i know it was you subhas chandra bose. you broke my heart. you broke my heart!

the bbc has this mindblowing article about indians fighting FOR the third reich. so bizarre.

It reveals how thousands of Indian soldiers who had joined Britain in the fight against fascism swapped their oaths to the British king for others to Adolf Hitler - an astonishing tale of loyalty, despair and betrayal that threatened to rock British rule in India, known as the Raj.

The story the German officers told their interrogators began in Berlin on 3 April 1941. This was the date that the left-wing Indian revolutionary leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, arrived in the German capital.

Bose, who had been arrested 11 times by the British in India, had fled the Raj with one mission in mind. That was to seek Hitler's help in pushing the British out of India.
[...]
He decided to raise them by going on recruiting visits to Prisoner-of-War camps in Germany which, at that time, were home to tens of thousands of Indian soldiers captured by Rommel in North Africa.
[...]
"He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered."

it just goes to show you, you shouldn't trust an indian any further than you can smell him. i think that joke lost something in the translation...it's much funnier in hindi. or german.

in any case, what the fuck were these guys thinking? yeah, the british took our diamonds or whatever, but at least they weren't fucking nazis, right? i don't think hitler would accept subhas chandra bose as his friendster either.