Sonderreferat Indien,[1][2][3] variously translated into English as, Special Bureau for India,[2] Special India Bureau,[4] or Section for Indian Affairs,[1] was a section or bureau established within the Information Department of the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany in late spring 1941 in response to a proposal or memorandum written by the Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, who had arrived in Germany in early April of that year.[3] The main function of the bureau was to aid Bose in his work,[1] to liaise with Bose,[2] and to mobilize an Indian Legion, comprising Indian POWs captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, to aid the German military in a future land invasion of India.[1] A military intervention in India, one of the two major points in Bose's proposal, had at first received a lukewarm response from the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, but shortly afterwards it received the unexpected support of Adolf Hitler, who saw the battle for India as the natural aftermath of a successful German invasion of Russia and a chance to deliver the ultimate blow to the British Empire.[5]