Legion Free India
The Legion Free India (synonymous Indian Legion , Infantry Regiment 950 or Azad Hind Legion ) was a military unit of the Wehrmacht during World War II , which was made up of Indian students in Germany and former Indian prisoners of war. Their troop strength was up to 2,600 men. She took her oath on the well-known Indian nationalist leader Subhash Chandra Bose and on Adolf Hitler . In August 1944 she was placed under the Waffen-SS .
history
When Bose came to Berlin in 1941 , he had just escaped house arrest in India. With the support of the German military leadership, he quickly began to build a military unit with Indian soldiers , mostly captured in North Africa , who had fought for the British army . Bose intended to deploy his troops along with German forces in the Caucasus . From there they were to march through Persia in the front row to India and there end British colonial rule .
In the Annaburg camp , in which there were about ten thousand Indian prisoners of war, Bose soon succeeded in putting together a troop formation so that the German army was able to defeat the 950 infantry regiment , which was made up of Indian soldiers , also known colloquially as the "Indian Legion" or " Azad Hind Legion ”.
The first volunteer contingent, which consisted of both Indian prisoners of war and some Indian civilians living in Germany, left Berlin on Christmas Day 1941 for Frankenberg near Chemnitz . The main task of this contingent was initially to take on other released prisoners of war and to convince them of the "just" cause of their action. In the Frankenberg camp, German officers were supposed to train the legion. However, this site soon proved to be unsuitable and the legion was transferred to the Königsbrück military training area near Dresden .
In December 1942, the Legion was finally divided into four battalions . The distribution of the creeds within the Legion is assessed differently by historians. From 1944 they were subordinated to the Waffen SS .
In view of the Soviet advance on the Eastern Front from late 1942, the Legion was first sent to Holland , where it served for five months. She was then stationed in Lacanau , near Bordeaux , where she was charged with various tasks to protect the " Atlantic Wall ". There it was also subjected to an inspection by Field Marshal Rommel , who has meanwhile been assigned to the defense there .
Two months after the Allied invasion of Normandy , the Indian Legion was sent back to Germany and, on August 15, 1944, finally to Poitiers in France , where it had to accept the first wounded by French Resistance organizations . In September 1944 the Legion suffered its first death, Lieutenant Ali Khan, who fell in a skirmish with regular French troops. The officer was buried in Sancoins with military honors .
The Indian Legion had to complain about further losses during fighting back to the east until it arrived in Oberhofen near Hagenau at the end of 1944 and finally in an empty military area on the Swabian Alb ( Heuberg camp ). It stayed there until March 1945, when the troop units tried to get along Lake Constance to neutral Switzerland . Troops also moved through Scheidegg. In this attempt, however, they were captured by Allied American and French forces. Under the guard of British and British-loyal Indian units, the soldiers of the Indian Legion were finally brought back to India and held there in the prison of the Red Fort in Delhi until they were convicted of treason . However, all members of the Indian Legion were released again in 1946, as protests by the Indian population made it impossible to convict the British courts.
Indian Legion soldier with MG 34 on the Atlantic Wall near Bordeaux (March 21, 1944)
Rommel inspects the Indian Legion in occupied France, Biscay February 1944
Rommel inspects a unit of the Indian Legion, Lacanau Océan (Biscaya), February 1944
Indian artillerymen sniping at sea targets, February 1944
Above: Sikh Bridge Guard; below: German non-commissioned officer demonstrating rifle grip to Indian volunteers
See also
literature
- Jan Kuhlmann: Subhas Chandra Bose and the India policy of the Axis powers. Schiler, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89930-064-5 .
- Lothar Günther: From India to Annaburg. Indian Legion and prisoners of war in Germany. Verlag am Park, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89793-065-X .
- Brian L. Davis, Malcolm McGregor: Flags of the Third Reich. Vol. 2: Waffen-SS. Osprey, London 1994, ISBN 1-85532-431-8 (Men-at-Arms-Series 274).
- Rudolf Hartog: Under the sign of the tiger. The Indian Legion on the German side 1941–1945. Busse and Seewald, Herford 1991, ISBN 3-512-03034-3 .
- Eugen Rose: Azad Hind. A European Indian fairy tale or The 1299 days of the Indian Legion in Europe. Bhaiband, Wuppertal 1989.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Rudolf Hartog (2001). The Sign of the Tiger: Subhas Chandra Bose and His Indian Legion in Germany, 1941-45. Rupa & Company.
- ↑ http://uk-muenchen.de/pdfPresse/20000819_AZ.pdf
- ↑ Rolf-Dieter Müller : Afghanistan as a military goal of German foreign policy in the age of the world wars in: Bernhard Chiari (Ed. On behalf of MGFA ): Wegweiser zur Geschichte Afghanistan, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76761-5 , p. 55.
- ↑ according to Jonathan Trigg: Hitler's Jihadis . Stroud. 2008. p. 183 two thirds of the population were Muslims and one third were Hindus and Sikhs . Other sources give different numbers for the beginning of 1943. According to this, the religious beliefs of the 2,593 members of the legion were distributed as follows: 1,503 Hindus, 516 Sikhs, 497 Muslims and 77 others. See: Werner Neulen: On the German side . Munich. 1985. p. 357.