204 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
East including the smashing up of the Singapore base will automati-
cally weaken British military strength and prestige in India.” Yet he felt
that a prior agreement between the Soviet Union and Japan would
both pave the way for a settlement with China and free up Japan to
move con fi dently against the British in Southeast Asia.^4
At a meeting with the German foreign minister, Joachim von Rib-
bentrop, at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna on April 29, 1941, Bose was
disappointed to hear that the German government felt it would be
premature to accept his plan. He suggested that sig nifi cant numbers
of Indian prisoners- of- war captured in North Africa could be or ga-
nized into an effective fight ing force against the British. Ribbentrop
responded that the time for such action had not yet come and he re-
fused to make a public statement in support of Indian in de pen dence.
When Bose probed further, saying the Indians were concerned that
Britain might accept defeat in Europe but hold on to its empire in In-
dia, the German foreign minister expressed the opinion that the Brit-
ish, having refused Hitler’s olive branch, had doomed their empire.
Asked about the Indian attitude toward Germany, Bose “wanted to ad-
mit in all frankness that feeling against National Socialists and the fas-
cists had been rather strong in India,” because they were seen as “striv-
ing to dominate the other races.” The foreign minister “interjected at
this point that National Socialism merely advocated racial purity, but
not its rule over other races.”^5 Bose’s first encounter with a se nior Ger-
man minister was not a happy one.
Undeterred, on May 3 Bose submitted a supplementary memoran-
dum in which he asked the Axis powers to make a clear declaration of
policy regarding the freedom of India and the Arab countries. The
anti- British revolt in Iraq had just occurred, and he urged the Germans
to support the Iraqi government. “For the success of the task of exter-
minating British power and in flu ence from the countries of the Near
and the Middle East,” he wrote, “it is desirable that the sta tus quo be-
tween Germany and the Soviet Union should be maintained.” He also
discussed four possible routes for opening up a channel of communi-
cation between Germany and India; of those four, he favored the one
going through Russia and Afghanistan. An invasion spearheaded by an
Indian legion from the traditional northwesterly direction, he believed,