TEMP
Japanese operations in Burma had begun in December 1941. Rangoon fell in March 1942 and the Japanese advance gathered pace until they had occupied most of the country by the end of April. Campaigning was effectively halted through the May to December monsoon season and then the Allies mounted the first of several offensives from India.[1] Efforts were hampered by disordered conditions in Bengal and Bihar, not least the severe cyclone which devastated the region in October 1942 and, with vital rice imports from Burma curtailed by the Japanese, led ultimately to the Bengal famine of 1943.[2] The situation in Bengal was exacerbated by a Japanese air offensive which prevented the RAF from launching an airlift.[3][4] It has been alleged that Churchill's government was wrong in its prioritisation of food exports to other theatres of war and its stockpiling of resources in Great Britain,[5] but those policies were pursued because Churchill's main concern was fighting a war for survival.[4] This, however, is an area of great dispute as the contrary is shown in the CAB 65 Second World War conclusions, which reveal that food exports (except those already in motion) were cancelled or diverted at the request of the Secretary of State for India, the Minister of War Transport, and the Minister of Food amongst others. These now cancelled food exports were consequently used as famine relief.[6][7][8] Churchill nevertheless did push for whatever famine relief efforts that India itself could provide given the unlikely success of outside aid,[4] these internal efforts hidebound by corruption and inefficiency which featured heavily in the Bengali government at that time.[3] Churchill responded by appointing Earl Wavell as Viceroy on 1 October 1943 and ordering the military under Wavell's direction to transport aid into Bengal.[4] The combination of relief transports and a successfully harvested winter rice crop eased the famine in December 1943, but the death toll by then was over three million.[4]
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