During the early 1940s the British military suffered a almost unbroken sequence of disastrous defeats at the hands of the German and Japanese armed forces. At Dunkirk they saved most of their troops but little of their equipment; and they lost their major ally, France, while the Germans consolidated their grip on Europe. In North Africa, the British and Australian troops where chased to the border of Egypt. Supplies to the British Islands from Canada were secure, but India, which supplied the forces in the Middle East and Far East regions, was boiling with rebellion.In quick sequence, the Japanese captured Hong Kong, Singapore, and Burma. They bombed Madras and Calcutta. Their navy sank the British navy, except for a few ships which restationed themselves in East Africa. Calcutta was their major target but they were blocked by the giant tidal rivers of East Bengal (now Bangladesh).

They had to go north to the region of Imphal. The Indian Army was called back from Egypt and sent north.Calcutta, the great industrial area, was always secure but restless. However, to the west, in the Midnapore region, the British district commissioners were assassinated or driven away and a parallel Bengali government developed.To quell rebellion the British Government of India imprisoned tens of thousands of political prisoners. All the Indian leaders were in jail. The British also passed laws restricting economic activity. They took away the small boats of a river-based communications system, for security reasons.

They also, for their army, made large purchases of rice. The result of these various moves was a hyper-inflation as less and less of the population could afford to buy rice.Eventually Famine arrived. The British had developed kindly and effective methods on how to recognize and treat famine conditions. But the people who could implement relief had been assasssinated or driven out of the countryside by Bengali "revolutionaries".Thus a deadly famine developed in a place that was not lacking food. Because of draconian censorship no news of the famine leaked out, even in Calcutta. Authorities concentrated on fighting the Japanese.

The situation changed when the soldiers started to give their rations to the mobs following their trucks. The Army High Command took over the task of famine relief and the Famine went away after millions died.A Commission of Inquiry was formed to look into the causes of the famine. It met a few times and produced a preliminary report. But the sweep of events made it obsolete. The jailed Indian politicians, who had not even heard of the Famine, were released from jail. The Japanese were pushed back and eventually defeated by the Americans. The British were busy trying to regain their colonies east of India.

The Famine was forgotten. There is no monument to the dead.