page_title: Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world
section_title: North Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world / Cooperation / North Africa
caption_attribution_description: English: ex SS Si Nacer/Saïd Mohammedi on the left, Ali Mellah, Kechai and Amirouche
context_page_description: The relationship between Nazi Germany and the leadership of the Arab world encompassed contempt, propaganda, collaboration and in some instances emulation. Cooperative political and military relationships were founded on shared hostilities toward common enemies, such as British and French imperialism and colonialism, communism, and Zionism. Another key foundation of this collaboration was the anti-semitism of the Nazis, which was admired by some Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably Hajj Amin al-Husayni. In public and private, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler made warm statements about Islam as a religion and political ideology, describing it as a more disciplined, militaristic, political, and practical form of religion than Christianity, and commending what they perceived to be Muhammad's skill in politics and military leadership. However, the official Nazi racial ideology also considered Arabs and North Africans to be racially inferior to Germans, a sentiment echoed by Hitler and other Nazi leaders to deprecate them.
context_section_description: 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. Over 2,500 Tunisian Jews perished during a six-month period in these camps.
  According to Robert Satloff, only one Arab in North Africa, Hassan Ferjani, was convicted by an Allied military tribunal in World War II for performing actions that led to the deaths of Jews, male members of the Scemla family of Tunisia, while many Arabs acted to save Jews. For instance, 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." The historian Haim Saadon opines that bar some exceptions, there was no violence towards Jews from Muslims, and that although there was no particular sense of camaraderie, Jews and Muslims treated each other quite well.
caption: The Algerian Saïd Mohammedi (on the left) assisted the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) during World War II, after which he joined the Algerian Revolution in 1954.
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