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yeah its called the Great Bengal Famine - 3 million dead (across the territories of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). That's how the second world war
by sandGorgon 5y ago
yeah its called the Great Bengal Famine - 3 million dead (across the territories of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). That's how the second world war was funded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
The financing of military escalation led to war-time inflation, as land was appropriated from thousands of peasants. Many workers received monetary wages rather than payment in kind with a portion of the harvest.[14] When prices rose sharply, their wages failed to follow suit; this drop in real wages left them less able to purchase food.[15] During the Japanese occupation of Burma, many rice imports were lost as the region's market supplies and transport systems were disrupted by British "denial policies" for rice and boats (a "scorched earth" response to the occupation). The Bengal Chamber of Commerce (composed mainly of British-owned firms),[16] with the approval of the Government of Bengal, devised a Foodstuffs Scheme to provide preferential distribution of goods and services to workers in high-priority roles such as armed forces, war industries, civil servants and other "priority classes", to prevent them from leaving their positions.[17] These factors were compounded by restricted access to grain: domestic sources were constrained by emergency inter-provincial trade barriers, while aid from Churchill's War Cabinet was limited, ostensibly due to a wartime shortage of shipping.[18] More proximate causes included large-scale natural disasters in south-western Bengal (a cyclone, tidal waves and flooding, and rice crop disease). The relative impact of each of these factors on the death toll is a matter of debate.
- sofixa 5y agoThe Bengal famine was, as the name suggests, in Bengal ( modern day India and Bangladesh, not Pakistan). > That's how the second world war was funded. That's just a propostreous claim. It's a tragedy that claimed many lives and could have been averted, but it's absolutely not how the war was funded.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIt's also really irrelevant to the claim at hand. Europe was the richest part of the world long before 1943.
- ashwagary 5y agoIndia was partitioned in 1947, the Bengal famine occured in 1943. Indian food, labor, supplies, and soldiers did play a large role in WW2 allied countries' military successes in Asia.
- sofixa 5y ago> Indian food, labor, supplies, and soldiers did play a large role in WW2 allied countries' military successes in Asia. And Africa, and Europe, and in WW1 too! Indian contributions to the world wars cannot be understated. However, my statement was regarding the claim that the Bengali famine is "how the second world war was funded", which is bullshit. It happened years into the war, and compared to the costs associated with waging a conflict of this size, it would have been miniscule to distribute rice to the population. It was war, bad weather, incompetence, negligence, not financing that caused the famine.
- sandGorgon 5y agoagain - please read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor... check the contribution tables During the war, India provided 196.7 million tonnes of coal, 6 million tonnes of iron ore and 1.12 million tonnes of steel. Approx 35 per cent of India’s annual cotton textile production, amounting to about 5,000,000,000 yards, went into creating war material. India contributed more than Australia, Canada, New Zealand put together. And yeah - we werent even part of the war. (oh also, Indian army had become the largest volunteer army in history, rising to over 2.5 million men in August 1945. with the operative word being "volunteer"!) By the end of the war outstanding balances were equivalent to 60 per cent of British net receipts under Lend-Lease. Of the total sterling balances, about a third was accumulated by India. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ehr.12372 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ehr.12372 you can go ahead and ignore this if you want. your choice and your call. This is fairly debated and fairly well known - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33618621 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33618621
- 5y ago
- sandGorgon 5y agogo and read the wikipedia article. its not my claim. its the truth. its easy to glorify the allies.