With the Winter War over, Stalin could commit himself more fully to the war in Sind Punjab. In March of 1940, he ordered substantial amounts of troops pulled from the north and transported southeastward. The entire Eighth Army was sent to the Sind Punjab front, swelling the size of the Soviet forces by over 100,000. However, transporting the army there was a logistical nightmare, and it placed great strain on the Soviet rail system- to say nothing of the primitive logistics in Afghanistan and occupied Sind Punjab. Additionally, Stalin took this time to reshuffle his command deck. General Apanasenko was sacked as commander of the Central Asian Front, although he was given command of the 27th Mechanised Corps. The new Eighth Army remained under the control of its Winter War-era commander, General Grigori Shtern. However, the new commander of the Central Asian Front was a little-known commander who had previously made a good name for himself in the armoured battles against the Japanese- Georgi Zhukov.
Zhukov saw that Apanasenko’s greatest error had been to attack on too broad a front. With British strength only increasing (1), it was clear that the Soviets needed to pick a target and commit to it, attacking on a narrow front to maximise their power. Zhukov selected the port city of Karachi as his target for the spring offensive, as it would finally fulfil the long Russian dream of a warm-water port. His plans for an offensive into Balochistan were given a boost when, in a typically byzantine move, several NKVD “advisers” supposedly en route to the front stopped over in Kabul and
just so happened to “convince” Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah to formally declare war on the Allies. The Afghan army was small, consisting of only eleven divisions of dubious quality, but by joining the war, Afghanistan had extended the front to almost 2300 kilometres in length. Afghanistan’s military commanders flew to Rawalpindi on 9 March to meet Zhukov. It was agreed that owing to the immense logistical difficulties which would stem from moving large Red Army forces into western Afghanistan from their current positions, the Red Army would make its main thrust from its present position near Layyah. However, the Eighth Army, which at the time of the conference was spread out in rail yards all over Kazakhstan, would be sent to the Balochistan theatre, thus bringing the combined Axis strength in the theatre to almost 200,000.
The Afghan decision to join the Axis had forced the British into a real dilemma. On the one hand, it was plain that the threat to Sind Punjab had increased considerably, and they would soon be locked in combat with the Afghans. However, there was also the fact that the Red Army was still perilously close to entering India proper, and was only four hundred kilometres away from New Delhi. The Allies had approximately 120,000 men in total, meaning that they were outnumbered almost 2:1 by the Axis. Committing forces into piecemeal defences in southern Sind Punjab would accomplish nothing except to throw away Allied lives and give the natives the impression that the Allies didn’t care about them.
The solution which General Cassels came up with exploited the terrain of India as much as was possible. Heading southwest from Bahawalpur is an S-shaped strip of relatively fertile terrain sandwiched between the mountains of Sind Punjab and the arid lowlands of Rajasthan. This corridor would naturally be Zhukov’s main axis of advance, as it would be the easiest to manoeuvre forces and maintain supply links through. Thus, Cassels directed Indian infantry divisions 3-9 to man this gap, with special focus on holding a Multan-Bahawalpur line. Even if the Soviets broke through, the British strength on the flanks would present a danger.
After the requisite period of planning, Operation
Krasnyi commenced on 30 March with terrific Soviet artillery and air bombardments of the British positions in Bilawal Pur and Kot Sultan. The defenders had expected the Red Army to come as before, in mass human wave charges, and were not all prepared to deal with the heavy armour being thrown at them. Within three days, the “left” wing of the Soviet offensive (commanded by Apanasenko and having started from Layyah) had reached the Rajasthan plateau, thus leaving Multan and its small garrison isolated and cut off. Indeed, the need to reduce Multan would leave the “right” wing of the Soviet advance hampered for many days, before finally surrendering on 8 April.
Meanwhile, the Afghan-Soviet advance into Balochistan was meeting with more success. Although their tactics were less advanced than those of Zhukov, the Afghans knew this terrain like the back of their hand, having fought countless wars against the British over the centuries. Encircling Quetta (which was to be besieged by the Red Army), the Axis forces advanced rapidly through the mountains, efficiently sweeping away poorly-trained, outnumbered British troops. On 11 April, the Afghan-Soviets reached the sea at Pasni, and from there began to sweep east. All of this inflicted heavy losses on the Afghans (who were qualitatively no better soldiers than their British foes), but manpower dictated that Balochistan would fall.
As Balochistan’s defences were penetrated, the British were slowly retreating from Zhukov’s armoured juggernaut. They fought in much the same way as the Finns had in the Winter War- clinging onto defensive lines and attempting to outsmart their foe. However, the seasoned veteran Zhukov was not a commander who could be easily outsmarted, and he demonstrated considerably more tactical agility than Timoshenko had in Finland, despite the narrow corridor in which he was forced to work. As city after city- Rasim Yar Khan, Khairpur, and Nawabshah- fell to the Soviets, the British and Pashtuns fought like tigers, causing heavy casualties to the Soviets which Zhukov was all too happy to accept, knowing that he was but one part of the advance and that even in the unlikely event of his being stopped, the advance would continue. The British achieved a temporary respite on 18 April, as Zhukov ran into the Hyderabad-Mirpur Khas line, which had been extremely heavily fortified. While the Soviet weight of numbers
was eventually able to crack the line open, doing so took a good two weeks, and it would not be until 16 May that Zhukov’s tanks reached the sea- by which point, the Eighth Army and Afghans were already locked in combat for Karachi. Thus, on 23 May, 1940, after two centuries of striving, Russia gained its warm-water port.
In Britain, the loss of Karachi had several major impacts. First off, it spelt the end of Neville Chamberlain’s tenure as PM. Chamberlain (who was already looking like a fool owing to the dismal Allied performance in the West) fell from office and was replaced by Winston Churchill. Churchill’s first act was to sack Sir Robert Cassels and replace him with General Hastings Ismay. This was a bit unfair, given Cassels’ lack of men and supplies when compared to the Red Army, but Churchill would not listen to those who told him so. Many postwar historians would quibble over to what extent it is fair to blame Cassels for the losses to Apanasenko and Zhukov, but in 1940 no-one had any idea how to rectify the situation…
For Stalin, the successful conquest of Sind Punjab had created something of a problem. While Red Army troops would naturally remain in the area and trace their supply lines through it, it was unclear what the correct political future for the territory was. Annexing it into the USSR wasn’t feasible, given that it lacked a common frontier. Instead, Stalin decided to partition the territory. A slice of the northwest- including the towns of Quetta and Peshawar- went to Afghanistan as a token of gratitude, while on 1 July, the People’s Republic of Punjab was founded, with communist leader Sajjad Zaheer in power. Naturally, Zaheer was an absolute stooge of the Soviets, but a dangerous precedent had been set… that the Soviets were willing to work towards the liberation of the Indian subcontinent…
Next update will be the Battle of France, then Italian foreign policy, then the Indian Revolution of summer 1940! Stay tuned!
Comments?
- ITTL, Indian mobilisation is much faster than OTL, and by the spring of 1940, approximately 120,000 Indians are fighting under the Union Jack. I will be referencing some divisions which had not been formed until later in OTL. Here, Indian infantry divisions 1-9 have already been formed and are remaining in India. There are also some ANZAC and French units fighting in India ITTL. View attachment 531191