[3] In September 1938, Dorman-Smith spoke at the English Array's annual rally held at Farleigh Wallop, urging that Britain not to go war with Germany over the Sudetenland crisis.

Dorman-Smith was referred to in the book "Guilty Men" by Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard (writing under the pseudonym 'Cato'), published in 1940 as an attack on public figures for their failure to re-arm and their appeasement of Nazi Germany.

Urbane, thoughtful, and fair, he was prepared to defend the underdog and could be intensely loyal to his friends...Perhaps he was not thick-skinned enough to be a great colonial administrator for he could be crippled by personal criticism and often grappled with a tender conscience.

[10] On 26 July 1941, Dorman-Smith reported to the India & Burma Office in London that he was "anxious to meet Chenault's wishes" and he expected no opposition from the Burmese ministers.

[16] In October 1941, Dorman-Smith arranged for U Saw to go to London to discuss Dominion status for Burma with Leo Amery, the India Secretary, and Winston Churchill, the prime minister.

[17] On his way home in December 1941, U Saw stopped by the Japanese embassy in Lisbon to offer his support for Burma joining the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

[16] The British had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and were aware of U Saw's offer, leading for Amery to send a telegram to Dorman-Smith saying that U Saw had just committed "a treacherous act" and was to be arrested immediately upon his return to Burma.

[17] Despite the fact that Thailand had allowed Japanese forces transit rights, British planners had assumed wrongly that the jungles on the Burmese-Thai border were "impenetrable", hence the decision to assign one Indian Army division and a particularly bad one at that to defend Burma.

[33] Starting with the first bombing of Rangoon, a desperate competition to board any ships bound for India began with violence at the port becoming common as people pushed each other out of the lines, leading to frequent fights; touts sold tickets for any ship for India at immensely inflated prices; and bribery became rampant as the richer Indians sought to literally buy their way out of Burma at the expense of the poorer Indians.

[35] In early January 1942, Dorman-Smith visited Prome to ask the refugees to return to Rangoon, saying that with cholera raging it was unsafe for them to drink the water, and promised them they would be evacuated in an orderly fashion.

[30] On 20 January 1942, the Fifty-fifth Division of the Imperial Japanese Army based in Thailand invaded Burma and proved adept at using jungle trails to bypass the Indian troops.

[23] As most of the policemen had deserted their posts, crime reached unprecedented heights in Burma and the Indian and the Chinese merchants who the victims of the most serious looting complained that Dorman-Smith was slow in proclaiming martial law.

[40] From his window of the Government House, Dorman-Smith was confronted with an apocalyptic scene as the skyline was blackened with smoke caused by the fires started by the Japanese bombing raids; sirens wailed as ambulances to pick up the wounded; and the sound of gunfire was heard as the Gloucestershire regiment fought with the dacoits.

[41] Dorman-Smith defended the releases, which had been ordered by Burma civil servant, J. Fielding-Hall, who argued that it was inhumane to keep people locked up while being impossible to provide them with food and water.

[42] Vorley told Dorman-Smith it was dishonorable to leave these people behind, and he agreed with him, giving orders to the Royal Navy commodore in charge of the port to find any ship to take them to India.

[46] Thousands of Indians died of heat exhaustion, starvation, disease or were killed by Bamar gangs while trying to walk though what were called Burma's "jungles of death" to reach the safety of India.

[48] American newspaper correspondents covering the war in Burma were less bound by British censorship and were especially vocal in condemning Dorman-Smith for the mismanagement of the campaign and of the evacuation of the Indians.

[48] The war correspondent Leland Stowe of the Chicago Tribune was one of Dorman-Smith's most vociferous critics, whom he had lacerated in his articles as a bumbling buffoon hopelessly out of touch with reality, and gave him the unflattening nickname of "Doormat-Smith".

Dorman-Smith wrote in the third person when he heard of the fall of Singapore in February 1942 that his "Mistery training stood him in good stead throughout the crisis and gave him the strength to carry on".

[49] Dorman-Smith later wrote that most people in Britain did not understand what it felt to be invaded, and that "only those who been the victims of an invasion can realise what it means to have a rutheless enemy ever pressing forward".

[56] As Dorman-Smith was in the jungle with no records waiting impatiently to be flown out of Burma, he send Amery a rambling telegram noted for its grammatical errors that did not answer his questions.

[57] Sir Shenton Thomas, the governor of the Straits Settlements, had been captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell on 15 February 1942 and had been paraded through the streets of Singapore as a prisoner as a way to show the power of Japan; Churchill was determined to prevent another British governor in Asia from being humiliated in the same way, telling Dorman-Smith that he did not want to see him paraded through the streets of Rangoon as a Japanese prisoner.

His reputation was badly damaged by a bestselling book in the United States, A Million Died: A Story of the War in the Far East by the American journalist Alfred Wagg, that had been published in the Autumn of 1942 that blamed Dorman-Smith for the botched evacuation from Burma.

Tin Tut wrote to Dorman-Smith in April 1943 that after the war it was clear: "that Burma will need a powerful friend and where better can she find one than in an England who will prove her generosity and disinterestedness by the grant of Dominion Status?

"[63] Churchill was enraged by a speech Dorman-Smith had given in New Delhi where he said: "Burma belonged to the Burmese, and when the time came for full self-government, 'we must try to hand over the country for which we have done a good job of work!

"[64] For his part, Paw Tun, the leader of the Burmese government-in-exile wrote to Dorman-Smith asking to press Churchill for a promise of independence, saying the recent statements about restoring Burma as a colony would "create a deep sense of despair" among the Bamar people.

In March 1944, Dorman-Smith compared the Bamar to the Irish, writing that like the Irish the Bamar are ""a romantic people, fed from childhood on the pristine greatness of their country; superstitious...and very gullible but being mostly a nation of peasants they have the cunning and shrewdness of the eternal peasant...The honesty of their politicians and minor officials may be open to question but I have seen too much of the ways of politicians and officials in other countries to be over-shocked by such petty graft as went on in Burma.

[69] By contrast, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the GOC of Southeast Asia Command, was more open to making a deal with General Aung San who by 1944 was complaining that the Japanese treated the Bamar worse than the British and that he was prepared to defect with his army.

[72] Dorman-Smith found himself out of favor with everyone as the new Labour government did not trust him; Churchill regarded him as a "liability"; Aung San saw him as an enemy; the British media were hostile towards him; and the returning Indians blamed him for the botched evacuation of 1942.

Dorman-Smith was born to a Protestant Anglo-Irish father and an Irish Catholic mother at Bellamont House, Cootehill, County Cavan, Ireland, and was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst.