Hitler's secret Indian army

From reading about these chaps a while back I seem to recall that their officers, many of them hardened Eastern Front veterans, eventually deserted as they were so appalled at the behaviour of their troops.

Let's not forget 'The Goodies' in contrast to these affirmed 'Baddies' though.
The Indian Army (& Navy and Air force too of course) earned a good number of VCs and were the biggest Army of volunteers to take to the WW2 battlefield on the right side, with c.2,581,726 men joining the colours.

Imperial War Museum Collections Online Database

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Thanks for the post JCFalkenbergIII, I'm writing a paper on the Tiger Legion

 

He hasn't posted here in about a year. Go to his profile page and there you can find his email address. I emailed him a couple of months ago, so it's still active.

 

What do you guys think personally of Bose?

 

Personally I think he was an easily duped person whose anti-British animosity blinded him to the fact that his nation would have been worse off under the hegemony of Japan than it was under the (mostly) benevolent "wing" of the British Empire.

Just my opinion of course, but no other nation did well under Japanese control.

 

I always thought that he wanted his country free from foriegn domination, and it looked like this would be their best shot in years, since the Sepoy Rebellion anyway. The winners write the history books, so he is remembered as one of the bad guys.

 

Ja, wollten viele Deutsche dort Land frei von den Leuten dort eindringenden Land. So kam Hitler mit einer letzten Lösung und verlor Indianer und so für das Reich zu kämpfen.

 

Try it again in English when you get out of the cooler pal.

 

To many Indians it could get no worse than the British occupation. It was a double edged sword in a sense, the British brought many contributions to India but they were largely forgotten about when British Oppression came to the forefront of society. "Indophobia", the Martial Race, etc were also common ideologies of the time, and I guess still are today? It's difficult to determine what the Japanese would have done persay as India wouldn't have been part of the co-propserity sphere anyway. Looking at the way the Japanese treated "non Asians" who were defeated in battle might give hints but it really depends on how the two nations dealt with each other after the war assuming Bose and Tojo were successful.

Now I don't know how far this extends but according to a few Indian war veterans I have talked to they told me that there was talk of switching sides in the Indian Army if Axis forces were successful at Burma. I've been trying to find more information on this but I haven't had much time to do so lately. I think this could be common among those who were not seeing combat, Mark Tully of the BBC did a few interviews with Indian vets a few years ago and one of them told a story of British officers shooting truck drivers for mutiny because they didn't want to drive trucks on the homefront like "coolies", they wanted to be on the frontlines.

1919vet wouldn't happen to be Nazivet again would it? Shame people like that end up discouraging legitimate veterans from joining. Also find it funny that he could "read" English but not type it even a little bit while playing the "game".

 

I understand that India's freedom was paramount to Bose, but he was willing to do anything, including working for the Nazis to achieve it.

 

Even with the war crimes, Holocaust, and India's role in World War 2 a majority of Indians and Pakistanis don't know much about Hitler or Nazism, those that know a little think Hitler was a good guy. I highly doubt information on Nazism was readily available in India at the time and even then, Nazism wasn't seen as that bad a thing (in comparison to after the war), Nazi parties had sprung up as far as America and it was fine for the most part (until the war started at least).

Also, he [Bose] wasn't working for Nazi Germany like an occupied nation but along side similar to Italy, Japan, etc.