Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (36 page)

Berlin in Arabic began the new year with a completely uninformative "Commentary on the Events of i943." In place of an account of what had actually happened in the war, it offered these three points: "The events of the last year give us proof that the Allies have agreed to hand over Europe to the Bolsheviks.... The Jewish American capitalists now dominate India, South and North Africa and Southern Australia ... Germany is fighting to establish the right; but the Allies are fighting to strangle right, abolish justice, and establish atheism."' On the same evening the VFA gloomily noted that the advance of Axis forces in Egypt had offered a possible "termination of the British occupation of Egypt and the Sudan." The Egyptians were "surprised" at Rommel's "withdrawal" but had "not lost hope in the final victory of their friends the Germans." In fact, the vast bulk of Rommel's forces were defeated and captured and thus unable to "withdraw." But for VFA, the broadcast was a rare acknowledgment that the war was going terribly badly for the Axis.

On January 4, Berlin in Arabic asserted that after Germany had driven the British forces off the Continent in 1940, it wanted to end a war it had not sought. Alas, "international Judaism seized the occasion ... to make money and to absorb the blood of the people." Within two years, the Jews succeeded in compelling Russia to enter the war "in order to avenge themselves against the Germans who had deported them from their country and who had prevented their tainted blood from mixing with the pure blood of the German people." This assertion failed to mention the minor detail of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, which was the reason the Soviet Union entered the war. Avoiding such an obvious and well-known fact underscored the distinctive purpose of the broadcast: to preach to the converted. That was evident as well in its remarkable assertion that "Germany has remained faithful to the strict rules of war. Indeed, nobody can accuse Germany of killing a child or a woman." By January 1944, the world press and Allied radio, including the BBC, were filled with detailed reports of Nazi war crimes. But Berlin in Arabic denounced the Jews for urging the Russians, British, and Americans to be "brutal" toward German civilians. Germany's enemies would "realize, as Adolf Hitler said, that the hour of vengeance will certainly come and that accounts will be settled."3

On January 7, the Mufti returned to the airwaves to issue a warning and threat to Arabs who might be "deceived by Anglo-Jewish schemes" that would legitimate any sort of Jewish state in Palestine. All who showed "leniency towards the Jews" in this matter were "guilty of high treason against the Arabs," undermined Pan-Arabism, and became "enemies of all Arabs and Moslems." Drawing on his authority as Grand Mufti, he added that "any Arab assisting such a plan would be eternally damned and previous good deeds would be erased from the memory of us all, bringing nothing to him but disgrace." The recognition of any rights for Jews in Palestine would amount to "the destruction of the Arab nation." Husseini compared what he called "this British-Jewish plan" to reconcile a Jewish state in Palestine with Pan-Arabism to "giving a patient an anaesthetic before a limb is amputated; in this case Palestine is a limb." If "any Arab" agreed to allow Jews to take part in pan-Arab talks or showed "leniency" to the Jews, he "would be a traitor and a destroyer of Pan Arabism [ sic]." He warned "any Arab personality" who might entertain such thoughts "not to be deceived by the British and the Jews and thereby to contribute to the deprivation of the Arabs of their vital rights. The entire Arab nation would certainly disown such a man who permits himself to falter and will adequately punish him."4 Given Husseini's reputation for terrorist attacks on his Arab political opponents in Palestine in the 1930s, these were not idle threats.

On January 8, Berlin in Arabic repeated a version of the assertion that a Jewish state in Palestine would be a "bridgehead" from which the Jews could enter other Arab countries. The announcer added that the Palestine issue should be understood as part of a Jewish plan to rule the world. If the Jews could establish a Jewish state in Palestine, they would "be able to control the three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. Thus they will be able to rule the whole world and spread Jewish capitalism."5 The following evening, VFA raised a similar warning about the Jews and the spread of Bolshevism. "We know that the Jews are the masters of the Americans, as they also are in Russia." The VFA announcer knew that "the Jews are our most bitter enemies, according to the Koran, our history, traditions, the present and actual realities. '16 Two days later, Berlin in Arabic, in a talk entitled "God Forbid Any Compromise;" echoed the view that Islam precluded cooperation with the Jews "because the Arabs hate the Jews." Indeed, Arabs had "been traditional enemies of the Jews since the dawn of Islam." Any Arab who cooperated with the Jews contributed to the defeat of the Arabs of Palestine and must be "either mad or a traitor." The opinion of such a person had "no importance whatsoever."7

On January 12, Berlin in Arabic continued to attack Nahas Pasha in "Forgiveness in Islam." According to the broadcast, the prime minister erroneously evoked the value of forgiveness in Islamic tradition as a reason to seek reconcil iation with the Jews because to do so conflated forgiveness with weakness. The broadcast asserted that "the Jews are the worst enemies of Islam, and always have been." It claimed that the Koran described the Jews "as being the worst enemies of Islam ... because of the evils which the Jews tried to do to Islam." Indeed, "the Jews boast of being the enemies of Islam," something that was "most obvious in Palestine." The broadcast conceded that "Nahas Pasha might have the right to support the Jews," but he had "no right to alter the Koran" and would "never have the right to do so" even though he was "supported by the British, the Americans, the Bolsheviks and the Jews." The broadcast concluded as follows: "Arabs, do not hesitate to continue your struggle against the Jews even though such statements [by Nahas Pasha] may be made by people who have no right to support the Jews. Arabs you have right on your side and you are going to win your case. Fear not because God is with you and the Almighty is the most just influence in this world."8 On January 14, Berlin in Arabic kept up its attack, stating that it was rumored that Nahas Pasha would recognize a Jewish national home in Palestine, something that would threaten "one of the most sacred lands of Islam." Mixing the language of racism with religious faith, it added, "The Arabs want a pure Arab country; we, the faithful sons of our noble ancestors, will not be humiliated and debased by accepting such a sacrifice and giving away our sacred heritage." It warned Nahas Pasha that "the Arabs and the Moslems recognize a betrayal and know when you deviate from the path.... Allah is great! Glory to the Arabs; glory to Islam!"9 Nazism thus stood with the "faithful" and "noble" Muslims against traitors who deviated from the path laid down in the Koran. This broadcast illustrated, yet again, the centrality of its view of the teachings of the Koran and of Islam in Nazism's Arabic programming: It was its reading of this work and this tradition-not citations from Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or speeches by Hitler or Goebbels-that served as the most important entry point to Arab and Muslim listeners.

On occasion, German Arabic broadcasts departed from their running commentary about ongoing political events to make general statements about basic beliefs, such as "Arabs and Moslems at War with Jewry," broadcast on January 29. It was an important mixture of racism, anti-Semitism, and religious fanaticism.

Ethnologists tend today to consider the Arabs and the Jews as distinctly different races. To put it simply, they consider them as one old race which was divided into two distinctive branches. What makes them believe thus are the different characteristics of each. While the Arabs are lavishly generous, the Jews are meanly miserly. While the Arabs are courageous and warlike, the Jews are cowardly and fearful. The differences between the two races were the reason for the enduring enmity which has always existed between them. We therefore believe that this enmity and strife between the Arabs and the Jews will always be maintained until one of the two races is destroyed. This struggle or war between the Arabs and the Jews is based on beliefs and such conflicts cannot end other than with the destruction of one party. We must also admit that the responsibility for this racial war between the Arabs and the Jews lies on the shoulders of the Jews. The characteristics of the Arabs, their generosity, unselfishness and will to sacrifice cannot lead to war.

Enmity has always existed between Arab and Jew, since ancient times. But it has been accentuated since the appearance of Islam. In Islam, the Jews found a danger to their beliefs. They fought the Prophet and his followers and when they found that the Moslems were gaining strength, they intrigued among them. They even tried to assault the Prophet. This enmity has existed from then till the present day, when Moslems realize that they must free their lands from the evils of the Jews. It is a fact that the Jews preferred paganism to Islam." 10

The announcer then read Sura 5, verse 82, from the Koran, which described the Jews as the most ardent enemies of the Muslims. He blamed the Jews for World War I, which he said they began in order to realize their dream of a state "in Moslem Palestine." As the Arabs had been able to prevent the realization of the Balfour Declaration, "the Jews started the present war [World War II] to realize what they failed to achieve in the last." But victory would go to "Moslems in general and the Arabs in particular;" and the Jews and their supporters would be defeated.' 1 This essay offers evidence of the way Nazi race theory became intertwined with fundamentalist Islamic hatred of the Jews based on religious arguments. Both the racial and religious arguments supported the proposition that a conflict between Arabs and Jews was total and must end in the destruction of one or the other. The anti-Semitism of the broadcast drew equally on an interpretation of Islam's view of the Jews and on modern, secular, anti-Semitic arguments about the origins of the Balfour Declaration and of World Wars I and II. Its anti-Semitism was both ancient and modern, evoking a continuity that extended back to the founding of Islam and forward to the Nazi regime's anti-Semitic interpretation of modern history.

As his collaboration with Erwin Ettel in the Foreign Ministry had demonstrated, Husseini's strongest supporters in the Nazi regime were among its truest believers, including the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. Indeed, by early 1944, one official in the Foreign Ministry contacted Himmler's office to inform him about leading officials in the Foreign Office who placed "restrictions on anti-Jewish action" in propaganda activities.11 The Husseini-Himmler connection produced a remarkable chapter in the history of the Nazi propaganda offensive. On May 14, 1943, Himmler requested that the SS's Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) examine "themes in the Koran that lead the Muslims to the view that the Koran predicts and assigns to the Fuhrer the mission of completing the Prophet's work." The RSHA should examine the issue because "we can very probably use this idea in the Muslim population, above all among our own Muslim troops. 1113 Over the summer and fall, the RSHA learned from German Orientalists that although the Koran did not offer such a prediction, there was, especially among the Shi'ites in Iran, a belief in the return of the Prophet that could be applied to Hitler. On September 11, 1943, Himmler's aide Rudolf Brandt told SS Obergruppenfiihrer Gottlob Berger in Berlin to "use your connections with the Grand Mufti" to see if this direction should be pursued.14 On September 13, Sturmbannfuhrer von Kilepinski in the RSHA's Office III C4 sent a memo to Himmler about the matter. Office III C4 was responsible for cultural research with a focus on Jewish matters. Its director, Otto Ohlendorf, was the former commander of Einsatzgruppe D on the Eastern Front, under whose command more than 90,000 executions took place. The RSHA had learned that although the Koran did not predict a prophet such as Hitler, "in all Islamic eschatology, the belief in the Madhi stands in the foreground. The Mahdi should appear at the end of days to help the believers and make justice triumphant. 1115 On December 6, 1943, following a series of memos and consultations, officials in the RSHA's "Research Office Orient, Office VI C 13" in the Foreign Intelligence Division, headed by Walter Schellenberg, wrote to Himmler. He reported that its investigation of the question whether "religious reverence for the Fuhrer" could be fostered among Muslims by using quotations from the Koran led to the following results.

The Fuhrer can neither be presented as a prophet nor the Mahdi but rather as Jesus (Isa) who the Koran predicts will return and, as a knight ... defeats giants and the king of the Jews who appear at the end of the world.

Along these lines, the Orient Research Office has written an Arabic leaflet.... The Koran quotation at the beginning and end of the leaflet refers to the return of the messiah who will kill the false messiah Dadjdjal before the Mahdi returns. The text [of the leaflet] suggests in the same way as the Koran quotation a conflation of the Fiihrer with the messiah while it presents Dadjdjal as the embodiment of Jewish world capital.

The distribution of the leaflet may not only have a favorable impact on the views of the Muslims in southeastern Europe. Rather, it should be effective above all at the right time in Palestine, because there the civil peace between Arabs and Jews is rapidly coming to its end. We therefore request permission for a massive printing and distribution of the leaflet.'6

By 1944, Husseini's relationship with Heinrich Himmler was cordial. In November 1942, after a group of Bosnian Muslims had written to Hitler to offer support and cooperation, Himmler decided to establish an SS division from their ranks. Recruitment began in February 1943.17 As it was the first military organization resting on cooperation between National Socialism and Islamist groups, Husseini understandably played an important role in its development. Husseini and Himmler agreed that the ideological development of the troops would be left in the hands of Imams selected by Husseini's representatives and approved by him. They would receive orders from Husseini and the SS. Hitler decreed that the division's name would be 13th Waffen SS Mountain Division "Handschar. 18