Bose and Nazi Germany. You can’t judge him. He sought freedom too.

An article I came across. Sharing it down. Your views are welcome :)

Bullet-point summation of why an American description of Bose as a Nazi collaborator is massively preachy and sanctimonious:

1. The USSR, the cherished Allied partner in WW2, was a ‘Nazi collaborator’ till the morning of Operation Barbarossa, courtesy the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Soviet trains loaded with foodgrains and oil were steaming into German territory till the moment the first guns opened up.

Much is made of Germany’s invasion of Poland – after all, Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to Hitler marching into Poland. But did Germany occupy all of Poland? No. While the Poles were still fighting, the eastern half of...

Poland was occupied by Stalin’s troops as per a German-Soviet pact. Did the Allies therefore declare war on the USSR as well, since the issue was guaranteeing Polish sovereignty? Of course not. The US, a sovereign nation, subsequently allying with Stalin as soon as he was at war

with Hitler, on the ‘enemy’s enemy’ rationality, wasn’t ‘collaboration with a dictatorship’, but Bose, a citizen of a colonised state nobody was willing to support militarily, seeking support from nations that were at war with Britain was?

4. Should he have gone to other nations to seek help in securing India’s freedom? As a Leftist, he may well have considered reaching out to the USSR, but when Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, the option of joint German-Soviet support became impossible.

The US, which today is discussing his status as a collaborator, should ideally have been the first option for anybody seeking liberty from colonial occupation. But Uncle Sam was busy propping up His Majesty’s forces to retain their colonies across Asia vs the Axis,..

3. Bose was no Nazi fanboy. If at all, he was on better terms with Mussolini than with Hitler, with whom he had one single, unflattering meeting that left him distinctly unimpressed.

In a letter to Dr Thierfelder, in 1936, he spelt out his views on the culture the Nazis were instilling in the country: ‘When I first visited Germany in 1933 I had hopes that the new German nation...

2. There were thousands upon thousands of Nazi collaborators in Europe. Half of Europe was collaborating with the Nazis during the occupation, when Hitler seemed unstoppable, either out of ideological necessity or out of the need for self-preservation.

Nations that proudly talk of liberty today were filling trains with Jews and sending them off as ordered, without the least resistance to German instructions. Anti-Semitism in Europe existed before Hitler and didn’t die with him.

Vichy France’s troops fought the Allies on multiple fronts, on multiple occasions. Fact check: More French troops bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies during the course of WW2.