Bose’s political philosophy and that of the Nazis was similar. As early as the 1930s he seems to have decided that a democratic system could not overcome India’s poverty and social inequalities and he wrote that an authoritarian state would be needed for the process of national re-building. In that sense he could be considered a Fascist and his alliance with the Axis was based on more than just pragmatism and an admiration for Germany’s defeat of the British. [167]
Upon India’s being granted Dominion status in 1942 and with the exit of many of the British, Bose returned and once more took up the leadership of the Forward Bloc. This greatly annoyed Nehru, the new Prime Minister and certainly hastened the break-up of the country. Far from being mellowed by his time away, Bose had become a strident advocate of Indian nationalism and in an attempt to broaden his political appeal he embraced alliance with Hindu nationalist groups that sought to expel Moslems from Hindu-dominated areas and fuelled the growing internecine bloodshed in India.
British Cabinet documents recently released under the 50-year rule show that by early 1943 this violence was becoming so bad that Nehru actually appealed to the British to send some of their troops back to India to help keep order. Sinclair’s Government rejected the request and it was shortly after this that Nehru began to seriously consider Jinnah’s suggestion for dividing the country into separate Moslem and Hindu states.
The leadership of the Congress Party was largely secularist and disagreed with the division of India on the lines of religion. Gandhi was both religious and irenic, believing that Hindus and Moslems could and should live in friendship. He opposed the partition, but his appeals for calm and a two-week hunger strike did little to ease the situation and the ever-rising toll of violence increased the pressure to implement partition in the hope of avoiding a full–scale civil war.
In April 1943, with constant rioting, looting and fratricidal slaughter a daily fact of life, Nehru met with Jinnah and Bose to decide on the break-up of the country. Due to the situation, it was necessary to complete the process with great haste and one of Bose’s demands was that India should reject British Dominion status and become a Republic. Bose believed that India should be in alliance with the Axis rather than with Britain though he does not appear to have made this point at the time of the conference. Nehru acquiesced to this demand on the condition that Bose would endeavour to calm the situation and persuade his supporters to pause in their attacks on Moslems. Gandhi opposed partition but had become side-lined politically by that position. He proved largely ineffective in stemming the tide of religious carnage, his resorts to sulking and refusing food in protest at the failure of the people of India to rise to his expectations being the limit of his power in the matter.
The decision was finally made on the 21st of April 1943 and the announcement of the borders was made two days later as public order broke down all across northern India and Bengal. In the next few days a massive migration got under way and in the months following partition almost 15 million people left their homes and moved to what they hoped was safety.
Based on the 1945 Census of displaced persons, 7.2 million Moslems went to Pakistan from India while 7.3 million Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan. 78% of the population transfer took place in the west, with the Punjab accounting for most of it. Politicians and community leaders on both sides whipped up mutual suspicion and fear, culminating in dreadful events. Far from causing an immediate end to the violence, partition in the short-term made matters dramatically worse. Part of the problem was that these enormous movements of people took place in the hot season when travel was hard and tempers easily frayed. The newly formed Governments were not equipped to deal with migrations of such a staggering magnitude, and massacres took place on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths incurred in partition range from lows of roughly half a million, up to as many as 1.5 million.
The Civil war itself was precipitated by Bose’s demand for the expulsion of all Moslems from India but was mercifully brief. The Indian and Pakistani armies (both of which still had many British officers) remained loyal to their respective governments and by and large tried to protect civilians. Atrocities were committed by military formations on both sides, but these were isolated incidents and few in number. Bose himself was assassinated on 3rd May 1943. The persistent allegations that he was killed by British intelligence at the request of Prime Minister Nehru have never been substantiated; however, the MI6 files pertaining to him are closed until 2044.
The two self-governing countries came into existence at midnight on 15 September 1943 almost 3 months to the day after the last skirmishes of the Civil War. Pakistan became a Dominion with Jinnah as its first Prime Minister. [168] The job of Governor General went to Sir Mohamed Zafarullah Khan.
The idea of India becoming a republic would have been quietly dropped after Bose’s death but for the fact that The Congress Party had already announced that this was to be the way forward. Gandhi rejected the notion of becoming India’s Head of State and until his death no head of state was appointed.
*
The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir had been divided up by Jinnah and Nehru based on the religious inclinations of the population. This plan had the Moslem regions of Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan absorbed into Pakistan, while the Hindu region of Jammu and the Buddhist regions of Ladakh and Aksai Chin went to India. The Maharajah of Kashmir was named Hari Singh. He was a Hindu, though the majority of the people in the state were Moslem. Nehru and Jinnah both disliked him and he was not consulted on the division of his realm. This was typical of the high-handed approach that Jinnah and Nehru took during the independence and partition process.
In consultation with his Chief Minister, Kailash Narain Haksar, as well as Sheikh Mohamed Abdullah, the leader of the Kashmiri Muslim Conference Party; Singh rejected the suzerainty of either India or Pakistan. An incursion by tribesmen from Pakistan on the 22nd November 1943 was repulsed by Singh’s forces and he declared independence four days later.
His timing worked in his favour. Not only was winter about to make military operations in the mountainous state tricky, but there was little appetite for further bloodshed in either Delhi or Karachi. Jammu and Kashmir was a poor state and neither India nor Pakistan were sufficiently recovered from the agony of partition to go to war over it. Under international law, Singh had every right to declare independence, but the leaders on both sides of the border were convinced that the state would fall into their hands without a struggle sooner rather than later. Jinnah was encouraged in this belief by Sheikh Abdullah and Nehru by Haksar. Kashmir became a member of the Commonwealth in 1944.
Unsurprisingly, the Nazis started to try to court both Pakistan and India diplomatically almost as soon as the countries became independent. Nehru rebuffed their diplomatic overtures but Jinnah hedged his bets and strung them along, talking reasonably to the Germans while cannily giving them concrete assurances of nothing. Jinnah played the Germans as effectively as he played the British. As he is reported to have remarked to his wife; “For most of 1941, I had to listen to British hacks talking rot about idealism, then for much of 1944 I had to listen to German hacks talking even more rot about race and eugenics.” [169]
ANNEX 8: GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT AND DEFENCE SPENDING OF THE GREAT POWERS 1944 [170]
From ‘The Economy of the Third Reich’ by Wilhelm Offenbach, Macallister 1962
(A) Axis Powers
(I) THE GERMAN REICH
Germany [171] 453.5
‘Vassalzustande’ [172] 179.2
French Colonies [173] 38.1
Dutch Colonies101.8
Belgian Colonies 1.0 Protectorates [174] 106.1
German total879.7
(II) IMPERIAL JAPAN
Japan [175]252.7
Japanese Colonies [176]140.1
Japanese Total 392.8
(III) THE KINGDOM OF ITALY
>
Italy [177]160.3
Italian Colonies [178] 34.2
Italian total194.5
(IV) THE REPUBLIC OF SPAIN
Spain [179]60.4
Spanish Colonies 0.8
Spanish total 61.2
(V) MINOR AXIS POWERS
Bulgaria [180] 10.5
Hungary 26.1
Romania [181] 23.1
Yugoslavia [182] 25.4
Minor Axis total 85.1
Axis Total 1612.3
(B) Other Great Powers
(I) THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
United States [183]912.1
US Colonies [184] 29.2
US Total941.3
(II) THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH [185]
United Kingdom 394.2
Australia 44.5
Canada 53.2
New Zealand 11.5
South Africa 16.6
Other British Dominions, Colonies, Protectorates and Territories[186] 102.6
Commonwealth Total 622.6
(III) THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA [187]
China 259.9
(IV) THE REPUBLIC OF INDIA[188]
India 215.4
(V) RUMP USSR [189]
USSR 133.4
Allied Total 2172.6
(C) Proportion of National Income (GDP) Spent by the Powers on Defence (Percent)
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
UK
4
6
8
9
15
43
17
7
8
8
Germany
8
13
13
18
32
49
56
60
17
16
U S
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
3
3
Italy
5
11
11
10
8
12
23
22
9
10
Japan
?
?
15
24
22
22
27
28
29
28
Spain
?
?
?
?
2
5
11
10
9
10
GLOSSARY
AAAnti-Aircraft
Ack–AckAnti-aircraft fire (slang)
BIABurmese Independent Army
COCommanding Officer
CPUSACommunist Party of the United States
DNCDemocratic National Congress
FDRFranklin Delano Roosevelt
GOP‘Grand Old Party’, the American Republican Party
GRU Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, (Main Intelligence Directorate) the foreign military intelligence agency of the Soviet Union
HMSHis Majesty’s Ship
IJNImperial Japanese Navy
INCIndian National Congress
KMTKuomintang
MI5Military Intelligence, Section 5, the UK’s counter-intelligence and security agency
MI6Military Intelligence, Section 6, the UK’s foreign intelligence agency
MPMember of Parliament
MNMarine National – The French Navy
NEINetherlands East Indies
NKVDNarodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, (The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) Stalin’s secret police
NRA National Revolutionary Army, the military branch of the Kuomintang
OCUOperational Conversion Unit
OTLOur Time Line
RAFRoyal Air Force
RMRegia Marina – The Italian Royal Navy
RNThe British Royal Navy
RNAAThe British Royal Navy Air Arm
SASturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing
SSShutzstaffel (Protection Squad) A Nazi paramilitary organisation
TTLThis Time Line
USAACUnited States Army Air Corps
USAAFUnited States Army Air Force
USNUnited States Navy
USNIUnited States Naval Institute
USSUnited States Ship
USSRUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Part of this story was posted by me under the title The Dark Colossus on the Alternate History Discussion Board in 2006-2007 but has subsequently been completely re-written and given the title Drake’s Drum. I feel it is only fair to acknowledge my sources of inspiration, while emphasising that the intent and substance of these sources has been changed by me to serve this story, which is a work of fiction.
It started life in 2001as an idea stimulated by a post on the Battleship vs Battleship message board of warships1.com entitled The Peace of Amiens 1940 by Steffen Jorgensen. This came together with a critique that I began writing on the version of Stuart Slade’s novel The Big One that was posted on the ‘History Politics and Current Affairs’ board in 2004. I had written about two foolscap pages before I realised that I was not so much writing a critique, as suggesting a completely alternative plot! These two strands of thought came together to form the outline of the story.
Passages in chapters 5, 7, 11 and 15 are based on the work of Ed Thomas who posted a scenario entitled A Greater Britain on the Alternate History Discussion Board in 2005. It was published as a book by Sea Lion Press in 2017. Parts of the Drake’s Drum story, as I originally wrote it, had a similar intent to Ed’s but differed from his work in one crucial respect. Ed’s was really good and mine wasn’t. The passages in question are credited to ‘Tom Shaed’.
The lines of poetry in chapter 10 are from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
I have been tinkering with the notion of alternate Washington Treaties for nearly thirty years but the version of the treaty presented here was partially inspired by the Washington Treaty Renegotiation Exercise. This was debated out on the Battleship vs Battleship message board of Warships1 in 2001. Richard Hawes, who negotiated for the British Empire, wrote an appreciation of that exercise and was good enough to share it with many of the participants and spectators including myself. It will be noted that the treaty presented here is markedly different from the final treaty agreed in WTRE.
The final passage in chapter 13 is adapted from ‘The USSR and Total War: Why the Soviet Economy Collapsed in 1942’ by Mark Harrison, in A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1939-1945, pp. 137–156, edited by Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, and Bernd Greiner (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and is credited accordingly. Mr Harrison has asked me to emphasise that it is Copywrite © material and adapted with permission.
I would like to thank Mark L. Bailey and Shane Rogers for their comments and insights on many parts of this story. Their ‘France Fights On - Alternative Point Of Departure’ (FFO-APOD) scenario is still an ongoing project, but is the most extraordinarily detailed, painstakingly constructed and comprehensively researched alternative history I have ever read.
All errors are my own.
A note on maps and photographs.
The maps have bee
n created in Photoshop using the line tool. A few are scans of pen and ink drawings created by myself. Some of the photographs have been altered in Photoshop. The licensees are noted in the captions.
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APPENDICES
www.drakesdrum.co.uk
* * *
[1] In OTL he was promoted a month later.
[2] In OTL the disputed and in some ways inconclusive result undermined the status of the battleship
[3] The British industry had not yet reached the state of atrophy that existed in 1937 OTL – which was a direct result of laying down only three new capital ships (that were completed) in the previous twenty years.
[4] There were provisions in the OTL treaty allowing France and Italy to build new ships within the ten–year building holiday period. In TTL the idea is extended to all the powers.
[5] In OTL Balfour’s argument was that they were ineffective UNLESS they were used against civilian trade in defiance of the rules of warfare
[6] Naval Operations: History Of The Great War Based On Official Documents By Direction Of The Historical Section Of The Committee Of Imperial Defence. Vol. 3 written by Sir Julian Corbett and published by Longmans, Green And Co, 1923 OTL.
[7] For a more detailed assessment of the story of the Dominion capital ships see the Appendices.
The Peace of Amiens Page 34
