Why Were the Dutch so Ineffective against Japan in Indonesia during WW2?

by March 1942 they completed the conquest of the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch colonial army

was easily brushed aside. This raises the question: why were the Dutch so ineffective

against Japan during the Dutch East Campaign in World War II? Keep watching

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Thanks. You can see that below the video. The KNIL (Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger; Royal Netherlands East Indies Army)

was the Dutch colonial army in the Dutch East Indies; for centuries under Dutch

influence the KNIL was established in the first half of the 19th century when the Dutch State

took over the possessions of the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) which had gone bankrupt before. The

KNIL had a twofold task: maintaining internal order and the defense against a foreign enemy.

This dualism could be seen in the organization, tactics, armaments of the Dutch colonial army.

Small isolated units were stationed in the outer regions (buitengewesten) which were the islands

beyond Java and Madura. The main Army was a Java Army located on Java island and was intended to fight

a foreign Invader. The chief of general staff of the KNIL from 1939 was Hein ter Poorten.

For land and naval forces there didn't exist a joint HQ; do note that the Royal Netherlands

Navy (Koninklijke Marine) was not part of the KNIL and was under the Dutch Ministry of Defense. They had

their HQ in Batavia (now Jakarta) with the main naval base in Surabaya while the KNIL had

its HQ in Bandung. Then there was also the air arm: the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force

(ML-KNIL). This force had 95 bombers, 99 fighters, 34 reconnaissance aircraft and 155 other aircraft.

Some of his planes were obsolete by 1941 standards. A major weakness of the ML-KNIL was the lack of

trained and technical personnel. North American bombers were ordered but arrived too late to join

the fight against Japan and and the same goes for war material for the land army.

“Out of four hundred light American armored cars, only twenty-five were ready on time. The American wartime economy could not serve

everyone. Hundred thousand guns? Order cancelled. 162 Brewster dive bombers? Not delivered. The same number of

B-25 bombers? Supplied, but... without parachutes. There was also a great shortage of machine

guns, field artillery, mortars, anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft defenses and above all: experience.”

The KNIL was in a constant reorganization from 1936 till 1942 and do notice that defense of the

Indonesian archipelago was a whole different ball game than when you compare it to the defense of

the Netherlands against Germany: in the Netherlands there were several lines of defense. In the Dutch East

Indies these lines of defense were the different army branches: the first line of defense was the

air arm which had to prevent Japanese landings; the second line was the Dutch Navy and the third line

was the colonial land army. So how did it come to war between the Netherlands and Japan? Well did you

know that the Netherlands was the first country to declare war in Japan after they have attacked

Pearl Harbor? The British and Americans followed shortly after. The Dutch wanted to show its

stronger side to the Allies and felt embolded by them. From December 1941 the Japanese launched the

conquest of Southeast Asia and the main target were the oil wells in the Dutch East Indies. When

in June 1941 talks between the Japanese and the Dutch government that locked the Japanese realized

they had to get the oil wells by force and if this would result in war with Britain and the US... it had