So Operation Compass December 1940 - February 1941 in which Britain destroyed the Italian Tenth Army which had a numerical advantage over Britain of about 5:1 and where Britain took upwards of 120,000 Italian prisoners with many deaths and injuries on both sides, while nobody else was fighting Italy or Germany, doesn’t count?
The people who fought, were wounded and died in that conflict would be offended that their efforts and sacrifices don’t matter.
Barbarossa is irrelevant to the fact that only the British Commonwealth was fighting Germany, and Italy, up to mid-1941 when Barbarossa was launched (after the British Commonwealth had been fighting the Germans in North Africa, Greece and Crete). The USSR to that point had been happily carving up eastern Europe in deals with the Nazis, which gave the Soviets new territories without having to fight for them, never mind defending their homeland as the British had been since the outbreak of war and losing tens of thousands of civilians in Britain during that time.
I’m not ignoring the vastly greater military and civilian losses under far, far worse conditions endured in the USSR after Barbarossa, but they are irrelevant the fact that only Britain and its Commonwealth fought the existing Axis (Germany and Italy) alone to mid-1941. And if Britain hadn’t done that, and stopped Hitler executing his main aim of going eastwards until mid-1941, then the Soviets probably would have faced an earlier invasion with poorer prospects of defending the USSR successfully, or at least doing so at far greater cost than the awful, awful cost the Soviets endured after Barbarossa.
British Commonwealth:Japan troops in Malaya were roughly 2:1.
Factor in that British Commonwealth troops were in large numbers only base troops in their bases; were fragmented; were not always even adequately trained or led; lacked battle hardening of many opposing Japanese units; lacked mobility due to need to defend widely separated airfields; and had virtually no air cover or armour against Japan’s great superiority in both areas, and the numerical superiority on paper of British Commonwealth troops becomes meaningless.
The Japanese were better trained, better led, better planners, quicker to exploit battlefield advantages as they occurred, generally much better in battle tactics at all levels, better morale, more cohesive, and overall very much better than their British Commonwealth opponents. Add in Japan’s great air and armour advantages and Japan was bound to win.
Given those factors favouring Japan, you can’t disparage the British Commonwealth forces for losing to Japan in Malaya while disparaging the British Commonwealth forces who performed at least as well as the Japanese when the British Commonwealth forces defeated the numerically much superior Italian forces in North Africa.
Give credit where it is due, to the Japanese in Malaya (and everywhere else on land south of Vietnam up to January 1943) and to the British Commonwealth forces in North Africa up to mid-1941.
