Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (11 page)

On February 20,1941, in a broadcast on "Renewal and Superstition in Islam," Berlin radio returned to themes of decline and renewal while also offering a reading of the Koran that focused on its anti-Jewish passages: "Oh Muslims! Many of you have departed from your religion and follow your personal desires. Religion has become an empty name for you. Your deeds and words, your intentions and qualities of character are free from Islam and no longer have anything to do with it." Now "ignorant Muslims and unbelievers" have suggested ideas about Islam that really had nothing to do with it. Most of these superstitions come from those "who secretly fight against Islam. It is above all the Jews, who in the past pretended to have adopted Islam but in fact were very far from it." The broadcast continued, citing words of God from the Koran: "`You will find that those who are most hostile to the believers are Jews and idol worshipers! "' It was "the Jews who have always been and are also today the enemies of Islam and the Muslims and who try with all means to wage war against both Islam and the Muslims." Yet all efforts to insinuate superstitions into Islam had failed because "Islam has not lost any of its brilliance." In conclusion, Munzel's text asked God to protect Islam from those who try to "introduce innovations" and to help Muslims "for victory against their enemies and the enemies of their religion!"55

The assertion the Jews "have always been" and were in 1941 "enemies of Islam" remained a staple of Nazi radio broadcasts that highlighted the Koran's anti-Jewish passages. They repeatedly asserted that there was a continuity of Jewish antagonism to Islam from the seventh to the twentieth century and that efforts by the Jews or anyone else to introduce innovations into Islam were actually designed to weaken and destroy it. The broadcasts presented Islam as a religion under siege. Muslims needed both to return to the piety of their ancestors and to ally with a great power, such as Nazi Germany, which was also fighting against political and cultural modernity. According to Berlin radio, Nazi Germany and traditional Islam met on a shared terrain of political Manicheanism that divided the world into friends and enemies; believers and unbelievers; Germans and Muslims, on one hand, and Jews, on the other .56 The Munzel broadcasts of winter 1940-41 implicitly and explicitly drew parallels between the teachings of the Koran and Islam and the ideology and practice of the Nazi regime. They were the opening salvo in a propaganda barrage that lasted another four years. Their references to the Koran and to the Islamic commentaries on it offered cultural entry points to Arab and Muslim listeners. The early broadcasts did not discuss day-to-day events. Notwithstanding a slightly academic tone, efforts to connect Nazism with the religion of Islam remained a key element of Nazism's Arabic-language propaganda campaign throughout the war.

Some German diplomats had few illusions about the difficulties Nazi Germany faced in the Middle East. In a December 9,1940, memo on "Germany in Arabia" Melchers observed that although Germany saw Arab nationalism as its "natural ally" even before the war, for the Italians, "recognition in writing of the independence of the Arab countries or formation of their right to form a union was out of the question." All statements made in the press and on radio that suggested Germany was truly interested in Arab independence "were merely propaganda" if doing so would undermine Italian influence in the region. It was German policy to give Italy the "absolute lead politically in the Arab area." German diplomats and intelligence agents, however, were reporting that in the aftermath of Italy's war in Ethiopia and occupation of Libya, the Arabs preferred the English to the Italians. Moreover, the "Jewish-Arab conflict" in Palestine was "no longer apparent." The people of the region wanted peace. Melcher's pessimism extended to German prospects in Egypt, the most important country in the region. The country was "entirely in English hands" and was occupied by"at least 175,oo0" English, Australian, New Zealand, and Indian soldiers. Among the Egyptians, the older officials and rich families were "for the most part pro-English, the younger officials and officers of the insignificant Egyptian army probably pro-German." The lower classes were "not interested in politics;" and the government's policy was to keep the country out of war and preserve its outward independence. Hence "resistance through internal struggle seems hopeless."57

Melcher offered the following sober view of the Arabs and their potential as allies of the Axis: "The national, military, cultural, and state-building forces of the Arabs should not be overestimated. We have no reason at all to be sentimental about these people who are basically anti-European and torn by religious, family, and tribal differences." But as the Arabs inhabited the land bridge and routes leading to southern and eastern Asia, as well as to East Africa, and were "the foremost representatives of Islam in the world;" they were "a tremendously important power factor. Germany must not jeopardize her great prestige here if she does not wish to suffer most severe reverses for a long time to come." The political and military efforts of the English and the Gaullists, Italian defeats in Greece, and disappointment with insufficient German support for Arab aspirations could "result in a defection of the Arabs to the side of the English, which is bound to affect decisively the conduct of the war in the eastern Mediterranean in a way that is detrimental to us, and may perhaps even create a disastrous situation in the whole of North Africa." Hence, without giving up the principle of Italian preeminence in the Arab area, Melchers recommended that "in the interest of assuring an appropriate, efficient conduct of the war;" German military and political authorities establish liaisons with the Italians in the region. He also supported issuing a written declaration in which the Arabs and the Egyptians in particular were "assured political freedom and self-deter mination" and suggested that "the Arab world could be promised a solution of the Jewish question that it would find tolerable." Adoption of any of these proposals would "profoundly stir up the entire Arab world (presumably North Africa also) and probably take the wind out of the sails of England and of de Gaulle."58 If so, diplomacy and propaganda might contribute to Nazi military success in the region, which in turn would reinforce the propaganda messages about Axis prospects for victory in the war. Two days later, Melchers noted that the German and Italian Joint Declaration about Arab "aspirations for freedom" read on Arabic-language radio on December 5,1940, had aroused "lively demonstrations of sympathy [for the Axis] among the Arabs." In Ankara, Rashid Ali Kilani's brother suggested to the German ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, that the statement be put in writing and presented to Kilani in Baghdad. Melchers concluded that "in view of the splendid effect achieved by the statement" and the fact that the situation in Syria and Iraq had become "much more acute, it seems desirable to comply with the wish of the Iraqis."59 So long as the Italians agreed, there was every reason to make what were modest expenditures of time and effort.60

On January 20,1941, following contacts with Grobba, von Papen, and Italian diplomats, Haj Amin el-Husseini sent his first letter to Adolf Hitler. The Grand Mufti, writing from Baghdad, began with an attack on England. "Excellency: England, that relentless and crafty enemy of the true liberty of peoples, has never tired of forging chains to enslave the Arab people, sometimes in the name of the perfidious League of Nations and sometimes by flaunting false and hypocritical sentiments of humanity for the others, but always in truth, for the most imperialistic designs camouflaged by the principles of democracy and of a mendacious internationalism." He stressed the strategic significance of the "geographic coincidence" that placed "the Arab people" at the center of the land and sea crossroads of British imperial communications and of the conflict between Arab nationalism and England. The case of Palestine was well known to "Your Excellency" because Germany also had suffered from "the perfidy of the English." English policy in Palestine was "creating an obstacle to the unity and independence of the Arab countries by pitting them directly against the Jews of the entire world" who were "dangerous enemies." The Arabs had been fighting the British and the Jews for twenty years. The Palestine question had "united all the Arab countries in a common hatred for the English and the Jews. If a common enemy is the prelude to the formation of national unity, one may say that the Palestine problem has hastened this unity. From the international point of view, the Jews of the entire world have given their allegiance to England in the hope that, if she is victorious, she will be able to make their dreams come true in Palestine and even in the neighboring Arab countries. If the Arabs are aided in defeating the Zionist aims, the Jews, and especially those of the United States, will be so demoralized at seeing the object of their dreams fade into nothingness that they will lose their enthusiasm for aiding Great Britain and will retreat before catastrophe." Husseini thanked Hitler for "having again and again brought up in ringing speeches the question of Palestine" and assured him of "the sentiments of friendship, of sympathy, and of admiration which the Arab people pledge to Your Excellency, Great Fiihrer, and to the courageous German people." Further, he added, he was sending his private secretary, Osman Kemal Haddad, "to initiate in the name of the strongest and largest Arab organization and in my own name the negotiations necessary for loyal cooperation in all fields." Husseini wrote "that the Arabs are disposed to throw their weight into the scales and to offer their blood in the sacred struggle for their rights and their national aspirations, provided that certain interests of a moral and material order are assured." The Arabs could "endanger [British] imperial communication and paralyze all connections between India and the Mediterranean and Turkey via the Persian Gulf." They could thereby bring an "an end to the exploitation and sale of petroleum for the benefit of England." He wished Hitler "a long and happy life and brilliant victory and prosperity for the Great German people and for the Axis in the very near future" and repeated his "sentiments of great friendship, of gratitude and admiration."6' The next week, Haddad left Baghdad for Rome and Berlin to convey the message that the Iraqi government was now ready to cooperate with Nazi Germany "in every way."62 These were important steps to the meeting of hearts and minds that took place ten months later in Berlin and Rome and which then lasted throughout World War II and the Holocaust.

CHAPTER 4

Propaganda and Warfighting in
North Africa and the Middle East in 1941

y early 1941, Hitler, a Eurocentric politician with dreams of world power, acknowledged the role that defeating Britain in North Africa and the Middle East could play in winning the war in Europe. The British, too, grasped the strategic significance of the region both for preservation of their imperial status as well as for the possibilities of winning the war. It was in this period that American officials also expanded their understanding of the role the Middle East would play in the outcome of the war in Europe. The Middle East meant access to oil, transit between the European and Pacific theaters through the Suez Canal, and an increasingly important base from which to attack Nazi-occupied Europe. A German and Italian occupation of the region would pose great difficulties for a possible Allied counteroffensive. As Hitler's comments to the Grand Mufti on November 28 suggested, an Axis victory in North Africa and the Middle East would also mean an extension of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe to the 700,000 Jews living in the Arab world. German occupation of Iran carried with it the same potential. Accordingly, the Nazi regime presented itself both as a supporter of Arab antiimperialism aimed at Britain and as a friend to Arabs and Muslims based on common values and a common hatred of the Jews and Zionism.

On January 11, 1941, Hitler issued Directive No. 32, which stated that "after Soviet Russian armed forces have been crushed;" Germany would "carry out the main attack against the Suez Canal with German and Italian forces" in North Africa, with an additional armored and a motorized division to supplement the German Africa Corps.' The directive also called for "utilization of the Arab liberation movement." The situation of the English in the Middle East was to be made "all the more difficult the more forces are tied down at the proper time by centers of unrest or insurrectionary movements. All military, political, and propaganda measures serving this purpose must be harmonized very closely with one another in this preparatory period." Hitler designated Special Staff F (Son- derstab F) in the Wehrmacht Southeast "as the central office in the field to participate in all planning and measures in the Arab area"; it was to receive "the best experts and agents."' On February 6,1941, in "Operation Sunflower," German forces under General Erwin Rommel landed in North Africa. Their initial mission was to prevent the loss of Italy's North African colonies and to launch a joint German-Italian counteroffensive in combination with the German air force, the Luftwaffe.3 For the first time, Nazi propaganda aimed at Arabs and Muslims would be accompanied by armed forces on the ground.