The decade of the Forties was turbulent for British Raj - World War II was raging and the Indian subcontinent was swept by a popular freedom movement. As the War ended, Indian subcontinent was divided in 1947. India as a fledgling nation rose to the aftermath of Partition violence, exodus and influx of population; and a War in posed in Jammu and Kashmir.
The historian and author of The Army in British India analyzes the British Indian Army’s devastating loss to the Imperial Japanese during WWII. The defeat of 90,000 Commonwealth soldiers by 50,000 Japanese soldiers made the World War II Battle for Malaya an important encounter for both political and military reasons. British military prestige was shattered, fanning the fires of nationalism in Asia, especially in India. Japan’s successful tactics in Malaya—rapid marches, wide outflanking movement along difficult terrain, nocturnal attacks, and roadblocks—would be repeated in Burma in 1942–43. Until the Allied command evolved adequate countermeasures, Japanese soldiers remained supreme in the field. Looking beyond the failures of command, Kaushik Roy focuses on tactics of the ground battle that unfolded in Malaya between December 1941 and February 1942. His analysis includes the organization of the Indian Army—the largest portion of Commonwealth troops—and compares it to the British and Australian armies that fought side by side with Indian soldiers. Utilizing both official war office records and personal memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories, Roy presents a comprehensive narrative of operations interwoven with tactical analysis of the Battle for Malaya.
Anecdote by thoughts hymn publishers is a collection of different literary works chosen by the publisher. The word “Anecdote” means a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. Our Anecdote "A GLIMPSE OF LIFE" contains marvellous literary work of various authors across the whole Bharat. It is a compiled to give a platform to the budding writers of our great nation and help them in coming forward and present their literary work in front of the whole world.
In this volume: * 1962: The Nehruvian Blunder * Taking on the Dragon * Helicopters in Special Operations * China's Space Programme and Its Implications for India * Air Power against the Maoists * Military Application of Unmanned Rotary Wing Aircraft * Aerospace and Defence News * A British Appreciation: Could Tibet have been Defended? * Higher Defence Management through Effective Civil-Military Relations * India and the South Asian Neighbourhood * Pretending 'Soldiers' * Disputes in the South China Sea SELLING POINTS: * This volume of the Indian Defence Review delves into subjects such as the use of air power against the Maoists, and disputes in the South China Sea
Some 60 million people died during the Second World War; millions more were displaced in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The war resulted in the creation of new states, the acceleration of imperial decline, and a shift in the distribution of global power. Despite its unprecedented impact, a comprehensive account of the complex international experiences of this war remains elusive. The Peoples’ War? offers fresh approaches to the challenge of writing a new history of the Second World War. Exploring aspects of the war that have been marginalized in military and political studies, the volume foregrounds less familiar narratives, subjects, and places. Chapters recover the wartime experiences of individuals – including women, children, members of minority ethnic groups, and colonial subjects – whose stories do not fit easily into conventional national war narratives. The contributors show how terms used to delineate the conflict such as home front and battle front, occupier and occupied, captor and prisoner, and friend and foe became increasingly blurred as the war wore on. Above all, the volume encourages reflection on whether this conflict really was a “Peoples’ War.” Challenging the homogenizing narratives of the war as a nationally unifying experience, The Peoples’ War? seeks to enrich our understanding of the Second World War as a global event.
During the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) suffered one of its greatest defeats in Burma. Both in Malaya and Burma, the bulk of the British Commonwealth forces comprised Indian units. Few people know that by 1944, about 70 percent of the Allied ground personnel in Burma was composed of soldiers of the Indian Army. The Indian Army comprised British-led Indian units, British officered units of the Indian princely states and the British units attached to the Government of India. Based on the archival materials collected from India and the United Kingdom, Sepoys against the Rising Sun assesses the combat/military/battlefield effectiveness of the Indian Army against the IJA during World War II. The volume is focussed on the tactical innovations and organizational adaptations which enabled the sepoys to overcome the Japanese in the trying terrain of Burma.
A study of the experiences of Chinese prisoners of war during the Korean War and the struggle over their repatriation. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days, but armistice talks occupied more than two of those years, as more than 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war refused to return to Communist China and demanded to go to Nationalist Taiwan, effectively hijacking the negotiations and thwarting the designs of world leaders at a pivotal moment in Cold War history. In The Hijacked War, David Cheng Chang vividly portrays the experiences of Chinese prisoners in the dark, cold, and damp tents of Koje and Cheju Islands in Korea and how their decisions derailed the high politics being conducted in the corridors of power in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. Chang demonstrates how the Truman-Acheson administration’s policies of voluntary repatriation and prisoner reindoctrination for psychological warfare purposes—the first overt and the second covert—had unintended consequences. The “success” of the reindoctrination program backfired when anti-Communist Chinese prisoners persuaded and coerced fellow POWs to renounce their homeland. Drawing on newly declassified archival materials from China, Taiwan, and the United States, and interviews with more than 80 surviving Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war, Chang depicts the struggle over prisoner repatriation that dominated the second half of the Korean War, from early 1952 to July 1953, in the prisoners’ own words. Praise for The Hijacked War “This book represents a giant step forward in our understanding of the prisoner-of-war issue in the Korean War. The research on the Chinese prisoners is extraordinary, the stories of individuals compelling, and the analysis of the context in which they made choices balanced and persuasive.” —William Stueck, author of The Korean War: An International History “David Cheng Chang’s superlative research reveals the use of Chinese POWs as pawns in the larger Cold War standoff between the US and China during the Korean War. His cogent analysis encourages us to think about the aftermath of the war and the lives of those who made the ‘voluntary choice’ to join or who faced ‘forced conformity.’” —Barak Kushner, author of Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice “Chang’s exceptionally vivid prisoner’s-eye account, based on camp archives and interviews with ex-POWS, leads him to condemn the key U.S. policymakers, including President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, for their “arrogance, ignorance, and negligence.” —Foreign Affairs
