Why did the 90,000 strong British army surrender Singapore to the Japanese who were only 30,000 strong?

为什么9万兵力的英军把新加坡输给了只有3万兵力的日军？

以下是Quora网友的评价：

LJP

The Japanese were supported by the Thai and they had reinforcements. Singapore had no way of getting more reinforcements.

日本人得到了泰国人的支持，他们有援军。但新加坡没办法获得更多的援军。

Rune Svensson

The Japanese read the secret intel from Singapore to London, that Singapore could not be defended. At first, the Japenese thought it was a trap, but later they realized that it was true.

日本人在新加坡发现了伦敦的秘密情报，说新加坡要失守了。一开始，日本人还认为这是一个陷阱，但后来他们意识到这就是事实。

Susanna Viljanen

Singapore was indefensible.

Singapore has no native ground water sources - all water must be either brought from mainland or be distilled from seawater, and General Percival did not want to put everything on one card.

新加坡站无法防守的。

新加坡没有本地的地下水源—所有水源要么从大陆运来，要么从海水蒸馏而来，珀西瓦尔将军不想把所有宝都押在一张牌上。

General Yamashita had more than 60,000 - not 30,000 as claimed - troops, and he attempted a bluff. The reality was that his troops were exhausted, but Percival did not know about it.

Not only Percival was demoralized, but also the troops in Singapore were the scras of the barrel. They were colonial troops considered to be unfit to be deployed in Europe or Africa, and they had bad training and bad morale.

山下将军有超过6万兵力—不止你说的3万，他还虚张声势。但真相是，日本军队已经筋疲力尽，但珀西瓦尔并不知道这一点。

不仅珀西瓦尔士气低落，新加坡的军队也元气大伤。他们是殖民地军队，不适合部署在欧洲或非洲，他们缺乏训练，士气低落。

With perfect 20/20 hindsight, Percival should have attempted an all-out sally, a Banzai charge. It would have had good chances of succeeding. But once the water supply was cut, Singapore was doomed.

如果要论马后炮，帕西瓦尔应该组织一次全力进攻的，成功的机会很大。但一旦水源被切断，新加坡就立马完蛋了。

William Hobba

I can say that Australian soldiers supposedly did not distinguish themselves in Singapore. The official reason is lousy leadership and poor training, but a British report claimed it was more profound than that. The report claimed they preferred to get drunk (very Australian) and, by all reports, practically raped any women they could find (very, very un-Australian). This last claim made me somewhat suspicious. The report was later discredited. Several Australian units fought well.

The real reason seems to be poor British leadership, then a conspiracy to cover up how bad that leadership was.

我可以说，澳大利亚士兵在新加坡没有好好表现。官方给出的原因是领导不力，培训不善，但英国报告称原因远非如此。英国的报告称他们更喜欢酗酒(这绝对是澳大利亚做派)，而且根据所有报道，他们几乎强奸了他们能找到的所有女人(这绝非澳大利亚做派)。最后这个说法令我生疑，这份报告后来遭到了质疑，有几支澳大利亚小分队的表现十分出色。

真正的原因似乎就是英国领导不力，但他们随后想尽办法遮掩这一事实。

Stacy Elam

Gen. Percival’s surrender to Yamashita “The Tiger of Malay” was a comedy of errors. The surrender happened during a break in the fighting as Gen Yamashita had run out of ammunition and was short on supplies. Yamashita was quite surprised Percival, who could have decimated Yamashita’s forces at the time, was actually approaching them to, of all things, surrender. Percival had no idea Yamashita was out of ammunition. The Japanese had thrown everything at the British in their surprise attack which so stunned Percival into thinking he was up against far more Japanese than were actually there.

珀西瓦尔将军向“马来之虎”山下将军投降，就是一场闹剧。投降发生在交战停火期间，当时山下将军已弹尽粮绝，物资短缺。当山下听说本可以歼灭自己的珀西瓦尔军队提出投降时，非常震惊。珀西瓦尔并不知道山下已经没子弹了。日本人在突袭中对英国人打光了所有弹药，这让帕西瓦尔感到震惊，他误以为自己面对的日本兵比实际人数要多得多。

Jonathan Hickey

It’s 30000 vs 90000 only if you firstly accept Japanese propaganda as fact and count every single British commonwealth person in uniform and ignoring any Japanese serviceman not in the 3 invading divisions (and even then the number of 30000 is woefully low).

The Japanese sent a force of 3 powerful well equipped divisions comprising 11 infantry Regiments (Brigades)

This included 2 divisions with war time experience with the 3rd a well trained unit and 2 tank battalions as well as over 500 aircraft in support.

只有当你先把日本的宣传当做事实，统计出每一个穿制服的英联邦军人，同时把所有在3个入侵师之外的日本军人都排除在外(即便是这样，3万人的数字也是低估了)，才会是所谓的3万对9万的悬殊对比。

日军派出了3个装备精良的师部，包括11个步兵团(旅)。

这其中包含了2个作战经验丰富的师，加上训练有素的第3个师部，2个坦克营以及超过500架飞机的支援。

The British forces were for the most part very green recently raised formations lacking in modern equipment and numbering 7 Brigades (5 Indian Army and 2 Australian).

1 Gurkha battalion was virtually comprised of 18 year old fresh recruits

They had no tanks, a handful of obsolete armoured cars and were short of their full table of equipment.

They had less than 200 aircraft and poor ones at that

Worse the forces were poorly led.

英国军队大部分士兵都是新兵蛋子，新部队也缺乏现代装备，只有7个旅（5个印度陆军旅和2个澳大利亚陆军旅）

1个廓尔喀营队其实都是18岁的新兵组成的

他们没有坦克，只有几辆过时的装甲车，也没有全套装备。

他们只有不到200架飞机，而且质量很差

更糟糕的是，这些军队的指挥也很差劲。

The fact is that the better men and equipment were in Africa or retained in the UK as part of the garrison.

Several of the Brigades were virtually destroyed early on and 2 more at the battle of Slim River

2 more Indian Brigades arrived during the fighting but were virtually untrained and lacked equipment.

The 18th British Division a better equipped and trained unit but still a green unit (with no time to acclimatise itself with the local conditions) arrived from the UK just in time for the surrender.

事实s上，更好的作战兵力和装备都留在非洲或作为驻军留在英国。

其中有几个旅早早就几乎被全部歼灭，另外两个旅也在斯利姆河战役中被歼灭

另外两个印度旅在作战时才匆匆赶到，但兵力并未受过训练，装备不足。

英军第18师是一支装备较为精良、训练较为有素的部队，但也还是新手部队(他们没有时间适应当地条件)，他们直接从英国赶来，但正好赶上投降。

James Barends

Two significant reason. The first is an utter collapse of the the command staff. Once the retreat down the pennisula developed, Percival and his staff never made any real attempt to develop a defensive line that could hold. They lost most of their field artillery in the retreat and thus lacked fire power. The big cannon in Singapore COULD hit the mainland easily and did try to support the troops, but for reasons I can’t understand the only shells were AP’s that would burrow deep before detonating and the Japanese barely noted them. By the time the Japanese attacked Singapore, Percival was trying to get out. He was in fact ordered to stay by London (Churchill) after repeated requests to evacuate his staff and himself to Australia. In a nut shell, he was a totally broken commander.

有两个重要原因。首先是指挥人员的彻底崩溃。在半岛撤退开始后，珀西瓦尔和他的参谋们没有真正竖立一条能够坚守抵抗的防线。他们在撤退中损失了大部分野战炮兵，因此缺乏火力。新加坡的大炮可以轻易击中大陆并努力支援部队，但因为某些我无法理解的原因，唯一的炮弹只有AP，在引爆前会钻得很深，日本人几乎没有注意到它们。日本进攻新加坡时，珀西瓦尔正试图逃出去。在多次提出将他和随形工作人员撤离到澳大利亚的要求后，他被伦敦(丘吉尔)命令留守新加坡。简而言之，他是一个彻底崩溃的指挥官。

And it was his inability to function that lead to the rapid collapse. the key target in the first attack was the water reservoir for the city which the Japanese seized in hours. The British never set up defenses for the water and once it was taken, they had no means to keep the fight going.

正是他的无能导致了英军的迅速失败。第一次进攻的主要目标是这座城市的水库，日军在几个小时内就占领了这座城市。英国人从来没有为这片水域建立防御工事，一旦被占领，就无法继续战斗了。

Brent Sutherland

The point is, they should not have surrendered. I was not there, so I cannot pontificate. However, Singapore was probably the worst debacle the Commonwealth/Empire had during WW2. Even Dunkirk could be shown to have its positive element in terms of the miraculous evacuation.

重点在于，他们就不该投降。但我并不在场，所以我也不能说得泰国武断。不过新加坡可能是英联邦/帝国在二战期间最糟糕的失败。即便是敦刻尔克大撤退也有其积极的一面。

Richard Hardy

I think 90,000 is a conservative figure: some Australian reinforcements arrived to walk straight into captivity the next day.

Percival allowed Yamashita to bully him into submission:

Percival was a weak Character and Yamashita was good at bluffing. The Japanese had only three days artillery shells left.

It would have been worth trying to sally forth along the causeway and attack the Japanese head-on.

Percival spent the war in luxury whilst his men were brutalised and rotted.

我认为9万只是一个保守的数字：有些澳大利亚援军在抵达后的第二天就直接被俘虏了。

珀西瓦尔听任山下威逼他就范：

珀西瓦尔是个软弱的家伙，山下则擅长虚张声势。其实当时日军只剩下三天的炮弹了。

如果珀西瓦尔沿着堤道向前冲，正面攻击日军，还有胜利的希望。

珀西瓦尔在战争中过着奢侈的生活，但他手下的士兵却饱受摧残。

Randall Wong

I’ve seen some answers to questions like that are pretty harsh on Percival with no room to reconsider their opinions.

From some articles on the campaign it seems that some of his unit commanders requested that he surrender when he did. If those commanders felt they could not continue resistance where would he have the confidence that the battle could be continued?

Did Percival even know that their side had an apparent advantage in numbers, and the attackers had their own supply problems? That is known know to researchers, but maybe not him.

我看过一些类似的问题，有些回答对珀西瓦尔太过苛刻，没有考虑过他们的意见。

从一些记录此次战役的文章来看，有些部队指挥官要求珀西瓦尔投降。如果这些指挥官都觉得他们无法继续抵抗，珀西瓦尔又怎么会有信心继续战斗呢？

珀西瓦尔当时知道英国在兵力上占据明显的优势，而日本自己也面临后勤供应的问题吗？研究人员知道这些，但珀西瓦尔可能并不知道。

Kerry Boswell

Suspect the British Army over-estimated the size of the attacking force, and figured there was no chance of being resupplied or relieved, so they surrendered to minimize military and civilian casualties. Plus maybe they expected to be treated humanely after surrender, not what really happened…

我怀疑英国军队高估了日本军队的规模，认为自己没有机会得到补给或救援，所以他们选择了投降，希望尽量减少军队和平民的伤亡。另外，也许他们也希望在投降后得到人道对待，而不是历史上真正发生的那样……

Dan Kim

British army wasn’t doing very well and running out of supples especially food. Japanese were also rapidly gaining grounds and had air and the sea. Further reinforcement for British was not possible. Also Percival had nearly 50,000 starving civilians trapped with him. He found the situation untenable and surrendered. The thing is that the Japanese were also very low on supplies, so many people blamed Percival for unnecessarily surrendering. Some even express crazy notion that Japanese were ready to surrender. But, strategic situation was such that Percival had no hope. Sure, he might have lasted few more months if he chose to let his men and civilians suffer, but he chose to end the pointless struggle. Had he known that Japanese would be so cruel to his surrendering troops, he certainly would have thought differently though.

当时英国军队的情况并不乐观，物资短缺，尤其是食物更为短缺。同时日本人迅速占领了新加坡的海陆空领土。进一步增援英军已是不可能的事。珀西瓦尔身边还有近5万饥饿的平民。他发现形势难以为继，于是无奈投降。但问题是日军的补给也非常紧缺，所以很多人指责珀西瓦尔其实没必要投降。甚至有人认为日本人当时也已经准备投降了。但是，战略形势使珀西瓦尔见不到希望。当然，如果他选择让士兵和平民受苦，他也许还能再坚持几个月，但他选择结束这场毫无意义的战斗。如果他知道日本人会如此残忍地对待他的降部，他肯定不会这么想了。

Joe D'Agostino

I haven’t done the research but from the little that I’ve read and retained it appeared the British were out of supply so they faced a ticking clock. The had no information as to the size of the foe they were facing who had struck so quickly and through what had appeared as impossible terrain. Rather than strike at the enemy in what would probably be a useless waste of lives, they took the less bloody option.

我没有做过研究，但从我读过和保留的一点资料来看，英国人似乎已经弹尽粮绝了，所以他们面临着一个紧迫的局面。他们对敌军的规模一无所知，因为敌人的进攻是如此神速，还穿越了看似不可能的地形。他们没有攻打敌军，做无谓的流血牺牲，而是做出了一个不那么血腥的选择。

Walt Miller

The British were badly led as they were throughout the war. Short answer is that the Japanese captured the reservoirs serving Singapore making the Brit position untenable.

在整个战争期间，英国军队都遭遇了指挥不力的问题。简短回答的话，日本占领了新加坡的水库，英国的地位无法继续维持。

Harsh Manral

The British were caught by surprise and moreover the Japanese Soldiers were better trained and full of more Zeal and Vigor than the British troops!

当时英国人措手不及，日本士兵比英国军队更训练有素，充满了热情和活力！

David Malone

Lieutenant General Percivale surrendered his 220,000 man army to the Japanese general who come in an 80,000 man army.

珀西瓦尔中将把22万人的军队降给了日本将军，而日本军队只有8万人。