South East Asia Command

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Map of the different command areas in the Pacific War 1942/43. The South East Asia Command in the west.

The South East Asia Command ( SEAC , "Southeast Asia Command ") was a British- led allied regional command (command area) during the Second World War , which comprised large parts of continental Southeast Asia and was primarily responsible for leading the Burma campaign . It existed from the end of 1943 to the end of 1946. From April 1944, the headquarters were in Kandy in Ceylon . Commander in chief was Admiral Lord Mountbatten . His deputy was the US General Joseph Stilwell , head of the American China Burma India Theater , who was also deputy commander in China .

The SEAC was created in the course of the reorganization of the Pacific theater of war after the collapse of the ABDA command in 1942. It was next to the Northern, Central and Southern Pacific Ocean Areas (POA; large part of the Pacific; under US Admiral Nimitz ), the Southwest Pacific Area ( SWPA; Australia , New Guinea , Solomon Islands , Philippines ; under US General MacArthur ) and China (under General Chiang Kai-shek ) one of the four major allied command areas in the Asia-Pacific region.

The SEAC included the eastern Indian Ocean , Ceylon, Burma , the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra . British India , on the other hand, was administered by Viceroy Archibald Wavell and Commander Claude Auchinleck virtually independently of Mountbatten. Towards the end of the war, the command was also given authority over Thailand , French Indochina south of the 16th parallel (the northern part went to China) and the rest of the Dutch East Indies including Borneo (previously with the SWPA). In both Indochina and Indonesia, the British made it possible for the colonial rulers to return after the war.

Lord Mountbatten relinquished his post to General Montagu Stopford in mid-1946 before the obsolete command was disbanded at the end of the year.

literature

  • Peter Dennis: Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945-46 , Manchester University Press, 1987
  • Jonathan Templin Ritter: Stilwell and Mountbatten in Burma: Allies at War, 1943–1944 , University of North Texas Press, Denton 2017
  • Peter Neville: Britain in Vietnam: Prelude to Disaster, 1945–46 , Routledge, London 2007
  • Richard McMillan: The British Occupation of Indonesia, 1945–1946: Britain, the Netherlands and the Indonesian Revolution , Royal Asiatic Society Books, Routledge, London 2006