| By June 1941,
Subhas Bose who was then visiting Rome, realised that Hitler
had made a strategic blunder by invading Soviet Russia. The
gravity of this strategic folly was clear to Bose. He immediately
came to the following conclusion that there would be no early
end to the European war, as he had considered possible after
the fall of France.
A new settlement between a vastly weakened
Britain and the Germany-led Axis powers, which might have
left India still a British colony under such a settlement,
was therefore not an immediate danger.
The termination of the Soviet-German Non-aggression
Pact which took the world by surprise in August 1939 and Hitler's
refusal to proclaim open support for Indian independence had
undermined the reasons why Subhas Bose had taken the risks
of travelling through Afghanistan, Soviet Central Asia, Moscow
to Berlin.
Since Hitler did not agree to host a Provisional
Government of Free India in Berlin, Bose turned his attention
to organising the Free India Centre. The Free India Centre
he created enjoyed de facto diplomatic privileges.
It had the responsibility of political campaign
for Indian independence and raising an Indian legion with
volunteers drawn from Indian POWs captured by Germany and
Italy from the British Indian armed forces largely deployed
in West Asia.
Having given shape to a political body and
a military force, he wanted to return to areas adjacent to
India, especially to the Far East after Japan began the military
campaign against the colonies of Western Powers in Southern
Asia.
It must be mentioned here that while
Hitler's Germany was unwilling to make a public declaration
favouring the end of British rule over India, Japan in its
diplomatic communications with its European Axis allies, Germany
and Italy, pleaded for a Tripartite declaration of support
for Indian independence.
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