Books by Dr Marc Lohnstein

At the end of 1941, Imperial Japan targeted The East Indies in an attempt to secure access to precious oil resources. The Netherlands East Indies Campaign featured complex Japanese and Allied operations, and included the first use of airborne troops in the war. This highly illustrated study is one of the less well-known campaigns of the Pacific War.Imperial Japan''s campaigns of conquest in late 1941/early 1942 were launched in order to achieve self-sufficiency for the Japanese people, chiefly in the precious commodity of oil. The Netherlands (or Dutch) East Indies formed one of Japan''s primary targets, on account of its abundant rubber plantations and oilfields--the latter, in particular, was highly prized, given that the colony was the fourth-largest exporter of oil in the world. Japan itself lacked any form of domestic production. The Japanese dispatched an enormous naval task force to support the amphibious landings over the vast terrain of the Netherlands East Indies. The combined-arms offensive was divided into three groups: western, center and eastern. Borneo was struck first in mid-December 1941, and assaults on Celebes, Amboin, Timor, Java, Sumatra, Ambon, and Dutch New Guinea followed. Allied forces in the NEI comprised British, Australian, Dutch, and American personnel. A combined theater headquarters (ABDACOM) was established on January 15 1942 in an effort to counter the Japanese offensives. The isolated airfields and oilfields were, however, picked off one by one by the Japanese, in the rush to secure the major islands before major Allied reinforcements arrived. This superbly illustrated title describes the operational plans and conduct of the fighting by the major parties involved, and assesses the performance of the opposing forces on the battlefield, bringing to life an often-overlooked campaign of the Pacific War.

Until 1945, Indonesia was a Dutch colony known as the Netherlands East Indies. In 1930, the area had over 60 million inhabitants and was a major exporter of oil, rubber, tin and quinine. It was a particularly strong trading partner for Japan, providing some 13 percent of Japan''s oil needs--second only after the United States. Following Germany''s occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, Japan decided to expand its influence in the Netherlands East Indies via diplomatic negotiations to acquire the necessary strategic goods of oil, rubber and tin. However, the negotiations did not provide Japan with the access it had hoped to gain.Up until the mid-1930s the colonial authorities considered the probability of military conflict between the major powers in Asia to be very low and that any military presence in the colony was primarily aimed at enforcing Dutch rule. This task was mainly the responsibility of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL). This force, designed primarily for colonial policing, underwent a series of cutbacks in the interwar years before the aggressive posture of Japan made this position increasingly unrealistic. The Japanese threat became acute with the seizure of the southern Chinese island of Hainan in February 1939 and the occupation of French Indochina by Japanese troops. Northern Indochina was occupied in September 1940 and Southern Indochina in July 1941. Japan thereby acquired bases from which the Netherlands East Indies was within reach of its naval and air forces.The East Indies Army had developed a modernization program with a time span of four to five years. This 1936 reinforcement plan focused on building up a strike air force, introducing tanks, and increasing the firepower of the infantry and artillery and this was put to the test at the end of 1941 with the declaration of hostilities.