Forgotten Sins

In Forgotten Armies, Bayly and Harper write: “…Mountbatten was… apprehensive that if the Burmese revolt went ahead early and succeeded in liberating a large area of the country, the incoming Allies would be faced with a fully fledged, and probably communist, Burmese provincial government which they would then have to unseat. In fact, this is exactly the scenario which the British were to face in French Indo-China and in Indonesia.” So the Supremo let the Burmese rot for some more time under Japanese occupation.

Strangely, when Stalin did the same thing to General Bór-Komorowski and the Poles, he became the devil incarnate. I wonder if any historian has drawn the parallel.

Taylor certainly drew the one between the Germans getting Yugoslavia into the War and the British getting Egypt in: Both surrounded the royal palace with tanks.