During ww2 the japanese offensive u-go sought to capture northern burma, forcing the allies back into india. The japanese command seemed to have some weird reasons to invade india, so if the japanese won a decisive victory at imphal, and broke into india what would happen? I honestly doubt the japanese could even take india let alone, Bengal. Due to massive hostile population, a population which would likely resist and with the appearance of putting india at risk britain focus their more also to stop the indians exploding with out rage of british failure to protect india. So what to the japanese if they broke into india?
Could japan realistically conquer british raj?
- Thread starter haider najib
- Start date
India is huge, i mean really huge, its basically a continent. If they win at Imphal then the first thing they encounter is what is now Bangladesh, which is basically a big delta. I don't think they would see any point in conquering that, just set up defensive positions there, where the area is still narrowish. Trying to plow through Bangladesh is going to cost them too much.
But from what i read the japanese command wanted to do that adding some mysticism they planned to go through chittagong and then push into the bengal.
Unfortunately there was never much chance of that. They only sent one division to Kohima, on a somewhat mad plan to 'live off the land', and Slim wanted them to attack at Imphal as he wanted to destroy the Japanese forces on a killing ground of his own making.
Srihari14
Banned
That's the point, if Japan sent a large force, perhaps at the expense of the Invasion of Indonesia, they could trigger a massive rovolt in the area
Well yeah the Japanese always had a kind of delusion about grandeur. Just like China, just like with fighting the US. Bu they couldn't do it, not realistically. I'm sure plenty would want to, especially in Tokyo, but on the ground there i think the generals were clever enough to understand the limits of the IJA.
Japan had trouble with invading and occupying parts of China, a giant country that was wracked by civil war and political instability. There's no way that they could completely subjugate India, a land with a similar population size controlled by the world's biggest colonial empire (with a powerful government/military to match).
This is debatable but also is this still "Japan" conquering the British Raj?
I agree that the only way forward would be the Azad Hind etc, but even if we assume they could then the Japanese would likely not be able to get much influence if India is being mostly held by Indians and so while it will remove India from the British side it will be unlikely to allow Japan to set up an exploitative model to help themselves all that much.
I also think an earlier Pakistan is likely if the INA make gains and so Japan/Japanese puppets would be unlikely to ever truly conquer the whole British Raj so I'd say no they could never conquer the British Raj in full myself. (Ceylon is also up in the air and probably unlikely.)
Yes, but the whole point of the war was to get the natural resources (oil and rubber) of the Dutch East Indies. Plus Burma is one of the worst places in the world to fight a war. The only reason why they won there in 1942 was because the British had the bare minimum of troops after the disaster of Singapore.