Hello, and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast, Episode 293,

Burma, the ground war begins. The meticulously planned out Oriental Blitzkrieg was launched

against Southeast Asia after the attack on Pearl Harbor. As we have seen on December 14th,

Victoria Point at the southern tip of Burma was captured on Christmas Day Hong Kong fell.

January 2nd saw the capture of Manila in the Philippines, the crawl isthmus that connected

the Malayan Peninsula with the Asian mainland was in Japanese hands by the third week of January.

The celibis was lost on February 9th, the next day, Borneo fell. Then it was the turn of

Sumatra on February 16th, and by the end of the first week of March, Java was all but lost,

as was most of the Philippines. But as for the invasion proper of Burma, that had to wait for Malaya

and Singapore to be secured, which came about on February 15th when Singapore surrendered.

Those Japanese troops that earned this incredible victory now had to deal with some 130,000 POWs

of British, Australian, Indian and local soldiers. Now it truly was Burma's turn with its oil

and rice, the American supply line to China, and just maybe a passage to India.

On the other side, to have any chance of safeguarding Burma, or at least making its defense viable,

Churchill knew that we will need more men. So on February 20th, the British Prime Minister

cabled the Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, urging or rather imploring that the sixth

and seventh Australian divisions currently on route home be diverted to Rangoon. Yet Curtin's response

could not have been unexpected. Simply he refused as these men had to come home, not only to save

Australia, but as Curtin said to preserve it as a base for the development of the war against

Japan. And he was not wrong, but it was hard for Churchill and the war cabinet to lose so much

territory in such a short time. Yet these dark days were not over. The men expected to defend Burma,

Lieutenant General Thomas J Hutton, he had only been on the job since December 27th, was still

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