Netaji In Germany During WW II

Initially Bose wanted to go to Russia, but in the end he reached Germany, because the Russians were not very interested in Indian Independence.

Bose was welcome in Germany, although the news of his arrival there was kept a secret for some time for political reasons. The German Foreign Office, which was assigned the primary responsibility of dealing with Bose and taking care of him, had been well informed of the background and political status of the Indian leader through its pre-war Consulate-General at Calcutta and also by its representative in Kabul.

Bose himself, naturally somewhat impatient for getting into action soon after his arrival in Berlin, submitted a memorandum to the German government on 9^th April 1941 which outlined a plan for co-operation between the Axis powers and India. Among other things, it called for the setting up of a "Free India Government" in Europe, preferably in Berlin; establishment of a Free India broadcasting station calling upon the Indian people to assert their independence and rise up in revolt against the British authorities; underground work in Afghanistan involving independent tribal territories lying between Afghanistan and India and within India itself for fostering and aiding the revolution; provision of finances by Germany in the form of a loan to the Free India government-in-exile; and deployment of German military contingents to smash the British army in India.

In a supplementary memorandum bearing the same date, Bose requested that an early pronouncement be made regarding the freedom of India and the Arab countries.

It is significant to note that the memorandum did not mention the need for formation of an Indian legion. Evidently the idea of recruiting the Indian prisoners of war for the purpose of establishing a nucleus of an Indian national army did not occur to him during his early days in Berlin.

At that time the German government was in the process of formulating its own plan for dealing with Subhash Chandra Bose in the best possible manner. The Foreign Office felt itself inadequate to discharge this awesome responsibility without referring the whole matter to Hitler. While this issue was being considered at the highest level of the government, Bose's own requests made it far too complicated and involved to be resolved at an early date.

There was a long wait for Bose, during which period he often tended to become frustrated. Nevertheless, through several sympathetic officers of the Foreign Office, he continued to press his requests and put forth new ideas.

Finally, after months of waiting and many moments of disappointment often bordering on despair for Bose, Germany agreed to give him unconditional and all-out help.

The two immediate results of this decision were the establishment of a Free India Center and inauguration of a Free India Radio, both beginning their operations in November 1941. These two organisations played vital and significant roles in projecting Bose's increasing activities in Germany. The German government put at Bose's disposal adequate funds to run these two organizations, and he was allowed complete freedom to run them the way he liked at his own discretion.

In its first official meeting on 2 November 1941, the Free India Center adopted some historical resolutions that would serve as guidelines for the entire movement in subsequent months and years in Europe and Asia.
First, Jai Hind or Victory to India, would be the official form of salutation; secondly, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore's famous patriotic song "Jana Gana Mana" was to be the national anthem for the free India Bose was fighting for; thirdly, in a multilingual state like India, the most widely-spoken language, Hindustani, was to be the national language.

During this period both the BBC and Writer, acting like the mouthpieces  of the British government, declared that Netaji had died.

In November 1941, Azad Hind Radio (or the Free India Radio) opened its program with an announcing speech by Netaji himself, which, in fact, was a disclosure of his identity that had been kept officially secret for so long. He said " I am Subhash Chandra Bose who is still alive and talking to you". During this broadcast he called Gandhiji as the father of the nation. This message sent shockwave through the British because they did not want to loose India at that crucial stage of the war.

During this time he was given the immortal title of Netaji, the Indian equivalent of the English "leader" or the German "Führer."

 

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