Intended to serve as a liberation force for British-ruled India, it was made up of Indian prisoners of war and expatriates in Europe.

Though it was initially raised as an assault group that would form a pathfinder to a German–Indian joint invasion of the western frontiers of British India, only a small contingent was ever put to its original intended purpose.

At the time of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the remaining men of the Indian Legion made efforts to march to neutral Switzerland over the Alps, but they were captured by American and French troops and eventually shipped back to India to face charges of treason.

The idea of raising an armed force that would fight its way into India to bring down the British Raj goes back to the First World War, when the Ghadar Party and the then nascent Indian Independence League formulated plans to initiate rebellion in the British Indian Army from Punjab to Hong Kong with German support.

Among the more rebellious Indian political leaders of the time was Subhas Chandra Bose, a former INC president, who was viewed as a potent enough threat by the British that he was arrested when the war started.

[10] Bose escaped from house arrest in India in January 1941 and made his way through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union, with some help from Germany's military intelligence service, the Abwehr.

The Soviets were navigating a complex geopolitical and strategic web and did not want to break any potential alliance with the Allies in case of an impending German invasion.

[12][13] Soon Bose's aim became to raise an army, which he imagined would march into India with German forces and trigger the downfall of the Raj.

[18] After the invasion of France by the Allies, the unit was ordered back to Germany, so that it would not participate in fighting for German military interests.

950, at one stage insisting that their weapons be handed over to the newly created 18th SS Horst Wessel Division, exclaiming that "…the Indian Legion is a joke!

Sikhs in the legion were permitted to wear a turban as dictated by their religion instead of the usual peaked field cap, of a colour appropriate to their uniform.

Following German defeat in Europe at Stalingrad and in North Africa at El Alamein, it became clear that an Axis assault through Persia or even the Soviet Union was unlikely.

Adrian Weale has written that about 100 members of the Indian Legion were parachuted into eastern Persia in January 1942 tasked with infiltrating Baluchistan Province as Operation Bajadere.

[29] The 3rd Battalion remained at Oldebroek as Corps Reserve until the end of September 1943,[29] where they gained a "wild and loathsome"[30] reputation amongst the locals.

[31] On 8 August 1944 Himmler authorised the legion's control to be transferred to the Waffen-SS, as was that of every other foreign volunteer unit of the German Army.

On the second leg of this journey, from Poitiers to Châteauroux, it suffered its first combat casualty, Lieutenant Ali Khan, while engaging French regular forces in the town of Dun.

[32] With the defeat of the Third Reich imminent in May 1945, the remainder of the Indian Legion stationed in Germany sought sanctuary in neutral Switzerland.

They undertook a desperate 2.6-kilometre (1.6 mi) march along the shores of Lake Constance, attempting to enter Switzerland via the alpine passes.

[25] After the uproar the trials of Indians who served with the Axis caused among civilians and the military of British India, the legion members' sentences were commuted.

[34] Bose's plans for the Legion, and even the INA, were too grandiose for their military capability, and their fate was too strongly tied to that of the Axis powers.

[35] Looking at the legacy of Azad Hind, however, historians consider both movements' military and political actions (of which the Legion was one of the earliest elements, and an integral part of Bose's plans) and the indirect effect they had on the era's events.

The views of the founder and leader of the Azad Hind movement, Subhas Chandra Bose, were, however, somewhat more nuanced than straightforward support for the Axis.

[36] Bose's correspondence prior to 1939 also showed his deep disapproval of the racist practices and annulment of democratic institutions by the Nazis.

Indeed, when the first POWs were brought to Annaburg and met with Subhas Chandra Bose, there was marked and open hostility towards him as a Nazi propaganda puppet.

[39] Once Bose's efforts and views had gained more sympathy, a persistent query among the POWs was 'How would the legionary stand in relation to the German soldier?'.

The foremost were that Bose had abandoned them and left them entirely in German hands, and a perception that the Wehrmacht was now going to use them in the Western Front instead of sending them to fight for independence.

[40] The attitude of the Legion's soldiers was similar to that of the Italian Battaglione Azad Hindoustan, which had been of dubious loyalty to the Axis cause—it was disbanded after a mutiny.

[40] Even in Asia, where the Indian National Army was much larger and fought the British directly, Bose faced similar obstacles at first.

Their stories were seen as so inflammatory that, fearing mass revolts and uprisings across the empire, the British government forbade the BBC from broadcasting about them after the war.