disintergrated only when they reached Johore should had been reckoned a success.

The INA reflects Imperial politics and etc,but its hard to fault the Indian soldiers for being so ineffective,anymore than one should blame the SOE staybehind parties.

The disagreements between heath,Bennett and Perceival is something valid of course so I conceed my initial remarks.

[PainRack]

The Singapore campaign was probably the worst possible conditions you could judge an army's morale under. The Indians had limited equipment (compared to the Japanese, who even got some use out of their tanks for a change, let alone the disparity in quality and quantity of air cover). They had mediocre leadership (unless there are some shining instances of British generalship in the campaign I'm missing). Their supporting arms were systematically being hacked to bits, leaving them vulnerable to naval and air attack. They were far from any reasonable hope of reinforcements. And they were (for all these reasons) continuously falling back, which saps the morale of all but the best armies.

So would it really be any wonder if Indian troops fought less bravely and effectively at Singapore than similar troops fighting in the 1943-44 Burma campaign, or against the Italians during Operation Compass?

Anderson force and the 2nd Argylls come to mind. Granted,Anderson force get hacked to bits and we see another example of the British inability to coordinate a relief force/attack/anything.

[PainRack]

low and behold the largest source of former POWs was among those listed were the French who don't have the best fighting reputation around either deserved or not. Even then the SS never had more then a few thousand at any one time, in spite of having the entire French population to recruit from as well as having taken nearly two million Frenchmen prisoner. The largest Nazi source overall was various Soviet minorities, most of whom I don't think anyone would argue were strongly motivated to fight for anyone, like the Mongols the US captured in Normandy.

I think the conditions in said POW camps has to be considered as well. If German POW camps had resembled Japanese ones, I expect the SS would have had far more success in recruiting from them.

I doubt soviet POW were treated better than Indian POWs. Also,the initial living conditions for the POWs were relatively benign and Indian POWs were generally treated better than Westerners.

[Captain Seafort]

I doubt soviet POW were treated better than Indian POWs.

Exactly, and as Skimmer said, the Hiwis were the largest group of allied nationals fighting for the Germans.

[Thanas]

Hiwi just means anybody who helps, as it stands for Hilfsfreiwilliger ("volunteer helper") in German.

[Sea Skimmer]

Why? He's arguing that a major cause of the fall of Singapore was because the bulk of the troops were Indian. Not because they were poor quality, but because they were lacking motivation due to their nationality. As has been widely pointed out, this suggestion is ludicrous, based on the performance of Indian troops in every other campaign they participated in.

Like the disaster in Burma that followed? This was hardly a shining example either. Indian divisions in the far east among other things had lower ratios of British personal to Indian, in Europe and North Africa British manned most of the technical posts in the artillery and signals and made up some of the infantry, and this did make a difference. Its not that the Indian solider was incapable by any means, but they did show questionable resolve fighting other Asians to defend Asian colonies at times. Certainly training was an issue, but few of the Indian units were actually untrained. Green sure, but so were most of the Japanese troops invading.

I think the conditions in said POW camps has to be considered as well. If German POW camps had resembled Japanese ones, I expect the SS would have had far more success in recruiting from them.

The Germans treated Russian prisoners of war so badly they stood better chances of survival as front line infantrymen in combat. Most Indian defections however did not take place after long dreadful experiences in Japanese camps, they took place right after the mass surrender at Singapore when Indian troops were given a choice of joining with Japan or going to said camps. A considerable majority agreed to join, though not all are thought to have been used. One might as well also point out that the British endlessly screwing over the Indian economy provided an manipulative incentive in its own right for people to join the Indian Army in the first place. The defection of so many Indians and the fallout of the postwar trials played no minor role in forcing the British out of India later. I really don't know of any other example in WW2 with such a massive proportional defection, but I'd be very interested to know if anyone did know of one. I don't see it as that much of a dishonor either, foolish though, considering the shit way the British Empire treated India in the world wars, killing millions in famines, but its certainly not typical behavior.

[Simon_Jester]

The Singapore campaign was probably the worst possible conditions you could judge an army's morale under. The Indians had limited equipment (compared to the Japanese, who even got some use out of their tanks for a change, let alone the disparity in quality and quantity of air cover). They had mediocre leadership (unless there are some shining instances of British generalship in the campaign I'm missing)...

Anderson force and the 2nd Argylls come to mind. Granted,Anderson force get hacked to bits and we see another example of the British inability to coordinate a relief force/attack/anything.

I assume that's the bit of my post you were quoting? I'm having trouble finding more information on his role in the campaign. And I was referring more to the overall average quality of hte leadership, including (and I didn't make this clear) the quality of the junior officers. Having good, steady junior officers, and enough of them, matters a lot when it comes to resisting a rout. Arguably more than having good generals does.



While trying to dig up a bit more on the campaign I ran into an interesting note by Percival:

"The young Indian recruits were helpless. They did not even know how to take cover, and there were not enough officers to control them. I say this in no spirit of disparagement. It was the penalty of years of unpreparedness for war coming out in all its stark nakedness."

It would hardly be surprising if troops like this collapsed or routed in large numbers- men who cannot take cover from artillery fire and are grossly under-officered will break in a hurry anyway. The large number of defections may speak to political unreliability, of course... but really, is this a surprise? Under the circumstances (Japan at least spoke the rhetoric of anticolonialism to Indians, at a time when India was literally six years from declaring independence from the British Empire), that's not too remarkable. I'd think it would take much less to persuade an Indian to fight for Japan than to persuade a Belgian to fight for Nazis, for instance.

Also, India is large and I'm not sure all Indian divisions were recruited from the same places or under the same conditions, or received the same training. I'd expect a lot of variation between units drawn from ethnic groups with a strong martial tradition that was encouraged by the Raj (say, the Rajputs), and units drawn at random from farm villagers who signed up for the pay.

[PainRack]

Like the disaster in Burma that followed? This was hardly a shining example either. Indian divisions in the far east among other things had lower ratios of British personal to Indian, in Europe and North Africa British manned most of the technical posts in the artillery and signals and made up some of the infantry, and this did make a difference. Its not that the Indian solider was incapable by any means, but they did show questionable resolve fighting other Asians to defend Asian colonies at times. Certainly training was an issue, but few of the Indian units were actually untrained. Green sure, but so were most of the Japanese troops invading.

Based on desertion rates,one can hardly argue that the Indian units didnt fight. Similarly,the casualty rates also suggest that Indian units didnt just turn tail and run. It would be impossible to use other criteria for judgement considering how weak the fornations were.

The greeness of the various Indian units must be remphasised. A large scale mobilisation and the selection of the most combat effective formations for duty in the Middle East meant that those left in the East were undertrained without the solid NCO corp that might had alleviated the problems.

I would point out that from a British perspective,the Japs already has a very poor image of handling prisoners due to China.This obvioisly had no impact on recruitment of course.

If we agree to raise this topic later,I see if I can source at least some books to back the ambiguity of INA recruitment but 2/3 of Indian POWs ultimately stayed loyal to the Raj.

[Captain Seafort]

Like the disaster in Burma that followed? This was hardly a shining example either.

I'd argue that it was. Burcorps marched back into Imphal as an organised formation - a great achievement, IMO, given that they'd been in continuous retreat for months. Once again the defeat was due to a lack of skill and equipment rather than lack of motivation.

Indian divisions in the far east among other things had lower ratios of British personal to Indian, in Europe and North Africa British manned most of the technical posts in the artillery and signals and made up some of the infantry, and this did make a difference.

Given that the first British offensive of the war went pear-shaped at least in part because an Indian battalion was replaced by a British one in the brigade in question, I'd call that sweeping statement a bit rickety.

they did show questionable resolve fighting other Asians to defend Asian colonies at times.

They also inflicted on the Japanese army the two worst defeats it suffered prior to August Storm.

If we agree to raise this topic later,I see if I can source at least some books to back the ambiguity of INA recruitment but 2/3 of Indian POWs ultimately stayed loyal to the Raj.

While you're doing so I think it would be worth having a look and see if there are any figures regarding how many joined with the intention of deserting as soon as they got close to the front line. I've heard stories ranging from the answer being "most of them" to "very few".

[PainRack]

The Singapore campaign was probably the worst possible conditions you could judge an army's morale under. The Indians had limited equipment (compared to the Japanese, who even got some use out of their tanks for a change, let alone the disparity in quality and quantity of air cover). They had mediocre leadership (unless there are some shining instances of British generalship in the campaign I'm missing)...

Anderson force and the 2nd Argylls come to mind. Granted,Anderson force get hacked to bits and we see another example of the British inability to coordinate a relief force/attack/anything.

I assume that's the bit of my post you were quoting? I'm having trouble finding more information on his role in the campaign. And I was referring more to the overall average quality of hte leadership, including (and I didn't make this clear) the quality of the junior officers. Having good, steady junior officers, and enough of them, matters a lot when it comes to resisting a rout. Arguably more than having good generals does.

Again,2nd Argylls and Anderson force. The 2nd Argylls were one of two British units stationed in Malayia. Pre war,their training schedule on jungle warfare ad etc helped overturn popular beliefs about jungle operations. Tactically,their performance was superior to all other units that fought in the long withdrawal south to Singapore.

Ltc Col Anderson of the AIF took command of the 45th Indian brigade when Japanese attacks killed the command staff in the Battle of Muar. The remmants of the Brigade with its twot Aussie battalions would conduct ambush operations,but failed to break through a Japanese encirclement. They fought on for 4 days,stopping the Japanese advance before Benett failure to relieve them. They were ordered to disperse and scatter back to singapore. One of their success includes destroying 4 Jap tanks.

The AIF in particular did well due to a change in tactics,using ambushes and off road operations,pushed through by 2nd Argyll success up north.

It would hardly be surprising if troops like this collapsed or routed in large numbers- men who cannot take cover from artillery fire and are grossly under-officered will break in a hurry anyway. The large number of defections may speak to political unreliability, of course... but really, is this a surprise? Under the circumstances (Japan at least spoke the rhetoric of anticolonialism to Indians, at a time when India was literally six years from declaring independence from the British Empire), that's not too remarkable. I'd think it would take much less to persuade an Indian to fight for Japan than to persuade a Belgian to fight for Nazis, for instance.

I would take comments taken post war or in captivity with a pinch of salt due to the asscovering and blame game afterwards. Stimson criticism of Perceival has been overexaggerated and taken up by others who commented bitterly of the lack of defences in Fortress Singapore.

Accounts taken from british participants,especially that at Jitra does support thae narrative that the Indian units were not well trained and lack initative. There exist accounts of Indian troops losing all cohesion after the British sulbatern were killed.

[PainRack]

While you're doing so I think it would be worth having a look and see if there are any figures regarding how many joined with the intention of deserting as soon as they got close to the front line. I've heard stories ranging from the answer being "most of them" to "very few".

Again,2/3 of POWs remained loyal to the Raj and did not join Mohan Singh. I think it would be more interesting to source how many rejoined the 2nd INA as these presumably represented the hardcore militants.

[Captain Seafort]

Again,2/3 of POWs remained loyal to the Raj and did not join Mohan Singh.

That's not the question I'm asking - what I'd like to know is how many of the remaining third joined the INA with the intention of rejoining the Indian Army at the earliest opportunity. It is after all easier to get the Japanese to transport them across Burma than to have to break out of a PoW camp and walk.

[PainRack]

Just a caveat,with regards to strategic bombing,the IJN would prove to be the
only service that got it right prewar with the bombing of Shanghai. They were the only service to grasp pathfinding,fighter escort and other tactical issues of long ramge bombing before any other service. Granted,they lack any equivalent to Gee which simplified target finding but their demonstrated tactics could be seen in areas like the bombing of Singapore and Phillipines. The Singapore bombing was albeit mostly conducted by the IJA,an entirely subpar arm of the Japanese airforce

[PainRack]

Again,2/3 of POWs remained loyal to the Raj and did not join Mohan Singh.

That's not the question I'm asking - what I'd like to know is how many of the remaining third joined the INA with the intention of rejoining the Indian Army at the earliest opportunity. It is after all easier to get the Japanese to transport them across Burma than to have to break out of a PoW camp and walk.

It doesnt make sense. In Burma as opppsed to Malaya,desertion rates,attributed to INA propaganda by the British were significant. Similarly,august 1942 is different from feb 1942. Quit India was in progress and the mutiny of Christmas island showed the impact Japanese victory had on Indian units morale.

Even if we assume that the bulk of Burma desertion was related to the fog of war and lousy conditions/morale,it does support Skimmer argument that Indian units in Burma were not as dedicated to fighting for the Raj as they might have been.

The thing is,Mohan Singh had his oppurtinity to work on Indian units only in Johore and Singapore. The disintergration of Indian units there muddies the waters as to how effective INA propaganda was. Again,I would need to male a trip to the regional library to research the articles discussing this. Skimmer may very well be right.

[ChaserGrey]

I come back to the thread after a few rough days at work, and it seems to be turning into a detailed discussion of the Indian Army in WWII which I freely admit I don't have the chops for. Two points I'd like to make, largely retractions:

- I did not mean to imply that Singapore fell "because most of the troops there were Indian". Singapore fell because of years of nonexistent defense planning by the British. The Indian troop disintegrations are important, I think, in explaining why it fell so rapidly, but even there they weren't a single decisive factor. I was commenting on Indian troops' performance during the Singapore campaign, not blaming them for the campaign's outcome or commenting on Indian troops in general.

- On rereading my main source (H.P. Wilmott, Empires in the Balance) and the other evidence presented here I now think lack of training and poor leadership were more important than lack of basic motivation in explaining what happened during the Singapore campaign. I withdraw my statement along those lines. On the subject of the INA and desertion rates I don't know enough to really have an opinion. It would be interesting to see what the INA's desertion rate was once they got into close proximity with Allied troops, but given how many Japanese records burned or disappeared after the war it's quite possible those data no longer exist.

[Simon_Jester]

Again,2nd Argylls and Anderson force. The 2nd Argylls were one of two British units stationed in Malayia. Pre war,their training schedule on jungle warfare ad etc helped overturn popular beliefs about jungle operations. Tactically,their performance was superior to all other units that fought in the long withdrawal south to Singapore.

Ltc Col Anderson of the AIF took command of the 45th Indian brigade when Japanese attacks killed the command staff in the Battle of Muar. The remmants of the Brigade with its twot Aussie battalions would conduct ambush operations,but failed to break through a Japanese encirclement. They fought on for 4 days,stopping the Japanese advance before Benett failure to relieve them. They were ordered to disperse and scatter back to singapore. One of their success includes destroying 4 Jap tanks.

The AIF in particular did well due to a change in tactics,using ambushes and off road operations,pushed through by 2nd Argyll success up north.

I figured the outlines looked something like that- what I'm getting at is that this was a regiment-sized or at most brigade-sized force: Anderson was doing the work of a field grade officer, a good one which is respectable, but... well.

Let's just say that I don't feel it invalidates the overall observation that the strategic and operational leadership of the campaign and the theater was mediocre. It wasn't uniformly bad, some of the officers were good and many were individually adequate, but the pressure of circumstances overwhelmed almost all the leaders involved. So leadership was wanting in general even if it was around in places.

It would hardly be surprising if troops like this collapsed or routed in large numbers- men who cannot take cover from artillery fire and are grossly under-officered will break in a hurry anyway. The large number of defections may speak to political unreliability, of course... but really, is this a surprise? Under the circumstances (Japan at least spoke the rhetoric of anticolonialism to Indians, at a time when India was literally six years from declaring independence from the British Empire), that's not too remarkable. I'd think it would take much less to persuade an Indian to fight for Japan than to persuade a Belgian to fight for Nazis, for instance.

I would take comments taken post war or in captivity with a pinch of salt due to the asscovering and blame game afterwards. Stimson criticism of Perceival has been overexaggerated and taken up by others who commented bitterly of the lack of defences in Fortress Singapore.

Accounts taken from british participants,especially that at Jitra does support thae narrative that the Indian units were not well trained and lack initative. There exist accounts of Indian troops losing all cohesion after the British sulbatern were killed.

Well, that was Percival himself talking- so it wouldn't have a thing to do with any blame falling on Percival for the state of the defenses. I'm sure there were some individual Indian units that were motivated/competent/whatever. But colonial troop quality can vary wildly, from "better than most of your own nation's troops" to "utter dreck that serves only as warm-bodies-with-rifles to park in vaguely restive places you have to garrison because it's marginally cheaper than abandoning them entirely." A lot of the difference hinges on how much effort the colonial nation puts into recruiting good men, equipping them and training them well, and motivating them to fight.

[PainRack]

Let put it this way Simon. The reason why Anderson, 2nd Argyll, or even a AT gun detachment assigned to the Australians became remarkable Malayan history is because they're rare displays of competence triumphing against the odds in a sea of disaster.

Most of the battles had bad soldiering worsen results for the British.


With regards to the Indian troops performance, again, 3rd Corp was in existence for 6 months and many of its consitutent brigades/divisions had been formed for a year or less, in most case, literally out of the blue.

Yet, it performed remarkably well, despite the disaster at Jitra and etc, before it finally disintergrated in Johore. That's a long series of defeat, rout after rout, from the border of Thailand down a single highway to KL and then Johore. Individual brigades were constantly knocked out of action and had to be reconsituted from remmants behind the lines, before being thrown back into action. At Jitra or any other number of defence lines, Indian units had to scatter through the jungle and then reform behind allied lines and they did so successfully. Yes, they were constantly encircled and outflanked, yes, the Japanese charge at Jitra or Slim River shattered Indian resistance, but the Corp as a whole, despite such defeats was only disintergrated after reaching Johore.

I'm busy studying... or trying to study for my LSCN course, so, I go and dig through the library at a later time and effort.

Its would had been a remarkable feat for any other green corp, with no tanks, lacking artillery, effective numbers of AT guns and machineguns, even shortage of barbed wire, to have successfully retreat that long a distance against an enemy with air and tank supremacy.
Its especially not fair when critics of the Indian divisions levy much less criticism on the AIF. The AIF similarly disintergrated in Singapore, after the Japanese broke through Bukit Timah.

[Saxtonite]

As a Chinese-American, I'm constantly amazed by how incompetent the Japanese military leadership was. Japan claimed the US embargoes forced them to attack it and the European colonies in SE Asia, to gain the resources they needed. Why did the US embargo Japan? Because Japan invaded China, which the US had interests in.

They did it actually because of the moving of Japanese troops into French Indochina. Remember the US government downplayed cases of Japanese people shooting US warships in the Yantze river during the Battle of Nanjing