Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (7 page)

Of course, the mufti was making a strategic gamble: that Hitler’s armies would prove invincible and that Germany, then at the height of its military power, would succeed in winning the war.

The mufti was not alone in thinking that Hitler would prevail. Throughout much of 1941, it seemed to many, especially among Hitler’s friends and allies, that a Nazi victory was on the horizon. Having already annexed Austria, occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and conquered France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece, Hitler and his Axis allies seemed invincible to many.
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On June 10, 1940, Benito Mussolini, fulfilling a promise he had made to Hitler aboard a train at the Brenner Pass the previous March, had declared war on England.
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By the beginning of 1941, Italy’s military and naval forces in the Mediterranean were actively enlisted in the Axis war effort.

On June 22, 1941, Germany would launch Operation Barbarossa against its erstwhile ally the Soviet Union. With the Battle of Britain raging and London under continuous German air attack, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, known as the Desert Fox, was advancing deep inside Egypt. It was only a matter of time, al-Husseini and Hitler’s other supporters believed, before Rommel’s forces would advance from Cairo to Baghdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem, establishing Nazi hegemony over the entire Middle East. With the United States still not in the war, Great Britain, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, stood virtually alone against the Axis onslaught.

Germany’s war against the British Empire struck a responsive chord in much of the Islamic world, whose people viewed the war as a meritorious battle against British imperialism.
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With the exceptions of Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and Abdullah of Jordan, no leader of the Islamic Middle East opposed Hitler and supported the Allied cause. Indeed, the widespread support for the Axis cause among Arab leaders prompted the American journalist John Gunther to note, “The greatest contemporary Arab hero is probably Hitler.”
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In October 1939, a month after Hitler attacked Poland and Britain had declared war on Germany, the mufti moved his base of operations from Jerusalem to Baghdad. In October 1939, he left for Iraq, where he continued his pro-Nazi propaganda activities. In so doing, al-Husseini assumed the role of a loyal Axis ally. By January 1941, al-Husseini had decided to align himself openly with Germany. In a letter to Hitler that the mufti wrote at the end of January, he assured “the great Fuhrer” of the “friendship, sympathy and admiration” of the Arab people and pledged that Arabs everywhere were “prepared to act as is proper against the common enemy and to take their stand with enthusiasm on the side of the Axis and to do their part in the well deserved defeat of the Anglo-Jewish coalition.”
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In thus pledging his allegiance to the Nazi regime, al-Husseini did not shy away from raw adulation: “I am anxious here to reiterate my thanks to your Excellency,” he wrote Hitler, “and to assure your Excellency of the sentiments of friendship, of sympathy, and of admiration which the Arab people pledges to your Excellency, great Fuhrer, and to the courageous German people.”
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On the Road to Berlin, April–November 1941

Al-Husseini next sought to evict the British from Iraq and to replace the country’s pro-British regime with a pro-German Iraqi government. In pursuit of this objective, he joined forces with a group of army officers led by the Iraqi lawyer and politician Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who seized power in a pro-Nazi coup that forced the Iraqi prime minister, the pro-British Nuri Said Pasha, to resign. As part of the cabal, al-Husseini played a role in organizing this coup, which brought to power the strongly pro-German regime of al-Gaylani, who became prime minister of Iraq on April 1, 1941. The goal of the pro-German coup was to give Hitler the oil he needed to enable his armies to conquer the Middle East.

On May 9, 1941, the mufti issued a fatwa proclaiming the Iraqi coup a jihad against the British and the Jews, “the greatest foe of Islam.”
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However, despite some aid to the pro-German Iraqis from Syria, which was still controlled by the pro-Axis French Vichy government, the pro-Nazi Iraqi government of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and Haj Amin al-Husseini did not last long. The British moved quickly, sending planes and troops into Baghdad. The rebellion was crushed, and the new pro-German government overthrown, after only one month of fighting. After the coup failed, the mufti incited a pogrom that broke out in Baghdad on June 1–2, 1941, and resulted in the murder of 110 Iraqi Jews
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and the wounding of several hundred others. Several thousand Jews were made homeless in the pogrom, their property looted.

One of the pro-Nazi plotters in the Iraqi coup of 1941 and a trusted friend and confidant of al-Husseini during his years in Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s uncle, General Khairallah Talfah, who would later become Saddam’s guardian, mentor, and father-in-law. Talfah would regale his young nephew, entrusted to his care, with exciting stories about the heroic exploits of the mufti and his Nazi collaborators, whom Talfah regarded as heroes.
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Thus, Saddam Hussein, who as a child learned about the pro-Nazi Iraqi coup of 1941 and the mufti’s subsequent wartime efforts on behalf of the Third Reich, grew up in awe of the mufti, whose devotion to the cause of radical Islam he sought to emulate. For the young Saddam Hussein, the mufti’s vision of radical Islam was inspirational,
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and others like Saddam Hussein came to regard the mufti as both hero and mentor.

Al-Husseini sought refuge in neighboring Iran. The mufti arrived in Tehran on June 1, where he was welcomed by the pro-Nazi Shah Reza Pahlavi. From his sanctuary at the Japanese embassy in Tehran, the mufti began to incite anti-Jewish hatred and violence as he had done throughout much of his stay in Baghdad. His well-deserved reputation as an anti-Jewish provocateur preceded him. In response to his anti-Jewish pronouncements and propaganda, a large number of Iranian Jews actually fled from Tehran to Istanbul. They feared the sorts of reprisals that Baghdad’s Jews had suffered.

The mufti’s safe haven was short-lived. Only four months after his arrival, the shah was forced to abdicate. Great Britain and the Soviet Union landed troops in Iran, arrested pro-government Nazi ministers, and replaced the shah with his young son, who immediately severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. The mufti was given sanctuary in the Italian embassy in Tehran, where he hid for several days. Aware that al-Husseini was still in hiding in Tehran, British prime minister Winston Churchill sought to capture him before he fled the Iranian capital. On September 3, 1941, Churchill telegraphed the British minister in Tehran, Sir Reader Bullard: “The fact that the Mufti has escaped from Persian surveillance is much regretted. His capture, dead or alive, is an important object, of which the Persian government should be made to feel the importance.”
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In a subsequent letter to British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, Churchill wrote: “I presume all measures are being taken to prevent his [the mufti’s] getting away. Will you please do whatever is possible.”
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With the British in hot pursuit, al-Husseini had to flee once again, this time from Iran, to Turkey, and then to Italy. In the dead of night on October 11, 1941, traveling incognito with his beard shaven, hair dyed, and a counterfeit Italian passport,
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the mufti was flown to Italy on an Italian air force plane sent by Benito Mussolini.

Upon his arrival in Rome, the red carpet was rolled out by the Italian authorities. Mussolini’s Fascist government was generous in its hospitality to its new ally, putting at the mufti’s disposal a luxuriously spacious villa in Rome, a full staff of servants and bodyguards, and an official car and escort of policemen on motorcycles. At Mussolini’s instruction, all of al-Husseini’s living expenses were covered by the government, as were those of his entourage who followed him to Rome.
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The highlight of the mufti’s Rome visit was a private audience with Mussolini, which took place on October 27, 1941, at Il Duce’s office on the first floor of the Palazzo Venetia, the exquisitely ornate Renaissance palace built by Pope Paul II in the fifteenth century and the seat of Mussolini’s Fascist government since 1928. It was in this same office, at the Palazzo Venetia, that Mussolini had met with Adolf Hitler during the führer’s much heralded state visit to Rome in 1937. As his chauffeured car passed the Roman Colosseum and the Pantheon en route to his destination, the mufti could not help but be impressed by the city’s grandeur. The stories about the historic Palazzo Venetia, where Napoleon Bonaparte’s government administration had held court at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were legendary. Since Mussolini’s assumption of power, lights at the palazzo were left on all night to give the impression that Mussolini and his Fascist regime worked without pause. From the balcony of the Palazzo Venetia, just above his private office, that overlooked the public square below, Mussolini drew huge crowds in his widely publicized speeches to the people of Rome, who were invariably mesmerized by his spellbinding oratory.

Il Duce received al-Husseini warmly, immediately endorsing his claim for an independent Arab government in Palestine and offering the mufti military support to fight the British.
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Al-Husseini and Mussolini shared a devotion to fascism as well as a passionate hatred for both the British and the Jews. In welcoming his Arab guest, Mussolini affirmed al-Husseini’s belief that the Jews had no historical right to establish a state in Palestine.
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Il Duce shared the mufti’s virulent opposition to Zionism. If the Jews want their own state, Mussolini told his delighted guest, “they should establish Tel Aviv in America.”
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He also shared the mufti’s hope for the eventual extermination of the Jews. “We have here, in Italy, 45,000 Jews, but none will be left,” Mussolini told al-Husseini. “They are our enemies, and there will be no place for them in Europe.”
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The mufti parted from Mussolini beaming. That night he noted in his diary: “I was very satisfied with my meeting with Mussolini and his statements about Jews and Zionism.”
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When the mufti departed from Rome on November 6, 1941, he had the firm support of one key member of the Axis leadership. Now he was determined to proceed to the next step in his grand design.

Hitler and the Mufti

Upon his arrival in Berlin on November 6, 1941, the mufti was welcomed warmly by the leaders of the Third Reich. As in Italy, he was greeted as a head of state in exile and deferred to as an important ally and political supporter. The mufti’s reputation as a high liver, with a taste for fine food and luxurious living, had preceded him. The Nazi government spared no expense in offering him their hospitality, providing al-Husseini with a luxurious home on Berlin’s fashionable Klopstock Street, a full staff of servants, a chauffeured Mercedes limousine, and a monthly stipend in excess of $10,000, as well as four other residences and suites in two of Berlin’s must luxurious hotels.
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The mufti was also given a generous monthly food budget, which would enable him to lavishly entertain the many leaders of radical Islam residing in or visiting Nazi Germany, whom the mufti would be able to use in mobilizing further Arab support for the Nazi cause.

Everywhere he went in Berlin, he was greeted by adoring crowds of Palestinian Arab expatriates. When al-Husseini had left Baghdad for Berlin, he had been accompanied by an entourage of Palestinian Arab colleagues, including Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and other leaders of the recently failed German coup in Iraq.
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Upon establishing his new residency in Germany, al-Husseini paved the way for other pro-Nazi Arab leaders to find a safe haven in the German capital, where they would remain throughout World War II. Berlin soon came to be home to the largest group of Arab leaders outside of the Middle East.

When al-Husseini met with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on November 28, part of their agenda was to discuss his forthcoming meeting with Hitler, scheduled for later that day. The mufti had been preparing for this meeting for much of his adult life.

One of the intriguing questions about the führer-mufti meeting is why Hitler agreed to meet, and to ally himself, with the mufti in the first place. Hitler had written about the racial inferiority of the Muslims in
Mein Kampf,
and he had a general contempt for all non-Aryans, including Arabs.
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Al-Husseini, with his blond hair, red beard, and blue eyes, appears to have been an exception. Hitler even went so far as to accept the mufti as an honorary Aryan.
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As Hitler would later remark, the mufti “gives one the impression that he is…a man with more than one Aryan among his ancestors and one who may well be descended from the best Roman stock.”
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Despite his earlier comments in
Mein Kampf,
the German leader seems to have later developed a new respect for Islam.
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According to documented private conversations he had with his staff, Hitler expressed admiration for the solidarity of the Muslim people and believed that they could be potentially valuable allies in his war against their common enemies, the British and the Jews.
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The mufti especially, Hitler felt, would be a useful ally in the Third Reich’s effort to eventually conquer and rule the Middle East. Hitler took very seriously the principle of the Aryans’ sole right to rule the world.
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His racial acceptance of the mufti, and his admiration for al-Husseini’s political sagacity and shrewdness, enabled the führer to envision a role for al-Husseini as a trusted political ally and future Aryan ruler of a Nazi-controlled Middle East.