I heard a mention of this today, but don’t know anything about the history.
Did Japan and Germany play a role in getting India free from the UK?
Other than bankrupting Britain so they couldn’t hang on to their territories?
I would think that was the most significant impact that they had on the Empire, but defer to more knowledgeable posters, line AK84.
There’s the bankruptcy and general exhaustion, as already noted by Northern Piper. But there’s also the Indian National Army, funded and equipped by the Japanese, which sought to liberate India from British rule in alliance with the Japanese. The effort was unsuccessful in a military sense, of course, but the first substantial attempt to offer armed resistance to colonial rule since the 1857 mutiny couldn’t but have a significant consciousness-raising effect, and this was intensified by popular feeling about the harsh treatment of INA volunteers at the hands of the British after the war. The events called into question the morale and the loyalty of substantial elements of the British Indian Army and, therefore, the capacity of the British to continue to rule in India.
There are parallels, no doubt, with the militarily unsuccessful Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916, and the harsh reaction which followed, and the effect this had on popular sentiment about independence.
Basically, neither Germany or Japan had any interest in Indian independence. But they did like the idea of weakening the British Empire so they offering assistance to some elements in the Indian independence movement. But the mainstream independence movement was never associated with Germany or Japan.
The principle of eventual independence for India was on the agenda for all but a bunch of Tory diehards around Churchill by the early 30s. The only question was, on what terms and when, bearing in mind that a major part of India was still the “princely states”, and there were intercommunal tensions. The government in London had started a gradualist (some would say, leisurely) process, by the time the war started (formally speaking, the Viceroy declared war on Germany on behalf of all India, which outraged nationalists, of course). The fact that Churchill’s wartime government was a coalition with Labour meant that some moves were made to try to negotiate a way forward in response to the Quit India campaign, but by then it had got more complicated with the rise of the Muslim League demanding Pakistan. So in effect it was shelved until after the war, and the Labour government pushed independence and partition through.
So the fact of war itself of course impacted attitudes and decisions, but the course of events was already in that direction.
The Indian National Army had as much effect as Bugs Bunny did, none at all. The mythologising of them comes from post war Republic of India, which found the large Indian Army contingent in British service to be unpalatable (and since most troops came from the Punjab and the Frontier, could be safely ignored as that area was now in Pakistan).
I would say the Americans had a greater effect then the Germans or Japanese. The US had wanted to dismantle the colonial empires for decades mostly due to wanting to open up the markets for their own goods, but the institutional dislike of colonialism was undoubtedly a factor. Americans were not going to help Britain prop up its rule. This was a major bone of contention between Churchill and the Americans. The US made it clear that while they were willing to make any sacrifice to defend Britain, they were far less enthused about doing the same for British interests and none at all for British colonies.
Of course if the UK had managed to hold on for a couple of years then they would seen the Americans change their policy. As the Marshall Plan gathered steam and the Cold War intensified the US began to see the European colonies as essential for the recovery of Europe, and gave support generously to efforts to surpress revolts. Like Indo-China.