Hitler's secret Indian army

[Guest guest]

Hitler's secret Indian army

 

By Mike Thomson

BBC News

 

 

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."

 

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.