WWII’s Hidden Aftermath: How Victory Betrayed Millions | Historian Phil Craig

In 1945, the world celebrated Allied victory in World War II — but across Asia, the war didn’t end. It simply changed shape, sparking new battles for freedom and the end of empire.

In this episode, historian Phil Craig joins Ramblings of a Sikh to discuss his new book, 1945: The Reckoning, the final volume in his acclaimed trilogy on the Second World War. Through the intertwined stories of five people — an Indian nationalist, a loyalist soldier, a nurse in famine-stricken Bengal, a doctor at Belsen, and a POW in Taiwan — Craig shows how “liberation” became a reckoning.

Why did British generals re-arm Japanese troops in Vietnam?

How did two Indian brothers, fighting on opposite sides, embody a nation at war with itself?

And what does it mean to say victory betrayed millions?

From the Bengal famine to the collapse of empire, this conversation explores how 1945 fractured families, toppled empires, and shaped the modern world we live in.

📘 Watch till the end for a discussion on how the promises of freedom made in 1945 still echo in today’s geopolitics.