History of the Second World War (35 page)

The British reverse at El Haseiat was a disappointing and frustrating end to the long pursuit — a cold douche to the exhilaration of ultimate success in the battle around Tobruk. But substantial profits were gained through Rommel’s enforced retreat, which left the German-Italian garrisons on the frontier isolated and without hope. Bardia surrendered on January 2, and the two remaining frontier posts on the 17th. This brought the number of prisoners captured in the frontier positions to 20,000, including those taken earlier at Sidi Omar, and the total Axis casualties to 33,000 — compared with just under 18,000 on the British side. But nearly two-thirds of the Axis loss were Italians, and of the 13,000 Germans a considerable part were administrative personnel, whereas the bulk of the British loss in the six weeks’ battle was in the fighting troops, and included many highly trained desert veterans, who were difficult to replace.

The disadvantage of having to rely on inexperienced troops, particularly in the desert, would be shown once again in the next battle. This came in the third week of January — when Rommel, supposedly crippled, delivered another of his unexpected strokes: with startlingly similar result to his opening stroke in 1941.

CHAPTER 16 - UPSURGE IN THE FAR EAST

From 1931 onward the Japanese were aggressively engaged in expanding their footholds on the Asiatic mainland at the expense of the Chinese, who were weakened by internal conflict, and to the detriment of American and British interests in that sphere. In that year they had invaded Manchuria and converted it into a Japanese satellite state. In 1932 they penetrated China itself, and from 1937 on pursued a consistent effort to establish their control of that vast area, but became enmeshed in the toils of guerrilla warfare, and eventually sought a solution of the problem in further expansionist moves, southward, aimed to shut off the Chinese from outside supplies.

Following Hitler’s conquest of France and the Low Countries in 1940, the Japanese took advantage of France’s helplessness by getting her to agree, under threat, to their ‘protective’ occupation of French Indo-China.

In reply President Roosevelt demanded, on July 24, 1941, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Indo-China — and to enforce his demand he issued orders on the 26th freezing all Japanese assets in the United States and placing an embargo on oil supply. Mr Churchill took simultaneous action, and two days later the refugee Dutch Government in London was induced to follow suit — which meant, as Churchill had remarked, that ‘Japan was deprived at a stroke of her vital oil supplies’.

In earlier discussions, as far back as 1931, it had always been recognised that such a paralysing stroke would force Japan to fight, as the only alternative to collapse or the abandonment of her policy. It is remarkable that she deferred striking for more than four months, while trying to negotiate a lifting of the oil embargo. The United States Government refused to lift it unless Japan withdrew not only from Indo-China but also from China. No Government, least of all the Japanese, could be expected to swallow such humiliating conditions, and such ‘loss of face’. So there was every reason to expect war in the Pacific at any moment, from the last week of July onwards. In these circumstances the Americans and British were lucky to be allowed four months’ grace before the Japanese struck. But little advantage was taken of this interval for defensive preparation.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, a Japanese naval force with six aircraft-carriers delivered a shattering air attack on Pearl Harbor, the American naval base in the Hawaiian Islands. The stroke was made ahead of the declaration of war, following the precedent of the attack on Port Arthur in 1904, Japan’s opening stroke in her war against Russia.

Until early in 1941 Japan’s plan in case of war against the United States was to use her main fleet in the southern Pacific in conjunction with an attack on the Philippine Islands, to meet an American advance across the ocean to the relief of their garrison there. That was the move that the Americans were expecting the Japanese to make, and their expectations had been reinforced by the recent Japanese occupation of Indo-China.

Admiral Yamamoto, however, had in the meantime conceived a new plan — of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The striking force made a very roundabout approach via the Kurile Islands and came down from the north upon the Hawaiian Islands undetected, then launched its attack before sunrise, with 360 aircraft, from a position nearly 300 miles from Pearl Harbor. Four of the eight American battleships were sunk, one was beached, and the others badly damaged. In little over an hour the Japanese had gained control of the Pacific.

By this stroke the way was cleared for an uninterrupted seaborne invasion of American, British and Dutch territories in that ocean. While the main Japanese striking force had been steaming towards the Hawaiian Islands, other naval forces had been escorting troopship convoys into the South-west Pacific. Almost simultaneously with the air attack on Pearl Harbor, landings began in the Malay Peninsula as well as in the Philippines.

The former were aimed at the great British naval base at Singapore, but there was no attempt to attack it from the sea — the kind of attack which the defence had been primarily designed to meet. The approach was very indirect. While a landing was made at Kota Bharu on the north-east coast of the Malay Peninsula, to seize airfields and distract attention, the main forces were disembarked on the Siamese neck of the peninsula, some 500 miles north of Singapore. From these landing-places in the extreme north-east the Japanese forces poured down the
west
coast of the peninsula, successively outflanking the lines on which the British forces attempted to check them.

The Japanese profited not only by their unexpected choice of such a difficult route but by the opportunities for unexpected infiltration which the thick vegetation often provided. After almost continuous retreat for six weeks the British forces were forced to withdraw from the mainland into the island of Singapore, at the end of January. On the night of February 8, the Japanese launched their attack across the mile-wide straits, got ashore at numerous points, and developed fresh infiltrations along a broad front. On February 15, the defending forces surrendered, and with them was lost the key to the South-west Pacific.

In a smaller, separate operation, the Japanese had launched an attack on the British base at Hong Kong, starting on December 8, and forced the surrender of the colony, with its garrison, by Christmas Day.

On the main Philippine island of Luzon, the initial landings north of Manila had been quickly followed by a landing in the rear of the capital. Under this dislocating leverage, and the converging threat, the American forces abandoned most of the island and fell back into the small Bataan Peninsula, before the end of December. There, by contrast, they were only open to frontal assault on a narrowly contracted front, and succeeded in holding out until April before they were overwhelmed.

Long before that, and even before the fall of Singapore, the Japanese tide of conquest was spreading through the Malay Archipelago. On January 11, Japanese forces landed in Borneo and Celebes, and stronger ones followed on the 24th. Five weeks later, on March 1, the Japanese launched an attack on Java, the core of the Dutch East Indies, after the island had been isolated by flanking moves. Within barely a week, the whole of Java had fallen into their hands like a ripe plum.

But the apparently imminent threat to Australia did not develop. The main Japanese effort was now directed in the opposite direction, westward, towards the conquest of Burma. The direct but wide-fronted advance from Thailand upon Rangoon was an indirect approach to their major object on the Asiatic mainland as a whole, the paralysis of China’s power of resistance. For Rangoon was the port of entry for Anglo-American supplies of equipment to China, by way of the Burma Road.

At the same time, this move was shrewdly designed to complete the conquest of the western gateway to the Pacific, and there establish a firm barrier across the main routes by which any overland Anglo-American offensive might subsequently be attempted. On March 8, Rangoon fell, and within a further two months the British forces were driven out of Burma, over the mountains, back into India.

The Japanese had thus secured a covering position so naturally strong that any attempt at reconquest would be badly handicapped and bound to be a very slow process.

A long time passed before the Allies built up forces sufficient to attempt the recovery of Japan’s conquests — beginning at the south-eastern end. Here they benefited from the preservation of Australia, which provided them with a large-scale base close to the chain of Japanese outposts.

Japan was the only country in an advanced industrial state outside Europe and North America — due to the rapid process of modernisation which had begun under the Emperor Meiji from 1868 onward. Yet at heart Japanese society remained ‘feudal’, where the warrior was exalted, not the manufacturer or merchant. The Emperor was divine, and the ruling class all-powerful. Moreover the influence of the military was immense. Fervently patriotic, and often bitterly anti-foreign, they hoped to establish their country’s domination over the whole of eastern Asia, particularly China. From the 1930s onward they had, by threats and assassinations, virtually assumed control of Japanese policy.

Japan’s approach to political and strategic problems was much influenced by the fact that she had never suffered defeat since her modernisation began. Her people’s belief in her invincibility became widespread after the war with Russia of 1904-5, when both on land and sea her forces had demonstrated their superiority — and shown that the dominance of Europeans over the rest of the world’s peoples could be breached.

In August 1914 Japan, as Britain’s ally since 1902, had taken Tsingtao and Shantung, the German concessions in China, together with the Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana groups of islands in the Pacific, all of which were German colonies. The gains were confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, at the end of the First World War — thus leaving Japan the predominant power on the west side of the Pacific. Despite this, her people were dissatisfied with her war gains, and left with the feeling that she was a ‘have-not’ power, like Italy. So the Japanese came to feel that they had something in common with Italy and with Germany.

The sense of frustration probably developed from the failure of Japan’s attempt to control China, in 1915, when her ‘21 Demands’ had to be withdrawn under American protest. Significantly, China was always the main goal for the Japanese Army from the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 onward. Although at the end of the First World War the Imperial Defence Policy named the United States as the prime potential enemy, in accord with the naval view, the Army was always more apprehensive about Soviet Russia, whose large land forces in the Far East were regarded as a much greater threat to Japan’s continental designs.

Then came a series of humiliations for Japan in the years 1921-4. First, the British politely declined to renew the alliance with Japan. That break was to some extent prompted by various signs of Japanese expansionist plans in the Pacific, but the definite decision was made under strong American pressure. The Japanese took it as an insult, and a sign that the white peoples were lining up against them. Their indignation was increased by successive American legislative steps to restrict Japanese immigration, culminating in the Act of 1924 that excluded Asiatics as immigrants. The double ‘loss of face’ was bitterly resented.

Meanwhile the British had announced plans for building a Far East naval base at Singapore, adequate for a battle-fleet. That was obviously intended as a check upon Japan, and interpreted by the Japanese as a challenge.

All this reacted to the detriment of the Japanese political leaders, who came under increasing attack for having accepted a 3-5-5 basis in relation to the American and British battlefleets under the Washington naval limitation treaty of 1921. Other grievances were that they had agreed to return Shantung Province to China, and later had signed the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 guaranteeing the integrity of China.

Actually, and ironically, the Treaty of Washington assisted Japan’s subsequent expansionist moves by weakening checks upon her in the Pacific — the projected American and British naval bases there being either delayed or weakly fortified. She herself found it easier to evade the specifications of gun-power and tonnage during the thirteen-year period before she openly repudiated the treaty.

The more liberal political leaders of Japan also suffered from the world economic crisis that developed in 1929, as she was particularly hard hit by it, with a resulting growth of discontent that the militarists were able to exploit in pressing their argument that expansion was the solution for Japan’s economic problem.

In September 1931 the ‘Mukden incident’ gave the local Japanese Army leaders a pretext, and opportunity, to expand into Manchuria, and turn it into their puppet state of Manchukuo. Their troops guarding the South Manchurian railway, under treaty right, attacked and disarmed the Chinese garrisons in Mukden and neighbouring towns on the excuse of self-defence against a threatened attack. The facts were obscure, and obscured, thus helping the Japanese to overrun the whole of Manchuria within the next few months. Although the occupation was not recognised by the League of Nations, or the United States, protests and widespread criticism gave the Japanese an incentive to withdraw from the League in 1933. Three years later they joined with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the Anti-Comintern Pact.