Intolerance: The Collaborators

The Collaborators

In the period following World War I, many groups and movements were created and operated on the Fascist model. The Rexists in Belgium under Leon Degrelle, The National Rally in Norway under Vidkun Quisling, The Hungarian Iron Cross under ‎Ferenc Szálasi‎, The Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania under Corneliu Codreanu, The Falange in Spain under José Antonio Primo de Rivera, The British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley and The Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Lebanon under Antoun Saadeh are few examples of fascist inspired movements.

Political convenience often trumps morality. In the infamous Munich Conference (1938), Hitler had demanded an integral industrial part of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France, instead of supporting the new but strong pro-Western Czech democracy, gifted them to Nazi blood lust without even caring to invite the Czechoslovaks to the conference. Later, 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 the German-Soviet pact. The Allies did not declare war on the USSR for guaranteeing Polish sovereignty. After murdering popular morality at Munich, Allies shook hands with Stalin as soon as he was at war with Hitler.

Less-than-clever German conservatives used Hitler in an attempt to rouse the public. They undermined parliamentary democracy, setting the stage for the Nazi state. The German Left was divided against itself. The decade beginning in 1930 saw great conflicts within the comunist revolutionary movement. In Moscow, the then fountainhead of all things communists, conflict rose through ranks and religion was religiously persecuted. The factional struggle was confined to a limited circle, at the most a few hundred party members. Lenin spoke how Communist Party policy is controlled by a “tiny section that might be called the Party’s Old Guard.” This cadre, or the victorious section, constituted the pool of leadership until the late 1930s and to some degree even later. Policy decisions were made on that ideological basis and not on rational grounds.

Trotsky was increasingly committed to a “left” policy and a swift end to the NEP, with a planned economy at home and revolutionary action abroad. None of the communist leadership thought of abandoning the idea of world revolution. The major division was between those who thought that the Russian Revolution could not survive on its own (the old orthodoxy) and thus the main effort should be in supporting revolution abroad, and those who now proclaimed the slogan ‘Socialism in One Country’ under Stalin’s leadership. Stalin achieved a majority in the Politburo. From 1927 to 1930 the political struggle between the Stalinists and the ‘Rightists’ continued. Russia was huge, and Siberia was far, almost 6000 kms away. Rich ores of gold and platinum had been found, waiting to be mined by Gulag inmates who were worked by Russians just like Nazi camp inmates. 5 lakhs gulag inmates lay buried under the Kolyma Highway construction which started in 1932 by the inmates continuing till 1953. Some Indian Leftists like Abani Mukherjee, Virendra Nath Chattopadhyaya and Subhash Chandra Bose are most possibly still buried under the highway.

Karl Mayr must have known Hitler closely because it was he who noticed Hitler’s gift for public speaking, installing him as a lecturer and sending him out to observe political activities in Munich where Hitler came across a fringe group - the German Workers’ Party. He joined it and rose within ranks in a few months. The group was later rechristened as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. We keep forgetting that Nazis or National Socialists began as all socialists begin. This is probably why they went for the socialists last, as per the natural rule of cannibalism.

Hitler’s ‘scientific anti-Semitism’ began echoing French racial theorists and anti-semitic intellectuals who had normalised venomous language during the Third French Republic. The British Empire was Hitler’s ideal image of a master race, the colony of India an ideal colony of slaves. The Armenian genocide of 1915-16 encouraged his belief that the world did not care about genocides. Hitler asked, “Who, after all, is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians?¹⁠” The Nazis expectedly found collaborators in almost every country that they invaded.

It is in light of such mind-numbing political dynamics that we must see the efforts of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, a half-citizen of a full British colony who sought tactical Nazi support against the colonial British empire. To put their relationship in Western contexts, Bose was Malcolm X to the Mahatma’s Martin Luther King Jr. While Gandhi never wished to end the British rule with German aid, Bose was willing to do anything to make the British go. The first Hindu nationalist who came into direct contact with Fascism was MS Moonje, a Hindu Mahasabha leader who was much impressed with Mussolini’s militarisation when they met in 1931. KB Hedgewar had formed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1925, six years prior to the said meeting. There were other nationalists like ML Jayakar who had formed Swastik League²⁠.

The sentiment for Hindu military regeneration on Italian lines, in face of popular public discontent over political appeasement by Mahatma Gandhi, was reflected in later nationalists like Savarkar who succeeded Moonje and Golwalkar who succeeded Hedgewar. They had come to believe that war was a fact of life and the idea of perpetual peace was nothing short of misguided idealism. They were far from wrong for the times they lived in, having seen two world wars within a quarter of a century. Of the past 3,400 years, humans had been entirely at peace for mere 268, or just 8% of recorded history³⁠.

Similarly, Bose was able to figure out something that we are still struggling with. He prioritised India over himself or the society around him. He chose to strive and die in the line of fire underneath the colonial moral high hill rather than on top of it, unlike all prominent nationalists of his time. Bose is guilty of miscalculating German military superiority but he compensated it with his passion for India's freedom.

Hitler had miscalculated air power in his plan of letting the seas stay with British if Germany could keep the lands. In Hitler's mind, India was merely a bargaining chip in exchange for control over Russia. Hitler's comments about India had come to Bose's notice as early as in 1933. In 1936, when Hitler preached white superiority, Bose held a press conference in Geneva advocating trade boycott of Germany. Bose knew the man he was meeting but he was consumed by his passion.

In their disastrous meeting on 29th May 1942, Hitler refused to help Bose out of racial spite but he recognised Bose's potential in the great colonial hunt. Bose, knowing his precarious situation, worded his anger "Your Excellency, I have been in politics all my life and I do not need any advice from anyone⁴⁠." Hitler did not care for his request to expunge some India-related objectionable paragraphs from Mein Kampf. Hitler did not care for India, but he took care of Bose. He called off the original risky Italian plan of flying off Netaji to Japan, offering Bose a ride in a brand new Africa bound U-180 submarine instead. Bose also saw action when the U-boat sank a British tanker Corbis en route to meet the Japanese I-80 submarine.

Hitler believed that India was one of the most resourceful lands on earth but the people were not capable of ruling themselves for another 100-200 years⁵⁠. Nazis considered India the Achilles heel of the British empire. In his biography, Hitler wrote how it would be better for India to remain under British domination. In his Aryan mind, British India was a textbook example of governance that he wished to implement in Russia. Hitler had built his political career on his misplaced notion of racial supremacy of Aryans, who were considered as the composer of Rig Ved and a vital part of Hinduism. The Aryan invasion theory in India was recently debunked.

Bose believed that being an imperialist collaborator was worse than being a fascist collaborator. While the latter had the possibility of freedom, the former was born to die in slavery⁶⁠. Bose was a staunch Leftist whose first choice was USSR, Germany came only later, that too in desperation. The option of joint German-Soviet support became impossible when Germany invaded USSR. Today, Bose is most certainly lying buried under the Kolyma highway, the Serbian Road of the Bones, betrayed in his death as in life, by both Left and Right⁷⁠.

To counter the Bose juggernaut in Congress, the Congress Working Committee had passed a resolution stating that no partyman could launch a mass movement without the express permission of the committee which was Gandhi’s coterie. Bose, whose radical left wing desired to confront the Raj, protested this move and was promptly removed as president of the Bengal Provincial Congress in 1939 and also disqualified from holding any Congress post for three years. It was not the first time for Bose, he had been betrayed earlier in 1922, when the Mahatma pulled the plug on non-cooperation movement because of Chauri Chaura incident^8⁠.

Bose bitterly remarked “By trying to warn the country about the continued drift towards Constitutionalism and Reformism, by protesting against resolutions which seek to kill the revolutionary spirit of the Congress, by working for the cause of left- consolidation and, last but not least, by consistently appealing to the country to prepare for the coming struggle - I have committed a crime for which I have to pay the penalty…I feel no doubt in my mind that the cause which we leftists represent is a just cause.”

Today, the USA calls Bose a Nazi collaborator. Back then, it was collaborating with the British in efforts to keep colonies across Asia under control during the war, because the USA itself had colonised the Philippines until Imperial Japan snatched it. All imperial hands were dipped in blood without exception. The year 1941 was filled with energy. Bose had stayed in Berlin for three years. He was in Rome on 05/05/1941 to meet Italian foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, who also happened to be the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini politely explained his weakened position but put in a good word with the Germans. On 24/05/1941, Nazis forwarded Bose a huge loan which helped him in setting up Free India Center and establishing Indian Legion, a fighting force of some 3,000 POW British Indian soldiers^5,9 The Congress which had distanced itself completely from Bose, resolved at Wardha session (1941) that India could not ‘offer voluntary and willing help to arrogant imperialism which is indistinguishable from fascist authoritarianism.’

There were many prominent Nazi 'collaborators', including the Jews. The Jew fascism began in modesty. Ironically, it was Itamar Ben-Avi, the son of the reviver of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who first expressed admiration for Italian fascists. Jew fascists saw the Jews as a whole and the Zionists in particular as historical victims in both Europe and Israel. They despised liberals, moderates and whoever harboured notions of reaching compromises with either the Arabs or the British.

A graduate of the University of Florence, Avraham Stern, rose through the ranks of a militia - Irgun Tzvai Leumi (the Revisionists’ National Military Organization). After World War II broke out Stern left Irgun and established a separate group called the Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), aka the Stern Gang. Ideologically, Stern envisaged a national resurgence that resembled fascist models. Stern sought support from the Axis powers in the struggle against the British Mandate in Palestine. In January 1941, following a failed attempt to make contact with the Italian representation in Palestine, Stern sent an emissary to approach the German representative in Beirut, which prompted the British to begin hunting his organization. Before this, the Stern gang was involved in many assassinations attempts. They assassinated British Resident Lord Walter Moyne in Cairo of 1944¹⁰⁠.

The Lehi perpetrated The Sergeants Affair in July 1947 during Jewish insurgency in Mandate Palestine, in which Irgun kidnapped and hanged two British Army Intelligence officers when their demands were not carried out. It caused a riot in Tel Aviv. The ripples were felt further in time. Secret files released by MI5 give a fascinating new insight into a bombing campaign which terrorised London in the years following the Second World War. This was carried out by some of the Zionist groups fighting to seize control of Palestine from the British government who took their campaign of bloodshed to Britain.

The Lehi targeted government offices and sent letter bombs to ministers, including future Prime Minister Anthony Eden, Labour PM Clement Attlee, Chancellor Stafford Cripps and wartime PM Winston Churchill, culminating in the infamous King David Hotel bombing, which killed 91 people in 1946. One Lehi leader, Yitzhak Shamir, became Israeli Prime Minister, sharing power in various governments in the 1980s with the left-wing Shimon Peres. Both Jewish right-wing and left-wing armed Zionist groups participated in the Deir Yassin massacre. These massacres were planned deliberately as a long thought-out strategy to “empty the land” of its people. How else could a “Jewish state” be formed in Palestine, a land which did not have a Jewish majority? Strikingly, Lehi used the word “terrorist” openly to describe itself, using it as a badge of honour. According to Calder Walton, a historian and author, Lehi is thought to be the world’s last terrorist group to describe themselves publicly as terrorists.

Stern had developed a plan to train 40,000 young Jews to sail for Palestine and take over the country from the British colonial authorities. He was supported by the Polish government. The Poles had been training Irgun before Germany invaded Poland. Germans calculated the cost-benefit ratio and refused to entertain or accommodate Jewish fascists.

In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister and Labour party leader Yitzhak Rabin concluded a formal peace agreement with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. In October same year, Rabin and Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres. Next year in 1995, Rabin was assassinated when he was shot in the arm and the back by Yigal Amir, a 27-year-old Jewish law student who had connections to the far-right Jewish group Eyal because the prime minister wanted “to give our country to the Arabs.” Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion was quoted on the Moyne assassination: “to England terrorism like the murder of Lord Moyne is like a fly stinging a lion, but to Jewry, it is a dagger plunged at the heart¹¹⁠.”

Jews weren't the only ones vying for Hitler's support in the hood. Two German banks, the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank, traded in Turkish free gold market to sell looted gold provided by the Reichsbank in return for foreign currency, particularly Swiss francs. The Nazis melted gold dental fillings from concentration camp victims and found the best price for it was in neutral Turkey. It kept selling Germany the chromium ore Germans needed to build weapons and continue the war¹²⁠.

In 1941, Haji Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine, fled to Germany to meet Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade Germans to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world. The Mufti sent fifteen drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make in concern with the Middle East. He called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, he wanted “the right to accord to Palestine and other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, following the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries¹³⁠.”

The Nazi dictator, however, rebuffed the Mufti's requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches. The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely..the Jews..” Hitler simply stated that Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention to Cairo in 1946 and later Beirut, dying in 1974.

“Muslims were in solidarity with their Palestinian co-religionists who were in conflict with the Jewish settlers and supported Hitler's anti-Jewish line. There was the Khaksar Muslim militia, founded on the model of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA, "storming department") by Allama Inayatullah Mashreqi who had visited Nazi Germany. The Muslim League, while in alliance with the British, held a soft corner for Hitler. The League leaders had begun to echo the Fascist tirade against democracy. The Nazis raised the cry of hatred against the Jews, the League raised cry against the Hindus."

- B.R. Nanda: Gandhi and His Critics (1985), P.88

The Arabs, like Subhash Chanda Bose, were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war, helping the Arab cause. Arabs claimed they were Germany's natural friends because they had common enemies - English, Jews and Communists. They cooperated with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in the war. They committed acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions and formed an Arab Legion, which was quite easy to raise. An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries and the prisoners of Arab, Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan nationality in Germany produced a great number of eager volunteers fighters. The Arabs, like many others, were convinced of Hitler's victory because the Almighty could never award the victory to an unjust cause.

Churchill, in one of his notorious racist rants, spoke of the Palestinian people, “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time… I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place¹⁴⁠.” The average Englishman in the late 1800s believed in a shared and cherished conviction, from the highest to the lowest, from the orderly to the Viceroy, that he belongs to a race whom God has destined to govern and subdue. The average colonial was no better than the extremist Islamist.

1. Hitler and the Armenian Genocide | Genocide Education Project. https://genocideeducation.org/background/hitler-and-the-armenian-genocide/.

2. Chandrasekaran, R. HINDUTVA MOVEMENT: BURKEAN EXAMINATION OF VIOLENCE AS RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE In Partial Fulfillment for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major Department: Communications. (2012).

3. ‘What Every Person Should Know About War’ - The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/what-every-person-should-know-about-war.html.

4. A Beacon Across Asia: A Biography of Subhas Chandra Bose - Google Books. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=hYaMBfgT2y8C&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Your+Excellency,+I+have+been+in+politics+all+my+life+and+I+do+not+need+any+advice+from+anyone.&source=bl&ots=CeH5lB_mQS&sig=ACfU3U2GCOsO3_YxPBUQAzL8DXsQJhqhaQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ8qWmmsrpAhX46nMBHfolCEUQ6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Your Excellency%2C I have been in politics all my life and I do not need any advice from anyone.&f=false.

5. Explained: Hitler’s relationship with India, Opinions & Blogs News | wionews.com. https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/explained-hitlers-relationship-with-india-277103.

6. (No Title). https://sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/Misc/Indian_Struggle-1.pdf.

7. Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide? https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/.

8. Noncooperation movement | Indian history | Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/noncooperation-movement.

9. No, dear land of liberty, you can’t judge Bose. He sought it, too. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/clicklit/no-dear-land-of-liberty-you-cant-judge-bose-he-sought-it-too/.

10. The Zionist Lehi was the last self-proclaimed terrorist group – Middle East Monitor. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180203-the-zionist-lehi-was-the-last-self-proclaimed-terrorist-group/.

11. When Jews praised Mussolini and supported Nazis: Meet Israel’s first fascists - Israel News - Haaretz.com. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-jews-praised-mussolini-and-supported-nazis-meet-israel-s-first-fascists-1.7538589.

12. WWII Lesson for Trump: Turkey Was in Bed With the Nazis. https://www.thedailybeast.com/wwii-lesson-for-trump-turkey-was-in-bed-with-the-nazis.

13. Amin Al-Husseini, H. THE MUFTI’S CONVERSATION WITH HITLER (NOVEMBER 28, 1941).

14. Balfour Declaration: A Wrong Waiting To Be Righted | Countercurrents. https://countercurrents.org/2019/11/balfour-declaration-a-wrong-waiting-to-be-righted/.