(Old page) East Indies Crisis - do not edit

East Indies Crisis
Part of the Cold War
Two Dutch soldiers in Malaya watching the helicopters coming in after a battle.
Date February 3rd 1960- November 11th 1976 Location East Indies Result Withrawal of the Dutch from the East Indies Independence of the Malakka Free State, Independence of the Malay Islands
Belligerents
Kingdom of the Netherlands Tussenland New Netherland	East Indies Liberation Front Malakka Various Sultanates of Indonesia
Commanders and leaders
	Junaid Siahaija Pieter-Bas Teterissa Bassil Patawala
Strength
1960-1967: 310,000 1967-1973: 260,000 1973-1976: 440,000 Total Troops deployed: 3.5 Million	Estimated: 7.3 million total
Casualties and losses
194.918 KIA 49.000 MIA	7-10 million civilian deaths 205.000 wounded 490.000 Missing

The East Indies Crisis, (Malay: Krisis Hindia Timur) also known as the Archipelago war, War of liberation and in the Netherlands as the Indian war (Dutch: Indische oorlog), or Oostelijke acties (Eastern actions) was a conflict fought all over the Indonesian archipelago, on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo, Malay peninsula, Java and Celebs. It was fought from 1960 up to the fall of Batavia on the 11th of November 1976. It was the 2nd and last of major uprisings across what was then the Dutch east indies and involved the Netherlands, Dutch East Indies and was supported by Nieuw Nederlandt, Taulandt, Kaap Republiek, and initially by Britain. Facing the Dutch & its allies was the “Liberation movement” supported by Russia. The war by some is considered a proxy conflict between Britain and Russia in the later stages of the cold war. Yet in the Netherlands, it’s viewed as a separate event that while heavily influenced by the cold war stands on its own. Yet after 16 years of fighting the war concluded with a new nation that was decisively pro-Russian, the East Indies Federation. It is noted that this was the first real televised war with people across the world but (mainly across the Dutch world) seeing the conflicts every day on their TVs. It was a conflict that was brutal and shaped entire generations and the fates of all nations involved in one way or another.

Background

The conflict emerged from the “Indische opstand van 1943” or Indian uprising of 1943, which was fought between Dutch colonial forces mainly the KNIL (Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger), and rebelling sultanates their militia’s and revolutionaries across the archipelago. It in turn happened as a direct result of a change in the Dutch rule which before 1942 was indirect with the sultans retaining a large degree of autonomy in their sultanates/Kingdoms. Dutch colonial administration was concerned with turning a profit and economic exploitation and thus their presence outside of Java was often relegated to administration or a military garrison if it was a major city. Yet the system was inefficient and riddled with corruption and thus in late 1941 from the Netherlands an order was given to reform the system and centralize it. This move an unpopular one and the Sultans did protests but it was ignored and thus in 1943 the sultans lost their official government power and were relegated to ceremonial roles. This was not taken lightly and what followed where a series of uprisings across Sumatra, Malaya, and Celebs. These uprisings or revolutions were possible due to the influx of arms from the great war, yet despite the relative nature of the opposition Dutch colonial forces KNIL brutally suppressed and crushed the rebelling sultanates and factions. Through 1943 entire rebel sultanates were put to the torch, royal families that ruled for centuries were extinguished and only those that surrendered or remained loyal would retain some form of wealth and status. It was this brutal suppression that laid the groundwork for the uprising in 1960, as a new generation of revolutionary had been born from it, trained and equipped by the Russians they would slowly be built up through the 1950s and spread themselves waiting for the moment to strike. In February of 1960, it was their moment when in the north of Sumatra near the border with British Aceh several towns killed their Dutch administrators promoting the KNIL to respond and it was there that the conflict in many people their eyes started.

Beginning of the Revolt

What started out as a relatively small and contained uprising to northern Sumatra in February 1960 had by January 1st, 1962 turned into an open revolt. the KNIL had been pushed out of the northern & central interior and was relegated to the coast with the southern parts of Sumatra still under their full control. While initially, this would not warrant further expansion, by this time small uprisings in Malaya, Borneo, and Celebs had been crushed stretching the KNIL her limited manpower. On the 1st of February 1962, the Staten-Generaal of the Netherlands approved 120.000 European Dutch soldiers to be sent to the indies to aid the KNIL in squashing the revolt and to bring back Dutch control to the archipelago. through the year it seemed to go well with Dutch forces crushing any revolts on the islands and regaining control over central Sumatra. This was done through a relative standard colonial campaign, they first secured the major population centers and worked from there. Yet unbeknownst to the Dutch forces, the Liberation was only growing in their numbers by recruiting from the countryside, which still was not fully under Dutch control, yet it was seen at that time as a winnable campaign. All changed when on new Year eve 1963 a major conventional assault by the Liberation Front was launched against major areas of Dutch control in central and northern Sumatra, most notably Padang in northwest Sumatra and Pekanbaru in central Sumatra. This conventional assault caught the Dutch forces off guard as the liberation front used older Russian tanks, heavy weapons such as artillery and mortar's. Due to the surprise and the fact that it was New Year’s eve the Dutch ability to respond was limited and it suffered for it as it lost control over Padang and Pekanbaru, it created thus a frontline across Jambi and the interior of southern Sumatra.

New Year Offensive

A Dutch soldier near Palembang during the fighting around the city in late February.

The New Year offensive as it was called changed the nature of the war from a “colonial conflict” where the rebels were relegated to asymmetric warfare and the Dutch approach was one of limited action. This new phase due to the Liberation front her firm control over northern and central Sumatra. This base of operations how small as it was let the rebels to built up their potential forces and at the same time the attacked showed that the Dutch were not undefeatable, the revolution began to more properly spread across the archipelago. When the front by mid-February had stabilized the Dutch began to change their strategy and began to approach it more seriously. The first mass use of strategic bombers soon followed and shore bombardments became more and more common, the use of Search & Destroy tactics now became the norm. This phase of the war however was still primarily a guerilla conflict as the Dutch in sheer firepower outgunned any conventional force the rebels could bring to bear. This period is often seen as one of the more intense periods as across the islands from Celebs to Borneo and in the Malaya peninsula guerilla strikes became more and more common and Sumatra quickly became just one of the fronts of what was by now a full-blown uprising. From 1963 all the way up to 1967 the Dutch fought a brutal campaign against ever-increasing numbers, entire villages were burned the ground, the mass use of chemical agents such as tear gas employed, firebombing in the form of napalm was used on mass turning once green jungles into burned up husks.

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Phase of Fire

the period from 1963 up to 1967 commonly called “Phase of fire” marked the rapid departure from it being a standard colonial conflict and instead of being something bigger. KNIL and now regular Dutch forces were not fighting colonial uprisings anymore but a well-organized foe. While in individual battles Dutch/KNIL units always came out on top it was the attrition rate that came with patrolling the central parts of Sumatra that were simply too high. Long-range patrols by the KNIL often resulted in 3 out of 10 men being killed, 4 more being wounded. This rate of attrition was simply far too high for the Netherlands to sustain what really woke the Dutch command structure up was the New Years’ offensive. The use of conventional military forces by the rebels combined with asymmetric warfare was a deadly one. While eventually the front was stabilized by mid-february 1963 the situation had not. Uprisings across the islands, from Malaya to Celebes and even Borneo were becoming more intense and organized. Dutch & KNIL forces were more and more divided with quelling them limiting and weakening their power projection. It was around this time that Lieutenant-General Cornelis van Langen of the Army came with a new doctrine, a doctrine that would become known as the Langen Doctrine and would change the face and nature of the war.

The Langen Doctrine as it was simply called was quite simple in its principle yet brutally effective. It not only shifted the objectives of military operations across the archipelago but also the nature of the fighting in itself. While before the new Year offensive the KNIL/Army her objective was to retake the territory held by the rebels, mainly central Sumatra, and after the new Year offensive parts of Malaya. However, the rebels were deadly in the jungle using their contacts in the countryside and their knowledge of the terrain to lay waste to the patrols going in. The reason for such an objective was quite simple the Dutch colonial administration had the goal to reconquer and bring back order to the territories while the fighting was still going on through the use of garrisons tying up troops.

The Langen Doctrine would see a shift in warfare with mobility and overwhelming firepower being key. The goal is to destroy the rebels their ability to wage war by hitting their supply lines and areas of operations. All the while using air power and mobile forces to prevent Dutch forces from being tied down in areas. This emphasis on mobility Langen argued would allow them to respond rapidly to insurgent activity, all the while making it possible to shift quickly between offensive and defensive operations. The doctrine shift was proposed to the general staff in march of 1963 and accepted on the 22nd of March. On the same day, orders were given to all units in the indies to move towards defensible positions and hold on to the urban centers and defend them at all costs. Van Langen has estimated that for this doctrine to be effective a period of 10 months would need to be spent on training the soldiers, getting the equipment, and getting the airpower in place.  Through 1963 and early 1964 the fighting in the archipelago changed into something more static. This period put the rebels off and for a while activities even seized as their intelligence networks were unable to determine what was happing, all that they knew from their Russian sources was that the Dutch were preparing for something.

While in Indies the rebels waited for what they assumed to be a large Dutch offensive, in Europe things were far more active. The air force was taking on more and more aircraft, many fighters and its bomber fleets were expanding at a rapid pace unseen in Dutch history. All the while the conscription period was reformed, the national service period would now be 24 months, 6 months for basic training, and 18 months on deployment. This decision was met with opposition in parliament but a series of backdoor deals were approved. This was done as the calculation was made that Dutch conscripts would be outnumbered 4 to one and would need to kill 8 rebels before they broke even. This calculation while cold to some was seen as the only way they could ever hope to defeat the rebels. This rapid training provided the first battle-ready formations by December 1963, trained in mobile warfare and combined arms these formations, some 12,000 men, were deployed as quickly as possible for what they planned to be a field test of the concept in the form of Operation Blink.

Operation Blink

The Assault on Jambi

On August 18th, 1967 the rebels attempted a major conventional assault upon Malakka yet after 2 weeks of fighting around the city it was halted. This was up to then the largest conventional battle and is often seen as the end of the “Phase of fire”. The failed assault costed the lives of 23,000 regular rebel soldiers while the Dutch only lost 1200. Through the entire phase by modern estimates cost the lives of 4.7 million civilians 1.3 million rebels and 22.000 Dutch/KNIL soldiers.

1967-1972 Period of Stalemate

The following period which lasted for 5 years (1967-1972) was marked by both the rebels and the Dutch recuperating their losses, stabilizing frontlines, and modernizing their armed forces rapidly. Dutch control of Sumatra and the Malayan peninsula by 1967 was relegated to the coastal areas and urban centers. It was around this time that troop deployments were scaled-down and the KNIL was operationally fully integrated into the Dutch armed forces. The Dutch already by mid-1966 began to be armed with more advanced aircraft, ground weapons, artillery, and ships. Through this period the Dutch conscript system was reformed to increase the manpower mobilization abilities and the quality. At the same time, the Rebels who now controlled the interior of the Malaya peninsula and most of Sumatra began properly built up their forces and rebuilt and regrouped, turning themselves into a proper conventional force and increasing the number of guerilla fighters. At this time in 1968, they also began through Russian channels to push for a diplomatic end to the war offering a peace treaty to the Dutch which was refused. Everyone knew that this lull in the fighting, reduced to more limited but still intense guerilla warfare, was because both sides were building up their forces for what would become known as the war. a period so deadly so brutal so destructive that only in recent years the archipelago has begun to properly recover in regards to population and development.

Final Period of the War (the blooding)

The 9th of March 1972 marked the start of the final and most brutal phase of the war. Through the 5 years lull, the rebels had infiltrated and expanded their networks on Java the bastion of Dutch colonial control. That only had some small uprisings, in the beginning, some 9 years ago but since then had not seen one uprising or revolt. Yet on the 9th of march outside of the major urban area’s they rose up. Across the Java countryside Dutch Colonial officials, Eurasians, and everyone who looked a bit European were slaughtered as the countryside sprung into open revolt. At the same time, the rebels launched proper conventional attacks upon the Dutch positions in Sumatra and across the Malayan peninsula. This caught the Dutch off guard but unlike before they now responded rapidly and with a brutally so far unseen in the war. The conventional attacks upon the Dutch positions in Malaya and Sumatra were halted due to overwhelming air power and counter armored thrusts, fighting was brutal and lasted 2 months but the Dutch were able to secure their footholds and even regain parts of central Malaya and regained full control of southern Sumatra. The java uprising opened up a new front that of Java which was isolated and thus between July 1972 and January 1973 became the most deadly front for the rebels. In that period it’s estimated that 6//7 million men died directly of actions undertaken by the Dutch and another 4 million indirectly, this was out of a population of 76,086,320. On the other islands mainly celebs the fighting became more and more intense and large parts of its jungle were burned down and casualties continued to rise for the rebels but also for the Dutch. This was also the final years of the war as the fighting became more and more brutal and savage on both sides, and the Dutch increased their firebombing campaign of rebel positions.

Despite the enormous amount of enemies killed, the general notion was that for every rebel killed 2 would take its place. Despite the kill ratio of 1 in 7 the numbers began to increase and increase. Russian support in the last years of the wars even came in air power and thus the first real air battles were fought above Sumatra. It was this period of fighting the sheer amount of brutality on both sides but mainly in the eyes of the world and more importantly the home front the Dutch that changed it all. An entire generation of young men in their prime did not go to college but fought in the Indies witnessed atrocities brutality and the death of their brothers in arms. The general mood in the Netherlands had since 1974 turned sower, the older generation began to be outnumbered as more and more veterans became able to vote. Eventually, in March 1975, after a vote of no confidence was given to the ruling party, a new party backed by Veterans and the mothers and fathers of the sons that were fighting, many of these newest conscripts their own fathers had fought in the war it had in fact become a multigenerational thing. It becomes so unpopular that even the military, knew that it would not survive if it went against the will of the government.

From May 1975 the new government led by Prime Minister Koen Haverman, himself a veteran of the war, began what it called a “Scale down”. This scale-down was however not peaceful it was a scorched earth campaign. Malakka at that moment knowing what was to come declared itself independent on July 8th, 1975, this was the first sign of what the last months of the war were to be like. The Dutch began a scale down which came down to a withdrawal, the KNIL in these last months were to be the crack forces that held the line fighting as at the same time the Rebels began a grand offensive which was held back and repelled but the rebels now gave it they’re all. From November 1975 all the way up to February 1976 Dutch & KNIL forces withdrew but held the rebels off giving time and space for Dutch, Taulanders, Amerikaeners, Afrikaners, Eurasians, and others to flee from Sumatra Borneo and Celebs, and eventually, they held only to the ports and like the rest of the cities and infrastructure has bombed the ground once the last boat left. What followed in the cities on the islands once the rebels got their hands on it was pure slaughter and mass killings were started.

Eventually, by October 1976 the Dutch forces all across Java were centered around Batavia. Operation “Thuiskomst” or homecoming was launched by the navy to get all the civilians and loyalists out as the remainder of Java fell to the rebels and it was one big bloodbath. Dutch forces held the line against repeated Rebel assaults, rescue operations across the islands were launched by the navy and remainder army units to get all Dutch loyalists out. For despite scaling down the navy in the area still had supremacy. In total in these last months of fighting 67.000 rebels, regulars died fighting, and across the island of Java millions, more died in purges, and the chaos that ensued entire KNIL units went rogue and killed hundreds of thousands in revenge. Eventually, by the 11th of November at 23:48, the last boat the destroyer “Blauwe Maan” left filled to the brim with civilians as the port finally fell to the rebels. This marked the end of 370 years of the Dutch presence in the east indies

Aftermath

In the Netherlands, a series of cultural shifts started to take place after the end of the war; with an entire generation of veterans (numbering around 4.7 million people) who saw the horrors of war up close. This had shocked the nation and in the years following the war many major events created tension within Dutch society including: a refugees crisis from it's former colonies, the reformation and restructuring of power within the Dutch economy, numerous social movements advocating for social, sexual and economic liberation, and a broken generation that tried to move on from the brutal conflict that had shaped the nation. There was a shift in the geopolitical landscape of the Netherlands, which following the end of the war in 1976, became a neutral nation and had to contend with the challenges of having a massive arms industry due to the war and needing to reform its economy towards civilian focused industry where possible. Its aerospace industry became focused on civilian products while still retaining experienced engineers and a well-established industrial compacity from the war. The Netherlands changed the balance of power in Europe by becoming neutral and taking it's close ally the German Confederation, with whom it shares a border, into neutrality. During and after the war, the music scene in the Netherlands radically changed with the adoption of NNL and Virginian rock & roll influences (made popular by the anti-war anthem Ik heb geen geluk) and the creation of an anti-war counter culture.

Causalities

During the war, the scale of fighting was enormous and the Dutch military had grown from a medium-sized force of around 310.000 active troops in 1960 to a military that was by 1973 unrivaled in its quality of fighting troops having the 4th largest military in the world. In total, by 1973 440.000 Dutch combat troops were deployed, and the army had manpower reserves of 2.7 million troops. The Nationalist rebels in 1973 were able to field 1.2 million regular troops and between 5 & 7 million guerilla fighters. The war exacted an enormous human cost: it’s estimated that a total of 7-10 million civilians (mostly native Indonesians) died in the conflict along with a total of 144,918 Dutch soldiers (and with an additional 50,000 KNIL soldiers), with 49,000 missing in action. Nationalist losses are not well known but are estimated to be in the millions. Extensive use of chemical weapons, napalm and famines that occurred during and after the war are likely to inflate the numbers of causalities of the conflict. The war's environmental cost was massive with many jungle ecosystems being near-beyond repair (only in modern day are some of the jungles returning to pre-war levels of growth) and entire species went extinct as their biomes were damaged or destroyed. The economic damage of the war was extensive as the Dutch left nearly no infrastructure of the many islands intact and many cities were in literal ruins. Many cities, including the former Batavia (now known as Jayakarta) had to be completed rebuild from the ground up and only recently have the economy of the East Indies Federation been able to recover.

The East Indies Immigration Crisis

In addition to the causalities of war 4.7 million civilians fled the East Indies during the war (mostly loyalist Chinese & Javanese but also almost all of the Dutch and Indo population of the East Indies). After the wars end another 250,000 to 500,000 Chinese and 250,000 Indonesians fled the East Indies between 1976 and 1985 to avoid the ethnic and political violence that the plagued the early now independent East Indies. The most popular designations for the exodus were the Netherlands mainland (in which new polders were constructed to give room to the ballooning immigrant population), New Batavia (in which vast swatches of land were set aside by the Dutch government as a "homeland" to the Indo or Eurasian population of the former East Indies whom the Dutch feared would be targeted in ethnic violence in an independent East Indies) and the Kaap Republic (which allowed many skilled immigrants from the East Indies to come to the country). Other less popular designations for the exodus were the Westerzee province of Tussenland, Taulandt, the Spanish East Indies, New Netherland, Nueva Guinea and Georgia.

Foreign involvement

The east indies crisis due its lenght and the region her strategic importance was not a conflict that was just between the Netherlands and the East Indies liberation front. Rather it was a conflict in which the two great powers backed both parties, as well as a conflict where the Netherlands her allies, former colonies & Dominions where involved in. It saw the deployment of Amerikaner volonteers, Taulandt volonteers, Kaap volonteers and Boschlandt volunteers. But more importantly it saw the Netherlands truly expand its economic network as it spread around its now massive needs for goods across the Dutch sphere.