a follow up question: I've found it hard to find reliable estimates of British causalities in WW2 broken down by nationality: i know ~400,000 troops iin the British Army died, but what is the breakdown by country/ethenicity?

bonus: the Indian national Army fought against the british army in burma. can we have a breakdown of british (indian) troops who died fighting the INA, as opposed to in other theaters?

edit:this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

says that the british had 383,000 military deaths (including overseas terriotires), and lists indian military deaths under the british as 87,000. I'm not clear if the latter is included in the former, though.

In answer to your first question, the Indian Army fielded 23 divisions in WW2. As well as fighting in the India/Burma campaign they composed a large proportion of the troops in Eritrea and Ethiopia against the Italians, The North African campaign and Italy, not forgetting Syria. According to one author the 4th Infantry Division lost 25,000 men alone during the war, while the 5th Infantry was one of the few to fight against the Germans, Italians and Japanese.

The Indian Army was just as important to the British Army as any British forces, they just didn't get the publicity for the newsreels.

The mutiny of tens of thousands of Indian soldiers after the fall of Singapore was according to some historians a significant cause of the fall of the British Empire. Without the security provided by the vast swathes of Indian troops and their stead fast reliability the far flung reaches of the Empire became impossible to govern. Exacerbating this was the fact that with this mutiny the myth of impregnability that surrounded the British Empire was forever destroyed.

Indian troops were crucial for Britain in winning the war, especially against the Japanese perhaps when they realised their own importance after the war the process of self determination began.

This is discussed in books like Forgotten Armies by Bayly and Harper.

Edit: Spelling

Keep in mind that we do not allow 'what if' questions in this sub. Any questions that can only be answered by speculation are to be removed, so I ask you to kindly remove the last two questions of your original post.