Last call for EEO comments

[el cid again]

A few units need to be revised in device terms in the location file. While this is happening, EEO is technically not completed. Ideas can still be considered - particularly for the Allies - if there are any. Do not wait - this will expire in hours.

[Historiker]

I haven't seen any Free India forces under control of Japan.
Haven't I just found them or aren't they in game? I've just read some days ago, that there were over 30.000 men and (more than) 3 divisions recruited for them...

[el cid again]

They are in there!

The idea was introduced by CHS - which carefully added - and properly named - several brigades. NO divisions were allowed - although some IJA officers passionately advocated them.

They were called the Indian National Army. In RHS - to make them easier to spot - they show up with the prefix INA.
You do not see them because they do not exist when the war starts - they appear later in the war - in time for the Imphal offensive - in which they participated.

In EOS family scenarios to these I add a small INAAF - which was NOT done historically - but should have been if Japan was serious - as it should have been. Calvorocci et al - in Total War - say India was a major opportunity - and a rare case of German/Japanese cooperation (because Bose was in Germany) - that it could have been neutralized to Japan's advantage. And The Atlas of Revolutions has the rare statistic that 160 battalions of British/Allied infantry were needed to garrison the country. The entire Congress Party - a combined Hindu Muslim party unthinkable in our day united in opposition to colonial rule - was in prison - because it demanded promises of independence in exchange for supporting the war (which should have been granted - because it happened anyway - but you could not tell that to wartime British politicians - who regarded the demand as treason). That created a LOT of tension - and it is NOT clear that Indian troops would have fought very well OTHER Indian troops under the command of Chandra Bose, an INA politician and former Mayor of Calcutta. [Bose was just rehabilitated in India, officially, and is now a national hero, officially, specifically for leading the INA for Japan in WWII.] The British so feared the possibility they spread false propaganda about the nature of the INA forces - and tried to create a form of paranoia about them wholly unwarrented by the actual situation. Captured INA soldiers were given perfectly awful choices - many of them for the second time - as IJA had done something similar already - if they would switch sides. But the British went farther than the Japanese did: instead of "sit out the war in prison" it was "be shot as a traitor" if they didn't switch! [This isn't the way we usually are taught history. But Nemo - who is Irish - will testify the the British can be perfectly monsterous when wearing their Imperial hat. The capital letter is because it is a proper name - a formal political concept coined by a British king for a formal policy. The policy was invented for use on British minorities in Ireland, Scotland and Wales BEFORE it was applied globally in a later Empire. No one even talks about the Cornish - who were not even allowed self government - being reduced to only a county - forbidden to learn their own language - a dialect similar to Welsh and Irish Gaelic. But my name is Cornish. Cornwall fell first - in a.d. 917 - and none of its leaders was allowed to live.] During WWII Britain intended to stay in India - and only the decision NOT to send ships with food during a famon during the war (the ships and food existed, but war priorities were not high enough to feed the nominally British subjects) combined with the awful treatment of Indian politicians of all stripes meant it became politically impossible for them to stay. Virtually all Indian leaders not outside British territories spend WWII as prisoners. Japan did not have a monopoly on foolish colonial behaviors in PTO of WWII. For some idea of what the British illusions/plans were, see "Grave of a Dozen Schemes" about WWII British naval policy in the PTO. For a formal, academic history unkind to the British, see Armageddon, by a Welsh academic of some reputation and rhetorical power. For a bi-partisan academic history, with academic authors from both sides of WWII, see Total War - the third revised edition being better than the earlier - this work keeps being redone - over decades of time - and is more balanced than any single author history in any country.

RHS also added the IMA - which otherwise is present only in the form of "Mongol Cavalry" - most of which was indeed Mongol - but one unit of which might be the "Mongol Cavalry from Manchukuo" (I call it the IMA Imperial Guard Regiment because that is its real name) - but there was no Nakano Brigade, no regional brigades, no Manchukuo air forces of considerable size and variety, etc. Nor were there ANY of the MILLIONS of Chinese troops in IJA service. RHS has these in the form mainly of static "armies" at three locations - Nanking - Peking and one other city North of Peking called Kalgan (called the Reformed Army - at Nanking; Provisional Army at Peking; and Mongol Army at Kalgan - these are strange static forces only of garrison value). Nor were there any of the later Japanese sponsored national forces. The most significant of these are added - especially the Anti-Dutch Army in Indonesia which never left the field until independence was won.

RHS also added wierd units sort of on both sides! In Indochina you have the Viet Ming - a tiny cadre starts the war at Dien Bien Phu - commanded by the future General Giap - and eventually you end up with 5 or 6 battalions of these. If they were nominally anti-colonial in later times, they actually served the French BEFORE WWII (betraying all other revolutionaries) and they fought the Japanese DURING WWII - so they are Allied troops. In Indonesia - you have communist guerilla units (Anti Japanese Units) on out islands (not Java) - Sumatra, Celebes and Borneo in particular. While AFTER the war they opposed the Dutch, they ALSO opposed the central authority represented by the Anti Dutch Army, and DURING the war they opposed the Japanese - so they show up as Allied units as well. BOTH these kinds of units (the Viet Ming and the Anti-Japanese units) should be controlled by the SOVIET player if a tag team game is played - they are communist after all. These tiny units are very hard to kill - and some regenerate if you do kill them! [The Viet Minh will appear if you have occupied their initial point of appearence, or they will reappear if you kill them, at Kunming - I think. (Otherwise probably Chunking). The Viet Minh, the Communist guerillas, the Anti-Dutch Army, and to a lesser degree even ROC guerillas - will feed themselves!] There is also a very small French unit at Noumea - it is static - but quite real. There is an even smaller unit at Tahiti - with the smallest national "air force" in the game - 2 or 3 planes! Both are real. There are a tiny number of French ships - at least two were inherited from CHS - on the Free French side - and in Level 7 - there are also Vichy forces on Madagascar. French forces in Indochina are almost absent - they were wholly disarmed in any case - except for the French Foreign Legion - which was NOT disarmed - and which eventually made it to Kunming. It IS present - with a clear line of retreat to Kunming - and a friendly source of supply. There is also a tiny Korean unit - under an obscure Soviet major Kim Il Sung - way up north - eventually.

Stock is supposed to have a wierd kind of Indochinese units appear for IJA if certain hexes are occupied by the Allies. I cannot make this work and I don't think it does work.

[Historiker]

Thank you for your long explanation! Meanwhile, I already had found the INA units. But they are only brigades while I've read about 3 divisions.

[el cid again]

IJA didn't want divisions - and they got their way. But some IJA officers (from the Nakano School English Section) and INA officers had quite different ideas. It might be an interesting idea to try in EOS family - or in EEO.