Finally, in the early hours of 8 December, news reached Singapore that the Japanese were landing to attack Kota Bahru. At 04.30 hours, while the senior commanders and the governor were in conference, Japanese bombers made their first raid on Singapore. The city was still a blaze of lights. Admiral Phillips, although well aware of the lack of fighter cover, decided to take his squadron up the east coast of Malaya to attack the Japanese invasion fleet.
At Kota Bahru, the only explosions which had taken place so far had been caused by mines on the beach being set off by stray dogs or by coconuts dropping on them. A little way inland, the 8th Brigade had concentrated one battalion round the airfield, but the beaches were guarded by only two battalions stretched over fifty kilometres.
The Japanese assault had started around midnight on 7 December, in fact about an hour before the attack on Pearl Harbor even though the two were supposed to have been simultaneous. The seas in this monsoon period were heavy, but that did not stop the Japanese from getting ashore. The Indian infantry platoons managed to kill quite a number of their attackers, but they were too thinly spread and the visibility in the heavy rain was poor.
The Australian pilots at the landing strip scrambled their ten serviceable Hudson bombers and attacked the transports offshore, destroying one, damaging another and sinking a number of landing barges. But after dawn the Kota Bahru airfield and others down the coast began to suffer repeated attacks from Japanese Zeros flying in from French Indochina. By the end of the day, the British and Australian squadrons in Malaya were reduced to just fifty aircraft. Percival’s deployment of his troops to guard airfields as a first priority proved a grave mistake. And Brooke-Popham’s indecision over Operation Matador meant that the Japanese air force was soon operating from bases in southern Thailand. General Heath, to Percival’s anger, began a retreat the next day from the north-east.
President Roosevelt, following his celebrated statement that 7 December was ‘a date which will live in infamy’, cabled Churchill in London to report on the declaration of war passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives. ‘Today all of us are in the same boat with you and the people of the Empire, and it is a ship which will not and cannot be sunk.’ It was an unfortunate metaphor just as HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were steaming out of the naval base escorted by their destroyers. While Admiral Phillips was leaving he was warned that he could expect no fighter protection and that Japanese bombers were now based in southern Thailand. Phillips felt that, in the best traditions of the service, he could not back out.
Phillips’s Force Z was not sighted by Japanese seaplanes until the late afternoon of 9 December. Not finding any transports or warships, Phillips decided to turn back that night and return to Singapore. But in the early hours of 10 December his flagship received a report of another landing at Kuantan, which was on his way.
The Royal Navy warships of Force Z were called to action stations after a hurried breakfast of ham and marmalade sandwiches. Guncrews wearing anti-flash protection, steel helmets, goggles and asbestos gloves manned the pom-poms. ‘Prince of Wales looked magnificent,’ wrote an observer on board the Repulse. ‘White-tipped waves rippled over her plunging bows. The waves shrouded them with watery lace, then they rose high again and once again dipped. She rose and fell so methodically that the effect of staring at her was hypnotic. The fresh breeze blew her White Ensign out stiff as a board. I felt a surge of excited anticipation rise within me at the prospect of her and the rest of the force sailing into enemy landing parties and their escorting warships.’
In fact the report of landings at Kuantan proved false. This diversion and delay to their return proved fatal. Later in the morning, a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft was sighted. At 11.15 hours, the Prince of Wales opened fire at a small group of enemy aircraft. Another group of torpedo planes appeared a few minutes later. The two ships’ multiple pom-pom guns began firing. Their crews called them ‘Chicago pianos’. The glowing tracers arced outwards in a mass of shallow curves towards their targets. But while the gunners were concentrating on the torpedo planes, nobody had noticed bombers at a much higher altitude. The Repulse was struck by a bomb which went right through the catapult deck. Smoke emerged through the hole, yet attention remained fixed on the attacking aircraft. As the pom-pom gunners knocked one of their low-level attackers out of the sky, everyone cheered: ‘Duck down!’ But then, reminding them of the more immediate danger, a marine bugler sounded the dreaded warning ‘ship on fire’. Fire-hoses played on the hole billowing black smoke but proved of little use.
The next wave of attacking aircraft concentrated on the Prince of Wales. A torpedo struck her stern, sending up a ‘tree-like column’ of water and smoke. The great ship began to list to port. ‘It doesn’t seem possible that those slight-looking planes could do that to her,’ the same observer on Repulse noted, still barely able to believe that the age of the battleship was truly over. Even if the carrier HMS Indomitable had been with them, it is far from certain that her aircraft would have been sufficient to ward off the determined Japanese attacks.
With her steering gear and engines out of action, HMS Prince of Wales was doomed as another wave of torpedo aircraft appeared. Repulse’s gun-crews did what they could to break up the attack, but three more torpedoes struck home. The battleship’s list increased dramatically. It was obvious that she was about to go down. Then the Repulse herself was hit by two torpedoes, one after the other. The order came to abandon ship. There was little panic. Some sailors even had time to light a last cigarette as they formed lines. When it was their turn, they took a deep breath and leaped into the black oil-covered sea below.
Churchill, who had exulted in the great ships of the Royal Navy from his times as First Lord of the Admiralty, was stunned by the disaster. The tragedy felt even more personal to him after his voyage in the Prince of Wales to Newfoundland in August. The Imperial Japanese Navy was now unchallenged in the Pacific. Hitler rejoiced at the news. It augured well for his declaration of war on the United States, announced on 11 December.
Hitler had always assumed that he would have to fight America at some point and he now calculated that, with its small army and a crisis in the Pacific, it would not be able to play a decisive part in Europe for nearly two years. He was above all encouraged in this decision by Admiral Dönitz, who wanted to send his U-boat wolfpacks against American shipping. All-out submarine warfare might still bring Britain to its knees.
Hitler’s announcement to the Reichstag prompted its Nazi representatives to rise cheering to their feet. They saw the United States as the great Jewish power in the west. But German officers, still fighting in the desperate retreat on the eastern front, did not know what to think when they heard the news. The more far-sighted sensed that this world war, with the United States, the British Empire and the Soviet Union aligned against them, would be unwinnable. The repulse before Moscow combined with the American entry into the war made December 1941 the geo-political turning point. From that moment, Germany became incapable of winning the Second World War outright, even though it still retained the power to inflict appalling damage and death.
On 16 December, Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, suffering from some sort of psychosomatic illness, informed Hitler that he must decide whether Army Group Centre should stand and fight, or withdraw. Both courses risked its destruction. He clearly wanted to be relieved of his failed command, and he was replaced a few days later by Kluge, who initially agreed with Hitler’s refusal to retreat. Brauchitsch, the army commander-in-chief, was also dismissed for pessimism. Hitler promptly appointed himself commander-in-chief in his stead. Several other senior commanders were also removed, but it was the sacking of Guderian, the symbol of offensive dash, which depressed German officers the most. Guderian had characteristically defied orders to hold positions whatever the cost. The wisdom or folly of Hitler’s decision to stand fast has long been debated. Did it prevent an 1812-style debacle, or did it cause huge and unnecessary losses?
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p; On 24 December, German soldiers, so far from home, felt an urge to celebrate Christmas, even in the most abject circumstances. A Christmas tree was easy to come by, which they decorated with stars made from the silver paper from cigarette packets. In some cases, they were even given candles by Russian peasants. Huddled together for warmth in villages which had not yet been burned, they exchanged pathetic little presents and sang ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’. Although they felt lucky to be alive after so many of their comrades had died, they felt an overwhelming loneliness as they thought of their families at home.
Only a few recognized the paradox of German sentimentality amid the vicious war which they had unleashed. On Christmas Day, the prisoner-of-war camp outside Kaluga was evacuated in temperatures below minus 30 degrees. Many of the Soviet prisoners, of whom some had been reduced to cannibalism, collapsed in the snow and were shot. It was perhaps hardly surprising that Soviet soldiers exacted revenge by killing German wounded abandoned in the retreat, in at least one case by pouring captured fuel stocks over them and setting them on fire.
Nobody was more conscious of the dramatic shift in world affairs than Stalin. But his impatience to exact revenge on the Germans and seize the opportunities offered by their retreat led him into demanding a general offensive along the whole front, a series of operations for which the Red Army lacked the necessary vehicles, artillery, supplies and above all training. Zhukov was horrified, even though operations so far had gone better than he had expected. The vastly over-ambitious Stavka plans aimed for the destruction of both Army Group Centre and Army Group North, and a massive strike back into Ukraine.
After so many months of suffering, the mood of the Soviet people also swung wildly towards excessive optimism. ‘We’ll get it over by spring,’ many were saying. But they, like their leader, still had many shocks ahead.
The British colony of Hong Kong, which had maintained a form of neutrality during the last four years of the Sino-Japanese War to the north, represented an obvious target. Apart from its wealth, Hong Kong had been one of the main supply routes to Nationalist forces. As in Singapore, the Japanese community had provided detailed information on its defences and weaknesses to Tokyo. Plans for its capture had been considered for the previous two years. A fifth column, largely based on heavily bribed Triad gangs, had also been prepared.
The British community, after so many years of asphyxiating supremacy, had no idea whether the Hong Kong Chinese, the refugees from Kwangtung province to the north, the Indians or even the Eurasians were likely to stay loyal. As a result they did little to inform them of the situation, and shrank from arming them to resist the Japanese. Instead, they decided to rely on the 12,000 British and Dominion troops and the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, which was almost entirely European. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists offered help in defending Hong Kong, but the British were extremely reluctant to accept it. They knew that Chiang wanted to regain the colony for China. Paradoxically, British officers were to enjoy much closer relations with Chinese Communist partisans, and later provided arms and explosives to them, a move which appalled the Nationalists. Both the Communists and the Nationalists suspected that the British would prefer to lose Hong Kong to the Japanese than to the Chinese.
Churchill had no illusions from a purely military point of view. If the Japanese invaded, he believed, there was ‘not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it’. But pressure from the Americans persuaded him to reinforce the colony in a show of solidarity with the equally threatened Philippines. On 15 November, 2,000 Canadian soldiers had arrived to augment the garrison. Although inexperienced, they could foresee the fate in store for them should the Japanese army attack. They were not convinced by the Allied plan that the colony should be defended for up to ninety days to provide time for the US Navy at Pearl Harbor to come to their aid.
On 8 December, just as Japanese forces moved in to occupy Shanghai, Japanese aircraft in a strike on Kai Tak airfield wiped out the colony’s five aircraft. A division of Lieutenant General Sakai Takashi’s 23rd Army crossed the Sham Chun River which marked the border of the New Territories. The British commander Major General C. M. Maltby and his men were caught off balance. Apart from blowing up a few bridges, his forces withdrew rapidly to what was called the Gin-Drinkers’ Line of defence across the isthmus of the New Territories. The lightly equipped and camouflaged Japanese moved silently and rapidly across country on their rubber-soled shoes, while the defenders clumped around in the rocky hills in metal-studded ammunition boots and full battle-order. Triad members and supporters of the Chinese puppet leader on the mainland, Wang Ching-wei, guided Japanese troops round behind the defensive line. Maltby had deployed only a quarter of his force in the New Territories. The majority were held back on Hong Kong Island, ready to face an attack from the sea which never came.
The Chinese population in Hong Kong felt that this was not their war. The food rationing and air-raid shelters organized by the colonial authorities proved totally insufficient for them. Those employed as auxiliary drivers slipped away, abandoning their vehicles. Chinese police and air-raid precaution personnel simply discarded their uniforms and went home. Staff in hotels and servants in private houses also disappeared. Fifth columnists stirred up trouble in the refugee camps filled with those fleeing the war in China, by stealing all the rice. Soon riots and looting began, led by Triad gangs. Somebody raised a large Japanese flag over the tall Peninsula Hotel near the Kowloon waterfront. This caused panic among some Canadian soldiers, who thought they had been outflanked. At midday on 11 December, General Maltby felt that he had no choice but to pull all his troops back across the harbour to Hong Kong Island. This produced chaos as crowds tried to storm the departing boats.
News of the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse confirmed that there was no hope of relief from a Royal Navy task force. The island itself was also in a state of ferment after the relentless artillery bombardment and bombing by Japanese aircraft. Sabotage by fifth columnists increased the hysteria. The British police rounded up Japanese on the island and arrested saboteurs, of whom a number were shot out of hand. The crisis forced the British to approach Chiang Kai-shek’s representative in Hong Kong, the one-legged Admiral Chan Chak. His Nationalist network of paid vigilantes was called upon to help restore some sort of order and combat the Triads, who were plotting to massacre the Europeans.
The most effective method was bribery. Triad leaders agreed to a meeting in the Cecil Hotel. Their demands were outrageous, but a deal was struck. Admiral Chan Chak’s vigilantes, operating under the name of the Loyal and Righteous Charitable Association, soon grew to 15,000 strong, of whom 1,000 were attached to the Special Branch. An underground war was then waged against Wang Ching-wei’s partisans. Most of those captured were executed in back alleys. The British became rather fond of the piratical Chinese admiral who had saved the situation, and they finally agreed to seek help from the Nationalist armies.
With rumours of relief and order virtually restored, morale on the besieged island rose. But Maltby, uncertain where to concentrate his troops to repel a landing, failed to strengthen his forces on the north-east corner of the island. A group of four Japanese swam across at night to reconnoitre this stretch; and on the following night of 18 December 7,500 troops crossed, using every small craft they could find. The 38th Division, once established, did not try to push round the coast towards Victoria, as Maltby expected. Instead they forced their way across the hilly interior, pushing back the two Canadian battalions, to split the island in two. Soon both Stanley and Victoria were without electricity or water, and much of the Chinese population was starving.
Already the governor, Sir Mark Young, had been persuaded by General Maltby that there was no hope of holding out. Young sent a signal to London on 21 December, requesting permission to negotiate with the Japanese commander. Churchill replied via the Admiralty that ‘There must be no thought of surrender. Every part of the Island must be fought over and the enemy resi
sted with the utmost stubbornness. Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance you help the Allied cause all over the world.’ Young, apparently dismayed to think of himself as ‘the first man to surrender a British colony since Cornwallis at Yorktown’, agreed to fight on.
Despite some brave stands, the morale of the doomed defenders was collapsing. Indian troops, especially the Rajputs who had suffered heavy casualties, were in a very bad state. Their morale had also been sapped by constant Japanese propaganda urging them to defect, with the implication that the defeat of the British Empire would bring freedom to India. The Sikh police had deserted almost to a man. Their resentment of the British was fuelled by memories of the Amritsar massacre in 1919.
With fires raging and with water supplies cut, which had also created a major sanitation problem, the British community, especially the wives, started to put pressure on Maltby and the governor to end the fighting. Young remained obstinate, but on the afternoon of Christmas Day, after the Japanese had intensified their bombardment, Maltby insisted that resistance was no longer possible. That evening the two men were taken across the harbour in a motorboat by Japanese officers to surrender to General Sakai by candle-light in the Peninsula Hotel. Admiral Chan Chak, with several British officers, escaped in motor torpedo boats that night to join up with Nationalist forces on the mainland.
Over the next twenty-four hours, the Triads looted at will, especially the British houses on the Peak. Despite General Sakai’s orders to his troops to treat their prisoners well, the heavy fighting on the island had enraged them. In a number of cases medical staff and wounded were bayoneted, hanged or decapitated. There were, however, relatively few cases of rape of European women, and the offenders were severely punished, which made a surprising contrast to the terrifying performance of the Imperial Japanese Army in the war on the mainland. In fact, Europeans were generally treated with some respect, as if to prove that the Japanese were just as civilized. But then, in a perverse contradiction of Japanese propaganda, which claimed that they were undertaking a war to liberate Asia from the whites, officers made little effort to restrain their men from raping Hong Kong Chinese women. More than 10,000 are estimated to have been gang-raped and several hundred civilians were killed during the ‘holiday’ after the battle.
The Second World War Page 36