259. Burma - The Forgotten Victory
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Hello and welcome to Battleground 45 with me, Saul David. Today I'm discussing arguably the finest British offensive victory of the Second World War, the twin battles of Mandalay and Maktila in Burma, also known as Operation Extended Capital. It was fought by Lieutenant General Bill Slim's multinational 14th Army, the so-called Forgotten Army, against the Japanese Burma Area Army under General Hitaro Kimura.

To lead us through the action is historian Rob Lyman, author of many books, but including Slim Master of War, Kohima 1944, and A War of Empires. Rob, you're in India at the moment, which is very fitting. Welcome back to the podcast. It's great to be back with you, Saul. Fabulous. And by the way, I'm off to Burma this afternoon, so...

You've called me just at the right time. Yeah, you're in Kolkata, Calcutta as we knew it in the Second World War. Let's set the scene then, shall we? Tell us, Rob, a little bit about the strategic situation in India, stroke Burma, in late 1944. And what was Slim's plan for the reconquest of Burma?

Yeah, let's just start by saying 1945 and all those operations that retook Burma were completely unplanned and unexpected by anyone in the Allied camp. Even in early 1945,

They weren't even perhaps a glim in Slim's eye because the previous year, 1944, were the great cataclysmic battles which saw Japanese invasion of India there, march on Delhi, come to a dead stop at Kohima and Imphal, and indeed in the Battle of Arakan in February. So 1944, this very large Japanese army under the Japanese general of the 15th Army, Mutaguchi Renya, came to a stop and

And probably about 90% of his 105,000 men made it back. So that retreat from India in late 1944 was known as the Road of Bones. The Japanese called it the Road of Bones because so many people died on the way back.

Slim, the story about where this led to is a really fascinating one because it had never been Allied strategy, believe it or not, to reconquer Burma. That might come as a bit of a surprise to people. But the purpose of Allied strategy in Burma was simply to

to rebuild the Burma Road. And that was to ensure that China remained supplied. And Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang armies continued to hold down the Japanese in China. And we're talking here about perhaps 750,000 to a million men. So a whole 20% of the 4 million men that the

in the Second World War were actually in China, which gives you a sense that China was incredibly important to Japan.

So the aim of Allied strategy was just to keep the Burma Road going. And after the first Burma Road from Rangoon up to Mandalay was cut by the Japanese in early 1942, it was replaced by the aerial airlift called the Hump and also by a new road being built from northern India, the Brahmaputra Valley, over the hills and took Burma called the Lido or the Stillwell Road down to a place called Michinar. Now,

In 1944, with this massive defeat of the Japanese in Manipur and Assam, Bill Slim started cooking up a plan, an unofficial plan, to go back into Burma. And the initial idea was that he would follow up

the remnants or follow up on the coattails of the defeated 15th Army, crossed the Chin Win and pushed the Japanese across Upper Burma to Mandalay and perhaps fight a decisive battle around Mandalay. Even at this stage, mid-1944, Slim certainly wasn't thinking about reconquering all of Burma. And even if he had suggested it, he would have been told to get back in his box because it was an allied strategy to do that.

So he put a little note up to Mountbatten. Mountbatten wasn't his boss. His boss at the time was General George Gifford of the 11th Army Group. But Mountbatten and Slim had a really good relationship. And Slim said, look, why didn't you give me permission, boss, just to carry on and pursue the enemy? So this is a pursuit task, not a reconquest task.

Mountbatten wasn't smart enough to realize what Slim was doing. But in any case, everything Slim had done for Mountbatten had turned to gold. So Mountbatten said, OK, fine, follow up the 15th Army. He didn't put any caveats on it. He didn't say only go as far as Mandalay or only go as far as, say, mid-upper Burma. He said yes.

All this was taking place in June 1944 at a time when, yes, the Japanese invasion of India had been destroyed and the Japanese were streaming back into Burma. But London really had no idea what was going on in India either. And there's a wonderful note in Alan Brooks' diary where in

On one of the days in June 1944, after D-Day, he says, oh, I'm still really worried about Imphal. I wonder whether it will hold. Well, the battle had long been won. And it just shows you the effect of the impact of distance and time on what was going on at Allenbrook.

clearly focused on Europe he wasn't really interested in what was going on it was not fair to say he wasn't interested you know that was a the Far East was a subject he could deal with in due course anyway to cut a long story short Slim followed up the 15th army into Burma a

Remember that monsoon is falling between May and October and 1944. It was very, very wet. But through the latter months of August and September, the 5th Indian Division cleared most of the area parallel to the border with Burma along the Chinwuna place called the Kibor Valley of Japanese. And by the start of December 1944,

the 14th Army had thrown a bridge across the Chidwan into Burma itself. Now, Slim's first plan, as I said, was just to chase the 15th Army to Burma. He threw the 19th Division under Pete Rees across the Chidwan in an operation called Capital. The original plan was just called Capital. Remember, this wasn't the conquest. This was simply to make sure that the 15th Army couldn't reconstitute itself and upper Burma, which has always been the target, as I suggested, for the Allies,

could come good. But throughout all this time, Slim was building up a bigger plan, which was an idea of having a confrontational battle with General Kimura north of Mandalay in the area of a place called Shwebo, where Slim was convinced that his superiority in armor, so he's got lots of tanks now, he's got lots of Sherman tanks as well as ground tanks, and aircraft would be able to defeat the Japanese in Burma for the first time comprehensively.

And he started moving towards Mandalay. But within a couple of weeks, so we're talking about mid to 7, 1944 here, it became quite clear to Slim that General Kimmerer wasn't going to come out of Mandalay. He wasn't going to cross the Irrawaddy and fight a battle on ground which would suit the British. Kimmerer was a smart man. He'd only just arrived in theatre.

He had replaced General Kouabe, who wasn't a smart man, I'm afraid. It was probably good for us that he wasn't. But Kimura wasn't going to be drawn by the quite obvious movement of Slim's forces across Upper Burma.

So this left Slim in a quandary. What should he do? He needed to defeat Kimura, based in Mandalay. And he came up very, very quickly with what you described at the start in the introduction as really one of the most extraordinary Allied operations of the Second World War. This is extraordinary because of the risk Slim took. Now, one of the principles of...

military operations is concentration of force. You know, only idiots split their forces so they can be divided up and eaten in pieces. Well, that's what Mutaguchi had done the previous year. He had divided his large 15th Army up into six separate columns, and Slim's 14th Army had destroyed everyone comprehensively. But Slim was now going to do something similar. He wasn't going to divide it into six columns. He was going to divide it into twos.

And he said to himself, in this process of thinking with his really quite remarkable army headquarters, he had two corps. He had about 70,000 men in total in the 4th Corps and the 33rd Indian Corps. The Japanese actually incidentally had more troops than he did. But he said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make Kimura believe that I've got my whole army moving across Upper Burma.

to threaten him in Mandalay. But at the same time, I'm actually going to take my fourth core away. I've got two armored brigades. I've got nearly 200 tanks and I'm going to drive it through the jungle. Bear with me, Saul, because this is, this is a crazy story. I'm going to drive it through the jungle and I'm going to,

hit the Irrawaddy. I'm going to push those troops over the Irrawaddy and I'm going to make for a town in central Burma called Maktila. Now Maktila was the nodal point, so the place where all the railways and roads in Burma coalesced and which supported directly Kimra's forces in Mandalay. And

If Mactela was lost, Chimera in Mandalay was lost. I mean, it's just like cutting off your legs. You're sitting on a seat. All your legs are gone. There's nothing you can do about it. Now, this is a very big risk that Slim was contemplating because that road that he was going to send his armoured brigades, the 4th Armoured Corps, down didn't exist. It was a track. And it was 300 miles long.

So Slim really took quite enormous risks, but by this stage he knew the capability of his army. And he said to Frank Massivey, who was the new corps commander, he said, can we build a road up?

in six weeks through 300 miles of jungle being bulldozed in order to get across the Irrawaddy and make a thrust at Mektila. The answer came back yes, and that's exactly what happened. Now, during this whole crazy process, so from mid-December through to the end of January, whilst Slim was busy

the army was building this crazy road through the jungle down through a place called Gangor. Slim was terrified the Japanese might find out what he was doing because the moment the Japanese knew that the main thrust of his offensive wasn't at the north of Mandalay, they would

redivert all their forces and attack him where he was weak, which is struggling to get over the Irrawaddy. Now, the Irrawaddy is one of the biggest rivers in the world. I've been up and down it many times, and I'm always absolutely gobsmacked at how huge it is. Some places, it's eight miles wide. It's shallow in the dry season.

And it was the dry season now, February 1945. The rain started coming in May. So it's getting lower and lower and lower. It was still a massive, massive obstacle. And Slim doesn't have any boats. How on earth does he do this?

Well, just as a quick aside, this crazy story even gets crazier now because what happens is as they were planning to cross the Rwanda, the Chinwun, the previous year, Sim said, I'm going to need boats. I'm going to need bridges and boats. I don't know. I've got enough really to build one bridge across the Chinwun. I'm going to need lots of boats. How do we do it? So 14th Army headquarters got their heads together and they said, okay, we're going to build boats. And they built 550 boats, each of 10 tons weight in order to carry a Sherman tank.

How do they do it? Well, they cut down some big teak forests. They created sawmills to cut the wood. They built them together. They slapped pitch, which is bubbling out of the ground on this very oil-rich region, to make them waterproof.

And they put them on the river. When I first went to Burma in 1997, I was going up the Irrawaddy with a friend. And he said to me, he was a long-term resident in Burma at the time. And he said, do you know those boats that you see there? I said, yeah. They were built by Bill Slim in 1944. They were still being used in 1997 to take teak logs down the Irrawaddy. I mean, the whole thing was crazy. And he built, stand by, 550 of these things. The only way he was going to get across the Chinruan and the Irrawaddy was by building his own navy.

This really just demonstrates not only how brilliant Slim was as a strategist, but actually as a logistician as well. He knew he had to have staff to transport his army. But it also speaks volumes about how his army was able just to get together and make things happen. It really is quite an extraordinary story. An interesting aside here is,

Slim decided to put a couple of Bofors guns on two of the boats and use them to protect his little fleet. And he called one HMS Una after his daughter and the other HMS Pamela after Mountbatten's daughter. A few weeks later into the operation, he got a

A rocket from the Admiralty saying the only person or the only organization entitled to name His Majesty's ships was the Admiralty and he was to desist forthwith. He just ignored that, of course. And HMS Una and HMS Pamela continued their fantastic job of protecting the fleet. Listeners will be fascinated to know

and I know you've spoken about it before, but let's have a recap here. Just tell us a little bit about Slim's 14th Army because people might imagine, well, it's a British army with a few Indian troops or maybe a lot of Indian troops, but actually it was a polyglot multinational army, wasn't it? So just tell us a little bit about its composition and the difficulties that any normal commander would have had in making all these disparate groups actually work well together.

That's a great question. I mean, it's almost impossible to think of another army outside of perhaps the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire, actually, that was able to make this polyglot army work. It's quite an extraordinary story. But by 1945, we just broadened the context to describe Southeast Asia Command, which is what Mountbatten commanded. Southeast Asia Command comprised 1.3 million men and some women, of whom 58% were Indian,

Quite extraordinary number, 272,000 were in fact American. And that might come as a surprise to people realizing that actually the Americans provided over a quarter of a million men in Southeast Asia command. They absolutely did so. But 100,000 ultimately in the Royal Navy, in the Pacific Fleet, and supporting it in Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was then.

About 100,000 Africans, so West and East Africa, and about 100,000 Brits. So actually, of that total 1.3 million, there's only...

100,000 who are British, which is quite extraordinary. Now, if we then look in at the combat forces, Slim's 14th Army had 606,000 men. Well, it's not just Slim, it's a bit too complicated, but there's another part of the army called the 14th Corps, which in 1945 was outside of the 14th Army. But if we put them together, 606,000 men. Of those 606,000, 87% were Indian,

A little bit more were African, and the remainder, about 8% or 9%, were British. So it just gives you a sense that actually the 14th Army was very, very, very comprehensively Indian. And this came about as a consequence of very rapid

building up of the Indian Army in 1940 and 41, and then escalated dramatically in 1942 after the Japanese invasion. And many of those who were recruited in 1942, of course, or most of them, were actually recruited to fight the Japanese. The Indian Army is worth just saying, during the war, recruited two and a half million men. And they were all volunteers, and some women, all volunteers. It's quite extraordinary. It's the largest volunteer army ever raised in the

And this was all subsumed into an army that was the Indian army. There's no such thing as the British Indian army. It was the legally constituted army of India. Now, most of these officers, of course, were British. It was a consequence of the colonial regime.

And that's just a fact. But that has led some people to say, well, it was a British army. It wasn't the British army. It was very, very distinctly an Indian army with officers who spent their whole careers serving with and leading Indian soldiers. So it created a new type of organization that actually after the big coup,

catastrophes of 1940, late 1941 and 1942 with the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia, rebuilt itself spectacularly in 1943. Really, really quite an extraordinary story of rebuilding an army led by Orkin Lake, who is now back again as commander-in-chief of India, and Bill Slim, who was

a commander of the 14th Army, first the Eastern Army, then the 14th Army. And together, they created an army of really quite unparalleled power. The first test of that new power was the Battle of the Admin Box, as it's commonly called, or a place called Sinsway, in February 1944.

And it demonstrated that the Indian Army was quite capable of smashing the Japanese. And that again happened at Kohima and Naval. Of course, British units, the 2nd Division, most notably at Kohima, played a very significant role. But there's something here about British and Indian and African units all working together to a common purpose under a single command and actually achieving quite remarkable things.

That carried on into 1945. So what you have in 1945 is a really remarkable army, able to operate in a combined arms way with modern weapons, modern technology. For instance, you know, 1939, the Indian Air Force had one fighter squadron. By 1945, they had about 29 or 30. The pilots who are flying them were recruited in 1942.

And through 1945, we had these fighter squadrons effectively, well, the Allies had aerial superiority over Burma. So these fighter squadrons were used for fighter ground attack. They were converted to fighter ground attack. And they were acting in the cab rank style of the

21st Army Group in Northwest Europe, where basically ground commanders had immediate access to fight a ground attack above them, flying around in half squadron sizes, say six to eight aircraft, and coming down exactly when it was required by the ground commander. So that's quite powerful. So we have a very large army, basically trained through 1943 and the start of 1944 for this great war,

against the Japanese, being bloodied in India, but coming good and demonstrating that the Japanese were not invincible. They weren't the Superman that had been portrayed in 1942.

And really, to use that phrase of the time, Saul, in going into Burma with their tails up, they knew the Japanese could be beaten. They knew they were pretty good. They had an army that solved every problem that came its way. That example of the boat, I always chuckle at because it really is quite extraordinary. You need to have a big vision to think that you might be able to do something as crazy as that. And also then to drive this...

road down the Gangor Valley to 300 miles of jungle with bulldozers in front, hoping that the Japanese don't spot you, but actually getting away with it. So this really talked to Slim's embracing of risk and the management of risk, which he had learned as a brigade and divisional commander in Eritrea and Iraq. You will never win unless you take risk. Now, that risk has to be calculated. You have to work out what the consequence of

life might be if it's not successful. But I think all those things, the whole story about Burma 1945 is a story of a whole series of events coalescing together at the right time. Slim's generalship, the rebuilding of the Indian Army, the strength of his headquarters staff in 14th Army, which is really quite extraordinary. A whole series of problems and errors and mistakes having been ironed out

they were very apparent in 1942 and 43, being ironed out through the remainder of 1943 and being tested in battle in 1944. Well, one of these things, of course, is the

sense that the primary Japanese tactic was envelopment. The idea that the Japanese would always press up hard against the position and then immediately envelop it and place blocks behind you. So the troops in the middle were not only fighting the front, but they were also getting worried about not being able to get out of the back. And Slim's solution was, when you are caught

fight. Don't feel that you have to withdraw because withdrawal is simply giving the initiative to the enemy. If you keep on fighting, you'll reduce the ability of the enemy to constrict you and strangle you. And whilst you're fighting, we'll supply you by air. And it worked

every single time. By 1945, the Allies were using encirclement tactics against the Japanese, and the Japanese were falling into the same trap that the Allies had in 1942, trying to hold ground. This is a really important principle that Slim had learned in 1942. And he said, look, our objective is

The object of our army in all our operations is to achieve the destruction of the enemy. It's not to hold ground. Ground is irrelevant. If I can withdraw 100 miles and still defeat the enemy by stretching them out and then attacking them by artillery and air, then I will do that.

Bear in mind also, by 1942, as I said earlier, the capability of the 14th Army had grown dramatically, not least of all in artillery. People need to remember that, you know, maybe 70 or 80% of all casualties in battle are caused by artillery. In order to be able to manage artillery, ground commanders use artillery, you need to practice a lot, you need to work out how to create killing zones to...

to fire on the enemy when they're least expecting it, to disrupt their attacks, to catch them off guard, to catch them when they're moving, to catch them when they're preparing to advance and also preparing to withdraw. So much of the science of modern war, and I think we've seen this in Ukraine, not done particularly well, but I think it's been seen in Ukraine, is the ability to use what the army calls fires, use artillery, both direct but primarily indirect fire, but also fire.

bombing from the air in a coordinated, intelligent way. And the more I study war front, I've been doing it for longer than I dare think. It comes back to this sort of stuff. You need commanders who are really capable of directing fires, of using fires to obstruct advances and withdraws, any movement that the enemy is trying to take. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment when we'll hear more from Rob Lyman about the extraordinary twin battles of Mandalay and Mektila.

Before we move on to the denouement, really, of this extraordinary battle, and you've set it up beautifully, Rob, tell us a little bit about the opposition. I mean, you mentioned Kimura. It might be tempted for some listeners to imagine that the Japanese army was not what it had been in Burma by 1945, but that's not necessarily the case, is it? And I think they had a numerical superiority, did they not, over Slim's attacking troop? But tell us a little bit more about the quality of those Japanese troops in early 1945.

It's very, very tempting to suggest that because we know that Slim's army was so dramatically successful and some of the stories about the relentless winning of battles that we hear might lead us to think the Japanese weren't very good. It's just complete nonsense. It really is nonsense.

Whilst the Japanese army under Mutaguchi had been defeated the previous year, Japanese had nearly 400,000 troops in Burma in 1944. They lost about 100,000 in 1944 in Manipur and Assam. So we're still talking about a very, very significant army of up to 300,000 troops in Burma. And the reality is this greatly outnumbered the numbers that Slim had. Remember what Slim had to do. He had to advance over very great distances to

And the Japanese had the advantage at all times in disrupting those advances and fighting to the death. And of course, all your listeners will know that Japanese military ethos, known generally as Bushido, was that everyone fought till they died. There was no giving up. This was not going to be...

a walk in the park for Slim. I'll just stop there and say, look, one thing that I haven't mentioned is really, really important in terms of understanding Burma are the vast distances involved because operations in Burma in 1944 were sustained from Calcutta.

Now, Calcutta was, depending on what line of communication you took, between 800 miles and 1,000 miles from the Chinwin. And it ran up the Brahmaputra Valley across to Dimapur, over the Naga Hills, down to Manipur, then over some more hills down into Tambu to the Chinwin. Let's just say 1,000 miles to Tambu. So every tin of bully beef, every bullet, every engine for a tank, all the fuel for the Armand Corps needed to come over either one road or by air.

And there's a huge air operation to be able to facilitate the advance of the 14th Army into Burma, but a massive operation where we basically saw Cheekt Jow vehicles all the way back that thousand miles to Guwahati across. And the Brahmaputra at the time was not crossed. There were no bridges. When the trains came into Guwahati, they had to

transship goods onto ferries to cross the Brahma pre-trap to get onto another train to go to Dimipur. I mean, Ulysses might want to look at a little map, but it's really quite an extraordinary story. And then from Tammu to Mandalay, where Slim's currently fighting now, is another 400 miles. So 1,400 miles. How far is this all do you think it is?

from London, 1,400 miles. Well, what might be a city that we could compare that with? I don't know, Moscow? I'm probably exaggerating a little bit. Moscow is it. Yeah, you've got it in one. It's Moscow. It's like fighting a battle in Moscow from London. Extraordinary. It is crazy. But then, of course, from Mandalay down to Rangoon, you've got another 400 miles. That's 800 miles. It's like fighting a battle in Beirut from London. This is unbelievable stuff.

For every man fighting at the front, you've got 120, 150, maybe 200 keeping it all going, which is why people say, why was the army so large at 1.3 million men? For precisely the reason I've described. The Japanese were formidable. Kimura himself was a formidable soldier, very vastly experienced soldier.

And Kuwabi had been effectively sank to the end of 1944. Kuwabi had been Murtuguchi's boss. Kimura came in, based himself on Mandalay rather than Rangoon. So he was up in the center of

of Burma where the action was happening. And he had previously been the deputy defense minister under Tojo and was well known for being, he was a militarist, of course, but he was a very, very efficient general. And he looked at what was confronting him and he said, no way am I going to get involved in a battle like

north of the Irrawaddy. I'm going to stay behind the Irrawaddy where Mandalay is, and I'm going to fight to defend Mandalay. And to take Mandalay, let's say I've got a quarter of a million men in Mandalay. There's no way that anyone's going to be able to remove me from this bastion because behind me, I've got the Shan Hills and Tyler. I can get away if I need to. It's a very, very, very strong position.

And he had no concept that Slim might be doing something differently. This is the real genius of Slim in 1945. By secretly pushing his whole corps down to Pakaku on the Irrawaddy and then shoving it across and pushing to Maktila. The crossings were made in the middle of February, by the way. Very, very cunning attack on Maktila, but very quickly by the end of March, it had been captured. Kibber and Mandalay, which is only 90 miles to the north, turned around and said,

Agame, I'm lost. What do I do now? So he then drew his whole army out of north-east in Burma, 33rd Army, brought it down to Mandalay and threw it bodily against Maktila. But by this stage, the whole of the Fourth Corps was in Maktila. And they defended it by... It's very, very interesting when you look at the tactics. The tactics here, I think, are really intriguing because...

Because there wasn't a fixed defense of Mactela. The British and Indians didn't do that at all. What they did is they exploited the offensive defense. So they created columns, attacking columns of tanks,

Mobile artillery, often used in the direct fire as well as the indirect fire role, and armored vehicles with troops. And as the Japanese were swarming towards them as they did, instead of behaving as they had done in 1942 and building defensive lines and trying to hold the defenses against the Japanese, they attacked the attackers. Yes.

Now, you need a lot of chutzpah and confidence and military skill to attack an attacker. But from time immemorial, as you know well, it's the only way to disrupt and advance. And of course, the Japanese were thrown into some confusion here because they weren't expecting this sort of defense. They were expecting that as they attacked the enemy, the enemy would be in trenches and lined up and they would go from one to the other. But nothing happened like that at all. It was a very mobile battlefield. It was a very cunning battle.

And this was all engineered, frankly, by Frank Messavy, who commanded the Corps, who saw this as an opportunity to add some maneuver to the battlefield, to the tactical battles.

As I said, you really need to be confident in what you're doing. But this proved to be the perfect occasion for these tactics. And the Japanese had no answer to them. So we have then by the middle of March, Magdala had been captured. The counterattacking army, 33rd Army, had been effectively destroyed under a guy called Honda. Kimura is sitting up.

in Mandalay. All the while, he's been attacked as well by a 33rd Corps, Slim's upper corps. And during the advance across Upper Burma, Slim had made out that the entire army was advancing on Mandalay. He set up a mock four-corps headquarters. They communicated

every day or 24-7 as a core headquarters would be expected to, giving instructions to all parts of the army that's advancing. And the Japanese were completely taken in by this.

And the guys doing the four-core headquarters scam actually had a lot of fun doing it as well. And they knew the Japanese were being reeled in because they could see units being moved around. And the Japanese were expecting a whole core, the whole four-core, to cross the Irrawaddy just to the west of Mandalay, a few miles west of Mandalay. I'm going to be there next week.

And they didn't expect that actually that was just a feint. Well, it wasn't a feint. There was a second British Division cross. But actually, to the north of Mandalay, the Irrawaddy, most of 33 Corps crossed and came down on Mandalay...

on the eastern side of the Irrawaddy and fell on Mandalay and captured it after a week-and-a-half battle. I mean, really quite an extraordinary thing. None of this was expected by Kimura. Now, remember, Kimura had come out of Tokyo. One of the quite extraordinary characteristics of the Japanese mentality, the military mind during the war, was they

Once they had cottoned on to an idea of an enemy, it never changed. And this is one of the great reasons for Japanese failure in 1944. They fought a battle in India in 1944 on the assumption that they were fighting Indian soldiers in 1942.

the sort that they'd come across in Malaya. And that wasn't the case. And they were really shocked by the response the Indian Army was able to put up. Now, Kimura came out of a number of years sitting behind a desk in Japan, and he came with this idea that the Indian Army wasn't particularly good. It wouldn't be able to maneuver in a way that he would expect a modern army to do.

And he was completely undone. All his assumptions were undone. And he was proved as a consequence to be not up to the task. I mean, subsequently, he described Slim's attack on Meg Thieler to be the

you know, the greatest strategy of the war. I mean, there is a little sense in which he's excusing his own failures here. But, you know, he was right, but he wasn't going to admit that he had messed up. Kimmerer had messed up by not really thinking through what an attacking army might be capable of doing and not guarding his left flank. That was the key failure. But, I mean, the unintended consequence of all of this, I just need to bring listeners back to this point. Remember I said at the start that

The invasion of Burma, the reconquest of Burma, wasn't part of anyone's plan. But by splitting his forces, Slim took a very great risk, but by having a whole corps, the 4th Indian Army Corps under Frank Messavi in Mandalay, sorry, in Mactela, meant that he could then turn Burma

look south at Rangoon, which is only 400 miles away. So at a stroke, this Battle of Mandalay and Mactela meant that now there was an opportunity for Slim to fall on Rangoon and capture the whole of Burma, which is what happened. And there's an extraordinary story here because I think this...

This is a story that I've told in A War of Empires, but it needs lots more retelling because not many people know about it. I think this is where this is the greatest example of the use of special forces was in this part of the Second World War. And I'll just describe it very quickly. Slim now said, well, I can get to Rangoon. Let's get down to Rangoon. But between him and Mektila and Rangoon was a town called Tungu. Tungu sits on the Satang River.

And on the right-hand side, as you're looking south, there's a range of hills called the Pegu Yomas. And on the left-hand side, the Karenne, the natural homelands of the Karenne people, the Karenne. And Slim said in January 1945, he said, OK, I'm going to raise the Karenne levees. He's going to raise some guerrillas in the Karenne hills. These are people who had been banging on for years about wanting to fight the Japanese. So Slim sent, and Slim was in direct command of Force 136, which is SOE in the Far East.

It's a very interesting example of how direct operational commander special forces like SOE came under the operational commander.

It didn't happen elsewhere. And I think we saw some really close coordination, of course, with the Jets during D-Day and so on. But this is a unique set of circumstances. And Slim said to SOE, go and raise havoc. Go and raise as many Karen levies as you can. Train them to kill Japanese. And when I give the order, make sure they don't get to Tungu. Because when you're looking south at Tungu, Tungu is the one place where if the Japanese all coalesce, they can hold it and prevent you from getting to Rangoon.

So he gave the order mid-February to these 2,000 NCOs and officers from the British Army, the Indian Army, and actually the Burmese Army, parachuted into the Karen Hills, trained up 14,000 Karen levies. They had about three weeks training each. They were all taught how to shoot a rifle, a brain gun, throw grenades, etc.

In the bloodbath that followed, they killed about 11,000 Japanese and prevented the Japanese from getting to Tungu. So this one action by these special forces, these guerrillas, meant that effectively Frank Messavie could drive his entire corps directly down to Tungu, largely unimpeded, and then threaten Rangoon. And in a really good example of how you don't have to fight a battle to win a war, the

When Frank Massivey got to Tungu, the Japanese commanders in Rangoon realized that unless they evacuated Rangoon, they'd be cut off and captured. They then evacuated Rangoon, scuttled across the Sataing, and Burma was reconquered. I mean, it's an extraordinary story of...

but position and professionalism, quite extraordinary operations. And this operation by SOE, Force 136 in the Cren Hills, needs greater publicity. Amazing. I mean, you did mention it, didn't you, in your book, War of Empires. But hopefully at some point in the future, Rob, you'll be able to return to that. You were talking about when we started our discussion, working on the Kohima battle, doing a proper job on that. But you might return to this one too, Mike, at some point.

Well, I think I will. I know James Holland's very keen to get into this as well because it's largely untapped. Well, extraordinarily, the stories from 1945 in particular are untapped. There are very few academics actually working in this area.

And that's been the case for a very long time. Everyone who wants to study the Second World War just seemingly wants to jump into Normandy and Northwest Europe or the ETO, as our American friends call it. But for a story of strategic importance of the reconquest and also of operational brilliance, you can't beat Burma 1945. It's really an extraordinary story. It's actually very exciting.

And one of the things I'd love to do, yes, I'd love to come back to this. And way back in 2005, I accompanied some veterans and we spent four days walking actually from a place called Nyangu near Bagan.

following the course of Provence Horse as the tanks, the Sherman tanks of Provence Horse crossed Upper Burma, actually Central Burma to make T-look, going through villages that hadn't seen a white man since the war. And it was quite extraordinary, very, very moving. And we basically used the maps that they had. They didn't know what was in front of them at the time, 1945. What I'd like to do, this would be a marvelous story, is go back and do a whole

narrative account of something like probe and tools going through Burma and achieving the unachievable. And just remember, this is 1945, only two and a half years before the Indian and British armies in the Far East had been absolutely smashed.

and the empire had appeared to be over. You know, time moves very fast. Yeah, extraordinary turnaround. So, Rob, I know you've got to head off in a short moment. You probably need to get a little bit of something to eat before you do. So let's just cap this off, shall we, with your assessment on where this battle stands in relation to other British victories of the Second World War. Was it, in your estimation, the finest? I think it was the finest. Look, let me just be clear. For

Slim was very lucky because no one bothered him. He just got on and did what he needed to do. He didn't have any of the pressure that Monty had in 21st Army Group.

But I think it was the finest. It gave free expression to what we as soldiers call maneuver, which is the ability to operate a campaign with all your forces and apply the strength of those forces to your enemy's weaknesses. And Slim's greatness in 1945 was to identify where the Japanese weaknesses were. I mean, that didn't happen immediately. He had to advance into Upper Burma first, and within two weeks, he realized that Kimura wasn't

going to come out of his lair. He needed to transform it. But it's great because of the numbers involved. It's great because this was basically a transnational army. It really was quite an extraordinary conglomeration of nations and ethnicities coming together to fight for a common cause.

And I've interviewed Africans, Indians and Brits. And, you know, there was no sense that they were operating in a different army. They might have been in different units, but they all fought together quite extraordinarily. You know, Japan, the defeat of Japan was the ultimate objective. It's got to go down in my mind. And I've studied lots of British campaigns as being probably the most significant. The final point, Saul, is worth just saying is

What is the place of these battles in history? Because every time I go to Japan, when I first went to Japan in 2002 to interview Japanese veterans, it struck me very forcibly that Burma is regarded by, certainly by Japanese veterans, as a profound defeat for them.

Because this bubble of militarism with which they had surrounded themselves for many decades had been popped and it was demonstrated to be worthless. And to be defeated by an army you despise, and certainly by Indians despised,

who you don't consider to be your ethnic or your racial pair, was really humiliating for the Japanese. I think that's left a legacy in Japan as well. It wasn't just the atomic bombs in August 1945, which persuaded Hirohito to surrender.

Although he didn't use those words. He threw in the towel. Country needed to understand that there were things that were too unendurable to endure. But that was because his armies had been defeated and he could see that his armies had been defeated. And he looked at Teju and said, you said that you would win this war and you haven't. You've failed. So that's really important. It's not just the winning of great battles in 1945. It's actually the legacy of militarism doesn't work. Don't use militarism to build an empire.

that we've been left with as a result. Yeah, well said. Rob, thanks so much for that. Great to chat to you. Have a great time in Burma and I'll see you when you get back actually in a few weeks' time. Look forward to it. Thank you very much indeed. See you later. Cheers, Rob. Bye.

Well, that was great stuff, wasn't it? And I have to say, I do think I agree with Rob. It's a battle that needs more work on it, but it was unarguably the finest offensive victory of the Second World War, certainly British Indian, possibly of any nation, actually. But thanks to Rob for that. Do join us on Friday when we'll be hearing the latest from Ukraine and also listen out for any special podcasts as the story is moving very rapidly there. Goodbye.

Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co-host of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goldhanger. And I'm James Holland, best-selling World War II historian, and together we tell the best stories from the war.

This time, we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the West, the Battle of the Bulge. And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way around, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality.

Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the GIs on the front line, full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the USA. And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search We Have Ways wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks.

Yeah. Anyway, so who is Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper? But I see his jaunty hat and I just think... And his SS skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than the handsome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway...

Be that as may, he's 29 years old and he's got a very interesting career, really, because he comes from a pretty right-wing family, let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early stage. He's very international socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. He took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with the 1st Waffen-SS Panzer Division.

Yeah. Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant. Then went off and commanded troops in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean, there's not many people that age. Or an Obersturmbannfuhrer, which is a sort of colonel. Yes, I... You see, what must it have been like if you're in...

If Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think, well, he only got that job because of his connections? For Piper, it must have been always, he's always having to prove himself, surely, because he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen-SS. He's dolloped in, having come from head office, as it were.

It must be a peculiar position to be in, right? He's got lots to prove, right? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, and he's from a sort of middle-class background as well. Yeah. But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never really recovers and actually has died of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horne.

He's also joined the SS and Totenkopfverbande and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous. You know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also ordered the destruction of the entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans.

Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, Second Class, First Class, Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk. Briefly in Northern Italy, actually. Then in Ukraine. Then in Normandy, he suffers a nervous breakdown. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August. And he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutich. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd. I mean... But isn't that interesting, though? Because if you're a Lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized. You don't get time off.

How you could interpret this is this is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? He's Hitler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern Front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point, and they're losing, you know. And because he's a knob, you know, because he's well-connected, he gets to be hospitalized if he has a nervous breakdown. He isn't told like an ordinary German soldier, there's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate.

go back to work. Yes, and it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue. Well, yes, of course. But, you know, what's the difference? One SS soldier said of him, Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done. Yeah. You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of

slightly manic energy, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a driver, you know, all those things. He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer. He's imbued with, he knows what's expected of him, extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of, he's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he, as an SS officer? Yeah, yeah.

which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.