The Terrible Price of Freedom 207German government’s treatment of Indians. On another occasion, as a
student, he had been expelled from class by a German professor for
expressing sympathy with the Jews. In 1941, when he was working for
the German engineering company Siemens, he was invited to meet an
Indian leader of known po lit i cal standing and was astonished to find
himself face to face with Subhas Chandra Bose. He soon brought along
his friend Abid Hasan, an engineering student, and they became Bose’s
close aides.^13 Girija Mookerjee, who came with Nambiar from France
in January 1942, found that during the preceding six months the Indi-
ans in Berlin had fallen under “the spell of Subhas’s charm.” M. R. Vyas
found Bose, who was “basically an introvert,” to be “a very pleasant
talking partner, quite patient, tolerant and appreciative.” When Bose
was asked the hostile question why he, a socialist, had come to Berlin,
he “displayed no annoyance” and “seemed to understand” and share
the questioner’s reasoning. Bose explained to Vyas “how Lenin, though
fundamentally opposed to German ‘Kaiserism,’ had used Germany as a
base of operation during World War I to fight Czarism, which he con-
sidered to be the root of all evils in Russia.” He “never sounded pedan-
tic or overbearing,” and Vyas noted with “amazement and admiration”
that Bose, even when conversing with common soldiers, never showed
the slightest trace of “I know better than you” superiority.^14
The circle of Indians Bose gathered around him interacted with the
special India division of the German Foreign Office headed by the
Oxford- educated Adam von Trott zu Solz and his deputy, Alexander
Werth. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford, the aristocratic Trott was a skilled
international lawyer and had traveled widely in China, Britain, and the
United States. After the outbreak of the war, he had been assigned to
the Foreign Office desk dealing with the United States, Britain, and the
British Empire. He used this position as a cover for his anti- Nazi ac-
tivities, and was later executed for his part in Claus von Stauffenberg’s
failed plot, in July 1944, to assassinate Hitler. As a result of his po lit i cal
opposition, Werth had already suf fered imprisonment at the hands of
the Nazis in 1934 and subsequently went to Britain, where he was
called to the bar at the Middle Temple. He was permitted to return to
Germany in 1939, on condition that he join the army; he was recruited
in 1940 by the Foreign Office because of his knowledge of the Anglo-