You should reach out to that Bose chap, a nice uprising behind the British lines works wonders for a little Blitzkrieging.
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Chapter 19 - Blitzkrieg on Speed
Chapter 19 - Blitzkrieg on Speed
September 2nd, 1939: As Hitler's ultimatum to Poland was about to run out of time, the so-called 'Irish Republican Army' (IRA) steals the media spotlight by launching a sabotage campaign targeting British civil infrastructure. Five bombs exploded outside various London power stations on the very first day. It seems Hitler has an unwitting ally. Western media claims that the operation was supported by German intelligence to distract UK from Poland. Though the Abwehr was too busy expression frustration that the 'IRA rabble' wasted time on civilian targets rather than military objectives which might actually harm UK's war capabilities.
September 5th: Emboldened by British and French guarantees, the Polish stands firm against Hitler's Danzig claims. Nazi Germany officially declares war on Poland, and the Wehrmacht -- long prepared for the invasion -- crosses the border into Polish territory. In response, the Entente, lead by Britain and France, honors their agreement with Poland and declares war on Germany. The war in Europe has officially began.
(Custom event! Ends all military production bonuses given to China by the Sino-German Cooperation events. The effects text is wrong; actual removed bonus is -20% build costs for infantry, artillery, and armored car.)
September 6th: With the start of war and the corresponding British blockade, Chinese resource exports to Germany and German military/industrial supplies to China come to a halt. German business interests and military advisors, however, are allowed to stay in China. Of course, there was no aid without its attached strings, as the German foreign ministry passes word that 'now would be a good opportunity for China to retake its foreign concessions through any means necessary'.
In other words, it was the Führer's wish that China use force against the Entente's colonial possessions in the East, to force them into a two-front war.
Chiang Kai-shek replied: "We've had almost no warning from the German government in regards to the outbreak of war. China has stayed on a heavy industrialization focus on the past three years, and our military is not yet ready for open hostilities -- certainly not across a massive front stretching from Afghanistan to the Vietnamese coast. Furthermore, the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact leaves Germany's ally in the Anti-Comintern Pact alone and exposed across its northern borders. Modernization of the Chinese military has began. But it will take us 8-12 months to reach war readiness."
Chiang did not make any more promises. He implied Chinese support, while buying space by indirectly accusing Germany of disloyalty. 8-12 months was more than enough to see if Germany could achieve the same victories as they did in his other world. If they could, then this would indeed be an excellent opportunity to retake full control of China's sovereignty... and possibly even exact revenge.
In the meantime however, China would officially declare its neutrality to the world.
...Or at least, 'neutrality', since the KMT was actively working with German military officers as... 'liaisons'.
Chiang wondered if anyone actually believed that.
But then, China isn't alone. Hitler's closer ally -- the Duce of Italy -- also declares neutrality. The Belgians and the Spanish follow swiftly.
The United States did as well, although that wasn't exactly news. Between 1935 and 1939, the US Congress has passed a total of four Neutrality Acts. Not to mention the American population was still bitter after the Nye Committee revealed that the US involvement in World War I was mostly due to financial and banking interests in collusion with weapon manufacturers and arms dealers.
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September 10th, 1939: Just five days after the Germans began their invasion, the Soviet Union shocks the world by declaring war against Poland as well. The monumental event left many Chinese generals in shock. Germany signing a Non-Aggression Pact with the USSR was bad enough. But an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union? It would truly leave China isolated against the Bolshevik colossus.
Chiang, however, brushed the idea off. "Just another example of Stalin's imperialistic opportunism," he declared.
Curiously though, Poland's British and French allies did absolutely nothing against Stalin's aggression, despite having publicly claimed to 'guarantee Polish independence'. China could only see this as yet another British betrayal.
September 12th: France retaliates symbolically by banning the Communist Party of France, which only two years ago had been part of Léon Blum's winning coalition. It's shocking how quickly the wind changes.
September 13th: After a mere eight days, German motorized columns have broken through Polish defenses at Wloclawek and stormed the Polish Capital at Warsaw. The entire world was astounded by how quickly Germany was winning this war. Then, just two days later, German forces met up with the Soviet vanguard at Bialystok and Lomza, while Radom was captured in the south. Most than three-quarters of Poland's armies had been encircled in the pockets of Lodz, Ostroleka, and Suwalki.
At this point, there was already no longer any purpose for Poland to continue its resistance.
Meanwhile in the east, the worthwhile 'allies' that Poland placed its trust in did... virtually nothing. The French made a symbolic sally from their Maginot Line defenses, pushed into Germany by a few steps, then retreated back to their bunkers.
Sitzkrieg, the Germans called it. It shows just how ill-prepared and lacking in offensive-mindedness the Entente leaders truly were.
...
September 14th, 1939: British Governor-General of the Raj, Lord Linlithgow, declared war on Germany without consultation of the Indian congress. As a result, the majority party INC refused to associate India with the war. In response, the British declared that they were waging a war to 'strengthen the peace of the world', and thus required Indian compliance, to which Mahatma Gandhi stated "the Congress has asked for bread and it has got stone". INC ministers were directed to resign immediately in protest. However, the British -- in accordance to their traditional 'Divide-and-Rule' stratagem -- cooperated with the All-India Muslim League instead to fill the vacuum.
In this pivotal moment when promises truly mattered, the British reneged upon all their vows to respect the wishes of Indian representatives.
September 16th: The German Kriegsmarine executed a daring plan and sneaked U-47 into the British naval base at Scapa Flow, sinking the WWI battleship Royal Oak. It was a phenomenal morale victory, even if it did little to change the balance of naval power in Europe.
September 20th: Just four days later, less inviting news came when the SS Athenia, a Canadian transatlantic passenger liner, was struck by a torpedo and sank. Fearing a replay of the Lusitania whose sinking drew US ire in WWI, Kriegsmarine Grand Admiral Raeder declared to the US chargé d'affaires in good faith that he had personally made inquiries, and that no U-Boat was within 75 miles of the Athenia's last location. Meanwhile, Reichminister Goebbels accused Winston Churchill, UK First Lord of the Admiralty, of sinking the ship to turn neutral opinion against Germany. In the US, former president Herbert Hoover expressed "it is such poor tactics that I cannot believe that even the clumsy Germans would do such a thing".
September 22nd: The United State might have stayed neutral, but that didn't stop US pilots and trainees from just walking across to Canada and enlisting for air combat training in the UK.
On the same day, the German Wehrmacht took the last major city in Poland and officially annexed all of its territories. In concordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Germans swiftly withdrew all forces east of the Bug River, handing the region over to Soviet control. Although this didn't stop Wehrmacht General Heinz Guderian from hosting a joint victory parade with the (Jewish) Soviet General Semyon Krivoshein at Brest-Litovsk.
In the end, the complete fall of Poland took just 17 days, and it only cost Germany 40,000 casualties and 66 tanks. The Poles, meanwhile, lost over 625,000 men.
November 2nd: Johann Elser, some average German carpenter, tried to assassinate Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller Munich Beer Hall Putsch anniversary. However, Hitler left beforehand and was untouched, his position even strengthened as he claimed to have providence on his side.
November 5th: The Soviet Union invades Finland, a breakaway province of the old Russian empire. The Swedish rush to help their former countrymen from two centuries back. China breathes a sign of relief for now -- not even the Bolsheviks would be crazy enough to pick a two-front war thousands of miles apart.
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Chiang Kai-shek leaned back in his favorite rocking chair as he unfolded the letter from his son Chiang Wei-kuo. It had been delivered to China across Russia's Trans-Siberia rail network. Had someone told him a year ago that the Russians would be ferrying cargo for the Germans, he would have accused them of lunacy. Perhaps the world really has gone insane since then. But that only made it all the more important to enjoy these precious moments:
Esteemed Father,
Your son is proud to inform that I have upheld the pride of the Chinese soldier in the eyes of our German allies. Our campaign in Poland has proven to be an overwhelming success, and for my own deeds in battle I was awarded with the Iron Cross Second Class. I've been promoted to Hauptmann (Captain) and transferred to the 7th Panzer Division in General Heinz Guderian's XIX Corps. It will be an honor to fight under the Father-of-Armored-Warfare himself in the coming offensive in the west...
Chiang smiled. Even though he wasn't as strict in Wei-kuo's upbringing as he was with Ching-kuo, his younger son had grown to become a fine man. KMT General Qiu Qingquan once studied in Germany under Guderian, and said that the panzer general was a very 'hands on' front-line leader. With that in mind, Chiang could relax knowing his son was in an excellent leader's hands.
Much of the letter was simply a summary of Wei-kuo's experiences. Though, as Chiang neared the end, one particular mention worried him:
The pressure to keep pushing forward without rest was intense. Many fellow tankers have been taking Pervitin during the campaign. We call them Panzerschokolade (Panzer Chocolate), giving even the most fatigued soldiers a confident awareness of their surroundings. The only downside is that they often become irrational and violent afterwards. I have seen actions that no soldier could proudly speak of being inflicted by these men...
Chiang couldn't wait any longer. Seizing the pen on his nearby desk, he wrote:
Son, under no circumstances are you allowed to take this 'Pervitin' during the performance of your duty. I don't care how tired you are. Your ancestors did not fight and die for their right to destroy opium, to see a soldier representing China abroad fall addict and disgrace his uniform!
( Next Chapter - The New CC Clique and Azad Hind )
Notes:
1. 'Speed' is a slang for Methamphetamine, the active ingredient of Pervitin.
2. Dönitz found out later that U-30 had accidentally sank the Athenia in the belief it was a troopship or Q-ship. As it represented a major embarrassment for the Kriegsmarine in addition to being a diplomatic thorn, the secret would remain until the war's end.
3. I find it odd that the Pervitin event gives Germany only (mild) benefits but ignores about its MASSIVE drawbacks. http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-nazi-death-machine-hitler-s-drugged-soldiers-a-354606.html
4. Chiang had once authorized the sale of opium to when the KMT almost went bankrupt... though certainly not something he'd want to admit to his son.
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@zanaikin
Understandably, Chiang is going to be kind of touchy about that topic, given Perfidious Albion's 19th century merchants of death and addiction. Besides, I don't really think there's a way for the devs to model the side effects on a personal/operational level.
The interesting part about the drug thing; next to literally all of the belligerents distributed (or at least tolerated their use as long as it didn't affect their missions) some sort of drugs, especially amphetamines, for their troops. Of course, there was one major player for whom the lives of their own troops were worth less than the cost of drugs (or bullets sometimes for that matter), so they maybe didn't see a big need.
Understandably, Chiang is going to be kind of touchy about that topic, given Perfidious Albion's 19th century merchants of death and addiction. Besides, I don't really think there's a way for the devs to model the side effects on a personal/operational level.
The interesting part about the drug thing; next to literally all of the belligerents distributed (or at least tolerated their use as long as it didn't affect their missions) some sort of drugs, especially amphetamines, for their troops. Of course, there was one major player for whom the lives of their own troops were worth less than the cost of drugs (or bullets sometimes for that matter), so they maybe didn't see a big need.
I like how you included the Germans giving their soldiers meth. Certainly an underexposed part of the war.
What other drugs were used as widespread though? I know all sides experimented with drugs, but Germany's orders in the millions is hard to come even close to =o
I find it interesting this is STILL a problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident
Clearly, the military doesn't care. Committing crimes because your brain is on psychoactive agents? Perfectly okay!
Pervitin is fairly exposed. I've stumbled across its mentions in so many books, albeit under many different nicknames and rarely discussed in detail. But logistical details are boring to most people, and it's just not as 'exciting' as Nazis and explosions.
Meanwhile, find me a single western WW2 documentary that discusses Churchill's crimes against humanity. The many, many organized despicable actions the allies conducted during the war barely receives a mention in most sources (i.e. the Allied bombing of neutral, civilian Tehran). But no, modern media would rather bury them in the dirt in their 'good vs evil' debate.
It's part of why I like writing this AAR. Exposing the war's many hypocrisies is a joy.
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Got to agree with all of this, I think the biggest problem is that most educational levels and other aspects of public life in Britain (and most other countries) find it hard to deal in grey.
I think Churchill is such an interesting figure, who really never gets a truly honest examination as people either underplay or over-exaggerate his actions and not many historians find the time to actually show the nuance of how the same traits that made him such a great wartime PM are the same traits that led to his decisions on Tehran, Bengal and Dresden.
Anyway, I daresay we'll see much worse committed by Germany "in the real life of this timeline" that'll put the Allied crimes to shame.
I can highly recommend Norman Ohlers book "Der totale Rausch" (English title "Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany"). It talks about the topic more extensively. Up there with Pervitin are Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrin), caffeine and simple glucose. The last two, of course, have far less long-term effects.
How are the programs against Opium, Footbinding, Illiteracy and other remnants of the feudal past going? Oh, and how is Chiang dealing with the writers and artists this time? Historically, he managed to turn almost all of them to the communist side with his repressiveness (yes, funny, I know, but they figured anything must be better than him... boy, were they in for a surprise!).
Churchill's crimes in Bengal are well documented in serious historical circles. Of course popular history is going to simplify the narrative, but academic history hardly sweeps the crimes of the Allies under the rug. I think that the reason it's not incorporated into the narrative of AARs is that doing so is a bit on the edge of board rules.
I read the decline and fall of the British Empire and I had to stop (which I never did before or since)'reading it for a while because it was so... brutal.
Oh Churchill is very interesting alright...
Any German victory is terrible for Europe, at least in the short run. As a historian I listen to once reminded: "in a thousand years, when fresh memories fade, people might praise a successful Hitler for uniting Europe just as we praise Genghis Khan today for rebuilding Euroasia links."
Well, from what (little) I've read, many Chinese writers and artists during the revolutionary period were leftist to begin with. I'm not sure Chiang would care much about them now, since artists by themselves have little actual power -- plus he's cleaned out many of his political rival.
At any rate, DH is a poor civil administration simulator P= (gosh, what I could do with HOI4 National Spirits and Stellaris ethos mechanics~)
Still, you'll like the next update -- The New CC Clique and Azad Hind.
Keyword: academic.
What % of the population actually crack open the books some of us read?
Modern propaganda does not use censorship but marginalization of inconvenient facts. Too many Britons still claim that India benefited from colonialism because the British gave them railroads, administration, yadda yadda, and then withdrew voluntarily, because that is how British schoolbooks try to portray it. Highlighting 'benefits' while marginalizing crimes as 'anomalies' rather than 'policy'.
Then I talk to Indians and they just smile thinly... "the British likes to pretend they gave us independence." There's a reason why BBC was promoting Gandhi while being forbade to run documentaries on Bose during the pertinent time period.
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Thing is, though, I don't think a German unification of Europe would last long after Hitler's death; the Nazi regime was living on borrowed time economically already, and there's only so much a Skaver's economy would do. We might consider Hitler a hero in the future, but, like with Genghis Khan, we'd be wrong. I also do, full disclosure, consider the Nazis worse than every other European Empire, but any further discussion of their atrocities is probably against board rules.
I do agree that British crimes in India are mostly ignored in pop-history, but recently Malcolm Gladwell mentioned it on his Revisionist History podcast, so hey, things might be getting better.
I think Bose is often ignored compared to Gandhi because Bose and Azad Hind only saw a transformation in perception in India post-War. Most Indians during the war believed that he was a hypocrite due to his ant imperialism and yet his alignment with Imperial Japan, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Those powers were explicitly trying to gain an empire and he was aligning himself with them. Bose and the Azad Hind and the INA were also massive failures in terms of military matters so it's not like he was ever close to success.
And to be honest, as someone who studied Bose and India's road to independence with help from an Indian student (international arrival) and a British-Indian lecturer. I can't help but think those Indians you talked to have bought into the same kind of mythmaking which paints the British as tyrannical in America and forgets the truth of the Boston riots. I'd argue that just as with America Post-SYW that India at the end of WW2 had no real threats to itself if it became independent and could "afford" a chaotic independence that might not have been affordable without the Soviet Union being exhausted, China being in complete disarray and Japan's empire extinguished.
And to be honest, as someone who studied Bose and India's road to independence with help from an Indian student (international arrival) and a British-Indian lecturer. I can't help but think those Indians you talked to have bought into the same kind of mythmaking which paints the British as tyrannical in America and forgets the truth of the Boston riots. I'd argue that just as with America Post-SYW that India at the end of WW2 had no real threats to itself if it became independent and could "afford" a chaotic independence that might not have been affordable without the Soviet Union being exhausted, China being in complete disarray and Japan's empire extinguished.
I was just quoting a point. The Nazis' administrative disaster is well known... not to mention that garbage they teach in schools instead of proper science. The "Man in the High Castle" version of a supertech reich is, rather unrealistic.
Problems with that view:
- Most Indians didn't know much about Bose during the war, only what the UK was willing to tell them (which was nothing good).
- Much of the INC leadership that Bose associated with was under arrest during the war, styming proper discussions.
- The INA emerged so late the Allies were already winning (better to hedge bets on the victor).
- When Bose's supporters did finally get a voice during the INA trials, the outcry and mutinies that followed were certainly not one of "they're hypocrites".
Excerbating this is the Gandhi Clique suppression Bose's legacy until the 70s to give themselves more credit. Open discussion about Bose hasn't really surfaced until around 2000, steadily increasing since. It's like how mainlander Chinese were taught that the CPC did most of WWII fighting until recent decades, which is just blatantly untrue.
I don't think India's peaceful independence has actually helped India.. but this is a topic I'd rather discuss when it's pertinent. Your last sentence baffles me though as many Indian leaders were Pro-Soviet and was on good terms with China (at least ROC), so if anything, the chaos around them negatively affected India's bargaining position during the transitory period as it increased Britain's regional influence.
In my field I meet a lot of actual Indians (not Indian Americans). My preference is to always research through a multimedia, multicultural approach, then discuss the matter with people actually from that part of the world to learn what are the foreign biases involved.
Oh no, we haven't gotten to the depressing stuff yet. Politics is fairly straightforward once you understand realpolitik.
The real heineous stuff comes when you delve into economics and find out what capitalism and 'free trade'truly does to the third world nations ("exploitation" and "extortion" are the nicest words to describe it)... and then realize it's not history, it's the present.
EU4 is a decent simulator of this. Guess what makes tons of money? Trade companies -- give them land, autonomy, and let capitalism run free. Guess what trade companies loves to do? Treat territorial populaces like slaves (including ingame atrocity events) or ripping apart local towns (provincial development decreases) to build plantations. Well... corporations hasn't changed that much, and modern, underdeveloped nations are easily manipulated by bribery.
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The problem with saying Bose is viewed badly because Britain is that it ignores the fact that not all propaganda is wholly misleading. It is true that Bose was moving against an established Imperial power by siding with 3 "up and coming" imperial powers of which two were more brutal on a per year basis compared to the British. Bose may not have had ideas that were that bad, but it cannot be denied that when you denounce Britain but saddle up with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan that propaganda would be right to call you a hypocrite of the highest order. That alone even if argued from realpolitik perspectives does make Bose what the propaganda said he was. This also explains why the INC Bose clique was arrested, which while stymying discussion of his merits can't be seen too harshly when they are directly associating with a wartime enemy. I'll give you that these arrests were detrimental to Bose being heard out, but again Bose was a hypocrite and a traitor so it's hard to argue that those advocating on his behalf weren't also being the same type of hypocrites or traitors to India.
Well if the INA emerged so late, isn't that a failure on Bose's part to not get it up and running sooner? And on the INA trials, I did mention that the perception shifted post-War. Again here the threat of Japan was no longer omnipresent and so people forgot who the INA and Azad Hind had been aligned with and the nationalists began to downplay that heavily.
You can question the wartime claims, but unless you have good evidence to refute them then I'd argue you can't make an opposite conclusion without clear evidence.
Agreed on the Gandhi clique, the problem with Bose is that the BJP in India as a Hindu Nationalist party have a vested interest in playing up nationalist figures in the curriculum and the (modern) INC to also play up how hard done by they were by the awful British and downplay Bose and the associated crimes of Japan. I was going to say this further down, but you have to consider nationalist bias just as much as foreign bias. So just talking to Indians randomly (if this is not the case, I apologise, as you only mentioned talking to them without any elaboration) won't be any better in terms of bias.
I'll reserve comment on this whole paragraph until you get to your thoughts on India's independence in the updates to come, if that's okay with you? Suffice to say, my point is roughly that with the end of empires, and the Soviets and ROC being ambivalent/supportive that Indian's knew that they could safely become independent ASAP and risk chaos due to the lack of strong neighbours who would want to take their land.
I mentioned my response to foreign/nationalist bias above.
I almost fear arguing like this, even academically as I don't want to distract you from updates
.
I'll elaborate my thoughts sometime, but essentially, saying Indians thinking one way or another is an extreme simplification of a view. Especially a perspective on what the British were to India, and what they meant.
Suffice to say, let's start by saying Indian very much doesn't really tell you anything when you scratch past the surface. Churchill was, while simplifying it, essentially right when he said India is a geographical term. Is that the case now? Not really, but this is a new thing for India - a wide overculture. India isn't like China, where the wide nation was centralized at various times over a millenia. In China, multiple Chinese states and dynasties were unusual in that they were the end of one era and start of another, a chaotic, violent transition period. In the land of Bharat, separate nations, separate people, were the norm. A (mostly, since even Ashoka didn't iron the entire land together) unified state was such an incredibly rare thing, that it usually was the signifier that the end would soon come. The Wheel of Fate was that it couldn't hold together. Numerous old Chinese texts (the ones to survive anyways) refer to people who simply no longer exist, having been subsumed into the Han mass long ago. That never happened in India. In India, it was faith that was the main determinant. China had, has a cosmological principle of how they are and who they are in relation to the universe, but in the Land, faith was what was the common denominator. And different cultures, very much different cultures. Few if any cultures were ever absorbed into others like that. If anything only ever more were created, split off.
Zanaikin, I get this is your AAR, but it's more complicated than what you're laying out here.
Suffice to say, let's start by saying Indian very much doesn't really tell you anything when you scratch past the surface. Churchill was, while simplifying it, essentially right when he said India is a geographical term. Is that the case now? Not really, but this is a new thing for India - a wide overculture. India isn't like China, where the wide nation was centralized at various times over a millenia. In China, multiple Chinese states and dynasties were unusual in that they were the end of one era and start of another, a chaotic, violent transition period. In the land of Bharat, separate nations, separate people, were the norm. A (mostly, since even Ashoka didn't iron the entire land together) unified state was such an incredibly rare thing, that it usually was the signifier that the end would soon come. The Wheel of Fate was that it couldn't hold together. Numerous old Chinese texts (the ones to survive anyways) refer to people who simply no longer exist, having been subsumed into the Han mass long ago. That never happened in India. In India, it was faith that was the main determinant. China had, has a cosmological principle of how they are and who they are in relation to the universe, but in the Land, faith was what was the common denominator. And different cultures, very much different cultures. Few if any cultures were ever absorbed into others like that. If anything only ever more were created, split off.
Zanaikin, I get this is your AAR, but it's more complicated than what you're laying out here.
Seeing as that's the first thing I like to talk to Indians about -- how their nation manages to retain one identity despite its huge flux in cultures (3 cultural groups!) and religions and languages... you're preaching to the choir here =P
And yes, I ask Indians which part of India they're from. It's very important! Being Marathi vs being from Delhi gives huge differences in perspective.
I'm writing a AAR, not a history book. Of course it's more complicated lol!
Um, any flipping of history books mention nothing of "Bose Clique" being arrested, just "INC leaders". Comments like those are very misleading. The Quit India Movement in 1942 was organized by the Gandhi Clique, which triggered broad, sweeping arrests across the INC. That's why I say proper discussions were stymied, because even those who were against Bose's ideology but in support of Indian independence were removed. This left the British viewpoint rather unopposed, as the AIML were effectively "British collaborators" during the war.
As a Chinese historian I read once said: one must ALWAYS question who wrote history and why they wrote it the way they did. Claims alone are often enough to cast issues into doubt (the fact we lack Gaullic records to oppose the Rome perspective does not make Roman perspectives reliable, due to their known penchant for bias and exaggeration).
The prime reason I believe Bose isn't a hypocrite is provided by his own actions: despite the war, and despite help by Abwehr agents in Afghanistan, he didn't go to the Axis first. No, he went to Moscow, to seek help from Stalin (as Bose is socialist-leaning). But Stalin disappointed him. In general, I can find few modern Indian sources calling Bose a hypocrite; most of it originating from western sources instead. Even Gandhi himself would praise Bose in 1945:
"Subhas Bose has died well. He was undoubtedly a patriot, though misguided." (in the Gandhian nonviolent resistance view).
Of course I'm aware of India's own nationalistic bias, even their own revisionism xD (some of the views forwarded by Bose supporters are blatantly untrue). Since one of the things I researched was the India-Paki Partition, avoiding nationalistic rhetoric was high priority.
(next update will be later tonight... no worries
)
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What I mean is that first, it's more than just three groups, but what I mean more is that the identity of India as a denonym, a signifier of one nation only, is a very new thing. And I also mean that it's not a very deep identity. And saying just because you talked to some Indians and read some books, that that's what Indians mostly think is just flat out wrong. And that's without factoring in the even further varied views of the migrants to other shores, which are still important because they often have family still in India. Besides a few niggles, AvatarOfKhaine is largely right (basically, about the BJP). India basically needed, back then, founding myths - not a sin, all nations do it. It's just appropriate to understand that that's what it is, myths.
An issue of whether the British were good is not, despite what old-school nationalists (molded in the 50s and 60s largely) want you to think, is still very much a passionate issue that often divides friends, generations, families, even now. If anything, it's becoming more pertinent than ever, after 50 years of independence, and coinciding with India, unnoticed somewhat, part of the mass movement around the world of popular, democratic revolt against old, stagnant establishment, and having a non-INC party in power for the first time. Basically, the old post-colonial legacy in India is finally dying - it took a while, but it is. It's humorously ironic actually, the younger generations, the non-INC generations are actually more supportive of what Britain did for India. And they would tell you Britain did a lot.
The recent dustups with China have only made more people look at the legacy of early INC stalwarts like Ghandi, Nehru, and the like, and finally taking a critical look, even trashing what they did, how they turned India on the eve of independence from the richest country in Asia into an economic basket case, and how they tiptoed the nation into living mass delusions, that led to disasters like the 1962 war, and the possibility it would happen again. And as far as the epic heroism of Bose, there never was any "conspiracy" to deny Bose his credit, besides Ghandists - it's always been known, he is, or was rather, a national hero. Even upto the 2000s, INA veterans were still feted. You know though, India had tons of veterans who fought against the INA too, fought for the British Indian Army, and many even, for the actual British Empire, believe it or not! Considered the INA traitors, they and their families, and a large swathe of society too - there never was a mass popular movement, or large majority ideology. And people are finally appreciating them, listening to their stories.
I'd know, since my family was filled with them. Veterans on both sides of that fence.
Look, again, I'm not trying to rain on your parade, and this is your AAR, so you're certainly free to write it how you see fit, but basically using Britain repeatedly as a giant punching bag is, I feel, detracting from the story a wee bit.
An issue of whether the British were good is not, despite what old-school nationalists (molded in the 50s and 60s largely) want you to think, is still very much a passionate issue that often divides friends, generations, families, even now. If anything, it's becoming more pertinent than ever, after 50 years of independence, and coinciding with India, unnoticed somewhat, part of the mass movement around the world of popular, democratic revolt against old, stagnant establishment, and having a non-INC party in power for the first time. Basically, the old post-colonial legacy in India is finally dying - it took a while, but it is. It's humorously ironic actually, the younger generations, the non-INC generations are actually more supportive of what Britain did for India. And they would tell you Britain did a lot.
The recent dustups with China have only made more people look at the legacy of early INC stalwarts like Ghandi, Nehru, and the like, and finally taking a critical look, even trashing what they did, how they turned India on the eve of independence from the richest country in Asia into an economic basket case, and how they tiptoed the nation into living mass delusions, that led to disasters like the 1962 war, and the possibility it would happen again. And as far as the epic heroism of Bose, there never was any "conspiracy" to deny Bose his credit, besides Ghandists - it's always been known, he is, or was rather, a national hero. Even upto the 2000s, INA veterans were still feted. You know though, India had tons of veterans who fought against the INA too, fought for the British Indian Army, and many even, for the actual British Empire, believe it or not! Considered the INA traitors, they and their families, and a large swathe of society too - there never was a mass popular movement, or large majority ideology. And people are finally appreciating them, listening to their stories.
I'd know, since my family was filled with them. Veterans on both sides of that fence.
Look, again, I'm not trying to rain on your parade, and this is your AAR, so you're certainly free to write it how you see fit, but basically using Britain repeatedly as a giant punching bag is, I feel, detracting from the story a wee bit.
Again, you're preaching to the choir.
Just because I'm not willing to open the very tangential question of India's complexity does not mean I don't grasp the basics of it -- because it opens a big bag of details that (1) aren't very pertinent and (2) I'm not the best versed on. But I've read enough of Britain's colonial policies in India to form my own opinion of it, and... well, there's a reason why the British Empire keeps topping "most evil empire" lists out there, despite competing against the Mongols and the Spanish (the Nazis were small fries).
Bose is no more divisive a figure than Chiang himself. Every leader has myths surrounding them. Thus, it's helpful to state specifics rather than level general accusations. And too many sources have described how INA soldiers and Bombay Mutineers were denied recognition as freedom fighters by India for decades.
You're free to object if I wrote something untrue about the UK (and I will strive to verify and correct). But unpleasant facts are still facts.
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