The Terrible Price of Freedom 219life I shall remain one. My allegiance and my loyalty has ever been and
will ever be to India and India alone, no matter in which part of the
world I may live at any given time.^43He had absolutely no doubt where he should be at that particular
moment in world his tory. “Now the time has come,” he wrote to Rib-
bentrop on May 22, 1942, “when the final effort should be made for
achieving India’s po lit i cal emancipation. For this purpose, it is abso-
lutely essential that I should be in the East. Only when I am there, shall
I be able to direct the revolution along the right channels.”^44
On May 29, 1942, Bose found himself face to face with the German
Führer. The of fi cial record filed by Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter,
gave the date of the meeting as May 27 and the venue as the “Führer’s
Headquarters.” But it is clear from other sources—including the su-
preme command of the Wehrmacht, the Führer’s diary, and the report
of the German News Bureau (DNB)—that Bose’s one and only en-
counter with Hitler took place in Berlin on May 29 at the Reich Chan-
cellory. According to Schmidt’s detailed account of the conversation,
Bose raised the issue of his “journey to East Asia,” “motivated by the
desire to find a point as close to India as possible, from where the In-
dian revolution could be directed.” Fortunately, the Führer agreed with
this proposal and promised logistical support for Bose to travel by sub-
marine from Europe to Asia. Hitler warned Bose against taking the risk
of a journey by air, which might entail a forced landing in British terri-
tory—he was “too im por tant a personality to let his life be endangered
by such an experiment.” Either he could travel in a Japanese submarine,
or the Führer would “place a German submarine at his disposal, which
would take him to Bangkok.” Later in the conversation, Bose brought
up the matter of Hitler’s anti- Indian racist remarks in Mein Kampf and
sought a clarifying statement for the Indian nation. Hitler evaded the
question, saying that he had not wanted “passive resistance for the
Reich of the Indian pattern.” Bose was lucky not to have the offer of the
submarine withdrawn.^45
A German declaration supporting Indian in de pen dence still eluded
Bose. Hitler launched into a long monologue on the virtues of po lit i cal