Gandhi and Hitler BFFs?

I was tracking down Gandhi's letter to Hitler, hoping to find someplace that had the actual text available after following some links to a site that was dropping the bomb that Gandhi called Hitler "my friend". The reference was so brief and interspersed with other personal failings of Gandhi that I was curious about how exactly Gandhi used the term.

I found the text at Letters of Note; Correspondence deserving of a wider audience.

Here's the post dealing with Gandhi's letter. It turns out Gandhi didn't really know Hitler and was trying to butter him up and ask him, oh-so-politely, not to start a war. Well...that didn't work out....although the post makes mention of the fact that Hitler never actually received the letter. Still, I doubt Hitler would have cared about Gandhi's opinion. The letter was written before the start of WWII as tensions were ratcheting up in Europe but before the scope of what Hitler was eventually planning on doing was fully understood.

So....it is factually true that Gandhi called Hitler "my friend" but not thematically true that Gandhi viewed Hitler as one of his best buds.

Just an interesting tidbit I ran across.