Originally posted by Keoland
Well, given the numbers quoted, it seems rather obvious that the mobilization of colonials was inferior to 1% of their total populations... that's even below what one would expect from a force drawn from volunteers alone - and it does seem to confirm my statements, not disprove them.
Could if every avaliable male was drafted - as the number inferior to 4 000 000 clearly shows, the vast majority of Indians were totally alienated from the British war effort and had no interest in fighting for them - they would most likely defect at first chance.
In comparison, Britain alone had a mobilization level superior to 10% and had more than 4,5 million troops under arms at the time of maximum mobilization effort (2 900 000 in the Army, 800 000 in the Royal Navy and 1 000 000 in the RAF - and these are British numbers alone. Percentage-wise, Canada also mobilized 10% of her numbers).
Regards,
Keoland
Firstly tot pop for india in 39 wa 339 mil, again from ellis, from which the army(ie excluding air and naval mobolisation) was 3.7mil, this comes to 1.09% for india, the Uk reached 8% of its pop, Canada 6.1%, buts thats besides the point, in gross numbers India and the Uk fielded similar ration returns,(UK army=3,788,00) how this supports
==============================================Point is, there was a reason WHY that «vast» manpower of the allies was left untapped for the duration of the war... if Britain ever trained and supplied with modern equipment large amounts of colonial troops, instead of the careful selection of men she did during the war, she would most certainly be giving the Axis free troops and would have a hell of a time regaining control of her colonies from those very same troops.
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is rather difficult to fathom.
Your racial slur on indians is noted, fourtunatly the facts do not not support them, as any review of combat medal awards will show, cowards dont win the Victoria cross, like the 20 out of 27 going to indians in Burma.
Are you not aware that only 91,243 Indian troops were taken pow?, compared to 203,192 Uk, does that mean that englishmen were twice as alienated and likly to defect, i dont think so.
http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/3/4/Borra407-439.html
This gives some 50,000 who took up arms under Boise to fight, hardly the great mutiny now is it.
You are aware , are you not that the indian navy, that grew from 6 sloops, to 12 minsweepers, 2 frigates, and a corvete + the original sloops, mutined in 46 when it was told to demobolise?. Oh yes they were just alienated al to hell.
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/1940s/Training.html
At the outbreak of the War, the IAF had a strength of 16 Officers and 144 Ranks. Only one Squadron was operational and all training was undertaken by units in the UK. But the outbreak of the war put a strain on UK's training requirements and also to cater to the Indian training needs, the IAF established new units and set up more combat units.
By the end of the war, the number of personnel trained or under training, by the end of 1944 was in excess of 22000 Officers and men.
If you continue to post inacurate figures its clear why your conclusions are such crap ones.
hanny
I mean: Italian colonial troops were all volunteers, and British? If in HoI you can have only volunteers from your colonies, their manpower will be really low, because there were only a few men that wanted to fight for money and/or for a country that they didn't even know, as was historically at least for Italian colonies.
