13 December 1945 On 13 December 1935, Indian troops led by British officers, acting under the orders of Major General Douglas Hawthorn, burned down the town of Bekassi on the Indonesian island of Java. As the Illustrated London News explained, ‘all the inhabitants had fled so the punitive expedition burnt the town’1 Approximately one thousand timber homes…
23 November 1945 Today in 1945, Richard Casey, the governor of Bengal, called on British troops to take to the streets of Calcutta to support the police, who had shot dead five student protesters earlier in the day. Another seven died the same day in hospital, and, as British newspapers informed their readers under such…
10 November 1945 On 10 November 1945, 24,000 British troops began a large scale assault on the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where nationalist forces, equipped with weapons they had seized from Japanese troops, were determined to defend their newly acquired independence. Several days earlier, a British brigadier, Aubortin Mallaby, had been killed in the city,…
5 September 1945 On 5 September 1945, following the surrender of Japanese forces in Singapore the previous day, British officers and soldiers were infuriated to discover the brutality with which their own countrymen had been subjected as prisoners of war and they began to inflict equally barbarous reprisal punishments on the Japanese soldiers stationed on…
16 March 1945 On 16 March 1945, in the closing days of the Second World War, as Allied forces advanced ever deeper into Germany, 225 RAF Lancaster heavy bombers dropped a mixture of high explosives and 300,000 incendiary bombs on the medieval city of Wurzburg. Though the municipality lacked any heavy industry, it contained numerous half-timbered buildings in…
23 February 1945 On 23 February 1945, Winston Churchill, having only days earlier approved the saturation bombing of the German city of Dresden which killed tens of thousands of civilians, now expressed a wish that a similar fate could be inflicted on Indian cities. According to the diary records of his Downing Street secretary John Colville,…
23 February 1945 At 7.50 pm of 23 February 1945, in the closing weeks of the Second World War, 367 RAF Lancaster heavy bombers began a massive air assault on the small German town of Pforzeheim. The town was renowned for its jewellery and watch making artisans, but of little or no strategic importance as…
13 February 1945 On 13 February 1945, during the closing weeks of the Second World War, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander was attending a lavish lunch on board the luxurious ocean liner SS Franconia with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a few senior government officials. As his fellow diners gorged themselves on the extravagant spread,…
CENSORSHIP OF BRITISH SEX CRIMES IN MALAYA – PROTESTERS SHOT DEAD [ 21 October 1945 ] On 21 October 1945 in Malaya, up to ten demonstrators were shot dead in the town of Sungei Siput and three more in Ipoh, after they refused orders to disperse. British soldiers had been ordered to fire directly into…
OFFICIALS REFUSE REQUEST FOR FOOD FOR FAMINE STRUCK INDIA [ 4 April 1945 ] At 5 pm on 4 April 1945, the Cabinet Committee on Food for India convened. It was not a long discussion. Field Marshall Archibald Wavell, the Viceroy of India, urged that ‘a substantial quantity of wheat’ was needed immediately to avert…
