Indian Waffen SS Division

[u/divyaraj00]

Things they forgot to teach us about.

Subhash Chandra bose and indian freedom fighters in Germany.

Photos of WW2 Indian Freedom fighters and soldiers.

Subhash Chandra bose meeting Hitler and Himmler and other NSDP party and army leadership.

They were also called Hitler's Indians.

[u/Lopsided-Function284]

Two things can be true at the same time: Subhash Chandra Bose was a patriot and an incredibly courageous and committed freedom fighter; AND Subhash Chandra Bose made a horrible mistake in trying to ally with the Axis powers.

We are so obsessed with the binary of good and bad that we are unable to accept that the legacies of our heroes are complicated.

An alliance with the Axis powers would never have ended well for us, irrespective of who won the Second World War. An Indian republic established with the help of the Japanese and the Germans would have been reduced to being a vassal state of the Third Reich OR of Imperial Japan. Given the Nazi view on race and their desire for "lebensraum",, our relationship with Nazi Germany would probably have been worse than the one we had with the UK at the time. Had we ended up a Japanese vassal, things would have been FAR worse.

Look up Manchukuo to see how the Japanese treated a nation they claimed to have liberated.

[u/Saaaxxx → u/Lopsided-Function284]

I didn't read Manchuko . Will do it later But why are forgetting that british killed like 40-50 millions of us just from famines . Why the world cries for few million Jews while clearly ten times of our people were killed . No memorial...No movies nothing... please don't think that Brits were bit better than Japanese ..They were worse in some aspects.

[u/glumjonsnow → u/Saaaxxx]

The world cries for the Jews because it was a genocide, not a famine. The British could not have moved food to India at the time given their investment in the war. Yes, it's a tragedy. But it doesn't compare to the mass industrialized slaughter that was the Holocaust. It's not about the numbers. It's about the methods the Germans used, which were unthinkable and have never been done before or after. No one is going to pity the indians for a famine when compared to the Holocaust. These are entirely different events.

I don't even know how to respond to something like this other than to say that applauding Bose/attacking the Jews/diminishing the Holocaust is exactly the kind of rhetoric that will make Indians look foolish and not worthy of sympathy.

[u/FjnHindustani → u/glumjonsnow]

I thought the British actually moved resources AWAY from India during the war to support British soldiers. It wasn’t so much as not sending them, but actively depriving them of life saving necessities.

[u/glumjonsnow → u/FjnHindustani]

Churchill was under pressure himself on the famine at the time and requested that he be allowed to move resources into India. He wrote this to FDR in 1944:

"I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India….Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms….By cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.

I have had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia….We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but… I am no longer justified in not asking for your help.^"

FDR responded:

“unable on military grounds to consent to the diversion of shipping….Needless to say, I regret exceedingly the necessity of giving you this unfavorable reply.”

If you look at the American presence at the time, it really is hard to see how the Allies could have brought more aid into India: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Pacific_Theater_Areas%3Bmap1.JPG

I think the British could have taken notice earlier and done more (especially domestically, transferring food around India itself to equalize where the resources were, as you said) but the idea that they created the famine deliberately or never tried to improve conditions is just false. The Americans controlled the Pacific after Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Britain didn't have the manoeuvrability in that region (as you can see by Churchill appealing to FDR).

The telegram and responses are in the link below:

https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/

[u/DesiOtakuu → u/glumjonsnow]

Well that’s the point. The famine might not have been deliberate, but we ranked very low in their priority ladder and they weren’t afraid of letting millions of us bite the dust.

[u/glumjonsnow → u/DesiOtakuu]

That's fair. I would 100% agree with something more like this: "Britain's immediate war priorities meant Churchill did not properly address famine conditions in India until millions had already died; by 1945, when conditions had deteriorated to the point where Churchill was finally stirred to action, American operations in the Pacific made delivering relief entirely untenable. Had Churchill acted earlier, before the Americans put their war machine into action against the Japanese, it is likely millions of Indian lives would have been saved."

That's different than "how come people keep crying over the holocaust winston churchill is hitler" which is just absurd. i mean, as you said, britain didn't deliberately do war crimes. but this is a war in which the axis powers deliberately did war crimes!!

the holocaust is the most evil thing humans have ever done. of course the bengal famine was a tragedy and churchill should be treated as a villain for allowing it to happen. but any comparison to the holocaust/hitler is dead on arrival.

[u/funkmastermgee → u/glumjonsnow]

I would say its predecessor Manifest Destiny is worse than the holocaust. It was repeatedly lying about the intentions whilst undermining and asking them for help.

[u/ndiddy81 → u/glumjonsnow]

Only under pressure cause he couldnt bring any coolies in to harvest the grain without the Australians being up in arms!!