Netaji’s Escape: From Calcutta to Kabul to Berlin

Before Subhas Chandra Bose ever led the INA, he had to escape British-controlled India entirely. His search for Axis support took him halfway around the world in disguise. This lesson follows that journey: two disguises, a meeting with Hitler, and an underwater submarine transfer unlike anything else in the war.

1.How did Bose’s night-time getaway to Kabul work?

1.1How did he slip past his own house guards?

A carefully planned exit, not a sudden impulse, got him clear of Calcutta.

• On the night of 17 January 1941, Bose slipped past the British guards watching his own house in Calcutta.
• A car drove him to Gomoh railway station, far from prying eyes, the first move in a carefully planned escape.

1.2What disguise carried him into Afghanistan?

A new name and a trusted guide got him across the border undetected.

• Bose dressed as a Pathan and called himself “Ziauddin,” a travelling insurance agent, to cross overland into Afghanistan.
• A local guide, Bhagat Ram Talwar, led him across the border. The disguise worked, and Bose reached Kabul without being caught.

2.Why did he need a second disguise for Europe, and what did Hitler offer?

2.1Who did Bose become for the journey through Soviet and European territory?

Each leg of the journey needed its own separate false identity.

• In Kabul, “Ziauddin” was retired. Bose became “Count Orlando Mazzotta,” travelling on an Italian passport, for the next leg through Soviet and European territory.
• Under this new name, he crossed into the Soviet Union and took a train to Moscow. From there he continued to Rome, and finally reached Berlin in early April 1941.

2.2What happened when Bose finally met Hitler?

The meeting he had planned toward for over a year did not go the way he hoped.

• Bose met Adolf Hitler in Berlin in late May 1942, hoping to win real military backing for India’s freedom struggle.
• Hitler offered no meaningful military support for an invasion of India. What he did offer was smaller: a submarine to carry Bose onward to East Asia.

3.How did Bose swap submarines in the middle of the ocean?

3.1Why was Azad Hind Radio his backup plan?

While still searching for real backing, Bose found another way to reach India.

• Bose started Azad Hind Radio in Berlin in 1942, broadcasting nationalist messages back to listeners in India.
• Radio let him speak directly to Indians from thousands of kilometres away. It kept his voice and his cause alive while he searched for real military support.

3.2What made his submarine transfer unique in the whole war?

No other civilian crossed between two navies’ submarines underwater like this.

• Bose boarded the German U-boat U-180 in 1943 for the long, cramped journey east.
• In late April 1943, near Madagascar, he was moved underwater from the German submarine onto a Japanese submarine, the I-29. This was the only time in the whole war a civilian transferred between submarines of two different navies.

4.Who was the guide who was secretly five spies?

4.1What did Bose not know about his trusted guide?

The man leading Bose to freedom was quietly working for nearly everyone else too.

• Bose trusted his guide, Bhagat Ram Talwar, completely for the Afghanistan crossing. What Bose did not know is almost unbelievable.
• Talwar was secretly spying for five different countries at once: Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, Italy, and British India. British intelligence even had a code name for him, “Silver.”

4.2Why is seeking Nazi support still a debated part of Bose’s legacy?

One strategic choice still raises an uncomfortable question decades later.

• Bose allied with a regime responsible for immense atrocities, purely out of anti-British strategic calculation, a choice separate from endorsing Nazi ideology itself.
• His full journey ran from Calcutta to Kabul in disguise, then Kabul to Berlin, a meeting with Hitler, and finally a submarine crossing to Japan. Few individual stories from the freedom struggle travelled this far.

4.3Why is Bose’s escape house back in the news now?

A recent national commemoration ties directly back to the house this lesson opens on.

• The Ministry of Culture ran Parakram Diwas from 23 to 25 January 2026, marking Netaji’s 129th birth anniversary. Events were held at 13 sites tied to his life.
• Netaji Bhawan in Kolkata, the very house Bose escaped from on 17 January 1941, was one of those official sites. More than 80 years later, it is now a preserved museum.
• The museum displays a period map of Bose’s escape route. It traces his path from the house itself to Gomoh railway station, on the night he slipped past his own guards.

5.Exam Angle: How does CDS test Azad Hind Radio?