ABSTRACT
Bose arrived in Berlin on April 2, 1941. The adventurous journey via Peshawar, Kabul, Samarkand, and Moscow had the active support of the Italian diplomatic service, which had issued him a false diplomatic passport in Kabul. Bose’s trip was tolerated by the Soviet Union, whose territory he, of course, had to traverse. Bose could not hope for more than tolerance from Stalin—not even at this time, when Stalin was rejecting every overture from Churchill, counting instead on Hitler’s good behavior. From the beginning, the attitude of the German government toward Bose was one of tolerance rather than active support. That is to say, German politics could not bring itself to see in Bose an actual partner in the struggle against Britain. But Bose viewed himself as just such a partner (Chand 1946; Sareen 1996: 62–71; Das 2000: 432–434).
