dwg
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quote:
Posters are assuming that the same factors which led to the creation of the Free French also applied to the Dutch situation. This is not correct. Significant differences between the French and Dutch positions were:
(a) the Free French movement was fundamentally a military revolt.
From the Free French perspective it was a refusal to accept orders from a government under duress, precisely the situation that would exist for the DEI, and rather than each unit having to decide individually which way to go the DEI have an entirely separate government infrastructure with its own head of state in the governor general and its own armed forces able to make the decision as a whole.
quote:
Anyone care to nominate a similar individual from the Dutch military to lead a military revolt?
The governor general, van Starkenborgh, doesn't seem to have been too much of a slouch in imposing martial law as soon as the Netherlands fell. Admiral Helfrich appears to have been extremely aggressive in directing the naval defence of the DEI as does his subordinate, Rear Admiral Doorman. Lieutenant General Berenschot, CiC of KNIL, was apparently an extremely capable organiser and diplomat and his successor after his death in a plane crash, Lieutenant General ter Poorten was a solid soldier but less of a diplomat. Any of these should have been at least as capable as De Gaulle, Berenschot probably better.
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there would have been no military substance to the Free French revolt without having access to the trained French military manpower which was evacuated from Dunkirk. There was no similar Dutch manpower pool
KNIL had 35,000 men under arms, the Home Guard was apparently around 40,000, add in the Navy, Gouvernmentsmarine and paramilitary forces and you are getting towards 100,000. In July 1940 the Free French OOB stood at 7000 men and 3700 in the Navy. Much of the eventual Free French strength was made up of conscripted colonial troops, the Dutch East Indies had a population of c100 million to call upon.
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it is hard to see where the British would have found sufficient forces to move into all of the DEI.
The Australian CMF is the obvious choice. If the DEI surrender to the Axis then the DEI become Australia's northern border. That's not the case for Malaya with the DEI government siding with the allies and acting as a buffer zone for the Australian mainland.
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5. The American move into Iceland is not comparable to a similar move into the DEI for these reasons:
(a) it had the tacit acquiesence of the Danish government. Would a surrendered Dutch government have been similarly inclined?
Iceland had been independent since 1918, though in personal union with the King of Denmark and following Danish foreign policy. The British move into Iceland occurred after the occupation of Denmark and after British discussions with the Icelandic government on 9th April 1940 where they were invited to join the belligerent powers, which they declined. On 10th April the Icelandic government declared King Christian X to be unable to perform his duties and suspended the personal union, returning all powers to Iceland. British forces landed in May, transferring the defences to the US in July 1941 under a US-Icelandic defence agreement. The Danes were irrelevent to the process once the Icelanders concluded they were under duress, so this is actually a model for how the DEI might react following a Dutch surrender, though given the different national psyches it is likely they would have opted for siding with the Allies rather than the neutrality preferred by the Icelanders.
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in practical terms Iceland was safe from a German invasion, hence the size of the American garrison could be kept quite low. Remember, Iceland was occupied after the amphibious lift capability of the Kriegsmarine had been shredded off Norway.
In actuality the UK considered there to be an imminent risk of a German invasion of Iceland and Operation Fork, the occupation, was contemporaneous with the Norwegian campaign, not after it.
Thailand is another example of what happens when a government is considered to be acting under duress. When the Japanese occupied Thailand and a pro-Japanese government took power, the Washington Embassy defected en masse and together with the dowager Queen in London formed the Seri Thai movement, which by the end of the war was actually running the Thai government, the only thing stopping a consolidated uprising against the Japanese in conjunction with the Thai Army being Mountbatten's request that they hold off until Operation Roger, the allied invasion of Thailand via Phuket.
< Message edited by dwg -- 2/12/2010 2:37:01 PM >
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What if the Dutch had surrendered? - 
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