The logistical train required to invade an island the size of Java would be more of an Army operation than a USMC one requiring far more armor and artillery than the USMC had
US Invasion of Java
- Thread starter Fennoman
- Start date
PETA formed most of the backbone of the Indonesian Army, with a few KNIL-trained pre-1940 officers such as Oerip Soemohardjo helped too. They being sent to the frontlines in Java and Sumatra means no one is going to rein in the militias.
The ones you need to watch out in the Republican side is the Japanese-trained Seinendan (Youth Brigade) and Suishintai (Pioneer Brigade) militias, also local Islamist militias approved by the Japanese and robber gangs (who emerged in the aftermath of vacuum of power in late August 1945) who managed to rampage their way through West-Central Java and Sumatra (with lots of Sultanates get wiped out by them because they were suspected to be Dutch-aligned) before being reined in by the Indonesian Army.
On the Dutch side, trigger-happy Mollucans, especially ex-Japanese PoWs needs to be reined in before they muddled things with so-called "revenge killings" in Jakarta (Batavia) in September-October 1945.
Majors Robert A. Koke and Frederick E. Crockett's accounts from OSS' Operation ICEBERG during September-October 1945. "How the Trouble Began in Java", Harper's Magazine, March 1946 Edition, page 281.
Just having two Red-and-White flags in your car would get your car ridden with bullet holes by ex-PoW KNILs.
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Would the Seinendan/Suishintai then be more likely to take the brunt of the Allied assault, while PETA stays back until a more opportune moment. The Islamists would also be interesting actors. Seeing Sharia as the only solution and fighting everyone else involved, even after Japan's surrender.
I wonder if this can be called ''revenge'' killings.
Considering the terror , murders and rapes commited by the various Bersiap gaings and the fact that the nationals like Soekarno were straigth colaborators.
I looks mere a point of view if it were ''revenge'' killings or killings whihc happened in war. The nationalist declared war with everything who was ''colonial''
My best guess is, that, if the USA would invade Java as per POD, there will be no power vacuum as in OTL.
No doubt there will be fighting and most likely hard fighting, between the Japanese Imperial Army and the various Indonesian militia's set up by Japan. But becuase of this fighting there will remain order behind the, fluid, front line.
I realy question what Soekarno will do, since he was very colaborative to the Japanese ocuping force. I wonder if the USA was looking for an opportuniscic unreliable man like him..
Let us not forget that the Japanese not only commited autrocities against the Europeans, Indo's and Chinese but where very, very harsh agians the Indonesians as well. The violence and total incompetence of colonial rule by the Japanese autorities caused thousands of dead, dead by excecutions, torture, hardlabor and famine due to the incompetent gouverning. This happend not only in Indonesia but as well in Singapore, Malaya and other occupied colonies. So far the Jpananese slogan Asian for tha Asians.
As PETA (Pembela Tanah Air / Homeland Defenders) is explicitly created to defend Java and Sumatra by the IJA (and more likely going to be assigned to the rest of Dutch East Indies with the Preparatory Committee being established earlier and loss of control by IJN over Eastern Indonesia), they would definitely going into the front lines with the militias acting as auxiliary units beneath them in the chain of command. Djibaku, a Japanese-trained Indonesian suicide platoons is also going at play here.
And yep, alongside the Islamists, the Communists is also an underdog here, with many of them is in the hiding, hunted by the Japanese, unlike the Islamists who has a good relation with the Japanese. There is a good chance of their uprising too in Sumatra.
Since Syahrir was a Socialist, their best chance would be in q united front. Were they particularly strong in Sumatra? I know their stronghold was among the rural Abangan if Java.
Syahrir abhors the communists and mainly followed his socialist mentor Hatta, as their failed uprising in 1926 because of lack of preparations on their own and lack of a socio-economical crisis in the Dutch colonial government indirectly led to his and Hatta's incarcerations in Boven Digoel concentration camp. Furthermore, there is also a lack of their willingness to compromise for the sake of independent Indonesia, ironically similar to the Islamists' sentiment after the signing of Renville Agreement in early 1948 as they established their own government in West Java (not quashed until 1962).
During OTL Indonesian National Revolution, Tan Malaka's non-Stalinist communists formed an official opposition bloc towards Syahrir's government in the first months of 1946. After their failed coup d' etat in April, they were incarcerated in East Java but most were pardoned after Amir Syarifuddin took Syahrir's place in mid-1947. Another bloc of communist opposition (this time, the Stalinists) was also established in early 1948 by Syarifuddin in opposition towards the establishment of Hatta's government and quashed in October following an uprising.
But ITTL, perhaps with the support of IJA towards the Sumatran Preparatory Committee, a similar political development like the one in Java can took place too with Syahrir leading it. A more prepared PETA formation there would make the local militias reined in by them.
Well, IOTL the OSS agents in the ICEBERG team clearly viewed him as a nationalist, not a fascist. But in their report, they stated that he need to act quickly to rein in the remaining Indonesian militias if he didn't want the Dutch to be angered further.
He suceeded in Surabaya at November 1945, but only after 15k Indonesian KIA and the local militia battered after someone posed as the Minister of Defense and managed to tell the local militias to attack the British. But failed in Jakarta, when control was lost to the British and the Indonesian government moved inland to Jogjakarta in early 1946, leaving the British forces to deal with the local Betawi gangs, whose loyalty is for themselves, until mid-1946. The other ones such as Sumatran militias managed to wipe out the local sultanates and their symphatizers because of the lack of central control from Jogjakarta.
Most remaining militias were reined in when the Indonesian Republican Army was established in January 1946, and by July 1947 only a few stragglers remained such as Acehnese militias because of the disjointed territories the Indonesians held after the Renville Agreement.
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