Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world

Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world
The relationship between Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and the leadership of the Arab world encompassed contempt, propaganda, collaboration, and emulation in some instances. Cooperative political and military relationships were founded on shared hostilities toward common enemies, such as the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, along with communism, and Zionism.
Another foundation of this collaboration was the antisemitism of the Nazis and their hostility towards the United Kingdom and France, which was admired by Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini (see Antisemitism in Islam). In public and private, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler made warm statements about Islam as a religion and a political ideology, describing it as a more disciplined, militaristic, political, and practical form of religion than Christianity, and commending what they perceived were Muhammad's skill in politics and military leadership. Minor Nazi party branches were established in the Middle East before the war by local German diaspora. In June 1941, Wehrmacht High Command Directive No. 32 and the "Instructions for Special Staff F" designated Special Staff F as the Wehrmacht's central agency for all issues that affected the Arab world. However, the official Nazi racial ideology considered Arabs racially inferior to Germans, a sentiment which was echoed in deprecating statements which were made by Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Hitler left no doubt about his disdain for the Arab world, writing in Mein Kampf: "As a völkisch man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of my own people with theirs".
Despite the Mufti's efforts to acquire German backing for Arab independence, Hitler refused, remarking that he "wanted nothing from the Arabs".
Nazi perceptions of the Arab world
In speeches, Hitler purportedly made apparently warm references towards Muslim culture, such as: "The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France". Hitler was transcribed as saying: "Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers [...] then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world."
This exchange occurred when Hitler received Saudi Arabian ruler Ibn Saud's special envoy, Khalid Al Hud Al Gargani. Earlier in this meeting, Hitler noted that one of the three reasons why Nazi Germany had some interest in the Arabs was:
Gilbert Achcar wrote that the Führer "did not find it useful" to point out to his Arab visitors at that meeting that until then he had incited German Jews to emigrate to Palestine (see Aliyah Bet and Timeline of the Holocaust), and the Third Reich actively helped Zionist organizations get around British-imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration.
Hitler had told his military commanders in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II: "We shall continue to make disturbances in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash."
Prior to the Second World War, all of North Africa and the Middle East was either within the sphere of influence or under the direct rule of, European colonial powers. Despite the Nazi racial theory, which denigrated Arabs as racially inferior, individual Arabs who assisted the Third Reich in fighting against the Allies were treated with dignity and respect. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, for example, "was granted honorary Aryan" status by the Nazis for his close collaboration with Hitler and the Third Reich.
The Nazi government developed a cordial association and cooperated with some Arab nationalist leaders based on their common enemies and shared distaste towards Jews and Zionism. Notable examples of these common-cause fights include the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and other actions led by Amin al-Husseini, as well as the Anglo-Iraqi War, when the Golden Square (four generals led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani) overthrew the pro-British 'Abd al-Ilah regency in Iraq and installed a pro-Axis government.
In response to the Rashid Ali coup, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 30 on 23 May 1941, to support their cause. This order began: "The Arab Freedom Movement in the Middle East is our natural ally against England."
On 11 June 1941, Hitler and the supreme commander of the armed forces issued Directive No. 32:
Nazi persecution of Arabs
While Arabs were a small population in Europe at the time, they were not free from Nazi persecution. Racist incidents against Egyptians were reported as early as the 1930s. The Nazis also sterilized hundreds of "half-breeds", Germans of mixed Arab/African heritage. On the onset of war, Egyptians living in Germany were interned in response to the internment of Germans in Egypt. There were also tens of thousands of French colonial prisoners of war in Germany during the war.
The historian Gerhard Hopp confirms 450 Arab inmates in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz (34), Bergen-Belsen (21), Buchenwald (148), Dachau (84), Flossenburg (39), Gross-Rosen (12), Hinzert (3), Mauthausen (62), Mittelbau-Dora (40), Natzweiler (34), Neuengamme (110), Ravensbruck (25), and others. Most of the inmates were Algerians who were living in France, and were used for Nazi slave labor. One in five Arabs did not survive the camps, and one - a Moroccan named Mohamed Bouayad - was killed in a gas chamber at Mauthausen.
Arab perceptions of Hitler and Nazism
According to Gilbert Achcar, there was no unified Arab perception of Nazism:
Robert Satloff believed that, although some Arabs played minor roles in collaboration and resistance, most North Africans during the Vichy France's colonial rule were indifferent towards their Jewish neighbors:
Massive programs of propaganda were launched in the Arab world, first by Fascist Italy and later on by Nazi Germany. In particular, the Nazis had considerable impact on the new generation of political thinkers and activists.
Some believed the Germans would help them in gaining independence from French and British rule. After France's defeat by Nazi Germany in 1940, some Arabs were making public chants against the French and British in the streets of Damascus: "No more Monsieur, no more Mister, Allah's in Heaven and Hitler's on earth." Posters in Arabic stating "In heaven God is your ruler, on earth Hitler" were frequently displayed in shops in the towns of Syria.
Some wealthy Arabs who traveled to Germany in the 1930s brought fascist ideals back and incorporated them into Arab nationalism. One of the principal founders of Ba'athist thought and the Ba'ath Party, Zaki al-Arsuzi, stated that Fascism and Nazism had greatly influenced Ba'athist ideology. A student of al-Arsuzi, Sami al-Jundi, wrote:
We were racialists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particularly Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, and H. S. Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which revolves on race. We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf. Whoever has lived during this period in Damascus will appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor. But our belief was rather different.
The two most noted Arab politicians who actively collaborated with the Nazis were the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, and the Iraqi prime minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.
The British sent Amin al-Husseini into exile for his role in the Palestinian revolt of 1936–39. The ex-Mufti had agents in the Kingdom of Iraq, the French Mandate of Syria and in Mandatory Palestine. In 1941, al-Husseini actively supported the Iraqi Golden Square coup d'état, led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.
After the Golden Square Iraqi regime was defeated by British forces, Rashid Ali, al-Husseini and other Iraqi veterans took refuge in Europe, where they supported Axis interests. They were particularly successful in recruiting several tens-of-thousands of Muslims for membership in German Schutzstaffel (SS) units, and as propagandists for the Arabic-speaking world. The range of collaborative activities was wide. For instance, Anwar Sadat, who later became president of Egypt, was a willing co-operator in Nazi Germany's espionage according to his own memoirs. Adolf Hitler met with Amin al-Husseini on 28 November 1941. The official German notes of that meeting contain numerous references to combatting Jews both inside and outside Europe. The following excerpts from that meeting are statements from Hitler to al-Husseini:
Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. ... This was the decisive struggle; on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England's power for their ends....the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, Series D, Vol. XIII, 2, No. 515
Amin al-Husseini became the most prominent Arab collaborator with the Axis powers. He developed friendships with high-ranking Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and (possibly) Adolf Eichmann. He contributed to Axis propaganda services and he also contributed to the recruitment of Muslim and Arab soldiers for the Nazi armed forces, including three SS divisions which consisted of Bosnian Muslims. He was involved in planning "wartime operations directed against Palestine and Iraq, including parachuting Germans and Arab agents to foment attacks against the Jews in Palestine." He assisted the German entry into North Africa, particularly the German entry into Tunisia and Libya. His espionage network provided the Wehrmacht with a forty-eight-hour warning of the Allied invasion of North Africa. The Wehrmacht, however, ignored this information, which turned out to be completely accurate. He intervened and protested to government authorities in order to prevent Jews from emigrating to Mandatory Palestine. There is persuasive evidence that he was aware of the Nazi Final Solution. After the war ended, he claimed that he never knew about the extermination camps and he also claimed that he never knew about Nazi plans to commit genocide against European Jews, he also claimed that the evidence which was used against him was forged by his Jewish enemies, and he even denied the authenticity of the evidence which proved that he had met Eichmann. He is still a controversial figure, he is both vilified and honored by different political factions in the contemporary Arab world.
Researchers like Jeffrey Herf, Meir Zamir, and Hans Goldenbaum agree on the importance of the German propaganda effort in the Middle East and North Africa. But the latest research on the massive and influential radio broadcasts was able to prove "that the texts were supplied by German personnel and not, as sometimes believed, by the reader[s] of the Arabic broadcasts [...]". Furthermore, Goldenbaum concludes "that the man who was long regarded as the Reich's most important Muslim of all, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, did not play any particularly important role in this case. Despite the fact that his Arabic speeches were broadcast by Radio Berlin and he was always presented as a role model, al-Husseini did not have any influence on the broadcast content. The Arabs in general did not seem to have been partners with equal rights. Instead they were secondary recipients of propaganda and orders, Goldenbaum concluded. Cooperation never went beyond the emphasized common battle against colonialism."
Opposition
Many Arabs opposed Nazism and fascism, especially in the liberal and leftist press. In some instances, Arabs defied Nazi laws by rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. Fascist Italy murdered both Arabs and Jews during and before the war. Tens of thousands of African soldiers, including Arab North Africans, fought in the French Colonial Army during the war.
Algeria
French colonialism in North Algeria began in the 1830s, solidifying in the 1870s. Algeria had been integrated into France since 1848, but few Algerians had been granted French citizenship. Algerian Jews were placed in another legal category because of the 1870 Crémieux Decree had granted citizenship to Algerian Jews. In Morocco and Tunisia, protectorates of France, Jews were considered subjects of the sultan and bey. Antisemitism in France was a growing movement among French political elites. One of the worst cases was in 1870, during the Dreyfus affair, when Alfred Dreyfus, a captain of Jewish heritage, was convicted of treason with forged documents. According to historian Bernard Lewis, Muslims generally sided with Dreyfus. Antisemitism, which had existed in the Muslim world long before, was influenced in many ways due to an importing of French antisemitism.
It was during this time, in the 1920s that the International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA) was founded by Bernard Lecache. Some Muslim reformers agreed with Lecache, among them Abdelhamid Ben Badis, Mohammed Salah Bendjelloul, and Sheikh Tayeb El-Okbi. Lecache believed in Arab-Jewish reconciliation against rising inter-communal tensions. El-Okbi would later say that "LICA is the true incarnation of the Islamic spirit. The Qur’an says that humans are born brothers and that Islam does not make a difference between races. True Muslims do not belittle other races. They are against hatred of people, injustice and inequality." In 1939, Abder-Rahmane Fitrawe published Le racisme et l’Islam ("Racism and Islam") which sought to illustrate the threat of Nazism and Fascism by arguing that they went against the teachings of Islam. Some of these Muslim intellectuals were criticized for allying with Jewish leaders and calling for Muslim-Jewish collaboration.
On 20 January 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials met at a villa in Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, to coordinate the execution of the "Final Solution" (Endlösung) of the Jewish Question. At this Wannsee Conference, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler's deputy and head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA), noted the numbers of Jews to be eliminated in each territory. In the notation for France there are two entries, 165,000 for Occupied France, and 700,000 for the Unoccupied Zone, which included France's North African possessions, i.e. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The SS had established a special unit of 22 people in 1942 "to Kill Jews in North Africa". It was led by the SS functionary Walter Rauff, who helped develop the mobile gassing vehicles the Germans used to murder Russian prisoners and Jewish people in Russia and Poland. A network of labor camps was established in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. In 1941, some Jews joined anti-Nazi underground rebel movements. Many of these Jews were caught and sent to labor camps or executed. Algerian Jewish survivors were the last to receive compensation from Germany for the Holocaust.
After the fall of France, the Vichy French regime abolished the Crémieux Decree, a decree which granted Algerian Jews French citizenship but did not grant Algerian Muslims French citizenship. The abolition of the Crémieux Decree served as the legal basis for the antisemitic laws which were enforced by the regime. The French fascists thought that by abolishing this decree, they would increase their popularity among Muslim nationalists in Algeria, which did not occur. The Algerian nationalist Ferhat Abbas responded: "Your [French] racism runs in all direction, today against the Jews, and always against the Arabs." Messali Hadj, founder of the Algerian People's Party, wrote: "[This] cannot be considered as progress for the Algerian people—lowering the rights of Jews did not increase the rights of Muslims." While Hadj was imprisoned, he refused a deal for his release if he wrote a declaration in support of the French fascist collaborator Marshal Pétain.
Taieb el-Okbi was a member of the Algerian Islah (Reform) Party, and he was also a friend of the prominent Algerian reformist Abdelhamid Ben Badis, who was tolerant of different religions and cultures. Taieb el-Okbi discovered that the leaders of the pro-fascist group, the Légion Français des Combattants, were planning to commit a pogrom against Jews with the help of Muslim troops. He tried to prevent it and he even issued a fatwa ordering Muslims not to attack Jews. His actions were compared to French Archbishops Jules-Géraud Saliège and Pierre-Marie Gerlier, whose efforts saved scores of Jews in Europe, though he took more personal risk as a Muslim in the French colony.
In 1941, Vichy France ordered the confiscation of the property of the Jews. However, in a sign of the solidarity, not a single Muslim Algerian took advantage of the law by purchasing confiscated Jewish property; on a Friday in 1941, religious leaders throughout Algiers delivered sermons in which they warned Muslims against participation in schemes to strip Jews of their property.
José Aboulker, a French Algerian Jew and the leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in French Algeria, praised the restraint of the Arabs:
According to Robert Satloff, in World War II, only one Arab in North Africa, Hassan Ferjani, was convicted for performing actions that led to the deaths of Jews by an Allied military tribunal, while many other Arabs acted to save Jews. In Paris, Algerian religious leaders Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli hid and saved Jews in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris. The historian Haim Saadon opines that bar some exceptions, there was no violence against Jews by Muslims and although there was no particular sense of camaraderie between Jews and Muslims, they treated each other quite well.
Mohammed Arezki Berkani
Mohammed Arezki Berkani was an Algerian nationalist who was an active member of Étoile Nord-Africaine (North African Star) and the Algerian People's Party. Because of his activities, he was imprisoned by the Vichy French authorities in 1941, along with the Algerian communist Larbi Bouhali, at the Djenien-Bou-Rezg concentration camp. Berkani's memoirs are unique in that they provide an insight into life as a Muslim in a French concentration camp alongside Jews. He expains how the camp commander Lieutenant Deriko tried to provoke fighting between Arabs and Jews at the site:
Egypt
Fascism was denounced by many in Egyptian society. The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram denounced Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, criticizing not just the brutal Italian conquest, but the world for allowing a League of Nations member to be invaded. The paper also denounced Germany's aggressive expansion before the war. The weekly Ar-risala had articles that denounced Hitler, such as a 1939 editorial that said: "Nazism by its very nature is contradictory to freedom of expression and freedom of opinion; it is based on the rule of force" and "The competition between fascism and Hitlerism is for the enslavement of people", as well as other articles criticizing the treatment of women by fascist regimes. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, while he worked as an editor for Ar-risala, wrote scathing articles on Hitler and fascism. The newspaper Al Muqattam produced articles which criticized Nazi racial ideology and its antisemitism. The Egyptian cultural and literature magazine al-Hilal compared Nazi Germany to Sparta, not as a compliment, but to critsize the "disintegration of the individual", arguing that Athenian values of elightenment and democracy outlasted the failed city-state of Sparta.
Taha Hussein, the famous Egyptian academic and twenty-one time Nobel Prize in Literature nominee, criticized the lack of freedom of thought in Nazi Germany, writing "They live like a society of insects. They must behave like ants in an anthill or like bees in a hive." The Egyptian journalist Salama Moussa, in the magazine Al Majalla Al Jadida, at first supported Germany's industrialization under Hitler, but later denounced it as a totalitarian state, arguing instead for traditional liberal democratic values. Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood also criticized fascism, in his book Peace in Islam. The Egyptian lawyer Hamid Maliji denounced Hitler's racial theories after Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic. The Egyptian journalist Muhammad Zaki Abd al-Qadir criticized appeasement and argued that the West should abandon appeasement and should instead confront Germany. One of the pioneers of Egyptian literature, Tawfiq al-Hakim, compared the dilemma between 'the law and the sword' in his drama al-Sultan al-Ha'ir. Though he does not name them directly, his writings offer a subtle denouncing of Hitler and Mussolini, writing:The leaders/people-tamers detest the learned philosophers who are capable of engaging in objective free study and liberal thought and are committed to the principle of science for the sake of science or science for the sake of the whole of humankind. The leaders/people-tamers believe that the philosophers have no right to exist unless they submit totally to the principle of science for the sake of the homeland, namely science at the service of the army and militarism and subservient to the authority of race and blood.Al-Hakim later directly ridiculed Hitler and Mussolini in his book Himari Qala Li (My Donkey Told Me). Here, Al-Hakim comments on Nazism, Fascism and liberalism through fiction. He writes a fictional conversation between Mussolini and his prison guard, where Mussolini learns that millions of Italians are celebrating his removal. He also writes a conversation between Scheherazade and Hitler. Al-Hakim, through Scheherazade, argues with Hitler in favor of democracy against Nazism.
The Egyptian journalist and poet Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad was an outspoken critic of Nazism and he was also a supporter of liberal democracy; he even fled to Sudan in an attempt to avoid being captured by the German army during the invasion of Egypt for publishing his anti-Nazi book "Hitler in the Balance". He argued that Hitler and Nazism were the ultimate danger to freedom and liberalism, and believed democracy was a better model for Egypt than dictatorship. Aqqad believed that "the fulfillment of the needs of these countries can by ensured only by democratic governments"
The most influential political party in Egypt at the time was the Wafd, which emerged from the anti-British protests during the 1919 revolution. The Wafdist Egyptian politician Mostafa al-Nahhas - who was prime minister from 1942 to 1944 - refused to ally himself with the Nazis. According to his memoirs, he was approached by the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano and Amin al-Husseini, who attempted to convince him to join the Axis, even promising him the presidency of an Egyptian republic. He refused, instead opting to cooperate with the British.
The political cartoons which were produced during that time frequently satirized politics in Egypt as well as foreign affairs. Cartoons produced by Alexandar Saroukhan and in Akher Saa, along others, were firmly anti-Nazi and anti-fascist, containing a message of ridicule and threat. The political cartoonist Kimon Evan Marengo, code name KEM, produced anti-Nazi cartoons during the war for the British Foreign office.
Morocco
Sultan Mohammed V reportedly refused to sign off on "Vichy's plan to ghettoize and deport Morocco's quarter of a million Jews to the killing factories of Europe," and, in an act of defiance, insisted on inviting all the rabbis of Morocco to the 1941 throne celebrations. During the celebrations, loud enough for the French attendees to hear him, he said: "I must inform you that, just as in the past, the Israelites will remain under my protection...I refuse to make any distinction between my subjects." For example, King Mohammed V refused to make the 200,000 Jews who were living in Morocco wear yellow stars, even though this discriminatory practice was enforced in France. He is reported to have said: "There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only subjects." However, the French government did impose some antisemitic laws against the sultan's will.
During the Battle of France, more than 2,100 Moroccan troops were killed and 18,000 were taken prisoner. The Armée d’Afrique later fought in the 1943 Tunisian campaign.
Tunisia
Tunisia, like Morocco, was a de facto colony, ruled by Ahmed Pasha Bey and Moncef Bey. The Nazis established labor camps in Tunisia, killing over 2,500 Tunisian Jews, including the famous Tunisian Jewish boxer Messaoud Hai Victor Perez, who was sent to Auschwitz and shot during a death march by a German officer. Though Ahmed Pasha did sign anti-Jewish legislation, forced by the French Resident-General of Tunisia, Jean-Pierre Esteva, he deliberatly stalled implementation of these policies. Moncef Bey went even farther; just eight days after ascending the throne, he awarded the highest royal distinction to about twenty prominent Tunisian Jews. Moncef later went own to say that Tunisian Jews are "his children" like Tunisian Muslims. His prime minister, Mohamed Chenik, regularly warned Jewish leaders of German plans. He helped Jews avoid arrest, intervened to prevent deportations, and even hid individual Jews. Khaled Abdul-Wahab saved several Jewish lives during the Holocaust, and was the first Arab to be nominated for the Righteous Among the Nations. So did Si Ali Sakkat, a local land owner, took in sixty Jews who escaped from a nearby labor camp. According to Mathilda Guez, a Tunisian Jew who later became an Israeli politician, Moncef Bey gathered all the senior officials of the realm at the palace and gave them this warning:
Moncef Bey was later ousted from power, with the French claiming that he was a Nazi collaborator. General Alphonse Juin doubted this charge and tried to prevent his ouster. The real reason he was removed was because he formed the first solely Tunisian government, causing an outcry by French settlers.
Palestine
Many Palestinian commentators denounced Hitler and Nazism. In 1936, the Arab newspaper al-Difa' published an article which contained the following statement: "There will be no peace in Europe until the spirit of the Swastika, ruling Germany today, will be overcome." Newspapers such as Filastin extensively covered Germany's new armament policy. In 1934, the newspaper warned, "Europe will see no peace if it will not keep distance from the spirit of the swastika that dominates Germany today. . . . [Nazism] is an ideology full of disrespect of all peoples; it glorifies the German, and therein lies a danger." In 1933, Filastin would later go on to print that "The Jews are oppressed only because they are Jews, no more, and there is no justification for that." An article in Filastin titled “The Truth about the Hitler Movement: Reasons for the Persecution of the Jews”: denounced Nazi racial ideology, saying:
Hitler followers want to make their race the ruler of all races in the world. One would think, the Nazis are Christians, and is not Christianity a fruit of the Semites and not of the Aryan people? Therefore, the view of Hitler's supporters is very strange.
Editor Yusuf Hanna predicted the "biggest confrontation in history" and he dismissed the idea of a Nazi "preventive war" against Communism: "Nazism does not fight communism, but wants to enslave all peoples." In the summer of 1941, Filastin predicted that Germany could never win a multifront war: "There is no doubt that we will soon witness the time of punishment for Nazi Germany, according to all the bestialities it has committed."
The leftist paper Al-Ghad warned that Palestine was directly threatened by the prospect of an Axis victory: "If Fascism will prevail, and the Arab lands will be enslaved with iron and fire, our struggle for independence will be set back for years." On the outbreak of the war, Al-Ghad argued that Arabs should support Britain over Nazi Germany:
The Arab people . . . stand at the side of those who fight Fascism. The differences between England and the Palestinian Arabs . . . do not change this. Those are local struggles, which have to be delayed until the end of the tensions in the world. . . . We are not stupid [enough] to believe the sentence "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Muhammad Najati Sidqi was a Palestinian intellectual and a leftist activist. In 1940, he wrote "The Islamic Traditions and the Nazi Principles: Can They Agree?", in which he argued that Nazism is entirely contrary to Islamic beliefs. Sidqi had previously fought for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He believed that Muslims must pause the fight against Britain and support the war against Germany, which he believed was the greater enemy. He wrote that the racist beliefs of the Germans were in complete disagreement with Islam, citing both Nazi and Islamic sources: "The barbaric theory of Nazi racism fundamentally contradicts the teachings of Islam, since Islam sees in all of its followers one equal essence, as it proclaims that all the believers are brothers.'" Since racial equality is integral to Islam, Nazism "represents the lowest level of concrete greed", going on to describe it as 'chaotic paganism'. He ended the book arguing that Arabs should mobolize for the Allies.
Thousands of Palestinians opposed Amin al-Husseini and Nazi Germany, leading to over 12,000 Palestinian Arab volunteers to serve in the British army. The Palestine Regiment was composed of both Arabs and Jews, which eventually lead to the formation of the Jewish Brigade consisting of Yishuv Jews. Platoon 401 fought the Germans in the Battle of France and was the last British platoon to be evacuted from France.
Cooperation
Egypt
Aziz Ali al-Masri was an Egyptian officer who was suspected by the British to be in contact with the Axis early in the war. On May 16, 1941, during the Anglo-Iraqi war, al-Masri attempted to fly to Iraq, but the plane lost power and crashed near Cairo. After he was caught, al-Masri claimed he was actually flying there to stop the rebellion. During an inquiry, it was revealed that, in a metting with the British Colonel C. M. J. Thornhill on the 12th, he proposed this idea. Whether or not he was telling the truth about his intentions, the fact that Thornhill proposed that Iraq and Egypt should become British dominions in the meeting, which would have angered the Egyptian public if it was revealed and be easy propaganda for the Axis, convinced British authorities to drop the case. Al-Masri was dismissed from his post. His secret clique of anti-British officers as well as prime minister Ali Maher were the precursor to the 1952 Egyptian coup d'état, with many of the same officers involved, including future president of Egypt Anwar Sadat.
Sadat attempted to collaborate with the Axis during the war. His memoirs, Revolt on the Nile (1957) and In Search of Identity (1977), describe how he saw the military as the key to sparking revolution in Egypt, similar to the Urabi Revolt. There were meetings and talk among junior officers as early as 1939 about a potential revolt, with Sadat describing how he wanted to make Egypt "a second Iraq". Sadat writes that al-Masri's goal was Beirut, which was under the Vichy government at the time, but since his car broke down on the way, he missed the secret German plane that was intending to transport him. Then he tried seizing an Egyptian plane, but it hit a post on takeoff, grounding it.
After the Abdeen Palace incident, where British troops ordered the Egyptian King Farouk to appoint a pro-Allied prime minister, Sadat furthered his plans for a coup. He met with the Islamist leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al-Banna, but was disappointed over his lack of explicit support for the plan. Sadat then met with two German agents in Cairo to discuss his plan, but was caught by the British and sentenced to two years in prison.
Iraq
On 1 April 1941, the day after General Erwin Rommel launched his Tunisian offensive, the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état overthrew the pro-British Kingdom of Iraq. Fritz Grobba served intermittently as the German ambassador in Iraq from 1932 to 1941, supporting anti-Jewish and fascist movements in the Arab world. Intellectuals and army officers were invited to Germany as guests of the Nazi party, and antisemitic material was published in the newspapers. The German embassy purchased the newspaper al-Alam al-Arabi ("The Arab World") which published antisemitic, anti-British, and pro-Nazi propaganda, including a serialized translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf in Arabic.
While Nazi Germany was not openly allied with the government of Iraq like Fascist Italy was during the Anglo-Iraqi War, it provided air support. On 1–2 June 1941, immediately after the collapse of the pro-Fascist Rashid Ali government in Iraq, al-Husseini and others inspired a pogrom against the Jewish population of Baghdad known as "the Farhud". The estimates of Jewish victims vary from less than 110 to over 600 killed, and from 240 to 2000 wounded. Gilbert Achcar claims that historian Bernard Lewis cites the numbers (officially 600 killed and 240 injured, with unofficial sources being "much higher") as the number of Jewish victims, without citing a single reference. Edwin Black concludes that the exact numbers will never be known, pointing out the improbability of the initial estimate in the official reports of 110 fatalities that included both Arabs and Jews (including 28 women), as opposed to the claims of Jewish sources that as many as 600 Jews were killed. Similarly, the estimates of Jewish homes destroyed range from 99 to over 900 houses. Though these figures are debated in the secondary literature, it is generally agreed that over 580 Jewish businesses were looted. The Iraqi-Arab Futuwwa youth group—modeled after the Hitler Youth—were widely credited with the Farhud. Saib Shawkat, an Iraqi doctor and leader of the al-Muthanna club, was chief of surgery at Baghdad Medical College, and attended to wounded Iraqi Jews in his hopital. When some of his Jewish nurses reported rape threats by wounded Iraqi officers, he threatened to shoot the officers.
Palestine
The Palestinian Arab and Nazi political leaders said that they had a common cause against "International Jewry". However, the most significant practical effect of Nazi anti-Jewish policy between 1933 and 1942 was to radically increase the immigration rate of German and other European Jews to Palestine and to double the population of Palestinian Jews. Al-Husseini had sent messages to Berlin through , the German consul general in Jerusalem, endorsing the advent of the Nazi regime as early as March 1933, and was enthusiastic over the Nazi anti-Jewish policy, and particularly the anti-Jewish boycott in Nazi Germany. "[The Mufti and other sheikhs asked] only that German Jews not be sent to Palestine."
Until the end of 1937, the Nazi policy for solving the "Jewish Question" emphasized motivating German Jews to emigrate from German territory. During this period, the League of Nations Mandate for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine which was supposed to be used as a place of refuge for Jews was "still internationally recognized". The Gestapo and the SS inconsistently cooperated with a variety of Jewish organizations and efforts (e.g., Hanotaiah Ltd., the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the Temple Society Bank, HIAS, Joint Distribution Committee, Revisionist Zionists, and others), most notably in the Haavurah Agreement, to facilitate emigration to Mandatory Palestine.
Nora Levin wrote in 1968: "Up to the middle of 1938, Palestine had received one third of all the Jews who had emigrated from Germany since 1933 – 50,000 out of a total of 150,000." Edwin Black, benefitting from more modern scholarship, has written that 60,000 German Jews immigrated into Palestine between 1933 through 1936, bringing with them $100,000,000 dollars ($1.6 billion in 2009 dollars). This precipitous increase in the Jewish Palestinian population stimulated Palestinian Arab political resistance to continued Jewish immigration, and was a principal cause for the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, which in turn led to the British White Paper decision to abandon the League of Nations Mandate to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. The resultant change in British policy effectively closed Palestine to most European Jews who were fleeing Nazi persecution during World War II. After 1938 the majority of Zionist organizations adhered to a strategy of "Fighting the White Paper as if there was not War, and fighting the War as if there was no White Paper". Zionists would smuggle Jews in Palestine whenever possible, regardless if this brought them into conflict with the British authorities. At the same time, the Zionists and other Jews would ally themselves to the British struggle against Germany and the Axis powers, even while the British authorities refused to allow the migration of European Jews into Palestine.
One consequence of al-Husseini's opposition to Britain's mandate in Palestine and his rejection of the British attempts to work out a compromise between Zionists and Palestinian Arabs was that the Mufti was exiled from Palestine. Many of his followers, who had fought in guerilla campaigns against Jews and the British in Palestine, followed him and continued to work for his political goals. Among the most notable Palestinian soldiers in this category was Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, a kinsman and officer of al-Husseini who had been wounded twice in the early stages of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Al-Husseini sent Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni to Germany in 1938 for explosives training. Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni then worked with al-Husseini to support the Golden Square regime, and consequently was tried and sent to prison by the British after they recaptured Iraq. He subsequently became the popular leader of approximately 50,000 Palestinian Arabs who joined the Mufti's Army of the Holy War during the 1947-1948 Arab–Israeli War. His fellow Iraq-veteran and German collaborator Fawzi al-Qawuqji became a rival general in that same struggle against Zionism.
After the Kristallnacht pogroms in November 1938, most Jewish and Zionist organizations aligned with Britain and its allies in opposition to Nazi Germany. After this time, the organized assistance which the Gestapo provided to the Jewish organizations which transported European Jews to Palestine became much more sporadic, but bribery of individual Germans frequently enabled the Jewish organizations to accomplish such operations, even after Nazi Germany's official policy discouraged them.
Al-Husseini opposed all immigration of Jews into Palestine. His numerous letters which appealed to various governmental authorities to prevent Jewish emigration to Palestine have been widely republished and they have also been cited as documentary evidence of his collaboration with the Nazis and his participative support of their actions. For instance, in June 1943, al-Husseini recommended to the Hungarian minister that it would be better to send the Jewish population of Hungary to the Nazi concentration camps in Poland rather than let them find asylum in Palestine (it is not entirely clear whether al-Husseini was aware of the extermination camps in Poland, e.g. Auschwitz, at this time):
I ask your Excellency to permit me to draw your attention to the necessity of preventing the Jews from leaving your country for Palestine, and if there are reasons which make their removal necessary, it would be indispensable and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland...
Achcar quotes al-Husseini's memoirs about these efforts to influence the Axis powers to prevent emigration of Eastern European Jews to Palestine:
We combatted this enterprise by writing to Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Hitler, and, thereafter, the governments of Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries. We succeeded in foiling this initiative, a circumstance that led the Jews to make terrible accusations against me, in which they held me accountable for the liquidation of four hundred thousand Jews who were unable to emigrate to Palestine in this period. They added that I should be tried as a war criminal in Nuremberg.
Achcar then notes that although al-Husseini's motivation to block Jewish emigration into Palestine:
was certainly legitimate when it was addressed as an appeal to the British mandatory authorities... It had no legitimacy whatsoever when addressed to Nazi authorities who had cooperated with the Zionists to send tens of thousands of German Jews to Palestine and then set out to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The Mufti was well aware that the European Jews were being wiped out; he never claimed the contrary. Nor, unlike some of his present-day admirers, did he play the ignoble, perverse, and stupid game of Holocaust denial... His amour-propre would not allow him to justify himself to the Jews... gloating that the Jews had paid a much higher price than the Germans... he cites: "Their losses in the Second World War represent more than thirty percent of the total number of their people... Statements like this, from a man who was well placed to know what the Nazis had done... constitute a powerful argument against Holocaust deniers. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler... told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had 'already exterminated more than three million' Jews: "I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then."... Thus. in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide... Himmler... again in the summer of 1941... let him in on a secret that... Germany would have an atomic bomb in three years' time...
In November 1943, when he became aware of the nature of the Nazi Final Solution, al-Husseini said:
It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries ... Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world. In 1944, the Germans planned a secret Nazi mission to Palestine. Dubbed "Mission Atlas", the mission was prepared in coordination with Amin al-Husseini. The unit was to incite against the British and organize a new Arab rebellion. The mission was carried out on October 5, 1944. The five agents were flown out of Greece, and at midnight they parachuted into Palestine. The mission failed. One of the few contacts in Palestine the mufti had given the agents, Nafith al-Hussaini, told them to leave immediately. Within ten days, all five agents were arrested by the Palestinian police or members of the Arab Legion.
Arab exiles in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy
Following the defeat of the Golden Square in Iraq in May–June 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani fled to Iran but was not to stay long. On 25 August 1941, Anglo-Soviet forces invaded Iran, removing Reza Shah from power. Gaylani then fled to German-occupied Europe. In Berlin, he was received by German dictator Adolf Hitler, and he was recognized as the leader of the Iraqi government in exile. Upon the defeat of Germany, Gaylani again fled and found refuge, this time in Saudi Arabia.
Amin al-Husseini arrived in Rome on 10 October 1941. He outlined his proposals before Alberto Ponce de Leon. On condition that the Axis powers "recognize in principle the unity, independence, and sovereignty, of an Arab state, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan", he offered support in the war against Britain and stated his willingness to discuss the issues of "the Holy Places, Lebanon, the Suez Canal, and Aqaba". The Italian foreign ministry approved al-Husseini's proposal, recommended giving him a grant of one million lire, and referred him to Benito Mussolini, who met al-Husseini on 27 October. According to al-Husseini's account, it was an amicable meeting in which Mussolini expressed his hostility to the Jews and Zionism.
Back in the summer of 1940 and again in February 1941, al-Husseini submitted to the Nazi German Government a draft declaration of German-Arab cooperation, containing a clause:
Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.
Al-Husseini helped organize Arab students and North African emigres in Germany into the Free Arabian Legion in the German Army that hunted down Allied parachutists in the Balkans and fought on the Russian front.
Arab incorporation and emulation of Nazism
Several emerging movements in the Arab world were alleged to have been influenced by European fascist and Nazi organizations during the 1930s. The Young Egypt Party ("Green Shirts") closely resembled the Hitler Youth and was "obviously Nazi in form", according to historian Bernard Lewis. The fascist pan-Arabist Al-Muthanna Club and its al-Futuwwa (Hitler Youth) type movement, participated in the 1941 Farhud attack on Baghdad's Jewish community.
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) adopted styles of fascism. Its emblem, the red hurricane, was taken from the Nazi swastika, leader Antoun Saadeh was known as al-za'im (the leader), and the party anthem was "Syria, Syria, über alles" sung to the same tune as the German national anthem. He founded the fascist SSNP with a program that Syrians were "a distinctive and naturally superior race". However, when Saadeh found out that the Argentinian branch of the SSNP newspaper had been voicing its outright support for Nazi Germany and the Axis powers, he issued a lengthy letter to the editor-in-chef, restating that the SSNP is not a National Socialist party and that no stance should be taken vis-à-vis the Allies or the Axis.
Ahmad Shuqayri, the founder of the PLO, wrote in 1946, "Let it be known that we are not anti-British, anti-Soviet, anti-American or antisemitic. Equally, we are not pro-Nazis, pro-Fascists. We are what we are—Arabs and nothing but Arabs. So help us God." The Palestinian newspaper Falistin would later deny the claim that Palestinian nationalism is derived from Fascism:The Arab Palestinians don't need Fascists or Nazis to be motivated against the Zionists. The hatred against the Zionist plan in Palestine grew long before Nazism and Fascism. . . . But always, when Arabs protest the pro-Zionist policies of England, we heard: Arab Palestinians learned it from the Nazis. And the English believe this? Reality is different. The Arabs don't expel the Jews from the home, but those foreigners want to push the Arabs out of the country.
Views on historical representation
The Arabic-speaking world has attracted particular attention from historians examining Fascism beyond Europe. Focusing exclusively on pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist forces, these scholars have tended to emphasize the appeal that Fascism and Nazism had across the Arab world. More recently however, this narrative has been challenged by a number of scholars who assert that Arab political debates in the 1930s and 1940s were quite complex. Fascism and Nazism, they argue, were discussed alongside other political ideologies, such as communism, liberalism, and constitutionalism. Moreover, the recent revisionist works have stressed the anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi voices and movements in the Arab world.
The first example of this issue was in 1946, when the American Christian Palestine Committee published "The Arab War Effort, a documented account", arguing that Arabs were eager collaborators with the Axis and only reluctantly worked with the Allies. This sparked a response by the Egyptian nationalist Ahmed Hussein, arguing the document deliberatly ignored and underplayed Egypt's contribution to the Allies in the war.
The Israeli historian Israel Gershoni, author of Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism - Attraction and Repulsion, described how the Arab–Israeli conflict has created a war of narratives, where history is used for modern politics, overemphasizing certain events to paint an image of eager collaboration:
Gilbert Achcar, a professor of Development Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, argues that historical narratives often overemphasize collaboration and under-appreciate progressive Arab political history, overshadowing the many dimensions of conflict between Nazism and the Arab World. He accuses Zionists of promulgating a 'collaborationist' narrative for partisan purposes. He proposes that the dominant Arab political attitudes were 'anti-colonialism' and 'anti-Zionism,' though only a comparatively small faction adopted antisemitism, and most Arabs were actually pro-Ally and anti-Axis (as evidenced by the high number of Arabs who fought for Allied forces). Achcar states:The Zionist narrative of the Arab world is based centrally around one figure who is ubiquitous in this whole issue—the Jerusalem Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with the Nazis. But the historical record is actually quite diverse. The initial reaction to Nazism and Hitler in the Arab world and especially from the intellectual elite was very critical towards Nazism, which was perceived as a totalitarian, racist and imperialist phenomenon. It was criticized by the liberals or what I call the liberal Westernizers, i.e. those who were attracted by Western liberalism, as well as by the Marxists and left-wing nationalists who denounced Nazism as another form of imperialism. In fact, only one of the major ideological currents in the Arab world developed a strong affinity with Western anti-Semitism, and that was Islamic fundamentalism—not all Islam or Islamic movements but those with the most reactionary interpretations of Islam. They reacted to what was happening in Palestine by espousing Western anti-Semitic attitudes.
See also
Antisemitism in the Arab world
Antisemitism in Islam
Anti-Zionism
Collaboration with the Axis powers
Contemporary imprints of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Geography of antisemitism
History of antisemitism
History of the Jews during World War II
History of the Jews under Muslim rule
The Holocaust
Islamic–Jewish relations
Jewish exodus from the Muslim world
Jews outside Europe under Axis occupation
Khairallah Talfah, the uncle and father-in-law of Saddam Hussein
Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II
Mein Kampf in Arabic
Muhammad Najati Sidqi
Muslim supporters of Israel
New antisemitism
Operation Atlas (Mandatory Palestine)
Racism in Muslim communities
Religious antisemitism
Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Transport of Białystok children
Xenophobia and racism in the Middle East
References
Notes
The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum puts the number of Muslims at 58, but this includes Muslim Soviets prisoners of war
Further reading
Berkani, Mohammed Arezki (1965), "Trois années de camp: Un an de camp de concentration, deux ans de centre disciplinaire, Djenien-Bou-Rezg, Sud Oranais (1940 à 1943 Régime Vichy)" (in French), as translated by Rebecca Glasberg within "An Algerian Muslim's Memories of Internment 1940–1943", Chapter 39 (pages 174–187) of Wartime North Africa: A Documentary History 1934–1950, edited by Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2022).
External links
Bruno de Cordier, The Fedayeen of the Reich: Muslims, Islam and Collaborationism During World War II in The China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly Vol 8, No 1, 2010.
Arab nationalism
Fascism in the Arab world
Foreign relations of Nazi Germany
History of the Middle East
Islam and antisemitism
Arab collaborators with Nazi Germany
The Holocaust