Image: A group of around 20–30 POWs are stand­ing togeth­er with the vis­i­tor Dr. Excha­que­tin what appears to be a court­yard in front of a larg­er build­ing. Fig. 1: V‑P-HIST-01695–02 Annaburg. Sta­lag IV E, Vis­it of the del­e­gate ICRC, Dr. Excha­quet, on 27 June 1941. Cour­tesy: Comité Inter­na­tion­al de la Croix-Rouge (CICR). 

Table of Con­tents
Diplo­ma­cy, Pro­pa­gan­da, Sub­ver­sion and Psy­cho­log­i­cal Oper­a­tions (Psy-Ops) | Prepa­ra­tions of Sub­ver­sion | Neta­ji Sub­has Chan­dra Bose Enters the Scene | British Night­mare | Pro­jec­tions of Wel­fare and Pater­nal­ism | Annaburg as the Epi­cen­tre of Sub­ver­sion and the Rais­ing of the Indi­an Legion (1941–43) | Prayer Rooms of Indi­an Cap­tives | Ger­man Furtive­nessRecruit­ment Strate­giesPostal Delays and Lin­guis­tic Diver­si­tyCon­clu­sion | End­notes | Bib­li­og­ra­phy

This arti­cle uses some rare pic­tures and reports from the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross Archives to eval­u­ate the diplo­mat­ic manoeu­vres, psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions (psy-ops) and pro­pa­gan­da around British-Indi­an pris­on­ers and Indi­an legionar­ies in WWII Ger­many from the per­spec­tive of experts from the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross Com­mit­tee (CICR, French abbre­vi­a­tion), who were sup­posed to act as neu­tral observers.  This source-base is then jux­ta­posed with visu­al and tex­tu­al Ger­man and British sources to pro­vide a larg­er con­text to British-Ger­man entan­gle­ments at the Annaburg prison camp in the non-com­bat­ant realm of sol­dier­ing and pol­i­tick­ing dur­ing the Sec­ond World War in Germany.

Annaburg, seen on the cov­er pho­to (Fg.1),[i] was Sta­lag IV D/Z from May 1942 to April 1945. In a com­mu­ni­ca­tion of 18 August 1942 from Berne, Switzer­land, to the For­eign Office, Lon­don, it was stat­ed that Annaburg Oflag IV E was to be known as Sta­lag IV D/Z. The CICR vis­i­ta­tion report of 27 June 1941, how­ev­er, called it Annaburg Sta­lag IV E.[ii]  The Ger­man offi­cial­dom inter­change­ably used Annaburg Sta­lag IV E or Oflag 54 before renam­ing it Annaburg Sta­lag IV D/Z.

Why do we have these dif­fer­ent sets of iden­ti-fica­tion for the same pris­on­ers’ camp in the small Sax­on cas­tle-town of Annaburg? Does it indi­cate a state of flux in the camp site or could it have  been a part of the Ger­man strat­e­gy to keep its char­ac­ter ambigu­ous dur­ing the peri­od under con­sid­er­a­tion? Through a micro-study of Annaburg, an exclu­sive camp site for British-Indi­an pris­on­ers in Ger­many, I will reflect on broad­er issues such as the use of decep­tion, sab­o­tage, sub­ver­sion and intrigue by the Ger­mans dur­ing the rais­ing of the Indi­an Legion in the diplo­mat­ic circles.

Diplomacy, Propaganda, Subversion and Psychological Operations (Psy-Ops)

The Euro­pean the­atre of war was not just a com­bat zone, but also one of wag­ing war through oth­er means: diplo­ma­cy, pro­pa­gan­da, sub­ver­sion, and psy-ops. Annaburg, a small cas­tle-town in today’s Sax­ony-Anhalt, was a site for what the British per­ceived as the sub­orn­ing of British-Indi­an sol­diers. It thus became the nerve-cen­tre of British-Ger­man entan­gle­ments. Sig­nals of manip­u­la­tions, decep­tions, and intrigues pro­duced rip­ples in the British For­eign Office, involv­ing the Swiss Lega­tion and the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross in the game of counter intel­li­gence and wel­farism from mid-1941 till the for­ma­tion of the Indi­an Legion on Ger­man soil in ear­ly 1943.

Unlike Japan, which showed no oblig­a­tion to the Gene­va Con­ven­tion of 1929 regard­ing the treat­ment of POWs, from ear­ly on, Nazi Ger­many agreed to make appro­pri­ate arrange­ments in accor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the Con­ven­tion. The entry of the neu­tral Swiss agen­cies cre­at­ed con­di­tions for a war of words and nerves between and across the British and Ger­man empires. This ‘war by oth­er means’ was car­ried out through com­mu­ni­ca­tions from British and Ger­man For­eign Offices, which in turn were sup­plied infor­ma­tion by their respec­tive war offices to the Swiss Lega­tion and Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross office in Berlin, Berne, Lon­don, and Geneva.

The Legation’s aim was to ensure the wel­fare of the pris­on­ers through peri­od­ic vis­i­ta­tions of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross del­e­gates. The CICR team con­duct­ed inspec­tions of health, san­i­ta­tion, hygiene, spir­i­tu­al and gen­er­al liv­ing con­di­tions in camps and direct­ly inter­act­ed with inmates of Sta­lags (camps for ordi­nary pris­on­ers), Oflags (camps for offi­cers), Mar­lags (camps for interned mariners), Dulags (tran­sit Camps), Heilags (tran­sit camps for the wound­ed to be repa­tri­at­ed under the exchange pro­gramme), and, in some cas­es, Arbeit­skom­man­dos (labour detach­ments).[iii] The Swiss Lega­tion and the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross became cru­cial medi­a­tors in address­ing mutu­al griev­ances and trans­mit­ting infor­ma­tion on the ground real­i­ties of camp life to the con­cerned bel­liger­ent empires.

This tri­an­gu­lar net­work has left a trail of doc­u­ments in French, Ger­man, and Eng­lish that reflects impe­r­i­al anx­i­eties, diplo­mat­ic manoeu­vres, intrigues, manip­u­la­tions, mutu­al reprisals, intel­li­gence, counter intel­li­gence, mil­i­tary train­ing, and delays in postal deliv­er­ies. Though such delib­er­a­tions went far beyond the war as the Ger­mans got busy with the destruc­tion of records of the per­se­cut­ed, the Inter­na­tion­al Trac­ing Ser­vice with the doc­u­men­ta­tion on and relo­ca­tion of state­less and dis­placed (DPs) vic­tims of Nazi atroc­i­ties,[iv] and the British with the repa­tri­a­tion of British-Indi­ans, I lim­it my focus here to the cru­cial years of the for­ma­tion of the Indi­an Legion between 1941 and 1943 to recre­ate the sce­nario of mutu­al fears and anx­i­eties of the bel­liger­ent pow­ers. The on-site records of Annaburg camp, its satel­lite camps and labour detach­ments (Arbeit­skom­man­dos) were destroyed towards the end of the war. Infor­ma­tion about the work­ing of the Ger­man For­eign Office and the Wehrma­cht is there­fore scat­tered and incom­plete in con­trast to British and Swiss com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which are still pre­served in their respec­tive archives and will be used along with sur­viv­ing Ger­man records to demon­strate impe­r­i­al diplo­mat­ic entan­gle­ments dur­ing WWII.

Preparations of Subversion

Rommel’s first dri­ve through North Africa in April 1941 result­ed in the cap­ture of the 3rd Motor Brigade com­pris­ing of British-Indi­an sol­diers at the Libyan front. For the Ger­mans these pris­on­ers were not ordi­nary pris­on­ers of the British Empire. They car­ried with them the poten­tial for sub­orn­ing sab­o­tage and defec­tions. Sup­port­ing the net­work of transna­tion­al rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in their anti-colo­nial strug­gles in Asia and Africa, and mobil­is­ing alien cap­tives for set­ting up for­eign legions, was nei­ther new for Hitler nor for Ger­many. Dur­ing WWI, Berlin became a cen­tre of fer­ment­ing trou­ble in the colonies, har­bour­ing Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies to dis­sem­i­nate anti-British pro­pa­gan­da[v] and estab­lish­ing a pro­pa­gan­da prisoner’s camp on the out­skirts of Berlin (Roy, Liebau, and Ahu­ja, 2011). This pol­i­cy was pur­sued with more vigour and acu­men in WWII. Col­lab­o­ra­tive forces of Ukraini­ans, Croa­t­ians, Dutch, Nor­we­gians, Rus­sians, and Arabs who were work­ing for the Ger­mans were now much bet­ter equipped with ide­o­log­i­cal (reli­gious, nation­al, or racial) moti­va­tion, mod­ern arse­nal, and mil­i­tary train­ing.[vi] Rais­ing an Indi­an Legion, how­ev­er, pre­sent­ed its own haz­ards and chal­lenges because of India’s dis­tant loca­tion and the pris­on­ers’ diver­si­ty (eth­nic, reli­gious, and linguistic).

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Enters the Scene

Sub­has Chan­dra Bose arrived secret­ly in Berlin on 2 April 1941 (Hayes 2011, 25–29). His escape from house arrest in Cal­cut­ta, his adven­tur­ous jour­ney to Kab­ul clad as a mute Pathan to cov­er his lin­guis­tic inabil­i­ty, his fail­ure to get sup­port from the Sovi­et Union, and his even­tu­al arrival in Berlin with the help of the Ger­man embassy is a sto­ry often told with great rel­ish in his­tor­i­cal accounts both in India and Ger­many. That it would play a cru­cial role in the plan­ning and for­ma­tion of the Indi­an Legion was not known to Bose him­self when he was in hid­ing in Kab­ul. His wish to reach out to Berlin for help was com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the Ger­man ambas­sador Hans Pil­ger to State Sec­re­tary Weizsäck­er who expressed great inter­est in Bose despite  receiv­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry feed­back on him. With the Ital­ian embassy, which was equal­ly keen to help, Bose left for Berlin car­ry­ing an Ital­ian pass­port imper­son­at­ing Orlan­do Maz­zot­ta, an employ­ee of the Ital­ian embassy in Kab­ul (Kuhlmann 2003, 122–130).

Though Bose had to con­tent with his rival Moham­mad Iqbal Shedai, an anti-colo­nial insur­rec­tionary, who was already active in Europe and was prop­a­gat­ing the Indi­an cause through the Ital­ian spon­sored Radio Himalaya broad­casts, the Ger­man offi­cial cir­cles were quick to accept Bose’s supe­ri­or lead­er­ship qual­i­ties. With­in a week of his arrival, Bose pre­sent­ed the Under­sec­re­tary of State, Ernst Woer­mann, a detailed plan for col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Axis. Woer­mann arranged a meet­ing with For­eign Min­is­ter Ribben­trop on 29 April 1942, to set up a Free India Cen­tre, and the Azad Hind Radio in Berlin to dis­sem­i­nate anti-British pro­pa­gan­da. What proved more chal­leng­ing for Bose was to set up a gov­ern­ment in exile and to get a tri­par­tite (Berlin, Rome, Tokyo) Axis dec­la­ra­tion from Hitler for India’s independence.

Bose kept try­ing to per­suade Hitler to com­mit but the lat­ter remained eva­sive, first in the hope of nego­ti­at­ing peace with the British, and lat­er because it made lit­tle strate­gic sense to him with­out back­ing the dec­la­ra­tion up with mil­i­tary action. When Bose was final­ly able to meet Hitler in per­son on 29 May 1942, he point­ed to the immense dis­tance between the two loca­tions and con­trast­ed it with Japan’s geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty, which seemed more favourable. He thought it would be fool­ish to make a dec­la­ra­tion about India (Toye 1978, 68–69). How­ev­er, he was ready to help with all pos­si­ble means when it came to pro­pa­gan­da and psy-ops. He was quite cer­tain that it would be a suc­cess­ful pro­pa­gan­da strat­e­gy and there would be a pay-off in the game of decep­tion and psy-ops rather than in an actu­al anti-colo­nial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion. When the moment arrived, he planned a safe exit strat­e­gy for Bose.

British Nightmare

The British were haunt­ed by the spec­tre of quis­lings, rene­gades, trai­tors, legionar­ies, com­mu­nists, and nation­al­ists dur­ing this peri­od (1941–43) and there­after. British intel­li­gence sources esti­mat­ed that out of 12,000 Indi­an pris­on­ers detained in Ger­man camps, the num­ber of active mem­bers of the 950th Reg­i­ment at no point exceed­ed the mark of 3200 This British source con­tains a brief sketch of 4 August 1945 on Indi­an col­lab­o­ra­tionist activ­i­ties in Ger­many, France, and Italy, and in par­tic­u­lar, a ref­er­ence to the Indi­an Legion.[vii]

Although even these legionar­ies nev­er engaged in an active anti-colo­nial com­bat, their sheer exis­tence along with the Free India Radio (Azad Hind Radio) broad­casts, and their even­tu­al arrival in Switzer­land kept the British on their toes much after the lib­er­a­tion of the camps. Ger­many became a play­ground for British anx­i­eties, mak­ing the Indi­an POWs an object of inces­sant allures, sus­pi­cion, sur­veil­lance, reprisals, and loy­al­ty testing.

The Ger­man efforts to woo Indi­an cap­tives for pro­pa­gan­da work began already in North Africa. In his anec­do­tal account, the lead­ing con­vert and recruiter of the Indi­an Legion, Man­gat Singh, con­trast­ed British offi­cers’ racism and arro­gance towards Indi­an sol­diers to Rommel’s charm and mod­esty in per­son­al­ly com­ing to El Mechilli fort to meet them after their sur­ren­der on 8 April 1941. Man­gat rem­i­nisced in his mem­oirs how a smart and stur­dy Ger­man offi­cer alight­ed from his mov­ing Volk­swa­gen and advanced towards them. He wel­comed them with the words, “Good Morn­ing to you, gen­tle­men! Thank you very much for the good fight you gave me. You are all my guests now. Excuse me, I am in a hur­ry. I must get going. Please remem­ber me through my men, if you ever have any dif­fi­cul­ty” (Man­gat 1986, 31–33). He went on to praise this ‘smart offi­cer’, who he lat­er real­ized was none oth­er than the “Desert Fox” Erwin Rom­mel him­self, for his bril­liance and accom­plish­ments. In a foot­note, he fur­ther con­trast­ed Rommel’s behav­iour with that of Gen­er­al Eisen­how­er of the Allied Expe­di­tionary Forces, who had refused to shake hands with his ene­my cap­tives in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. Twen­ty-sev­en Indi­an cap­tives were flown in from Beng­hasi to Berlin while the rest were trans­port­ed by boat through Naples to Genoa and then by train to Annaburg.[viii]

Projections of Welfare and Paternalism

While the trans­porta­tion of select­ed poten­tial legionar­ies from dif­fer­ent Euro­pean des­ti­na­tions to Annaburg was already under­way, the For­eign Office, Berlin, received a com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Amer­i­can Embassy in August 1941 on behalf of the British gov­ern­ment. Draw­ing the atten­tion of the “appro­pri­ate Ger­man author­i­ties”, it request­ed that ade­quate pro­vi­sions be made to cater to the pris­on­ers’ spe­cial needs. It stat­ed that besides warm cloth­ing and heat­ing, it would be appre­ci­at­ed if spe­cial arrange­ments regard­ing their reli­gious beliefs and cus­toms as well as the food and its prepa­ra­tion could be made. It also rec­om­mend­ed hous­ing offi­cers in a sep­a­rate accom­mo­da­tion and ensur­ing that oth­er priv­i­leges such as work and pay would cor­re­spond to their rank.[ix]

Annaburg as the Epicentre of Subversion and the Raising of the Indian Legion (1941–43)

Already before this com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the Annaburg cas­tle-com­plex was being pre­pared to wel­come British-Indi­an cap­tives. The first vis­i­ta­tion report of the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross Com­mit­tee (CICR) gives us insight­ful infor­ma­tion on this. In this sec­tion, I will dwell on this and sub­se­quent reports on Annaburg to high­light Germany’s prepa­ra­tion for pro­pa­gan­da and psy-ops.

After stat­ing the geo­graph­i­cal coor­di­nates of this Baroque style cas­tle and its his­to­ry as a gar­ri­son for young Ger­man NCOs (Non-com­mis­sioned Offi­cers) and then a Sta­lag for Ser­bian pris­on­ers until mid-May 1941, the CICR report moved on with details on Indi­ans. On the vis­i­ta­tion day of late June, it found 1200 Hin­dous includ­ing 40 offi­cers, cap­tured from the Libyan front, occu­py­ing the three-sto­ried vil­la with­in the cas­tle premis­es. The vil­la had the capac­i­ty to house 2,200 inmates, was well-lit and ven­ti­lat­ed, and its huge rooms were fur­nished with three-tier bunk beds of which only two were in use. The san­i­tary and hygien­ic con­di­tions were found to be excellent.

In the court­yard, there were five addi­tion­al bar­racks hous­ing pris­on­ers of oth­er reli­gious denom­i­na­tions. Over­all, there were 596 Mohametans, 200 Sikhs and 4 Brah­manes and the rest Hin­dous.[x] The report dwelled on how much free room there was in the vil­la for com­mon activ­i­ties, like a din­ing hall, a kitchen with a sep­a­rate stove for Hin­dous and sep­a­rate prayer rooms for dif­fer­ent faiths. The prayer rooms aroused the curios­i­ty and admi­ra­tion of the report’s author, Dr. Excha­quet, which is tes­ti­fied by the pho­to­graph­ic col­lec­tion of the day to which I shall turn now.

Curi­ous­ly, most cap­tions of these pho­tos state the loca­tion as “Altenburg” Sta­lag IV E but the date of the pho­to shoot is the same as that of Dr. Exchaquet’s vis­i­ta­tion report of “Annaburg” Sta­lag IV E, name­ly 27 June 1941. Just one pic­ture of the cap­tives (Fig. 1 cov­er pic­ture), car­ries the cap­tionAnnaburg. Sta­lag IV E” which shows Dr. Excha­quet talk­ing to the pris­on­ers. The vis­i­ta­tion sched­ule plan of sev­er­al camps in Sax­ony around this time allo­cat­ed one day to each site. More­over, Altenburg at this time housed no Indi­an cap­tives and did not have bar­racks like these. I, there­fore, go with the assump­tion that pic­tures of the court­yard and prayer rooms were tak­en on 27 June 1941 dur­ing Dr. Exchaquet’s vis­it to Annaburg and not Altenburg.

Prayer Rooms of Indian Captives

A group of about 8 POWs are standing outside of the small hutments which contain the prayer rooms. One POW is standing inside the entrance of one of the prayer rooms, leaning on the doorframe. The door is surrounded by a large number of shoes, neatly arranged in pairs.
Fig. 2: V‑P-HIST-01763–45, 27/06/1941, WW II, 1939–1945.
Altenburg (Annaburg?) Sta­lag IV E, pris­on­ers of war camp. Pris­on­ers of war going to pray.
Cour­tesy: CICR Pho­to Archive.

This is the entrance of one of the prayer rooms. It clear­ly shows the Annaburg cas­tle in the back­ground – as in Fig. 1 – but the cap­tion reads “Altenburg”. The devo­tees arranged their shoes in neat rows at the doorstep before enter­ing the prayer room. Dr. Excha­quet was quite impressed with this and even men­tioned in the report that the devo­tees roamed around bare foot in silence inside the mosque.

A group of Indian POWs are in a room reading from the Quran, 11 of them standing, 7 sitting.
Fig. 3: V‑P-HIST-03518–06, 1941-06-27 Ger­many, WW II, 1939–1945. Altenburg (Annaburg?) Sta­lag IV E, pris­on­er of war camp. Indi­an pris­on­ers of war pray­ing. Cour­tesy: CICR Pho­to Archive

Fig. 3 cap­tures a Namaz ren­di­tion in progress in this inte­ri­or of the prayer room we saw in Fig. 2. All cap­tives are seen hold­ing the holy Quran and read­ing it aloud. The walls are bare and the front row indi­cates the typ­i­cal seat­ing pos­ture while ren­der­ing the Namaz.

A group of about 25 Sikh POWs is sitting in a prayer room.
Fig. 4: CICR/ V‑P-HIST-03518–05, 1941-06-27, Altenburg (Annaburg?) Sta­lag IV E, pris­on­ers of war camp. Indi­an pris­on­ers of war pray­ing. Cour­tesy CICR Pho­to Archive.

Fig. 4 is espe­cial­ly illus­tra­tive in its details. In this makeshift Gur­d­wara, the house of wor­ship of the Sikhs, their holy book, Guru Granth Saheb is cov­ered in a beau­ti­ful­ly pat­terned cloth. The holy book itself is placed on an alle­vi­at­ed plat­form cov­ered in a spot­less white sheet on which vas­es with flow­ers can be seen. Above the plat­form, hangs an equal­ly dec­o­ra­tive canopy. While the Granthi (cer­e­mo­ni­al leader) is chant­i­ng from the Guru Granth Sahib, the devo­tees are lis­ten­ing to him qui­et­ly. Pic­tures of var­i­ous Gurus adorn the wall on the right along with the Nis­han Saheb, their holy sym­bol. Next to it, we can see a jhan­jh and a dho­lak (per­cus­sion instru­ments) which accom­pa­ny a har­mo­ni­um (pos­si­bly kept inside the wood­en box in the left cor­ner below the win­dow). These instru­ments and the decor are intrin­sic to the set­ting up of a Gur­d­wara. It brings back to my mind a Sikh captive’s sound record­ing from WWI. After prais­ing the Ger­mans in this pro­pa­gan­da camp (Halb­mond­lager, Wüns­dorf), he said “if they thought of us as them, they would have hon­oured our house of wor­ship.” He was allud­ing to the miss­ing cov­er for the Granth Saheb which the Ger­mans did not both­er to pro­cure for the prayer room (Mahren­holz 2011, 201).[xi] The Ger­mans in WWII seemed to have learnt the art of per­sua­sion from their pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences with Sikh sol­diers and their spe­cif­ic require­ments relat­ed to their rituals.

A close read­ing of both the text and the pic­ture col­lec­tion of the CICR sources clear­ly reveals that Annaburg’s cas­tle-com­plex was being pre­pared as a mod­el POW camp to host British-Indi­an cap­tives. The pris­on­ers’ pro­files indi­cate that there were sev­er­al high­ly accom­plished sol­diers and offi­cers among them, a care­ful­ly cho­sen and suit­ably inspir­ing selec­tion for pro­pa­gan­da and recruit­ment pur­pos­es. Com­ing, as this evi­dence does, from a Swiss del­e­gate and CICR eval­u­a­tor of pris­on­ers’ health and well-being, name­ly Dr. Excha­quet (or the unknown cam­er­ap­er­son S.N.), it con­tains vital insights into the art of per­sua­sion Ger­mans were prac­tic­ing on Indi­an cap­tives. The graph­ic tex­tu­al and visu­al details are allur­ing, assur­ing, com­fort­ing, and promis­ing to even a con­tem­po­rary observ­er such as the author. Dr. Excha­quet lib­er­al­ly used terms such as remark­able, impec­ca­ble, well-kept and ven­ti­lat­ed for the com­plex, which he thought was rarely the case in pris­on­ers’ quar­ters. When it comes to the visu­al col­lec­tion, we are not cer­tain whether he sub­mit­ted his own col­lec­tion to the archive because his name does not fig­ure as the pho­tog­ra­ph­er on record. As can be observed in Fig. 1, Dr. Excha­quet him­self car­ried a cam­era which he is hold­ing in his left hand.

The report also not­ed a wish list fea­tur­ing items such as win­ter cloth­ing, indoor games and balls for out­door sports, and a change of camp in win­ters due to the harsh cli­mate. The Mohametans sought allowance to offer Namaz at 23.00 hours. The Hin­dus com­plained about the food not being suit­able to their veg­e­tar­i­an palate.[xii] The mem­oirs of cap­tives and vis­i­tors’ recount the con­cern that was raised over the food. Soon enough, Red Cross parcels were arranged for them and gar­den­ing of sea­son­al sal­ads and veg­eta­bles start­ed at the camp site as not­ed in the next report. The inmates request­ed for books in Eng­lish as 50 per­cent of them read Eng­lish. Doc­tors request­ed for med­ical journals.

It is quite obvi­ous from this descrip­tion that the camp did not dis­tin­guish between offi­cers and sol­diers and this was done for a strate­gic pur­pose. The mixed nature of the camp, it was thought, would facil­i­tate recruit­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, the labels Oflag and Sta­lag were used inter­change­ably by the Ger­mans to send con­fus­ing sig­nals outwards. 

On 16 Octo­ber 1941, Ribben­trop gave Bose a go ahead for his recruit­ment dri­ve in camps and soon after to raise an army (Nor­mann 1997, 174). Bose vis­it­ed Annaburg and Franken­burg in Decem­ber 1941. One of the first enthu­si­as­tic con­verts from Berlin, wrote in his mem­oirs that the inmates did not believe that it was Bose him­self who was stand­ing before them and the NCOs remained total­ly unre­spon­sive to his call (Man­gat 1986, 75–79). Once his iden­ti­ty was ver­i­fied through a reli­able source, the author says that he was able to recruit 1000 cap­tives but the num­ber seems high­ly unlike­ly, as only one pro­pa­gan­da com­pa­ny could be raised. Bose real­ized that ordi­nary men were more sus­cep­ti­ble to his charm than the NCO. Thus, on 13 Jan­u­ary 1943, 2 con­voys of Indi­ans were brought to Ger­many after 2 and a half days of trav­el in goods trains, which were only par­tial­ly heat­ed. Many pris­on­ers only wore pants (or under­pants), shirts and a jack­et. It seemed that the men had suf­fered a lot from cold, eight of them had frozen toes and one was still in the infir­mary.[xiii] After such an ardu­ous jour­ney and rel­a­tive­ly poor­er nour­ish­ment, as the CICR report tells us, the lodg­ing in Ital­ian cap­tiv­i­ty, a failed attempt by Shedai to raise an Indi­an legion in Italy, the far supe­ri­or arrange­ments in Annaburg seemed to have paid div­i­dends. The num­ber of vol­un­teers rose dra­mat­i­cal­ly start­ing with the Sikh reg­i­ment sign­ing up as the first enthu­si­as­tic converts.

The Annaburg camp under­went a major trans­for­ma­tion if we go by the CICR report filed on 15 May 1943.[xiv] It had enrolled 4323 Indi­ans, of whom 864 were Sikhs, 2136 Hin­dous, 9 Boud­dhists, 1214 Mahometans and 100 Chre­tiens. The total was bro­ken down pro­fes­sion­al­ly to 8 offi­cers, 538 NCOs and 3777 men, 3 doc­tors, and 6 para­medics. Of these, just 1587 cap­tives stayed inside the camp while the rest were sent to labour detach­ments. 32 detach­ments returned to the camp every evening after work. Three exter­nal detach­ments of 82, 10, and 2736 (total 2828) remained sta­tioned in their labour detach­ment camps.

The CICR report went on to note that there was a veg­etable gar­den where fresh sea­son­al veg­eta­bles and sal­ads were grown by 10 men. The rice came from Gene­va. Besides, oth­er men were engaged in cook­ing, tai­lor­ing, mend­ing of shoes, socks, and stock­ings, the hair salon and latrine main­te­nance. Every pris­on­er had a new “bat­tle-dress”, a jack­et and new boots. The state of health and dis­ci­pline was excel­lent with no report­ed deaths. The library was equipped with 800 books, the British pris­on­ers’ news­pa­per The Camp was banned. Pris­on­ers could take lan­guage and writ­ing lessons under an Indi­an pro­fes­sor. The pris­on­ers attend­ed film screen­ings in the the­atre, had a chess­board, musi­cal instru­ments, foot­balls. They went out for walks in groups of 5–600 men. Sev­er­al pris­on­ers were sent out to work in sur­round­ing areas and returned to the camp for their after­noon and evening meals.

It was between the two reports of 27 June 1941 and 15 May 1943 that selec­tions, recruit­ment, and final­ly mil­i­tary train­ing took place, first in Meseritz, then Franken­berg and ulti­mate­ly Königs­brück. The camp author­i­ties des­ig­nat­ed them as ‘exter­nal labour detach­ments’ of Annaburg to main­tain secre­cy over the mil­i­tary train­ing they were receiv­ing from the Wehrma­cht. Keep­ing it a secret, how­ev­er, turned out to be quite a chal­lenge as we shall see in a while.

German Furtiveness

Annaburg and these train­ing cen­tres were fre­quent­ed by Bose through­out 1942. Annaburg became the epi­cen­tre for loy­al­ty test­ing, com­bat fit­ness, rumours, intense pro­pa­gan­da and counter-pro­pa­gan­da, as pres­sure mount­ed on the cap­tives to decide between the Legion and con­tin­ued cap­tiv­i­ty. Anx­i­eties swelled up in the Ger­man offi­cial­dom on how the recruit­ment dri­ve and train­ing could be kept a secret. Sur­viv­ing hold­ings in the Ger­man For­eign Office Archives reflect the diplo­mat­ic ten­sion in the let­ters that were exchanged between Ger­many, Switzer­land, and Britain dur­ing this period.

From mid-1942 the Swiss Lega­tion sent repeat­ed requests to For­eign Office, Berlin, on behalf of the British, who sus­pect­ed some camps of har­bour­ing legionar­ies, to sched­ule vis­i­ta­tions to the camps, espe­cial­ly Annaburg IV D/Z, Colditz Oflag IV E, and Mühlberg IV B. On 3 July 1942, the Swiss Lega­tion was clear­ly told that so far as Annaburg was con­cerned, the vis­it per­mis­sion could not be grant­ed for the time being. How­ev­er, Colditz and Mühlberg could be vis­it­ed. On 17 June it was told tele­phon­i­cal­ly that British-Indi­ans were trans­ferred from Colditz to Annaburg. So, only Mühlberg IV B could be vis­it­ed but not Königs­brück, Ring­baum and Franken­berg. When the Lega­tion remind­ed the For­eign Office, Berlin, that Art. 86 of the Gene­va Con­ven­tion autho­rized them to vis­it all POW camps, it gave var­i­ous excus­es such as first the out­break of epi­dem­ic typhus, then the British ill-treat­ment of Ger­man cap­tives in South Africa and then the await­ed clear­ance from prison author­i­ties. The Lega­tion request­ed the For­eign Office, Berlin, to allow them to vis­it IV E Colditz Oflag/ Zwei­glager, instead of Colditz IV C on 17 July 1942.[xv]  The Swiss Lega­tion informed the British Min­istry of For­eign Affairs that Camp IV E, in ques­tion, was named Colditz Oflag IV E and had a mix of Indi­an offi­cers and men.[xvi]

In August 1942, the Swiss Lega­tion was final­ly told that Königs­brück was not a prisoner’s camp but a mil­i­tary train­ing cen­tre and there­fore vis­i­ta­tion could not be grant­ed. The Swiss Lega­tion man­aged to send a team and com­mu­ni­cat­ed a short report from Berne to the British For­eign Office, Lon­don, on 20th Novem­ber 1942 on Annaburg, by when it was renamed IV D/Z. This over­crowd­ed camp had water scarci­ty and insuf­fi­cient heat­ing and toi­lette facil­i­ties. The Man of Con­fi­dence (rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pris­on­ers) had to send Red Cross parcels to Franken­berg and Königs­brück, which he believed were Legion camps. Ger­man author­i­ties stat­ed that Franken­berg no longer exist­ed and that the lat­ter was a labour camp like any oth­er.[xvii]

The frus­tra­tion of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, Lon­don, shows clear­ly in its com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the Swiss Lega­tion on 3 June 1943: “Regard­ing Sta­lag IV D/Z Annaburg, it was actu­al­ly not pos­si­ble in the peri­od in ques­tion to vis­it the Indi­an POWs. It is to be regret­ted that owing to the con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments of the offi­cers who spoke with the Swiss Del­e­ga­tion, the impres­sion has been formed that it was the inten­tion to cre­ate spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ties for the del­e­gates; the atti­tude of the offi­cer was brought about by the fact that he was not suf­fi­cient­ly informed of the cir­cum­stances”.[xvi­ii]

We also know from the May 1943 CICR vis­i­ta­tion report of Annaburg that inmates of exter­nal labour detach­ments were not avail­able at the time of the inspec­tion, one of which num­bered 2736. This exter­nal labour detach­ment, I sug­gest, was in fact not a labour detach­ment at all but the Indi­an Legion where pris­on­ers were being secret­ly trained at Königs­brück. By the time the next vis­it took place on 15 Novem­ber 1943, the total num­ber at Annaburg came down from 4323 to 2779 of which 1801 were present at the camp, 37 in the infir­mary, 22 in hos­pi­tal, 4 doc­tors and 8 med­ical order­lies. There was now just one chapel for all faiths.[xix]

Recruitment Strategies

The recruit­ment strate­gies ranged from allure­ments such as the ones evi­dent in CICR reports, well-lit, heat­ed and ven­ti­lat­ed liv­ing rooms, well-dec­o­rat­ed prayer halls, rice from Gene­va, fresh sal­ads and veg­eta­bles from the gar­den, to appro­pri­ate cook­ing arrange­ments for each reli­gious denomination.

Bose’s recruit­ment strat­e­gy was cus­tomized accord­ing to the type of pris­on­er. For exam­ple, when he want­ed to recruit the RAMC (Roy­al Army Med­ical Corps) doc­tor, Cap­tain Mazum­dar, in the sum­mer of 1942, he act­ed like a per­fect gen­tle­man play­ing the polite, patri­ot­ic card in the meet­ing. Mazum­dar was picked up in a Mer­cedes from his camp and brought to Berlin. Bose spoke to him in Ben­gali, their moth­er tongue, to estab­lish a quick rap­port with a com­plete stranger and switched to Eng­lish when he approached the sub­ject, “Do you know why you are here? We are form­ing the Indi­an Legion and I want you to join us”. Mazum­dar replied, “I can­not and shall not. I was taught a promise once made, you have got to abide by.” Bose left the room with the words, “I do not think we should meet again”. Mazum­dar was back to Colditz next morn­ing, this time trav­el­ling in 3rd class com­part­ment. When the inter­view­er of the Sound Archive, Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um, asked him, “What was Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose’s demeanour?”, Mazum­dar replied, “Very polite, like one Ben­gali talk­ing to anoth­er. I was very impressed, he could make you do things. Though he was a bit annoyed he did not show it.” “Did he threat­en you?” asked the inter­view­er, “No, but I was promised many things by the Ger­mans before that too”.[xx]

Bose left the intim­i­da­tion and reward game to be played by the Gestapo before and after his encounter with Mazum­dar, like he may have done with oth­er pris­on­ers of the latter’s stature. British intel­li­gence was very curi­ous to know the details of the meet­ing, then and sev­er­al years lat­er, Mazum­dar tes­ti­fied. On 3 Decem­ber 1943, Major Tuck­er, an erst­while col­league of Mazum­dar, made a state­ment to Lt. Col. H. J. Phillimore of MI2 and in-charge of the POWs about Mazum­dar. He believed that Ger­mans knew that this offi­cer had been a mem­ber of the Free India move­ment before the war and, in con­se­quence, every form of pres­sure was put on him and every sort of induce­ment held out to him to per­suade him to join the Indi­an Legion. After the Berlin trip, he was put in soli­tary con­fine­ment, for­bid­den to prac­tice, and sub­ject­ed to many indig­ni­ties. He went on a hunger strike for 14 to 18 days. The Ger­mans became fright­ened and sent him to anoth­er camp.[xxi]

Major Tuck­er did this to pre-empt Mazum­dar being accused by some British offi­cers of play­ing a dou­ble game which indeed his British inmates at Colditz believed, there­fore mock­ing him as the “Gand­hi chap”. Tuck­er thought that Mazum­dar stuck out against great pres­sure from Ger­mans. He had known Mazum­dar before his cap­ture and thought him to be a good man and a good doc­tor.[xxii] This state­ment was cir­cu­lat­ed to the con­cerned intel­li­gence offi­cer, yet Mazumdar’s trou­bles were far from over, if we believe his own testimony.

When Bose did not have much suc­cess with the NCOs dur­ing his first vis­its to Annaburg in Decem­ber 1941, he devised anoth­er strat­e­gy. He got Italy to send pris­on­ers straight to the train­ing grounds so their fresh and uncor­rupt­ed minds could be influ­enced direct­ly. Gir­i­ja Mookeer­ji, one of his asso­ciates, rem­i­nisced, “stand­ing very erect under a tree and talk­ing to the sol­diers for hours, I saw how the audi­ence was com­ing under his spell…when he had fin­ished they acquired new life, new ani­ma­tion, new excitement…Dozens now asked to be enrolled” (Bose 1982, 201). Major Mack­ay, a British cap­tive who was vis­it­ing a hos­pi­tal in the prox­im­i­ty of Königs­brück for den­tal treat­ment, man­aged to talk to some recruits who told him that some of the NCOs were pro­mot­ed to Ger­man com­mis­sioned rank.[xxi­ii] What Mack­ay thought was a bribe was mere­ly an incen­tive and reward for loy­al­ty to Bose. Fresh batch­es of NCOs arrived straight to Königs­brück from Ital­ian cap­tiv­i­ty. Bose made prophet­ic speech­es to inspire them such as: “The Eng­lish are like the dead snake which the peo­ple are afraid of even after its death. There is no doubt that the Eng­lish have lost this bat­tle. The prob­lem is how to take charge of this country…We are young and we have a sense of self-respect. We shall take free­dom by the strength of our arms. Free­dom is nev­er giv­en it is tak­en” (Bose 1982, 201).

Apart from exer­cis­ing his charms on the rank and file, he also played with their psy­che to get com­pli­ance. Cap­tain Mazum­dar told anoth­er Colditz escapee that some cap­tives from Annaburg told him that they heard shots, were shown blood stains and were then invit­ed to sign a doc­u­ment of some sort under the threat of being imme­di­ate­ly shot. Very few signed and then they spot­ted that the exe­cu­tions were staged for their benefit.

Ger­mans’ racial ide­ol­o­gy was dilut­ed to allow the recruits free access to local Ger­man women. Abun­dant sup­plies of Red Cross parcels con­tain­ing cig­a­rettes and choco­lates was an easy way to win local women’s com­pa­ny. Whether at Franken­berg, Königs­brück, Hol­land, or the Altan­tic Coast, cross­ing the racial line by the legionar­ies irked the Ger­man offi­cers, local pop­u­la­tions, and train­ers alike, but the high com­mand tol­er­at­ed it. Some mar­riages were reluc­tant­ly approved such as those of mid­dle-class pro­fes­sion­als recruit­ed for pro­pa­gan­da work. Some oth­ers end­ed bad­ly for the mixed off­spring in post-war Ger­many.[xxiv] How­ev­er, seen from the per­spec­tive of the mil­i­tary cul­ture in wartime Ger­many, racial laws were not applied so indis­crim­i­nate­ly. Ger­man sol­diers were allowed to rape and pil­lage in the occu­pied East. The local women wit­nessed a range of behav­iour pat­terns from the mil­i­tary from rape and sex­u­al slav­ery to more sta­ble rela­tions based on mon­e­tary and oth­er incen­tives in kind includ­ing pro­tec­tion from every­day abuse. To bring back order, broth­els were set up lat­er which housed local women of all racial back­grounds. While the Nazi offi­cial­dom always warned the sol­diers against estab­lish­ing sex­u­al con­tact with local women (Rassen­schande as it was called), sol­diers were sel­dom pun­ished for these acts of indul­gence with the so called “racial­ly infe­ri­or East­ern­ers” or even Jew­ish women for that mat­ter.[xxv] The same ambi­gu­i­ty could be seen in cas­es of race mix­ing with the Japan­ese and Ital­ians, who con­front­ed the Ger­man offi­cial­dom when they saw racial laws being applied to them (Krebs 2015, 217–241; König 2018).

Postal Delays and Linguistic Diversity

One thread that ran across all Red Cross vis­i­ta­tion reports to camps and labour detach­ments was the slow or non-exis­tent flow of post to pris­on­ers. Pris­on­ers said that they reg­u­lar­ly sent let­ters home but did not get replies. The postal exchange and cen­sor­ship remained a source of con­stant dis­plea­sure and anx­i­ety for the cap­tives. The rea­sons could be mul­ti­ple: the High Command’s order to stop air mail from Egypt, the insu­la­tion of camps from exter­nal influ­ences (such as the ban­ning of the British news­pa­per The Camp), and reprisal for dis­obe­di­ence. These were all part of the recruit­ment and dis­ci­plin­ing strategies.

The most inter­est­ing of them, how­ev­er, was the fol­low­ing: Accord­ing to the Gene­va con­ven­tion, POWs could write in their moth­er tongue but the Ger­man OKW (Oberkom­man­do der Wehrma­cht, High Com­mand of the Army) issued an order to the ranks ban­ning let­ter writ­ing in region­al lan­guages. Sure enough, the British gov­ern­ment made a rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Swiss Lega­tion evok­ing Arti­cle 56 of the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. The Ger­man author­i­ties retort­ed that there was no breach of postal reg­u­la­tions on their part. India had over 200 lan­guages and the inter­preters were sim­ply not avail­able for each! They could only write let­ters in cer­tain approved lan­guages. The main prob­lem was: What would they cen­sor if they could not under­stand the con­tent? The over­whelm­ing diver­si­ty of Indi­an lan­guages seemed to have exhaust­ed the anthro­po­log­i­cal reserves of the Ger­man empire. Their frus­tra­tion at the inabil­i­ty to read the cap­tives’ minds marred the prospects of con­trol­ling their minds.

In com­par­i­son, the British col­lect­ed quar­ter­ly cen­sor­ship reports on mails exchanged between sol­diers and their kin through­out the war.[xxvi] This shows just one dimen­sion of gen­er­a­tions of con­nec­tions between the empire and its sol­diers. This, among oth­er things, goes to explain why despite every pos­si­ble incen­tive, the large major­i­ty of cap­tives remained loy­al to the Raj.

Conclusion

The picture shows 8 POWs turned soldiers marching past Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Fig. 5: Cour­tesy: Bun­de­sarchiv, Bild 101I-823‑2704-30 Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: Aschen­broich, 1942.

The pol­i­tics of expe­di­en­cy both Hitler and Bose played with each oth­er may not have been a mil­i­tary suc­cess but the psy-ops and pro­pa­gan­da turned out to be a night­mare for the British intel­li­gence agen­cies. Bose in his pro­pa­gan­da offen­sive through­out late 1942 and ear­ly 1943, claimed to know more about events in India than its gov­ern­ment had made pub­lic and would include cod­ed instruc­tions as if to a wider net­work of his agents there. In his speech­es aired from Berlin, he would talk about the drop­ping of para­troop­ers, giv­ing cir­cum­stan­tial details and urg­ing peas­ants to help them, or warn the police and sol­diers that one day they would have to answer to the Free India gov­ern­ment for their crim­i­nal sup­port to the British (Toye 1978, 69).

Under the shroud of con­fu­sion, mis-com­mu­ni­ca­tions, mis­in­for­ma­tion, unde­liv­ered pris­on­ers’ post, and delayed CICR vis­its to Sta­lags hous­ing British-Indi­an pris­on­ers, we see Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose salut­ing the Indi­an Legion sol­diers dressed in their cap­tors’ uni­forms, march­ing in columns at Königs­brück in the autumn of 1942.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Bild 101I is from the Record Group of Pro­pa­gan­da-kom­panien der Wehrma­cht- Heer und Luft­waffe, which has a col­lec­tion of 21850 pho­tographs in the Bun­de­sarchiv deal­ing with var­i­ous pro­pa­gan­da com­pa­nies of the Ger­man army.

Netaji is standing in the foreground looking to the left, in front of him there is a flag with a large Iron Cross on it. Midground one can see a stationary machine gun and an anti-aircraft-gun. In the background there is a group of Indian POWs in soldiers' uniforms in front of a row of trees.
Fig. 6: Cour­tesy: Bun­de­sarchiv. Bild 237–473/ Fotograf(in) Stephan, Hans Eberhard.

In the rare pho­to­graph above, a glee­ful and proud Sub­has Chan­dra Bose is seen address­ing the first pro­pa­gan­da com­pa­ny of the Indi­an Legion at Königs­brück amid much jubi­la­tion, the oath tak­ing cer­e­mo­ny, and all the rit­u­als of ini­ti­a­tion that went with the for­ma­tion of yet anoth­er for­eign legion on Ger­man soil. While pre­sent­ing the tri­colour with the spring­ing Tiger embossed on it, Bose told the sol­diers: “Your name will be writ­ten in gold­en let­ters in the his­to­ry of free India. Every mar­tyr in this holy war will have a mon­u­ment there. I shall lead the army when we march to India togeth­er” (Bose 1982, 202). When Bose uttered these words, he had already start­ed look­ing east­ward for an actu­al armed resis­tance to the British Raj. In the end, Ger­many was a mere lab­o­ra­to­ry for his exper­i­ment. In his fre­quent vis­its to Königs­brück in 1942, Japan­ese observers could be sight­ed. The oath tak­ing cer­e­mo­ny in 1942 was attend­ed by the Japan­ese press and Colonel Yamamo­to Bin, the Mil­i­tary Attaché from the embassy in Berlin. Bose was able to demon­strate to the Japan­ese that he could raise an army from cap­tives. On 8 Feb­ru­ary 1943, Bose depart­ed from Kiel on a Ger­man U‑boot for the Far East, where the num­ber of cap­tives was much larg­er and the chances of actu­al com­bat real. His depar­ture was kept a guard­ed secret. In April, the three bat­tal­ions of Indi­an Legion were absorbed into the Ger­man Army by the name of the 950th Infantry Reg­i­ment and deployed to guard the West­ern Front.

A German official is adressing an audience inside a festive hall. To his left and right once can see a few Indian POWs in soldiers' uniforms.
Fig. 7: Cour­tesy: Bun­de­sarchiv: Bild 146‑1985-130–30/Hoffmann Novem­ber 1943.

The above pic­ture shows the pro­ceed­ings of an elab­o­rate cer­e­mo­ny to cel­e­brate Bose’s pro­vi­sion­al nation­al gov­ern­ment in exile. The func­tion took place in Hotel Kaiser­hof, Berlin, in Novem­ber 1943. It was attend­ed by high pro­file Ger­man dig­ni­taries, and ambas­sadors from Italy and Japan. The founder of the exile gov­ern­ment Bose, iron­i­cal­ly, can only be seen in a pic­ture frame on the wall while his speech played on a record player.

Endnotes

[i] While the pho­to col­lec­tion is cit­ed as CICR, (Comité Inter­na­tion­al de la Croix-Rouge) the reports go as ACICR (Archiv de Comité Inter­na­tion­al de la Croix-Rouge). Both are locat­ed on the same premis­es in Gene­va. I am thank­ful to Nav­ina Lam­ba for help­ing me with these reports writ­ten in French.

[ii] Altenburg­er, Andreas, Kriegs­ge­fan­genen-Mannschafts-Stamm­lager (M‑Stale­g oder Sta­lag), n.d.,  http://‌www‌.‌lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Kriegsgefangenenlager/Stammlager.html. (Last accessed on: 01.12.2020).

[iii] This cor­re­spon­dence is archived in all three coun­tries. In Ger­man For­eign Office Archives (PAAA) in Berlin, the Nation­al Archives (TNA) and India Office Records (IOR) in Lon­don and the Office of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross (CICR) in Geneva.

[iv] See: Joshi, Van­dana, “Mem­o­ry and Memo­ri­al­i­sa­tion, inter­ment and exhuma­tion, pro­pa­gan­da and pol­i­tics dur­ing WWII through the lens of Inter­na­tion­al Trac­ing-Ser­vice Col­lec­tions”. MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con (2019): 12 pp. www.projekt-mida.de/reflexicon/memory-and-memorialisation-interment-and-exhumation-propa‌gan‌da-and-politics-during-wwii-through-the-lens-of-international-tracing-service-its-collections/.

[v] For Germany’s role in aid­ing and abet­ting anti-colo­nial activ­i­ties of the Indi­an, Per­sian, and Alger­ian-Tunisian inde­pen­dence com­mit­tees against the British, French, and Russ­ian empires respec­tive­ly dur­ing the First World War through her ‘pro­gramme for rev­o­lu­tion’, see: Jenk­ins, Jen­nifer, Heike Liebau, and Laris­sa Schmid, “Transna­tion­al­ism and Insur­rec­tion: Inde­pen­dence Com­mit­tees, Anti-Colo­nial Net­works, and Germany’s Glob­al War”. Jour­nal of Glob­al His­to­ry 15 (2020): pp. 61–79.

[vi]Among the more recent works see David Motadel (2014) for Ger­man sub­ver­sive activ­i­ties in the Islam­ic world. For­eign Office Berlin made con­cert­ed efforts through poli­cies and pro­pa­gan­da work in the Mus­lim war zones from recruit­ment and spir­i­tu­al care to ide­o­log­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion of tens of thou­sands of Mus­lim vol­un­teers who fought in the Wehrma­cht and the SS. For Dan­ish, Swedish and Swiss Waf­fen SS vol­un­teers see: Gut­mann, Mar­tin R., Build­ing a Nazi Europe: The SS’s Ger­man­ic Vol­un­teers. Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2017; Ibid., “Debunk­ing the Myth of the Vol­un­teers: Transna­tion­al Vol­un­teer­ing in the Nazi Waf­fen-SS Offi­cer Corps dur­ing the Sec­ond World War”. Con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean His­to­ry 22, no. 4 (2013): pp. 585–607.

[vii] TNA WO 208/802. This file con­tains a brief sketch of Indi­an col­lab­o­ra­tionist activ­i­ties in Ger­many, France and Italy in par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the Indi­an Legion, writ­ten on 4.8.1945.  The Indi­an Legion was lat­er named the 950th Reg­i­ment of Ger­man Army once it was deployed out­side Germany.

[viii] Accord­ing to Man­gat, one of those cap­tured at El Mechilli, twen­ty-sev­en pris­on­ers were select­ed to fly to Sici­ly and he was one of them. On the 17th of May the par­ty was inter­viewed again their ques­tions were main­ly cen­tred around pol­i­tics and Man­gat found him­self to be “weak” as far as his answers were con­cerned. They then select­ed 8 men to fly with them to Berlin while the rest reached Berlin by train on the night of 19/20 May 1941. He wrote about the pris­on­ers being split up and rearranged in groups time and again. The advance par­ty was sup­posed to advise the Ger­mans on the food habits and cus­toms of Indi­ans.  See: Man­gat 1986, pp. 36–37.

[ix] PAAA R40742

[x] The spellings of var­i­ous reli­gious groups of Indi­ans have been repro­duced as they exist in reports of ACICR fur­nished in French (or ICRC in English).

[xi] The Ger­man ver­sion of this arti­cle was repub­lished by MIDA in 2020. See: Mahren­holz, Jürgen‑K., “Südasi­atis­che Sprach- und Musikauf­nah­men im Lautarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin”. MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con (2020): 19 pp. https://www.projekt-mida.de/reflexicon/suedasiatische-sprach-und-musikaufnahmen-im-lautarchiv-der-humboldt-universitaet-zu-berlin/.

[xii] ACICR, C Sc Sta­lag IV E, 27.06.1941

[xiii] ACICR, C Sc, Sta­lag IV D/Z, 15 May 1943

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] PAAA R 40985. This file on British-Indi­an pris­on­ers was main­tained for a peri­od from July 1942 to Novem­ber 1942 and gives telling details of the war of words.

[xvi] PAAA R 40985

[xvii] TNA WO 224/14B TNA Annaburg 3

[xvi­ii] TNA WO 224/14 B

[xix] ACICR, C Sc, Sta­lag IV D/Z, vis­it on 15.11.1943

[xx] Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um (IWM), Sound Archive, 16800. For more on Mazum­dar and the life of South Asian POWs in Annaburg see: Joshi, Van­dana, “The Mak­ing of a Cos­mopoli­tan Jan­gi Qai­di: A Leaf from Sohan Singh’s Prison Note­book writ­ten in Annaburg­er Stamm­lager D/Z in Ger­man cap­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the Sec­ond World War (1942- 45)”. MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con (2020): 11 pp. https://www.projekt-mida.de/reflexicon/the-ma‌king-of-a-cosmopolitan-jangi-qaidi/.  

[xxi] TNA, WO 208/808

[xxii] Ibid.

[xxi­ii] Ibid.

[xxiv] See: Gün­ther, Lothar, Von Indi­en nach Annaburg. Berlin: Ver­lag am Park, 2003, pp. 48–49.

[xxv] Gen­der, race and sex­u­al­i­ty in wartime is a bur­geon­ing field of new mil­i­tary his­to­ry, and we now have ample lit­er­a­ture avail­able on the theme. See: Her­zog, Dag­mar (ed.), Bru­tal­i­ty and Desire: War and Sex­u­al­i­ty in Europe’s Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. New York: Pal­grave Macmil­lan, 2009; Röger, Maren, Wartime Rela­tions. Inti­ma­cy, Vio­lence, and Pros­ti­tu­tion in Occu­pied Poland, 1939–1945. Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2020; Joshi, Van­dana, “Soldier’s Morale and War Wife’s Moral­i­ty: Gen­dered Images of Right­eous­ness and Cit­i­zen­ship in Nazi Ger­many”. Fem­i­nis­tis­che Stu­di­en 2 (2015): pp. 229–245; Timm, Annette, “Sex with a Pur­pose. Pros­ti­tu­tion, Vene­re­al Dis­ease, and Mil­i­ta­rized Mas­culin­i­ty in the Third Reich”. Jour­nal of the His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty 11, no. 1/2 (2002): pp. 223–255.

[xxvi] IOR con­tains a mas­sive col­lec­tion of the cen­sured let­ters that pro­vide us a win­dow to pris­on­ers and sol­diers life.

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MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con

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