The Weirdest Battle of World War II

Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Japan all fighting in Africa

(By Oulds, D C (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer — http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//17/media-17907/large.jpgThis photograph A 9713 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25259065)

On May 5th, 1942, British forces landed on the island of Madagascar, thus beginning a campaign that would drag on for six full months. The Battle of Madagascar was one of the strangest battles of the entire war and pitted British and Dutch forces against the French and Japanese. This was not a one-off battle but a protracted fight that eventually saw hundreds of casualties, including dozens of tanks and planes destroyed during the fighting. Despite the length of the campaign, few people remember the Battle of Madagascar. The battle was one of the strangest of the war and perhaps its absolute weirdest.

Why were the British fighting for Madagascar? Why were the French so determined to stop them? Why were the Japanese involved?

The Madagascar Campaign began in earnest after the Japanese seized large portions of Burma in Southeast Asia. Between the conquest of Burma and the alliance with Thailand, Japan had access to large swaths of coastline on the Indian Ocean. As a result, Japanese submarines and commerce raiders had free reign in the central Indian Ocean. This posed a serious threat to the British position in the region. British war planners were terrified that the Japanese would manage to threaten their supply lines…