The Indian Legion (), officially the Free India Legion () or 950th (Indian) Infantry Regiment (), was a military unit raised during the Second World War initially as part of the German Army and later the Waffen-SS from August 1944. Intended to serve as a liberation force for British-ruled India, it was made up of Indian prisoners of war and expatriates in Europe. Due to its origins in the Indian independence movement, it was known also as the "Tiger Legion", and the "Azad Hind Fauj". As part of the Waffen-SS it was known as the Indian Volunteer Legion of the Waffen-SS ().
Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose initiated the legion's formation, as part of his efforts to win India's independence by waging war against Britain, when he came to Berlin in 1941 seeking German aid. The initial recruits in 1941 were volunteers from the Indian students resident in Germany at the time, and a handful of the Indian prisoners of war who had been captured during the North African campaign. It later drew a larger number of Indian prisoners of war as volunteers.
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. A small contingent, including much of the Indian officer corps and enlisted leadership, was transferred to the Indian National Army in South-East Asia. The majority of the troops of the Indian Legion were given only non-combat duties in the Netherlands and in France until the Allied invasion. They saw action in the retreat from the Allied advance across France, fighting mostly against the French Resistance. One company was sent to Italy in 1944, where it saw action against British and Polish troops and undertook anti-partisan operations.
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. After the uproar the trials of Indians who served with the Axis caused among civilians and the military of British India, the legion members' trials were not completed.
Background
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. This plan failed after information leaked to British intelligence, but only after many attempts at mutiny, and a 1915 mutiny of Indian troops in Singapore. During World War II, all three of the major Axis Powers sought to support armed revolutionary activities in India, and aided the recruitment of a military force from Indian prisoners of war (POWs) captured while serving in the British Indian Army, and Indian expatriates.
The most notable and successful Indian force to fight with the Axis was the Indian National Army (INA) in southeast Asia, that came into being with the support of the Japanese Empire in April 1942. Fascist Italy also created the Azad Hindustan Battalion () in February 1942. This unit was formed from Indian POWs from their Centro I POW camp, and Italians previously resident in India and Persia, and ultimately served under the Ragruppamento Centri Militari alongside units of Arabs and colonial Italians. However, the effort had little acceptance from the Indians in the unit, who did not wish to serve under Italian officers. After Italy lost the Second Battle of El Alamein, the Indians mutinied when told to fight in Libya. Consequently, the remnants of the battalion were disbanded in November 1942.
Although the Indian National Congress (INC), the organisation leading the struggle for Indian independence, had passed resolutions conditionally supporting the fight against fascism, some Indian public opinion was more hostile toward Britain's unilateral decision to declare India a belligerent on the side of the Allies. 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. 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. Bose, ideologically a Communist was inclined to the Soviet Union for aid.