Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

Author(s): Thomas G. Fraser

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 255-272
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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Journal of Contemporary

History, 12 (1977),

255-272

Germany and Indian Revolution,

1914-18
Thomas G. Fraser

One of the twentieth century's most characteristic contributions to

international relations in war and 'peace' has been the use of dissident
groups within states or empires to weaken real or potential enemies.
It is no new phenomenon; for nearly sixty years the Bourbon monarchy
supported risings by Scottish and Irish Jacobites hoping that they
would weaken or divert British power. Nonetheless, as recent analysis
of Soviet support for Pathan and Baluchi separatists in Pakistan has
again emphasised, foreign-backed subversion is a seemingly inescapable
feature of late twentieth century life.1 The technique was first systematically developed during the first world war. In the Middle East Britain
profitably allied herself with Arab nationalist discontent with Ottoman
rule and later, together with the United States, encouraged the dissident
minorities of Austria-Hungary. Some years ago, however, the American
Chinese historian, Robert North, while studying the career of the
Indian communist, M.N. Roy, in China in the 1920s, concluded that
the real pioneer of revolutionary subversion had been Imperial
Germany. His view would find sympathy in the school of historians
which sees aggressive expansionism as the characteristic feature of
German foreign policy in the period up to 1918. Certainly, Fritz
Fischer, in Germany's Aims In the First World War, reviewed at some
length German attempts to foster revolution in different parts of the
British, French and Russian empires.
The best known examples of this aspect of German enterprise have
been their curiously lukewarm relationship with Irish nationalism in the
person of Roger Casement and their more successful intrigues in Russia,
but in many ways the most instructive study is that of their attempts to
assist revolutionary nationalists in India. This is partly because of the
255

256

Journal of Contemporary History

significance of India which was, as they knew well, not only Britain's
most important possession but the only section of the empire which
could immediately contribute a trained and coherent military force to
the war effort. Moreover, the Indian experience is important because
several of the key personnel involved survived to become active in
Soviet plans for disruption, in the colonial world in the 1920s. But it is
the richness of the documentation which makes the story of Germany's
Indian involvement not only interesting but as complete as it is possible
to make the history of events which were inherently secret. In comparison with, for example, their files on Ireland, the records of the
Auswartiges Amt on Indian revolution are extensive and revealing.
These microfilms are complemented on the British side by some thirty
volumes of Foreign Office documents devoted to the subject, and by
embassy and consular records which not only emphasise British concern
but contain invaluable material on revolutionary nationalism not otherwise available to South Asian historians. Finally, the India Office
Library possesses the transcript of the trial of Indian revolutionaries
and their German associates held in San Francisco in 1918. Though
basically a 'show trial' staged for propaganda reasons, its records have
much to tell about German activities in the United States. It is from
this material that the following account of attempted German subversion in India has been written.. Its purpose is to illustrate the
realism and flexibility of German and British officialdom as they
attempted to come to terms with an unfamiliar aspect of warfare.
Hopefully, it will also not only assist in understanding the small groups
of Indian revolutionary exiles who saw in German co-operation an unimagined opportunity of furthering their country's freedom but indicate
certain links between these events and subversion as it later developed.
From the first days of the war the Germans knew that Britain's
apparently strong position in India might by skilful manipulation be
made into a liability. As early as 1912 the polemicist General von
Bernhardi had pointed to the possibility of using pan-Islamic and
Bengali revolutionaries to German advantage.2 It is not altogether
surprising to find the Kaiser expressing similar sentiments on the fateful
night of 30-31 July 1914 when he learned that Russian mobilization
was irrevocable.3 It was only when he has become convinced of
Britain's resolve to fight the war a outrance that Bethmann Hollweg
officially sanctioned on 4 September a campaign of unrest in India and
Egypt.4 Before this, however, the Auswartiges Amt's eastern expert,
Max von Oppenheim, had begun to approach Indian exiles living in
Germany to form a committee. A former official of the Cairo con-

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

257

sulate-general, Oppenheim's prominence dated from 1898 when his

advocacy of an alliance between Germany and the pan-Islamic movement was regarded as the inspiration behind the Kaiser's rather controversial Damascus speech. On 2 August 1914 he was recalled from
Hittite archaeology to head the newly-formed 'Intelligence Bureau for
the East'.s His was the initial impetus behind the Indian revolutionaries
but it was not an area of the east in which he had any particular
expertise. His real interest was pan-Islamism and after his departure for
Constantinople early in 1915 he ceased to be important in the formulation of Indian plans. From December 1914 these were controlled by
a young official of the Auswdrtiges Amt, Otto Giinther von
Wesendonck, whose interesting, if unenviable, task was the organization
of revolutionary outbreaks in India and along the borders of the
Russian empire.
Nothing, of course, could be attempted until they had gathered
together a group of Indians willing to participate in such potentially
dangerous work. The men they recruited fall readily into two groups.
Living in Berlin and other university centres at that time was an Indian
student community, many of whom had come not only to sympathize
with the German way of life but had been moved by the intense
patriotism of their fellow students on the outbreak of war.6 These
young men formed the original Indian committee in Berlin, the leaders
being M. Prabhakar, a former Heidelberg student then teaching in
Dusseldorf, and Abderrahman and A. Siddiqi, students at Freiburg and
Gottingen universities.7 Though their enthusiasm was valuable, they
were political novices and Oppenheim knew that he had to contact
more experienced revolutionaries for planning to begin.
The recent history of revolutionary nationalism in India ensured
that there were two possible allies, the revolutionaries of Bengal and
the Ghadr party, a largely Sikh movement with considerable support
among the emigrant communities of North America and East Asia.
The former were the 'classic' Indian revolutionaries, intelligent and
dedicated young men from the elite bhadralok community of urban
Bengal who had become identified with violence during Lord Curzon's
viceroyalty. In 1914 a number of groups, or dais, were active in the
province, while others had been forced abroad by police pressure.8
These exiles were to determine the character of German plans, their
intention being to use the opportunity to provide the maximum
assistance to their remaining compatriots in Bengal.
The Ghadr party, whose origins lay in the vicious discrimination suffered by Punjabi immigrants at the hands of the American and Canadian

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Journal of Contemporary History

governments, was very different in character.9 Though its initial leaders

were revolutionary exiles, Har Dayal and Barkatullah, its strength lay in
the devoted allegiance of these Sikh peasant emigrants and the potential
support these men could arouse in the villages and regiments of the
Punjab. Had the Ghadrites received German money and arms, they
might have seriously embarrassed the British with the Sikh peasantry
whose loyalty was a major factor in the Indian war effort. As it proved,
however, the outbreak of war roused their enthusiasm to such an extent
that hundreds left North America for the Punjab where they mounted a
revolutionarycampaign and, together with supporters in Sikh regiments,
attempted an abortive rising in February 1915. By the time the German
consul in San Francisco had contacted the party's remaining leader,
Ram Chandra, these men were beyond possible assistance. Nonetheless,
many Ghadrites remained in the Sikh communities of Thailand, the
Philippines and the China ports, who could still offer the Germans
the prospect of fruitful collaboration.
Inevitably, Germany's Indian plans were fashioned by the
possibilities offered by these two groups. Oppenheim was fortunate
that two Bengali activists, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and
Bhupendranath Dutta, were living in Germany. Chattopadhyaya, whose
sister, the poetess Sarojini Naidu, was the most celebrated Indian
woman of her generation, had become a revolutionary while studying
at the Middle Temple in London. His charm and ability quickly
established him as the leader of Oppenheim's committee. Even so, it
undoubtedly suffered from the lack of more prestigious names. This
was partly Oppenheim's fault, since he refused to approach Shyamaji
Krishnavarma, the doyen of revolutionary exiles, then living in
Geneva.10 As most of the committee's members were politically
unknown, such an attitude was short sighted. The most notable German
failure was with the leading Punjabi politician, Lajpat Rai, who had
gone to America on the outbreak of war after taking part in a Congress
mission to London. Though he was a bitter opponent of British rule, he
considered that it .would be demeaning for India to gain her freedom
through a cynical alliance with another imperial power.11 The
committee's only recruits of any stature were the Ghadr leaders, Har
Dayal and Barkatullah, who arrived in Berlin in January 1915. Har
Dayal only came after much persuasion and never gave more than halfhearted co-operation.12
It was from these men, all of whom had been refugees for at least
seven years, that Oppenheim and Wesendonck had to acquire their
knowledge of current Indian politics. Unfortunately, their reports are

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

259

a matter for speculation as records of them no longer exist. Alternative

sources of information available to the Germans were pitifully inadequate. Imperial consulates had been established in Calcutta, Bombay
and Madras in 1872, but their concern was with commerce and the
needs of eminent Germans, like the Crown Prince in 1910-11, who
were attracted to India by shikar. These consular officials were not
used in connection with the Indian revolution. Germany's other link
with India was scholarly, and here she had a justifiably renowned
reputation. In the early nineteenth century Franz Bopp and the
brothers Friedrich and Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegel had
pioneered the new subject of indology, which later in the century
found its most distinguished exponent in Friedrich Max Muller.13
Their work made Indian philosophy widely appreciated among scholars
and artists --- Schopenhauer, in particular, confessed his reverence for the
teachings of the Upanishads - but none of this was relevant to the
mundane matter of fomenting revolution.14
The only sustained analysis of the Indian situation known to have
been studied by Oppenheim and Wesendonck is a report written by the
former Austro-Hungarian consul-general in Calcutta, Count Thurn, on
his return to Vienna. The Austrian had evidently interested himself in
Indian politics but had not always been critical of the information he
had gained. In estimating the power of the revolutionaries he was hopelessly optimistic, believing that they were organized in some two
hundred and fifty secret societies. He recalled the appearance in
Calcutta of placards proclaiming the readiness of twenty thousand
young men to rise against the British and the evidence in conspiracy
trials that there were some ten thousand revolutionaries with access
to arms. His conclusion was that these men were simply awaiting
outside help to act decisively.15 It is impossible to say how much
reliance the Germans placed on Thurn's report, but they read it, and
it was on such sanguine information that they based their plans. Without such optimism nothing would have been attempted.
If the formation of an Indian committee in Berlin was the first
problem facing Oppenheim and Wesendonck, their second was the more
fundamental one of Germany's remoteness from India. Geography and
the attraction of Germany's alliance with Muslim Turkey seemed to
recommend that they approach the sub-continent through Persia and
Afghanistan, concentrating their efforts on the Islamic sentiments of
north-western India. This would have been Oppenheim's preference,
but it was not that of the Indian committee whose background made
them wholly antipathetic to such an appeal.1 6 Expeditions were sent to

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Journal of Contemporary History

Kabul and Baghdad in 1915 and 1916 but they were little more than
token gestures. The presence in Berlin of men like Chattopadhyaya and
Har Dayal ensured that the main German plans concerning India
operated through the established revolutionary networks in the United
States, East Asia and Bengal.
The advantages of using the United States as a revolutionary base
were considerable. Its anti-colonialist traditions ensured that many
public figures, including the Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan,
and
influential
Indian
with
Irish-Americans,
sympathized
nationalism.1 7 The Germans could hope that their support for the
Indians might help counter allied propaganda which portrayed them as
the oppressor of defenceless nations. On the other hand, they went to a
great deal of trouble to disguise acts which they knew were in breach
of American neutrality legislation. Even after the war, the ambassador,
Count Bernstorff, denied any knowledge of the 'so-called Indian
conspiracy', although the records reveal his intimate knowledge of the
various attempts to send arms to India from the United States. 8 His
two subordinates most concerned with these schemes were the military
attache, Franz von Papen, and the consul in San Francisco, Franz
Bopp, whose task was to concert measures with the Ghadr leader, Ram
Chandra.
In East Asia the Germans, though faced with the preponderant
power of Britain and Japan, managed to retain some assets even after
the loss of their stronghold of Tsingtao. From their foothold in the
Shanghai International Settlement they could hope to exploit China's
instability to secure sympathy and arms from men sympathetic to
Asian nationalism. Moreover, the Ghadr party was strongly supported
by the country's Sikhs. Because of these assumed advantages the
consul-general in Shanghai, Knipping, was given control of the various
Indian revolutionary schemes.19 His authority extended to the
Netherlands East Indies and Thailand, both of which enjoyed the advantages of neutrality and may crudely be termed the German 'forward
bases'. The former had a vigorous Austro-German community of over
six hundred adult males led by the brothers Emil and Theodor
Helfferich.20 The Helfferichs, whose brother Karl Helfferich was
Secretary for Finance in the German government, were ardent patriots
who knew that Holland's uneasy relationship with Germany ensured
they could work unhindered. They could also establish contact with
revolutionaries in India through the old-established trading routes
between Sumatra and Calcutta. Unlike the East Indies, Thailand had
no sizeable German community from which recruits could come, but

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

261

there were diplomats and resident Sikh Ghadrites. It offered the

tempting possibility of mounting raids into the Indian empire across
the lengthy and ill-guarded Burmese frontier. In establishing links
between Berlin and these remote jungles, the Germans had shown
considerable imagination, but when set against the problems of distance
and British power in that part of Asia, they seem pitifully tenuous.
It should have been obvious from the beginning that exceptionally
resourceful and courageous agents would be needed to overcome
these difficulties. The following account of the actual plans the
Germans attempted will demonstrate how the general incapacity of
their personnel combined with a more fundamental lack of realistic
thinking to frustrate their hopes.
Franz von Papen confessed in his memoirs that the Germans were
sufficiently aware of these limitations to realize that they could not
overthrow British rule in India. Instead, they hoped that by creating
a number of local disturbances they would compel Britain to retain
in India troops which would otherwise be sent to the front.21 If this
is true, then German motives were cynical and opportunistic, but it
did not mean that they stinted their aid to the revolutionaries. At a
conference held in the Reichsmarineamt in October 1914, it was
decided that assistance would be pointless unless it were given on a
substantial scale. As the result of this discussion, Bernstorff and
Papen were ordered to purchase between ten and twenty thousand
rifles with ammunition on the American arms market and organize their
transport to India.22 Papen, who was by no means the rather ludicrous
bungler of allied propaganda, accomplished the first part of his task
with notable efficiency, drawing on the unrivalled contacts of Krupp's
American representative, Hans Tauscher. By the first week in December
the two men had assembled 8,080 Springfield rifles of SpanishAmerican war vintage, 2,400 Springfield carbines, 410 Hotchkiss
repeating rifles, all of matching calibre and with 4,000,000 cartridges,
5,000 cartridge belts, 500 Colt revolvers with 100,000 cartridges and
250 Mauser pistols with ammunition.2 3 This formidable and expensive
armoury is ample proof of the seriousness with which the Germans
regarded their prospects in India.
Transporting these arms to their destination proved a more
formidable task than their collection. Papen entrusted this part of the
operation to a prominent German-American shipping agent in California,
Frederick Jebsen, who was to ensure their delivery to the revolutionaries
in India in a ship commanded by Hermann Othmer, a German sea
captain who had been stranded in the United States on the outbreak of

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Journal of Contemporary History

war. Inconceivable though it might seem, Papen and his associates

were vague as to the vessel's ultimate destination, Othmer's orders being
to sail to Java whence, if no one met him, he was to continue to
Bangkok where it was hoped he would be met by a German pilot.
Failing this, he was to sail to Karachi where he was assured the arms
would be unloaded in fishing boats.24 The reason for this imprecision
was misleading information given by the Ghadr leader, Ram Chandra,
who told the Germans that there were hundreds of thousands of
revolutionaries in the Punjab and Karachi waiting to receive the cargo
of arms. He admitted to Lajpat Rai that he had lied and was terrified
that there would be no one to meet the arms ship when it arrived.2 5
Ram Chandra was spared this humiliation because of Jebsen's
incompetence. Sensing the danger of discovery by American or British
intelligence agents, Jebsen devised a complex plan to camouflage the
real destination of the arms. His basic idea was to consign the weapons
to a fictitious participant in the Mexican civil war, but once his vessel
had cleared American waters it would sail for Java. He ruined this
straightforward concept by the apparently clever refinement of using as
his agent a shipping broker, Marcos Martinez, who knew nothing of his
real purpose. Martinez was simply engaged to arrange for the transportation of the arms to Topolobampo in Mexico, which he did by
chartering a small schooner, the Annie Larsen, which, unfortunately for
Jebsen, was incapable of crossing the Pacific.26 Martinez' innocent
action immeasurably complicated the German task. Not only did it
force them to begin negotiations for a larger vessel but the delay which
this incurred compelled them to ship the arms out of the United States
7
On 8
before the State Department became too knowledgeable.2
March 1915 the Annie Larsen, with the arms on board, left San Diego
under Othmer's command to await the arrival of a second ship at the
uninhabited island of Socorro, off the Mexican coast.2 8
The purchase of such a ship proved difficult and expensive, but
ultimately Jebsen secured an elderly oil tanker, the Maverick. His
intention was that she should receive the arms from the Annie Larsen
at Socorro and proceed under Othmer's direction to Java but, as
extensive repairs proved necessary, she did not reach the island until
29 April.29 On arrival, Jebsen's second blunder emerged. Twelve
days previously the Annie Larsen had been forced to sail for Acapulco
as Socorro had proved waterless. Adverse winds foiled the irate
Othmer's attempts to return to the island and at the end of June he was
left with no option but to anchor at a small port near Seattle,
where the arms were impounded by the authorities.30 The Maverick,

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

263

tiring of her barren vigil at Socorro, eventually sailed to Java where her
arrival without the weapons proved a bitter blow to plans the Helfferich
brothers were arranging with revolutionaries in Bengal.
As these events developed over nearly seven months, Papen was slow
to realize the failure of his plan, and even before this had become
apparent he was preparing another. At the end of April 1915, a second
arms shipment, consisting of 7,300 Springfield rifles, 1,920 pistols and
ten gatling guns with nearly 3,000,000 cartridges was assembled by
Tauscher.3 On this occasion, Papen intended the plan to be a much
simpler affair -- the arms would be shipped to Soerabaya in the East
Indies on the Holland-America steamship Djember which was to leave
New York on 15 June.32 His plan avoided the tortured manoeuvres
which had bedevilled Jebsen on the west coast but it ignored the
obvious fact that a large cargo of arms consigned to a sensitive area of
the world was bound to attract the attention of British intelligence. The
consul-general in New York, Sir Courtenay Bennett, controlled a
network of agents who investigated all goods and passengers about to
leave the port. These men traced the projected cargo to Tauscher,
whom they knew to be a German agent, and Bennett passed this
information to the Holland-America Line.33 When the trucks arrived
at the quayside with the arms of the Djember, Tauscher's men were
told the company were refusing to honour the contract.34 Papen's
second scheme was altogether more discreet than his first; indeed he
refrained from mentioning it in his memoirs, but its collapse was just
as final.
These two affairs were scarcely examples of a dynamic Weltpolitik;
basically, they reflect the inability of an ad hoc organization to sustain
such sophisticated plans. With the exception of Papen's skill in
assembling the arms, German actions were naive and inept. Jebsen
complicated his plan in a way which was perhaps unnecessary and his
choice of the arid Socorro as a rendezvous was an error as basic as
Papen's inability to anticipate the vigilance of British intelligence.
These flaws in execution were compounded by their willingness to
despatch the Maverick with only the haziest instructions as to her final
destination, based on an uncritical acceptance of Ram Chandra's menda.cious reports. When all this has been said, however, the basic German calculation that a major revolutionary outbreak in India would need the
assistance of a large scale arms shipment was correct. It was on the understanding that this was being organized in the United States that they initiated two ambitious plans based on Thailand and the Netherlands East Indies.
In the spring of 1915 the Germans managed to contact Jatin

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Journal of Contemporary History

Mukherjee, the acknowledged leader of a large number of Bengali

revolutionaries. Mukherjee, realizing the value of such an alliance,
had already formed an organization capable of responding to a German
offer of assistance.35 The latter, convinced that the province was in a
state of widespread unrest, believed that Bengal offered the best possibility for revolutionary action.36 In March 1915 their emissary,
Jitendranath Lahiri, reached Mukherjee with an offer of co-operation
and instructions that the Helfferichs would organize money and arms
from Batavia.3 7 The following month his chief lieutenant,
Narendranath Bhattacharya, travelled to the East Indies where the
Helfferichs told him of the Maverick's impending arrival with arms
on board. Despite the fact that these had originally been intended for
Ghadr use, he convinced the Helfferichs that they should be diverted to
Bengal. They arranged a location in the Sunderbans where the Maverick
would be unloaded by Mukherjee's men and for money to be sent to a
bogus firm in Calcutta run by one of his party. Between June and
August 1915 Mukherjee's organization recieved Rs33,000 from the
Helfferichs.3 8
Had the Maverick's intended cargo reached the volatile youth of
Bengal, it could have given the British government a severe shock.
Not only, however, was she empty on arrival at Java but things soon
went badly wrong for the revolutionaries in India. On 28 June 1915
Beckett, the British consul-general in Batavia, received an anonymous
letter claiming knowledge of the Maverick, whose mysterious voyage
had already aroused the suspicion of naval intelligence. The writer, a
well connected Baltic-German using the alias 'Oren', offered to sell
Beckett the details of the Helfferichs' Indian plans.39 This unexpected
defection from the German side gave the British their first insights into
the Maverick affair, but 'Oren's' accurate knowlege of the links between the Helfferichs and Mukherjee proved even more significant.
Working on his information, the police destroyed the revolutionary
organization in Calcutta and killed Mukherjee in the jungle near
Balasore on 9 September.40 Despite his courage and resourcefulness,
Jatin Mukherjee fell victim to one of the commonest revolutionary
dangers, treachery from within.
A second German plan based on the East Indies was no more
successful. This envisaged raising a volunteer force from the local
German community to raid the Government of India's penal settlement in the Andaman islands. If this succeeded, these men would
organize the large number of political prisoners into an expeditionary
force and land on the Indian coast. On 4 May 1915 the Auswartiges Amt

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

265

approved this grandiose plan, sending as its organizer Vincent Kraft, a

German planter from the East Indies who had been wounded fighting as
a volunteer in France.4 1 The plan was Kraft's conception. In April he
had been brought to Berlin after writing to Wesendonck from hospital
indicating various possibilities for organizing Indian revolution from
Java and Sumatra.42 It was as the result of his imaginative ideas, which
the Indian committee found 'extremely useful and practical', that the
Andamans raid was sanctioned.43
Unfortunately for those who believed in him, Kraft's object in conceiving this plan was not patriotism but the desire to concoct something
which could subsequently be sold to the British. Such an interpretation
of his motives might seem fanciful but for his record once he reached
the east and a previous undetected attempt to interest the British in his
services as a double agent. Some weeks before his letter to Wesendonck,
he had been in Holland prior to being sent as a secret agent into Britain.
His mission did not take place, but while in Amsterdam he had written
to the British vice-consul offering to act as an informer.44 Immediately
on his arrival at Medan in the middle of July he contacted the British
consul, whom he advised to enquire into the man who had offered
himself as an agent in Amsterdam.4 5 Having thus prepared his path, he
went to Singapore where he was first arrested and then engaged as a
double agent at the rate of ?2 per day until the end of the war.46
Aware, however, that this income depended on the value of the
information he was providing, Kraft had no option but to act as an
agent provocateur. In early August the British sent him to Shanghai
where, with the unsuspecting Knipping, he drew up a detailed plan
for the raid on the Andamans which he was able to reveal on his return
to Singapore.47 His information enabled the British to counter
Knipping's plans for secret arms shipments to the Andamans as part of
the preparation for Kraft's raid. Once again, the German organization
proved vulnerable to treason. On this occasion, British intelligence
officers in Shanghai employed a discontented Austro-Hungarian whose
information in October and November 1915 led to the exposure of
Knipping's two attempts to furnish arms for the Andamans.4 8
In the East Indies Kraft succeeded in attracting many of the more
ardent Germans into his expeditionary force. The exact number is
not known, but evidence independent of Kraft estimated over one
hundred and it certainly included such flotsam of the war as von
Muller, a former naval officer who was to command the raid, Dr
Gehrmann, a colonial official from New Guinea who had avoided
capture by the Australians and two men, Diehn and Jessen, who had

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Journalof ContemporaryHistory

made a daring escape from prison camp in Singapore when an Indian

regiment mutinied there in February 1915.49 Such men were honest
patriots determined to make some contribution to their country's
war effort but they could achieve nothing in the face of the prevailing
treachery in the German organization. So bad had this become that
even Kraft's bogus plans were being betrayed to Beckett by 'Oren'.50
Kraft planned the raid to take place on 25 December 1915 and be
destroyed by the British but by November the uniform failure of the
Indian plans caused a loss of nerve in Berlin and Shanghai. Both
Knipping and the Berlin committee recommended the abandonment
of the operation, which was never revived.51 If Kraft's immediate
hopes were thwarted, he remained resilient. In 1917 he emerged in
Mexico where his reports on German intrigues were highly regarded
by British intelligence. The following spring he was brought to London,
entered into an indenture for the receipt of ?15,000 fourteen days
after a treaty of peace, and he was then sent to Japan to report on
German attempts to subvert the Anglo-Japanese alliance. His subsequent career cannot be traced, but few men can have negotiated the
war with such calculating resourcefulness.5 2
If these East Indian plans were still-born through treachery, those
based in Thailand, though initially more successful, failed because the
Germans did not appreciate the realities of power in that area. In
October 1914 the Ghadr party decided to make Thailand an area of
operations in the belief that they could infiltrate agents across the
border to work on the sympathies of the Burma Military Police, a
quasi-military force of some 15,000 Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims. With
the arrival of Har Dayal and Barkatullah in Berlin in January 1915,
these plans were discussed with Oppenheim who agreed that the
Germans could provide assistance.53 At this stage it was the obvious
outlet for the arms Papen was collecting in the United States and it is
an indication of the jealousy existing among Indian revolutionaries
that Bhattacharya had no hesitation in appropriating them for the
use of his party in Bengal.s4
The Germans in the United States also arranged to assist the
Ghadrites with three German-Americans, a Chicago art dealer, Albert
Wehde, who was to act as financier to the various Indian revolutionary
groups while pretending to purchase oriental antiquities, and two
German army veterans, Boehm and Sterneck, who were to train the
Indians in the Thai jungle and lead them into Burma.s5 When these
three men arrived in Manila they saw an opportunity to arm the
Ghadrites. Interned in Manila harbour were two German ships, the

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

267

Sachsen and Suevia, which had been carrying arms to China when the
outbreak of war had forced them to take refuge. In early July their
cargoes were transferred to a schooner for shipment to Thailand but
the American customs, aware of what was being attempted, refused
the vessel clearance.56 American neutrality did not extend to the
promotion of Asian nationalism. Their quiet, but effective, intervention
discouraged Wehde, Boehm and Sterneck from further participation in
the plan.
In Thailand itself there was greater initial success. The consul,
Remy, established a headquarters in the jungle near the Burmese
border where Ghadrites arriving from China and Canada were sent
for training.57 The Indian CID later estimated that by the end of
April 1915 over a hundred revolutionaries had passed through
Bangkok, a total which does not include Ghadrites already resident,
a group which went direct to Burma or those who arrived after that
date.58 If the Ghadrites did their utmost, so did the Germans.
Knipping sent three members of the Peking embassy guard to train
and lead the revolutionaries and persuaded a sympathetic Norwegian
ship's officer to smuggle arms regularly from Swatow.59 By late July,
with a sizeable group of armed Ghadrites near the Burmese border,
the Germans were as close to achieving an uprising in the Indian empire
as they would ever be.
Once again, however, their assumptions were unreal. They do not
appear to have considered the subtle relationship between the Indian
empire and Thailand which then, as now, adjusted its foreign policy to
accommodate the needs of its most powerful neighbour. Thai
dependence on British India meant that their principal police officers
were British who became aware of a major movement of revolutionaries
as early as March. Their information led to the arrest of over twenty
Ghadrites in Burma.60 In June an Indian secret agent posing as a
revolutionary was sent to Bangkok where he learned the main details
of the German plan from the Austrian charge d'affaires.6 1 Despite the
fact that the use of an Indian agent should have been an obvious
British ruse, no one suspected him. His reports coincided with the
arrival in Bangkok of a new British minister, Herbert Dering, who was
determined to suppress the plot. On 21 July he presented the Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Prince Devawongse, with a request for the arrest
and extradition of a number of Ghadrites identified by the secret
agent.62 There was no problem. At the beginning of August six leading
revolutionaries were arrested, to be followed by some fifty others.
The disheartened remainder fled to China, only six Ghadrites making

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a forlorn raid into Burma where they were hanged after being betrayed
by men of an Indian mountain battery. Once the plan had been uncovered by the British, its destruction by the Thai government was
certain, as they could not afford to allow such a quixotic raid from
their territory. In planning such an operation the Germans should have
realized that, although Holland's delicate position in Europe enabled
them to work unhindered in the East Indies, they had no such advantage in Bangkok or, as it proved, in Manila.
The reason why Germany's Indian endeavours were so consistently
unsuccessful are clear: inefficient personnel, inability to detect treason
in their own ranks, underestimation of the efficiency of British
intelligence and a false idea of how certain neutral countries would
react. These lacunae ensured that they could not overcome the basic
problem of India's remoteness from Germany. If their over-optimistic
assessment of revolutionary potential in India are also taken into
account, then the overall impression is one of naivety and
incompetence. Their efforts left India's war effort unaffected; instead,
German officials in various countries had been revealed indulging in
unneutral practices which duly formed the basis of British memoranda
in Washington, the Hague and elsewhere. Papen's activities reinforced
the general picture of bungling German interference with American
neutrality which was being carefully built up by British and pro-allied
propagandists. In this sense the Indian plots contributed to American
alienation from Germany and, though they were not a major reason for
her belligerency, once hostilities had broken out they were usefully
exploited to show doubting Americans how their new enemy had
abused their benevolent neutrality. The resources of the British and
American intelligence services were combined to make the trial in
San Francisco of Ghadr and the German plotters one of the longest in
American legal history, given heightened drama by a disgruntled
Ghadrite assassinating Ram Chandra in the courtroom.
But if the Germans lost rather than gained from their Indian policy,
they had set in motion a chain of events which did not stop when their
Indian committee was formally disbanded in November 1918. As their
interest declined after the end of 1915, their Indian proteges came
to focus their hopes on revolutionary Russia. It was hardly surprising
that the internationalist left attracted the revolutionaries more than
imperialist Germany. Between 1917 and 1920, most of the survivors
became strongly attracted to communism, seeing Russia as the new
patron of colonial revolution. In the 1920s the revived Ghadr
party openly proclaimed its new communist beliefs, an intellectual

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18

269

position which made it an even more isolated section of Californian

society than before. Dutta and Chattopadhyaya, who arrived in
Moscow in November 1920, were also converted. Until 1932,
Chattopadhyaya was back in Berlin as communist general secretary
of the League Against Imperialism. He secured a notable success in
1927 when Jawaharlal Nehru cajoled Congress into affiliation with the
League, but two years later his doctrinaire left-wing criticism of Gandhi
provoked a bitter quarrel which led to an irrevocable breach between
the two organizations. When Nazi success seemed inevitable, he fled
to Russia, where he lived in obscurity until his disappearance in
Stalin's purges of 1937.
Chattopadhyaya was unfortunate in being overshadowed by Jatin
Mukherjee's old lieutenant, Narendranath Bhattacharya, who had
preceded him to Moscow. Under his new name, M. N. Roy, he had
worked with Kraft in Mexico in 1917 but was attracted to communism
by the Soviet emissary, Michael Borodin. His greatest moment was at
the second congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1920
when he challenged Lenin's thesis that communists should support
the bourgeois nationalist movements of the colonial world. Roy,
disillusioned by his recent experience of such a movement in Bengal,
argued for a concentration on the establishment of communist movements in these societies. His arguments produced a compromise policy
whereby communists would assist middle-class nationalists but would
also organize themselves among the masses. This compromise was the
doctrinal justification for Russian Chinese policy in the early 1920s
which supported the Kuomintang while countenancing the growth of
indigenous communism.63 This alone would merit Roy a place in any
history of communist expansion. Together with the Ghadrites and
Chattopadhyaya, Roy enabled Indian communists to claim a place in
the history of their country's freedom movement, no easy task in a
historiography dominated by Gandhi and Congress.64 More than that,
they are a direct link between the revolutionary policies of imperial
Germany and those of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and beyond.

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History

NOTES

Documents from the German Foreign Microfilm are identified by the reel and
frame numbers, e.g. GFM 397/00413. References to Foreign Office documents
in the Public Record Office, London, have the series, followed by the volume
and documents numbers, e.g. FO 371/2784(8266). References to documents in
the India Office Library and Records, London, are prefixed by the letters IOR,
e.g. IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138.
1. See L.F. Rushbrook Williams, Pakistan under Challenge, (London 1975).
Professor Williams, who was the Government of India's first Director of Information from 1920-26, has been an informed observer of Soviet-backed subversion
for over half a century.
2. General Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, (Stuttgart
1912, English edition 1914), 96.
3. See Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times, (London 1964), 352.
4. Bethmann Hollweg to Auswartiges Amt, 4 September 1914, GFM 397/
00326.
5. For a sketch of Oppenheim's career see R.L. Melka, 'Max Freiherr von
Oppenheim; Sixty Years of Scholarship and Political Intrigue in the Middle East'
in Middle Eastern Studies, IX, January 1973, 81-93.
6. Polizeirat Henning to Oppenheim, 15 September 1914, GFM 397/00352;
J. Nehru, An Autobiography, (London 1936), 151-52.
7. Memorandum by Oppenheim, 8 September 1914, GFM 397/00332;
Request by Indian Committee for access to Konigliche Bibliothek, 5 March 1915,
GFM 397/00786.
8. 'Bhadralok' means 'respectable people' and describes a Hindu social
group drawn from the three dominant castes of Bengal, the baidyas, kayasthas
and brahmans. Amongst their attitudes was contempt for the Muslim majority of
the Bengali population - a factor which affected German plans.
9. For a discussion of the origins of the Ghadr movement see the author's
unpublished University of London PhD thesis 'The Intrigues of the German
Government and the Ghadr Party Against British Rule in India, 1914-1918'
(1974).
10. Oppenheim on Krishnavarma, 21 November 1914, GFM 397/00413.
11. V.C. Joshi (ed.), Lajpat Rai: Autobiographical Writings, (Delhi 1965),
198-99.
12. It was assumed during the war that Har Dayal was the inspiration behind
the committee. The German documents make it plain that this was not the case.
13. Miiller had a distinguished career at Oxford. His memorial is the classic
series of volumes, Sacred Books of the East.
14. For the development of Germany's cultural links with India see W.
Leifer, India and the Germans, (Bombay 1971).

Fraser: Germany and Indian Revolution,

1914-18

271

15. 'Die politische Lage in Indien nach Ausbruch des Krieges', Count Thurn,
5 December 1914, GFM 397/00502-6.
16. See note 8. Nor could the Sikhs of the Ghadr party be expected to favour
a Muslim approach.
17. In 1915 German propagandists reissued a pamphlet attacking British
rule in India written by Bryan nine years previously, to his considerable
embarrassment. See Bryan to Spring Rice, 16 August 1915, FO 371/2495
(123305).
18. Count Bernstorff, My Three Years in America, (London n.d.), 102.
19. 'Eine kurze Zusammenfassung der Plane des indischen Committees in
Berlin', n.d. (? December 1914), GFM 397/00461-8.
20. 'List of Germans, Austrians, Turks and Pro-Enemy Residents in the
Netherlands East Indies', Singapore 1917, FO 371/3065(60854).
21. Franz von Papen, Memoirs, (London 1952), 40.
22. Memorandum by Wesendonck, 18 October 1914, GFM 397/00390-1.
23. Testimony of H. Muck, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, II 929;
Bernstorff to Auswartiges Amt, 20 October 1914, GFM 397/00473; Papen to
Auswartiges Amt, 11 February 1915, GFM 397/00772.
24. Testimony of J.B. Starr-Hunt, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, VI
3085; Papen to Auswartiges Amt, 11 February 1915, GFM 397/00772. In this
document he gives the destination as Bangkok but in his memoirs refers to it as
Karachi.
25. Joshi, op. cit. 203-4.
26. Testimony of M. Martinez, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, IV,
1953 -2002.
27. Papen to Auswartiges Amt, 24 March 1915, GFM 398/0046-8.
28. Testimony of P.H. Schluter, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, VIII,
3799-3802.
29. Testimony of J.B. Starr-Hunt, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, VI,
3084-3101.
30. Testimony of G. Kotzenberg, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, II,
9834. This contains Othmer's diary of the voyage.
31. Testimony of H. Muck, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, II, 930.
32. Papen to Auswartiges Amt, 31 May 1915, GFM 398/00176.
33. Memorandum by Bennett, 1 July 1915, FO 115/1895 ('Enemy Arms'
171).
34. Testimony of H. Muck, Ghadr Trial, IOR.MSS.EUR.C.138, II, 920.
35. M.N. Roy, Memoirs (Delhi 1964),82.
36. Memorandum by Oppenheim, 4 February 1915, GFM 397/00668.
37. J.C. Ker, Political Trouble in India, 1907-1917 (Calcutta 1917), 277.
Indian Independence Committee to Wesendonck, 7 April 1916, enc. report from
Harish Chandra, GFM 398/00608-12.
38. Statement of P.K. Chakravarti, 17 December 1915, FO 371/2788
(152538); Sedition Committee Report, (Calcutta 1918), 82.
39. Beckett to FO, 2 July 1915, FO 371/2494(106706).
40. Ker, op. cit., 279-80.
41. 'Andamanen', 4 May 1915, GFM 398/00090.
42. Kraft to Wesendonck, 12 April 1915, GFM 398/00057.
43. Memorandum by Indian Committee, 28 April 1915, GFM 398/00072.

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History

44. Biography of Kraft, c. 13 November 1917, FO 371/3069(223290).

45. Beckett to FO, 30 July 1915, FO 371/2495(124971).
46. French, MIla, to Sperling, FO, 16 February 1918, FO 371/3423(51442).
47. General Ridout, Singapore, to WO, 23 September 1915, FO 371/2495
(13663).
48. Jordan, Peking, to FO, 19 October 1915, FO 371/2496(153442); De
Saumarez, Shanghai, to FO, 15 January 1916, FO 228/2642 ('Abbass Trial'.).
49. See note 20 above.
50. Beckett to FO, 5 November 1915, FO 371/2497(188834).
51. Indian Committee to Wesendonck, 14 November 1915, GFM 398/00368;
Windels, Batavia, to Auswartiges Amt, 5 January 1916, GFM 398/00576-8.
52. See files in FO 371/3069(223290).
53. Memorandum by Oppenheim, 9 January 1915, GFM 397/005634.
54. Papen's correspondence leaves no doubt that he believed he was arming
a Ghadr enterprise.
55. Statement of George Boehm, 16-17 November 1915, FO 371/2784
(8266).
56. Harrington, Manila, to Admiral Jerram, Singapore, 22 July 1915, FO
371/2495/(130787).
57. 'Betrifft: Forderung des indischen Aufstandsbewegung von Siam aus',
Dr Remy, 11 November 1917, GFM 400/00142-54.
58. Ker,op. cit.,289.
59. 'Betrifft', Remy, 11 November 1917, GFM 400/00142-54.
60. Ker, op. cit., 291; See also files of Bangkok Legation: FO 628.
61. Dering to Govt. of India, 26 June 1915, FO 628/Box 32(351).
62. Deringto FO, 6 August 1915, FO 371/2495(128631).
63. Roy's memoirs are essential for an understanding of this important
debate. His role in Indian and world communism has been studied by John
P. Haithcox in Communism and Nationalism in India (Princeton 1971),
and 'The Roy-Lenin Debate on Colonial Policy: A New Interpretation',
Journal of Asian Studies, XXIII, 1963, 93-101. There is a slightly different
view of Roy in R.C. North and X.J. Eudin, M.N. Roy's Mission to China,
(Berkeley 1962).
64. Important recent publications by the CPI which develop this theme
are: G. Adhikari (ed), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of
India, I, 1917-1922 (Delhi 1971), and G. Chattopadhyay, Communism and
Bengal's Freedom Movement, I, 1917-29 (Delhi 1970). Though ideologically
committed, these books contain much valuable information. Dr Adhikari, for
example, was closely associated with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya in the 1920s.