Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith, GBE, PC (10 March 1899 – 20 March 1977) was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, military officer and politician who was a Member of Parliament for Petersfield from 1935 to 1941 and Governor of Burma from 1941 to 1946.
Early life and politics
Dorman-Smith was educated at Harrow School and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. After serving in the army, he continued his career with a strong interest in agriculture, becoming president of the National Farmers Union (the NFU) at the age of 32, and then later Minister of Agriculture. He was first elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Petersfield in the 1935 general election as one of a handful of MPs sponsored by the NFU and served as the Union's president for the following few years. As an MP, Dorman-Smith was a member of the English Mistery and its successor, English Array. English Mistery was a mystical "back-to-the-land" movement that sought to discover the "lost secrets" of the English as way as bringing about some sort of neo-feudal political and social order. In September 1938, Dorman-Smith spoke at the English Array's annual rally held at Farleigh Wallop, urging that Britain not to go war with Germany over the Sudetenland crisis.
In the late 1930s, the British Government's agricultural policy came in for heavy criticism from the NFU, Parliament and the Press and in January 1939 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took the bold step of appointing Dorman-Smith as Minister of Agriculture. As benefitting a former president of the National Farmers Union, Dorman-Smith was very close to the farmers' lobby and represented their interests in the cabinet. In October 1939, Dorman-Smith instigated the Government's Dig for Victory campaign, aimed at increasing food production from allotments. During the war, Dorman-Smith was opposed to the "nutritional" approach under which university-educated experts would instruct farmers in how to obtain maximum yields from their lands, saying in November 1939 "once we fall into the nutrition trap we are sunk". In general, Dorman-Smith tended to champion traditional farming methods and was opposed to pasteurised milk under the grounds that British people had drunk unpasteurised milk for thousands of years, and he saw no reason for any change. In the winter of 1939–1940, Dorman-Smith had "different conclusions" about agriculture with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, who favoured the scientific "nutritional" approach to farming. From Churchill's viewpoint, increasing agricultural production would lessen the threat of a U-boat caused famine in Britain and free up shipping for other uses. When Chamberlain fell, Dorman-Smith was not included in the government of his successor, Winston Churchill.
Dorman-Smith was referred to in the book Guilty Men by Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard (writing under the pseudonym 'Cato'), published in 1940 as an attack on public figures for their failure to re-arm and their appeasement of Nazi Germany. Foot, Owen and Howard had singled out Dorman-Smith as one of the "guilty men", blaming him for low agricultural productivity as a minister of agriculture at a time when the U-boat campaign threatened Britain with a famine. The British historian Andrew Marr wrote that Dorman-Smith was a "bizarre target" in Guilty Men as he was never very close to Chamberlain and was not particularly involved in Chamberlain's foreign policy, and moreover had only joined the cabinet in January 1939 after the Munich Agreement.
Governor of Burma Arrival in Burma Dorman-Smith was appointed Governor of Burma from 6 May 1941 to 31 August 1946. He was in office at the time of the Japanese invasion and was expelled from the country by the Japanese. Burma was a turbulent colony as the Bamar had never really accepted the British conquest of Burma and the Great Depression by collapsing the price of rice had devastated Burma's economy. The thesis behind British rule in Burma was an implicit social contract under which the Burmese economy would grow in exchange for the acceptance of colonial rule; most Bamar took the viewpoint that the Great Depression had put and end to the social contract, a viewpoint not shared by the British. The British historian Michael Leigh wrote: "Dorman-Smith was complicated. Urbane, thoughtful, and fair, he was prepared to defend the underdog and could be intensely loyal to his friends...Perhaps he was not thick-skinned enough to be a great colonial administrator for he could be crippled by personal criticism and often grappled with a tender conscience. This rendered him indecisive and even self-delusional at times. He was neither a strong nor a weak leader, but his anxiety to do the right thing and to please people made him extremely vulnerable".
In July 1941, Claire Lee Chennault arrived in Rangoon seeking transit rights to use the Burma Road for the American Volunteer Group (AVG), an ostensible group of mercenary pilots who had been hired by Chiang Kai-shek to provide China with an air force that was in fact a thinly disguised American intervention in the Sino-Japanese War. On 23 July 1941, Chennault met with Dorman-Smith who was highly supportive of the AVG and promised Chennault everything he asked for. Dorman-Smith gave Chennault permission to train his pilots in Burma before going on to China; to use the Burma Road to bring supplies for the AVG; the right to install guns on his aircraft and to conduct live-fire training in Burma; observation posts in Burma; and the right to use the remote Royal Air Force airfield at Toungoo. Chennault described Dorman-Smith as a man who was very sincere in wanting to help the AVG. On 26 July 1941, Dorman-Smith reported to the Burma Office in London that he was "anxious to meet Chenault's wishes" and he expected no opposition from the Burmese ministers. On 27 July 1941, Dorman-Smith's agreement with Chennault was vetoed by Air Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in the Far East who told Dorman-Smith that he exceeded his authority in giving Chennault permission to install guns on his aeroplanes and conduct gunnery exercises in Burma. Chennault went to Singapore to seek to change Brooke-Popham's mind, but the matter was settled by a directive from the War Office on 30 July 1941 that ruled in favour of Brooke-Popham. On 21 August 1941, Churchill intervened to rule in favour of Dorman-Smith. As the Burma Road was the only way by this point for Westerners to reach China, Dorman-Smith found himself entertaining a number of American visitors on their way to China. Clare Boothe Luce wrote in her diary that Dorman-Smith was the "big, handsome, able, dark, young governor".
Dorman-Smith had a strong liking for the Burmese prime minister, U Saw (like most Bamar, U Saw had only one name). He complained most of the Burmese politicians were corrupt, petty men who preached a highly chauvinistic version of Bamar nationalism. He especially disliked Ba Maw who had instigated bloody riots against the Indian minority in 1938, seeing him as a perfect example of the jingoistic Barmar nationalist. Dorman-Smith called U Saw a "true patriot" and a "likeable rogue" whose private army, the Galon, could be used for the defence of Burma. In October 1941, Dorman-Smith arranged for U Saw to go to London to discuss Dominion status for Burma with Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India and Burma, and Winston Churchill, the prime minister. The talks were inconclusive as Churchill met U Saw only once and while Amery told U Saw that nothing could be done about granting Burma Dominion status until after the war. On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the British empire. On his way home in December 1941, U Saw stopped by the Japanese embassy in Lisbon to offer his support for Burma joining the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. The British had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and were aware of U Saw's offer, leading for Amery to send a telegram to Dorman-Smith saying that U Saw had just committed "a treacherous act" and was to be arrested immediately upon his return to Burma. U Saw was arrested upon his arrival in Rangoon and was exiled to Uganda for the rest of the war.
Invasion and evacuation The forces defending Burma were inadequate with the 17th Indian Division - which had been assigned to defend Burma - being considered one of the worse divisions in the British Indian Army. Despite the fact that Thailand had allowed Japanese forces transit rights, British planners had assumed wrongly that the jungles on the Burmese-Thai border were "impenetrable", hence the decision to assign one Indian Army division and a particularly bad one at that to defend Burma. Burma had some of the most productive rice fields in Asia; was rich in oil, rubber and other raw materials; and the port of Rangoon was one of the largest ports in Asia which led the Japanese to make the conquest of Burma a priority. Furthermore, one of the central Japanese objectives to sever the Burma road which linked India to China, and by 1940 was the only route by which arms had reached China. The Japanese saw the conquest of Burma as the means to finally win the war against China which they had been fighting since 1937; by contrast British military planners in London did not seem to understand the Japanese obsession with severing the Burma Road and assumed the Japanese would not attempt an invasion of Burma from Thailand. Finally, reflecting the "Germany First" grand strategy, the Royal Air Force aircraft assigned to Burma were all obsolete, leading for the Japanese to have complete air superiority. Only the American Volunteer Group (AVG) under the command of General Claire Lee Chennault which on their way to China when the Japanese invaded were the only force capable of defending the skies above Burma as the AVG had modern aircraft, but even then the AVG was heavily outnumbered. On 23 December 1941 the Japanese bombed Rangoon for the first time and returned for a second time on 25 December 1941. At the sound of the air raid siren, Dorman-Smith retired to the air raid shelter under the Government House and stayed there until the all clear was given. Dorman-Smith went on to personally inspect the damage and reported that hundreds of people had been killed in the bombing. The second bombing raid did even more damage and set off dozens of fires all over Rangoon. Archibald Wavell had just arrived in Rangoon minutes before the second bombing raid started, and after greeted by Dorman-Smith at the Government House was forced to join him in the air raid shelter after the Japanese again bombed Rangoon. Dorman-Smith and his wife, Lady Dorman-Smith, were forced to spend Christmas Day and Boxing Day visiting hospitals to offer moral support for those injured by the Japanese bombing raids. The Dufferin Hospital was destroyed in the bombing raid, and the surviving patients had to be taken to Rangoon General Hospital, which itself was overfilled with bomb victims. Dorman-Smith complained that the doctors had all fled Rangoon and there were only three nurses to tend to the wounded.