soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Rich Rostrom" < @ > wrote

> Umm, with all respect to Slim and The Forgotten Army,
> the Burma campaign was dwarfed by Kiev, Vyazma, Stalingrad,
> BAGRATION, Normandy, and Manchuria. And the Battle of France.

Of course. I meant to say the biggest Japanese land defeat of WW2.

> TORCH was not "highly visible American involvement"?

TORCH was not entirely American: Eisenhower was a titular commander only.
The military command, and most of the troops, were British. TORCH was
branded as American purely to win over Vichy authorities (and to appease US
nationalistic sentiment, of course)

> As to Burma, there were American units and .-
> suppled equipment "highly visible" there. The Chinese
> army contributed hundreds of thousands of troops
> to the Burma theater - armed and and trained with
> great effort by the .

The Chinese army and the US land forces played a subsidiary and minor role
in the defeat of the Japanese offensive into India and the subsequent
re-capture of Burma. US air support was important to 14th Army, however.

The Chinese Army trained and supplied by the US at gigantic cost and expense
achieved virtually nothing of strategic significance even in China.

> The Indian Army was a colonial force - raised and controlled
> by British officials. So were the King's African Rifles.
> Both were volunteer forces, but then, they always were.

I was denying the existence of colonial armies in the sense being used by
the OP. Obviously, British colonies raised armies.

> Three? If Burma and Ceylon count, then four.

I missed Ceylon; thank you.

> George VI used the title King-Emperor until 1947.

Only for technical reasons connected, IIRC, with the transitional
arrangements for the princely states into the new Indian state.

> The granting of Dominion status ended "Imperial"
> status of the Dominions, but did not change the
> status of the colonies - including India, Malaya,
> Africa (except South Africa), and the Caribbean.

The Imperial Crown was abolished in the 1930s and with it the concept of a
single political state - the British Empire - divided into many geographical
territories but ultimately run by London. Thereafter, there existed only
separate states at varying points along the road to self-government which
shared a single Head of State.