…the work that offered the entry point of Nazism’s propaganda to Arabs
and Muslims was its selective reading and quotation of the Koran and the traditions of
Islam. There were German diplomats who preferred to limit Arabic language propaganda
to appeals to secular Arab anti-imperialism directed against Britain and the United States
or to Arab anti-Communism. Others were more comfortable with explicit appeals to the
traditions of Islam. In practice, the distinction between secular and religious
dimensions blurred into insignificance. In the same texts and broadcasts, the Nazis
spoke the secular language of attacks on American, British and “Jewish” imperialism
while also appealing to what they depicted as the ancient traditions of hatred of the Jews
in Islam itself. Nazi Germany presented itself both as an ally of Arab anti-imperialism as
well as a soul mate of the religion of Islam.
A significant historical scholarship has also documented the actions and beliefs of the
Most important public face and voice of Nazi propaganda aimed at Arabs and Muslims,
Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.13 The mutual admiration between
Husseini and Hitler and his virulent Jew hatred are a matter of public record. Details
about his collaboration with Heinrich Himmler and his knowledge about the Holocaust
came to light after the war as well. Husseini was also key figure in finding common
ground between the ideology of National Socialism, on the one hand, and that of Arab
nationalism as well as doctrines of militant Islam. While the Mufti was a key figure in this
historical episode, so too were many other German intelligence officers, diplomats,
military officers, members of the German Foreign Ministry’s division of political radio,
announcers, writers, editors along with mostly anonymous native Arabic speaking radio
announcers and writers.14 The broadcasts were the result of a cooperative effort
including German officials working in the Division of Political Radio in Joachim von
Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry with occasional assistance from the Joseph Goebbels’
Propaganda Ministry. They received assistance from Orientalists in the cultural division
in Heinrich Himmler’s Reich Herf Security Main Office, and from German Orientalists
who advised the Foreign Ministry and worked in the SS research offices.15 The pro-Nazi
Arab exiles gave the Nazis a resource they had not had before or possessed in such
abundance, namely native Arabic speakers and readers who could make Nazism’s
message understandable in fluent, colloquial Arabic to Arabs and Muslims.
Should we not curse the time that has allowed this low race to realize their desires from
such countries as Britain, America and Russia? The Jews kindled this war in the interests
of Zionism. The Jews are responsible for the blood that has been shed. Despite
this, Jewish impudence has increased to such an extent that they claim that they alone
are the sacrifice of this war and that they alone are tasting bitterness. The world will
never be at peace until the Jewish race is exterminated., otherwise wars will always exist.
The Jews are the germs which have caused all the trouble in the world.
A year later the Husseini returned Egypt. The reaction offered an example of what the
OSS analysts had in mind. Throughout the war, American and British intelligence
agencies had been concerned about the pro-Axis sympathies of the Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt. On June 11, 1946, Hassan al-Banna, its leader, sent the following statement to
officials of the Arab League.
“Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimin [the Moslem Brotherhood] and all Arabs request the Arab
League on which Arab hopes are pinned, to declare that the Mufti is welcome to stay in
any Arab country he may choose and that great welcome should be extended to him
wherever he goes, as a sign of appreciation for his great services for the glory of Islam
and the Arabs...The hearts of the Arabs palpitated with joy at hearing that the Mufti has
succeeded in reaching as Arab country. The news sounded like thunder to the ears of
some American, British and Jewish tyrants. The lion is at least free and he will roam the
Arabian jungle to clear it of the wolves...What a hero, what a miracle of a man. We wish
to know what the Arab youth, Cabinet Ministers, rich men, and princess of Palestine,
Syria, Iraq, Tunis, Morocco,, and Tripoli are going to do to be worthy of this hero. Yes,
this hero who challenged an empire and fought Zionism, with
the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin Al-Husseini will
continue the struggle...God entrusted him with a mission and he must succeed...The
Lord Almighty did not preserve Amin for nothing. There must be a divine purpose behind
the preservation of the life of this man, namely the defeat of Zionism. Amin! March on!
God is with you! We are behind you! We are willing to sacrifice our necks for the cause.
To death! Forward March.86
The history of Nazi Germany’s Arabic language propaganda aimed at North Africa and
the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust was not a story about one man,
the “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,” Haj Amin el-Husseini. Rather, it was part of a much
broader story of the diffusion of Nazi ideology from Europe to the Middle East and of the
Nazi regime’s efforts to integrate propaganda with military strategy in its unsuccessful
military operations in the region. With the added material from American and German
archives, we are now able to offer more detail and texture to the history of Nazi
Germany’s efforts to extend beyond a eurocentric framework as well as to understand
how it interacted with Islamic and Arab radicalism. The propaganda barrage drew on
political and ideological fusion between National Socialist ideology, radical Arab
nationalism and equally radically and militant Islam. Just as Nazism rested on a
selective reading and appropriation of some elements of European and German
traditions, so too did the militant Islam expressed by Husseini and his associates in
wartime Berlin. Both represented a radicalization of already existing components of
European and Christian, on the one hand, and Arab and Muslim, traditions, on the other.
While neither were simply expressions of these traditions in general, they also cannot be
understood without also seeing them also as a result of their selective appropriation,
reception and radicalization. In wartime Berlin, the improbable diffusion of Nazi ideology
and its hatreds to non-Aryan “Semites” in the Middle East presupposed a leap beyond
the racial particularism and extreme nationalism for which Nazi Germany was justly
famous and resulting appeals to unlikely of allies. The political and ideological
cooperation between Nazi officials and their Arab and Muslim allies in wartime Berlin
was an example of what historians in recent years have called “trans-nationalism” or
“hybridity” though it perhaps was not what is usually meant by those terms. The radio
broadcasts and printed material that emerged from the hothouse of wartime Berlin
documented a meeting of hearts and minds of two different traditions that found common
ground in hatred of the Jews and liberal modernity despite their starkly different starting
points, ethnic differences and linguistic barriers. The Arab exiles aided in this
radicalization of their own traditions by pointing out where their understanding of
passages from the Koran offered entry points to radical anti-Semitism and hatred of
democracy. The Nazi officials, including Hitler, were pleased to learn that cultural
components of another civilization produced hatreds similar to their own. Just as the
Nazis had learned how to radicalize pre-existing anti-Semitic potentials in European and
German culture, so the officials and ideologues working on propaganda aimed at Arabs
and Muslims learned how to build on the already existing anti-Jewish themes that
comprised one component of the traditions of Islam. An adequate answer to the
important question of the impact of this propaganda barrage in North Africa and the
Middle East remains beyond the evidence presented in this paper. The evidence is
compelling and persuasive that Nazi Germany’s appeal both to Arab nationalism and to
the traditions of radical Islam played a central role in its fortunately failed efforts to
extend its influence to North Africa and the Middle East.
Endnotes
1. War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
2. Mallmann and Martin Cuppers Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006). Also see Robert Lewis Melka, The Axis and the Middle East: 1930-1945 (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1966); Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999); Josef Schröder, “Die Beziehungen der Achsenmächte zur Arabischen Welt,” in Manfred Funke, ed.,
Hitler, Deutschland und die Mächte: Materialien zur Außenpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1976), 365-382; Philip Bernd Schröder, Deutschland in der Mittlere Osten im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Mustershmidt, 1975); Wolfgang Schwanitz, Germany and the Middle East, 1871- 1945 (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004); and Heinz Tillmann, Deutschlands Araberpolitik im
Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin: Deutsche Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965).
3. University of Chicago, 1972.
5. Also see Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986 and 1999).
6. On the anti-Semitic traditions within the religion of Islam see
Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2008).
PLEASE SEE DIRECT CITATIONS INTERNET REFERENCE above AS SOME OF THESE SOURCES DID NOT COPY AND PASTE FULLY. Thanks, American Eagle.
