| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
|
Locked on 05/10/2005 7:26:32 AM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason:
By request |
Posted on 05/09/2005 9:08:05 AM PDT by minus_273
In the closing stages of World War II, as Allied and French resistance forces were driving Hitler's now demoralised forces from France, three senior German officers defected.
Legionnaires were recruited from German POW camps The information they gave British intelligence was considered so sensitive that in 1945 it was locked away, not due to be released until the year 2021.
Now, 17 years early, the BBC's Document programme has been given special access to this secret file.
It reveals how thousands of Indian soldiers who had joined Britain in the fight against fascism swapped their oaths to the British king for others to Adolf Hitler - an astonishing tale of loyalty, despair and betrayal that threatened to rock British rule in India, known as the Raj.
The story the German officers told their interrogators began in Berlin on 3 April 1941. This was the date that the left-wing Indian revolutionary leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, arrived in the German capital.
Bose, who had been arrested 11 times by the British in India, had fled the Raj with one mission in mind. That was to seek Hitler's help in pushing the British out of India.
He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered Lieutenant Barwant Singh Six months later, with the help of the German foreign ministry, he had set up what he called "The Free India Centre", from where he published leaflets, wrote speeches and organised broadcasts in support of his cause.
By the end of 1941, Hitler's regime officially recognised his provisional "Free India Government" in exile, and even agreed to help Chandra Bose raise an army to fight for his cause. It was to be called "The Free India Legion".
Bose hoped to raise a force of about 100,000 men which, when armed and kitted out by the Germans, could be used to invade British India.
He decided to raise them by going on recruiting visits to Prisoner-of-War camps in Germany which, at that time, were home to tens of thousands of Indian soldiers captured by Rommel in North Africa.
Volunteers
Finally, by August 1942, Bose's recruitment drive got fully into swing. Mass ceremonies were held in which dozens of Indian POWs joined in mass oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Chandra Bose did not live to see Indian independence These are the words that were used by men that had formally sworn an oath to the British king: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose."
I managed to track down one of Bose's former recruits, Lieutenant Barwant Singh, who can still remember the Indian revolutionary arriving at his prisoner of war camp.
"He was introduced to us as a leader from our country who wanted to talk to us," he said.
"He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered."
Demoralised
In all 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion.
But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border.
Matters were made even worse by the fact that after Stalingrad it became clear that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer Bose help in driving the British from faraway India.
When the Indian revolutionary met Hitler in May 1942 his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones.
So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan.
Rudolf Hartog remembers parting with his Indian friends There, with Japanese help, he was to raise a force of 60,000 men to march on India.
Back in Germany the men he had recruited were left leaderless and demoralised. After mush dissent and even a mutiny, the German High Command despatched them first to Holland and then south-west France, where they were told to help fortify the coast for an expected allied landing.
After D-Day, the Free India Legion, which had now been drafted into Himmler's Waffen SS, were in headlong retreat through France, along with regular German units.
It was during this time that they gained a wild and loathsome reputation amongst the civilian population.
The former French Resistance fighter, Henri Gendreaux, remembers the Legion passing through his home town of Ruffec: "I do remember several cases of rape. A lady and her two daughters were raped and in another case they even shot dead a little two-year-old girl."
Finally, instead of driving the British from India, the Free India Legion were themselves driven from France and then Germany.
Their German military translator at the time was Private Rudolf Hartog, who is now 80.
"The last day we were together an armoured tank appeared. I thought, my goodness, what can I do? I'm finished," he said.
"But he only wanted to collect the Indians. We embraced each other and cried. You see that was the end."
Mutinies
A year later the Indian legionnaires were sent back to India, where all were released after short jail sentences.
But when the British put three of their senior officers on trial near Delhi there were mutinies in the army and protests on the streets.
With the British now aware that the Indian army could no longer be relied upon by the Raj to do its bidding, independence followed soon after.
Not that Subhas Chandra Bose was to see the day he had fought so hard for. He died in 1945.
Since then little has been heard of Lieutenant Barwant Singh and his fellow legionnaires.
At the end of the war the BBC was forbidden from broadcasting their story and this remarkable saga was locked away in the archives, until now. Not that Lieutenant Singh has ever forgotten those dramatic days.
"In front of my eyes I can see how we all looked, how we would all sing and how we all talked about what eventually would happen to us all," he said.
However one shouldn't have the impression that they all signed up out of burning patriotism for the British Empire and a desire to crush fascism; the Indian economy was very bad during WWII, one of the worst problems was inflation in food prices such that the average Indian couldn't afford food; most joined up out of financial desperation.
the birtish had already promised to grant independence after the war, why would they need to repress independence movements?
well keep in mind that was the great depression. we were all pretty bad off (except the soviets.. but thats a case of slave labor)
Yes, the Army was a great career move for many Indians. I didn't mean to suggest that the British pointed guns at people's heads and said "fight for us or else".
My point was that these men (tiny fraction that they were) cannot be called traitors because they were fighting in Britain's wars, and decided to fight against Britain because they believed that was best for their country. A good analogy would be the Free French Resistance in WWII which decided to fight against their country's (Vichy) govt and Germany instead of for them.
The only difference is that the Free French wound up on the winning side, while these suckers wound up on the losing side. Don't get me wrong - I'm no supporter of Subhas Chandra Bose - the man was a fascist nutcase, and if he'd come to power, instead of Nehru, India would have turned out like Saddam Hussein's Iraq or something.
I do agree that the British Indian Army was no longer pro-British by that time, but I'm not so sure that that was a major factor in Britain giving Independence. (The lack of a white settler class was certainly a factor). But I don't think the British ever seriously considered ruling India by force, using the Indian Army, even if it had been reliable. Simply too many people, and too big a country, and too hard to handle.
The British came to power by playing Indian rulers against each other and stayed in power by co-opting the Indian elite. The Independence movement became serious when the Indian educated elite turned against the British when they realized that they might be allowed education at Oxford and Cambridge, but they were never going to be treated as equals like the Australians. It is to be noted that the racism against Indians *increased* in the last 70 years of the Empire - the early British assimilated a lot more.(Nehru once called himself "the last Englishman to rule India"). Gandhi's genius was in taking the movement of an educated elite and making it a mass, all-India movement, but the British lost their trump card when they lost the support of the elite.
Anyway, I've wandered wildly off topic so I'll stop now..
You are correct. However, the effective loss of a tool they had used for controlling India for most of a century was an obvious factor in them making the decision to "grant" independence.
They really didn't have a choice.
An excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on Subhas Chandra Bose:
---
At the start o World War II, Bose traveled to Germany where he joined the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and established the Indian Legion, (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) from Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa. The Azad Hind legion was attached to the Waffen SS, and they swore their allegiance to Hitler and Bose for the independence of India.
Recent research has shown that after the Normandy landings, the French resistance and military openly shot unarmed and surrendered Indian legionaries who had tried to escape to neutral Switzerland, in defiance of the norms of the Geneva Convention in 1944. Though there were a few incidents of the rape which its German liaison officers claimed that they were unable to control, on the whole it was a disciplined unit.
Bose had openly criticised Hitler's treatment of Jews, annulment of democratic institutions in Germany and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.
---
4500 soldiers out 2.5 million in the Indian Army? And that too, prisoners of war, who were told "either fight for India against Britain, or rot in prison"?
The more I read about these guys the more sympathy I have for them. They just wound up on the wrong side.
Interesting. The Waffen SS was a very multicultural force by the end of the war. Saw a documentary on them on the history channel over the weekend. Pretty much anybody they conquered they created a division out of the prisoners- ukranian, polish, even british. I guess you can add Indian to that list now, too.
IIRC, the British had promised the Indians dominion status(like that granted to Australia, Canada, etc), if they fought on their side way back in WW-I. They never did so back then, and the only reason why they quit India in 1947 was because they were too weak to hold on to India after the severe damages they had incurred in WW-II, notwithstanding American and Soviet pressures against colonialism.
Here's an excerpt. Please reply if you find anything odd or falsified herein (whitewash included):
http://www.indhistory.com/lord-irwin.html
In May 1929 the Labor Party won the most number of seats at the General Elections in Britain. They did not have an overall majority but formed a minority Government. Ramsay Macdonald became Prime Minister and Wedgewood Benn the Secretary of State for India.
Lord Irwin visited London to consult the new Government. It was known that the Labor Party was more sympathetic to Indian aspirations.
Soon after his return, the Viceroy Lord Irwin with the consent of the Secretary of State for India, Wedgewood Benn made a momentous announcement. He stated that a Round Table Conference would be held in which the British Government would sit with delegates from British India, and the native states to discuss India's constitutional progress. He envisaged that the natural issue of the conference to be Dominion Status for India.
Gandhi and the elder statesman of the Congress Party welcomed the statement.
However, Lord Irwin was soon to retract the statement. His promise of Dominion Status raised a howl of protest in London. Led by his predecessor Lord Reading, the Conservatives and Liberals combined to condemn the Viceroy. Although Wedgewood Benn defended the Viceroy the minority Government had to defer to the majority pressure exerted by the Conservatives and Liberals in combination.
As a consequence the Viceroy Lord Irwin was non-committal when Gandhi met him to seek clarification. Lord Irwin merely said that he could not prejudge the final outcome of the Round Table Conference. In other words there was not going to be any Dominion Status for India.
The change in the attitude of the British Government did not leave the Congress Party with much choice. At the annual party convention held in December 1929 under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru it was decided to launch a campaign of civil disobedience in the pursuit of complete independence.
I consider this the proudest moment of Indian history regardless of what people here at FR may think. Subhash Chandra Bose fought for India and he did nothing wrong.
keep in mind that wikipedia is hardly a reliable source. anyone can go and write anything they want.
Fascinating post. I'm a WWII and history buff, and I was glad to get to read this.
aside from occupy other countries in the name of indian independence,
What loyalty does a private or NCO owe to an army in which he knows for a fact that his son will never have any chance to become an officer ?
An interesting fact in the employment of the Indian Army was that they were not used among "white" people (they were used in Italy but to the British "wogs" weren't white). They did not want a situation where a brown man was having sex with a white woman. That is why they were only used on the Western Front in WW1 only at the very beginning when the British manpower situation was dire.
4500 out of the garrisons of Tobruk and Crete.
where did you get that info from? part of the process of the destruction of the colonization myth of whites being superior was seeing them kill themselves while serving on the western front. Before that colonists seemed almost invincible to less technologically advanced people.
I know quite a bit about the Great War.
In 1915 they put Indian divisions on the Western Front but denied them leave because they didn't want brown men sleeping with white French prostitutes. They were quickly removed from the Western Front and sent to the Middle East and Africa.
they were sent to the mid east because they could not fight in the weather in europe especially in the winter. The british thought that the mid east and africa would be better becasue they thought it was similiar to their home climate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.