Churchill's Secret War

by Madhusree Mukerjee

  3 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 437–438, 442; Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 177–178.

  4 Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 184; Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 438–439.

  5 Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 183, 187; Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal, Vol. I, 4, and Vol. II, 111–113; Sen, Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal, 300–302; quoted in Chowdhury-Zilly, The Vagrant Peasant, 11–12.

  6 Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 39.

  7 Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 123–124; Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 21.

  8 Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 133; James, Raj, 40; quoted in Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 28.

  9 Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 138–142; quoted in Dutt, Indian Trade, 10.

  10 Dutt, Indian Trade, 16, 20; Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 21; James, Raj, 42.

  11 Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 53; James, Raj, 50; Sur, Chiattorer Monnontar,11; quoted in Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 18.

  12 Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of India, 51, 53; Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, 304; Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 31.

  13 Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, 306.

  14 Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital, 18.

  15 Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, 26; Kumar and Raychaudhuri, The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II, 299.

  16 Chaudhuri, Cartier, 51–53; quoted in Ghosh, Famines in Bengal, 26.

  17 Chaudhuri, Cartier, 62; Sur, Chiattorer Monnontar, 24.

  18 Quoted in Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 30; quoted in Sur, “The Bihar Famine of 1770”; quoted in Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, 37, 381. At the time, one sterling pound equaled about ten rupees.

  19 Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, 63–64.

  20 Ibid., 71.

  21 Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal, Vol. II, 57; quoted in Chaudhuri, Cartier, 44.

  22 Quoted in Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 32; James, Raj, 49–51; Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 48.

  23 Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 59; Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal, Vol. II, 276–284; Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 48–50.

  24 Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 111, 85.

  25 Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 61–62; Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of India, 70–71. At the time, the region that came to be called the North West Frontier Province belonged to Afghanistan.

  26 Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 245; quoted in Nash, The Great Famine and Its Causes, 242.

  27 Several of the Madras famines lasted two years or longer, so that different sources give slightly different dates for their occurrence. See Digby, “Prosperous” British India, 125–127; Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, 281–283; and Mill, The History of British India, 241–243.

  28 Mill, The History of British India, 245, 326.

  29 Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of India, 57.

  30 Mill, The History of British India, 247. Mill was not the first to find Indians unmanly, however; see Orme, “On the Effeminacy of the Inhabitants of Indostan,” in Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, 455–472.

  31 Jennings, Speeches of the Right Honourable Lord Randolph Churchill, Vol. 1, 212.

  32 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 43.

  33 Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of India, 78; Devi, The Queen of Jhansi, 191.

  34 Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 95.

  35 Quoted in Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 98.

  36 Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 104–106, 205–207.

  37 Mill, The History of British India, 326; Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 127, 210–212, 165–167; Chakravarty, The Raj Syndrome, 127; Macaulay, Lord Clive, 70.

  38 Quoted in Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 125.

  39 Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 120.

  40 Quoted in Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of India, 159; The Hon. R. Palmer, A Little Tour in India, 152.

  41 Mayo, Mother India, 29–34, 99; Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, Companion 2, 309.

  42 T 160/1263, “India’s Sterling Balance,” January 22, 1942. Estimates for deaths in India from Spanish flu range from 10 million to 17 million.

  43 Gandhi, Satyagraha, 191, 106.

  44 Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 17.

  45 Ibid., 19; Gandhi, Satyagraha, 85.

  46 James, Raj, 473.

  47 Jeffrey, The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 187; Churchill, India,19, 28.

  48 Quoted in Louis, In the Name of God, 68–70.

  49 Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 430.

  50 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 189–191.

  51 Gandhi, Satyagraha, 295; quoted in Iyer, “Utilitarianism and All That,” 26; Churchill, India, 95; CHAR 20/165/43, May 27, 1944.

  52 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers II, 368; Taylor et al., Churchill, 109.

  53 Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, Companion 3, 828; CAB 121/11, “War Cabinet: Overseas Defence Committee,” January 22, 1942.

  54 Quoted in James, Raj, 571.

  55 Birkenhead, The Professor and the Prime Minister, 11.

  Chapter One

  1 Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, 480–481.

  2 Singh, “Imperial Defence and the Transfer of Power in India,” 569–570; Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, 124; Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. I, 188. India’s defense budget was £38.5 million in 1937–1938.

  3 Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 827; Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. I, 1290, and Vol. II, 22.

  4 Louis, In the Name of God, 30, 121–122.

  5 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 617; Louis, In the Name of God, 120–124; Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, 368.

  6 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 620; quoted in Louis, In the Name of God, 129.

  7 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, 397.

  8 Sinha and Khera, Indian War Economy, 58; Kamtekar, “A Different War Dance,” 194–195, 198; Prest, War Economics of Primary Producing Countries, 31. Of India’s war expenditure of £2.054 billion, £1.042 billion was recoverable from the United Kingdom.

  9 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 606.

  10 Narayan, The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. VI, 343–345, 377–379.

  11 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 48; Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, 586.

  12 Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 9, 30.

  13 Ibid., 65, xxii.

  14 Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, 114; Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 9, 93, 145.

  15 Nehru, The Discovery of India, 472.

  16 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 266, 450; Nehru, The Discovery of India, 475.

  17 Singh, The Origins of the Partition of India, 48, 53.

  18 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 431.

  19 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. I, 715–716.

  20 Churchill, India, 14; Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, Companion 3, 827.

  21 Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, Companion 3, 827.

  22 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. I, 1038.

  23 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 634; Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, 528–529.

  24 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, 506–507, 529(footnote); Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 608.

  25 Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 316; Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 637.

  26 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, 584. Nowadays, Anglo-Indian indicates people of mixed European and Indian ancestry.

  27 AMEL 1/6/21, Ind
ia Office to Prime Minister, April 8, 1941.

  28 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 49–50.

  29 Churchill, India, 35, 46–47; Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol., V, 595; James, Churchill, 259. By some accounts, Churchill intended shame rather than sham.

  30 Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, Vol. 1, 561, 564; Jennings, Lord Randolph, Vol. I, 272–273; Churchill, My Early Life, 71; quoted in Ponting, Churchill, 25.

  31 Churchill, My Early Life, 21, 25.

  32 Ibid., 52–53.

  33 Ibid., 113.

  34 Ibid., 114, 121.

  35 Ibid., 126; Martin Gardiner, quoted in James, Churchill, 36; Carter, Winston Churchill, 20.

  36 Churchill, My Early Life, 133–134; Bhatia, Famines in India. For a detailed account of these two famines, see Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts.

  37 Churchill, My Early Life, 135.

  38 Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, 2.

  39 Woods, Young Winston’s Wars, 44; quoted in Ponting, Churchill, 26.

  40 Woods, Young Winston’s Wars, 93, 77; Churchill, My Early Life, 158; Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, 165.

  41 Churchill, My Early Life, 166.

  42 Quoted in Woods, 27; Churchill, My Early Life, 69.

  43 Mansergh, The Transfer of Power, Vol. I, 878.

  44 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 454.

  45 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 667. The modern hunger strike was invented by English suffragettes and adopted by, among others, Irish nationalists. See Russell, Hunger, 74–79.

  46 Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 10, xi.

  47 Macaulay, Clive, 70, 35; Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 2, 336.

  48 Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 10, 197; Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, 417–418.

  49 Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 11, 35.

  50 SOE War Diaries: HS7/214–217, 319, 626–627, 672, 1045, 1057.

  51 Dhara, Probaho, 93, 107.

  52 Ibid., 98–101.

  53 Ibid., 40; Sengupta, History of the Bengali-Speaking People, 380–383.

  54 Bari, Tamrolipto Jatiyo Sorkar, 53.

  55 Gupta, Kichhu Smriti Kichhu Kotha, 60.

  56 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 273–276; Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan, 86.

  57 Churchill, India, 94, 97, 120.

  58 The deliberate fostering of divisions between Hindus and Muslims by such measures as separate electorates would ultimately lead to the partition of India. See Page, Prelude to Partition, 260.

  59 Anonymous, “Gandhi’s Goat”; Rothermund, An Economic History of India, 107; Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, 432.

  60 Dhara, Probaho, 55.

  61 Ibid.

  62 Rothermund, An Economic History of India, 105; Rothermund, “A Vulnerable Economy,” 324.

  63 Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, 288; Nehru, The Discovery of India, 401–403.

  64 Dhara, Probaho, 102.

  65 Ibid., 103, 95, 67.

  Chapter Two

  1 Quoted in Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, 28.

  2 During World War I, India had donated more than £100 million to the war effort. But that “gift” had aroused great resentment, so during World War II it was replaced in part by a loan, to be repaid after the war. See Kamtekar, “A Different War Dance,” 197.

  3 Dutt, Ancient India, 12.

  4 Risley, The People of India, 53; quoted in Metcalf, 127. The scholar was G. F. MacMunn, writing in The Armies of India.

  5 Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, Vol. II, 1258–1259, 989.

  6 Weinberg, Hitler’s Second Book, 160–163.

  7 Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, Vol. I, 792–795.

  8 Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, 69, 33–34, 42, 198–199, 24; Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, Vol. I, 800; Welch, “‘Our India,’” 35–36.

  9 Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, 33; Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, 33.

  10 Amery, My Political Life, Vol. I, 97.

  11 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 380, 397; Louis, In the Name of God, 115–116.

  12 Rubinstein, “The Secret of Leopold Amery.”

  13 Louis, In the Name of God, 72–73.

  14 Amery, My Political Life, Vol. I, 28–31, 49; William Rubinstein, email communication.

  15 Churchill, My Early Life, 25–26.

  16 Amery, My Political Life, Vol. I, 63, and Vol. III, 278; Rubinstein, “The Secret of Leopold Amery,”184; Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 517.

  17 Sengupta, History of the Bengali-Speaking People, 354; Hitler, Mein Kampf, 597; Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, 62.

  18 Bose and Bose, Netaji, Vol. 11, 45–47.

  19 Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, 479; Bose, “Love in the Time of War.” But Bose’s wife, Emilie Schenkl, told historian Leonard Gordon that she and Bose were secretly married in 1937.

  20 Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, Vol. II, 1623, 1688.

  21 Baker, Human Smoke, 178, 191–192, 226.

  22 Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. VI, 1059.

  23 Hammond, Food, Vol. I, 15, 47.

  24 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. III, 1430; Birkenhead, The Professor and the Prime Minister, 222.

  25 Harrod, The Prof, 5, 198–199; MacDougall, Don and Mandarin, 26.

  26 Harrod, The Prof, 193.

  27 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. III, 1431.

  28 Cherwell Papers A93/f8.

  29 Birkenhead, The Professor and the Prime Minister, 124; Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 777.

  30 Birkenhead, The Professor and the Prime Minister, 11; Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, 391.

  31 Harrod, The Prof, 29, 97; Cherwell Papers A91/f2,f3.

  32 Quoted in Farren and Thomson, “Frederick Alexander Lindemann, Viscount Cherwell,” 60.

  33 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. III, 802; Harrod, The Prof, 195, 204; MacDougall, Don and Mandarin, 21.

  34 Fort, Prof, 217.

  35 Hammond, Food, Vol. I, 102, 235; Kamtekar, “A Different War Dance,” 213.

  36 Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, 263; Harrod, The Prof, 201; Birkenhead, The Professor and the Prime Minister, 228–229; MacDougall, Don and Mandarin, 31.

  37 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 762.

  38 Mansergh, The Transfer of Power 1942–7, Vol. II, 505; Sinha and Khera, Indian War Economy, 73.

  39 Prest, War Economics of Primary Producing Countries, 31; Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 157.

  40 Kamtekar, “A Different War Dance,” 191.

  41 De, “Imperial Governance and the Challenges of War,” 20; William A. Barnes, CSAC, Box 8.

  42 Tendulkar, Mahatma, Vol. VI, 46–47; Mansergh, The Transfer of Power 1942–7, Vol. II, 590.

  43 Quoted in Digby, “Prosperous” British India, 123–131; Loveday, The History and Economics of Indian Famines, 136–138; Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, 278–285; Rothermund, An Economic History of India, 36; Dutt, India To-day, 133.

  44 Quoted in Digby, “Prosperous” British India, 31; Habib, Essays in Indian History, 305–306; Rothermund, An Economic History of India,18.

  45 Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, 261.

  46 Jennings, Speeches of the Right Honourable Lord Randolph Churchill, Vol. II, 266–267; quoted in Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 172–173; Bose, South Asia and World Capitalism, 214.

  47 Basu, The Ruin of Indian Trade and Industries, 7, 124; Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 202, 192, and Vol. II, 69.

  48 Quoted in Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I, 172; Bhatia, Famines in India, 22.

  49 Rothermund, An Economic History of India, 37; Kumar, The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II, 873; Dutt, Speeches and Papers on Indian Questions, 48.

  50 Rothermund, An Economic History of India, 33; Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in
India, 214–216; Bhatia, Famines in India, 9; Shrivastava, The History of Indian Famines, 360–361.

  51 Bhatia, Famines in India, 38–39; Kumar, The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II, 850–851.

  52 Hunter, Famine Aspects of Bengal Districts, 15–17; Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, 216; Connell, “Indian Railways and Indian Wheat,” 242–247, 256.

  53 Bhatia, Famines in India, 106, 122; Nash, The Great Famine and Its Causes, 139.

  54 Kumar, The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II, 873; Atkinson, “Rupee Prices in India,” 530.

  55 Digby, “Prosperous” British India, 130, 128; Maharatna, The Demography of Famines, 15; Bhatt, “Mortality and Fertility in India,” 111.

  56 Churchill and Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. II, 102; Churchill, India, 82; James, Churchill, 259.

  57 Ghose, “Food Supply and Starvation,” 376; Chattopadhyay, “Notes Towards an Understanding of the Bengal Famine of 1943,” 124–125; Nanavati Papers, Vol. I, 226; Bose, Agrarian Bengal, 23–24.

  58 Ghosh, Famines in Bengal, 31.

  59 Chakrabarti, “Archeology of Coastal West Bengal,” 135–160.

  60 Majumdar, History of Mediaeval Bengal, 183.

  Chapter Three

  1 Quoted in Connell, Wavell: Supreme Commander, 31, 19.

  2 Sinha and Khera, Indian War Economy, 323; Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, 268; Connell, Wavell, 30; Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, 758; Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 641.

  3 WO 208/819A; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 304.

  4 Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 37.

  5 Ibid., 34–39; Reynolds, In Command of History, 54. Elliot Roosevelt’s book has been described as unreliable because some remembered conversations were rendered as actual speech, but the information it contains on India is consistent with that from other sources.

  6 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 710; Hess, America Encounters India, 28; AMEL 7/36, Diary, January 8, 1942.

  7 Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate, 209.

  8 Schofield, Wavell: Soldier & Statesman, 256; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 142.

  9 Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 147; Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 725.

  10 Barnes and Nicholson, The Empire at Bay, 722.

  11 Ibid., 751; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 167.