Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

by Barry Rubin, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz

A groundbreaking account of the Nazi-Islamist alliance that changed the course of World War II and influences the Arab world to this day
 
During the 1930s and 1940s, a unique and lasting political alliance was forged among Third Reich leaders, Arab nationalists, and Muslim religious authorities. From this relationship sprang a series of dramatic events that, despite their profound impact on the course of World War II, remained secret until now. In this groundbreaking book, esteemed Middle East scholars Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz uncover the complete story of this dangerous alliance and explore its continuing impact on Arab politics in the twenty-first century.
 
Rubin and Schwanitz reveal, for example, the full scope of Palestinian leader Amin al-Husaini’s support of Hitler’s genocidal plans against European and Middle Eastern Jews. In addition, they expose the extent of Germany’s long-term promotion of Islamism and jihad. Drawing on unprecedented research in European, American, and Middle East archives, many never before written about, the authors offer new insight on the intertwined development of Nazism and Islamism and its impact on the modern Middle East.

Genres: History, Politics, Middle East, Religion, Nonfiction, World War II, War

340 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Barry Rubin is an American-born Israeli expert on terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA), and a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. He is also editor of the journal 'Turkish Studies'.

Reviews

[Matty S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Myth of Margin Vs. The Operational Partnership
For decades, conventional historiography treated wartime collaboration between Nazi Germany and Middle Eastern radical nationalists as a peripheral footnote—an opportunistic marriage of convenience between European fascism and anti-colonial Arab agitators. In Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, historians Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz shatter this myth. Drawing on unsealed Western intelligence archives, German Foreign Ministry files, and Arabic sources, they demonstrate that the alliance between Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was an operational, ideologically aligned partnership centered on shared genocidal objectives.
Far from being a passive pupil of European fascism, al-Husseini was an active co-architect of totalitarian anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. He arrived in Berlin in November 1941 not merely seeking anti-British patronage, but advocating for the global liquidation of Jewry. His presence coincided directly with Hitler’s transition from forced Jewish emigration to systematic extermination. In return for German pledges to extend the Final Solution to Mandatory Palestine and the Middle East, al-Husseini mobilized radio propaganda, recruited over 20,000 Muslim soldiers for the Waffen-SS, and personally intervened to block escape routes for European Jews, sending thousands directly to death camps in Poland.
This alliance was uniquely catastrophic because, unlike defeated European Axis collaborators, Middle Eastern actors were neither punished nor discredited after 1945. Instead, al-Husseini and his ideological network emerged victorious over moderate Arab figures, embedding totalitarian methods, conspiratorial anti-Semitism, and counterpragmatic rejectionism into modern regional politics—from Ba'athism and the Muslim Brotherhood to the PLO, Hamas, and al-Qaida.
"Jihad Made in Germany" And the Fall of Moderation
The ideological trajectory that brought al-Husseini to Berlin did not begin with Hitler; its roots lay in late 19th-century Prussian imperial strategy. Following German unification in 1871, Imperial Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II sought to challenge British, French, and Russian power. Diplomats like Baron Max von Oppenheim—"the father of jihad"—formulated a blueprint to instrumentalize Islamic fervor as a strategic weapon. During World War I, Oppenheim’s 136-page plan urged the Ottoman Empire to declare global anti-Allied jihad, distributing fatwas drafted by German scholars and Ottoman clerics to incite Muslim soldiers in Allied armies to mutiny.
Though this joint jihad failed operationally in WWI, it established a lethal precedent: European powers weaponizing religious fanaticism. German officers in the Ottoman Empire witnessed—and often facilitated or ignored—the genocide of over one million Ottoman Armenians, providing an ominous template for mass murder that Adolf Hitler and his lieutenants absorbed attentively.
Simultaneously, Hajj Amin al-Husseini was rising through Palestinian politics. Born into a wealthy Jerusalem family, al-Husseini studied at al-Azhar under radical thinkers like Rashid Rida, who advocated puritanical Islam combined with anti-Western nationalism. During WWI, al-Husseini served as an Ottoman officer, forming close ties with German personnel. After the empire’s collapse, he adroitly pivoted to serve British intelligence, securing an early release from a sedition charge.
In April 1920, al-Husseini orchestrated the Nabi Musa riots in Jerusalem, inciting mobs with fanatical anti-Zionist rhetoric that left numerous Jews dead. Convicted in absentia to ten years' imprisonment by a British military court, al-Husseini was pardoned in 1921 by Sir Herbert Samuel, Britain's High Commissioner for Palestine. Samuel appointed the 24-year-old agitator Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and President of the Supreme Muslim Council. Given vast patronage, authority, and revenues, al-Husseini utilized his office to systematically liquidate moderate Arab political rivals—most notably the Nashashibi clan—converting the Palestinian movement into an uncompromising anti-Semitic crusade.
Counterpragmatic Intransigence: Rejection of the 1939 White Paper
Al-Husseini pioneered what Rubin and Schwanitz term the "counterpragmatic" doctrine in Arab politics: total rejection of diplomacy, compromise, or partition in favor of absolute victory through terror and external alliance. Between 1936 and 1939, al-Husseini spearheaded the Arab Revolt in Palestine, utilizing fascist funding from Mussolini's Italy and clandestine arms from Nazi Germany. When moderate Arab leaders sought peaceful negotiations, al-Husseini dispatched assassination squads to murder them. Over thirty prominent Palestinian Arab figures—including scholars, village elders, and mayors who favored compromise—were executed on his orders.
The ultimate tragedy of al-Husseini’s rejectionism unfolded in 1939. Desperate to secure Arab loyalty on the eve of WWII, the British government issued the 1939 White Paper. This document acceded almost entirely to Palestinian Arab demands: it placed a strict cap on Jewish immigration (75,000 over five years), heavily restricted Jewish land purchases, and promised an independent Arab-majority Palestinian state within ten years. Egyptian and Iraqi diplomats pleaded with al-Husseini to accept the offer, noting that accepting it would guarantee an independent Arab state ruling all of Palestine by 1949 and permanently prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.
Blinded by ideological fanaticism and convinced that Nazi Germany was on the verge of crushing the Western democracies, al-Husseini categorically rejected the White Paper. He demanded immediate, total power and the absolute prohibition of all Jewish presence. By demanding everything, al-Husseini ensured that his people received nothing. His rejectionism set a catastrophic precedent that led directly to the rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the 1948 war, and generations of statelessness.
The Berlin Summit and The Pact for Extermination
Fleeing British arrest after his rebellion failed, al-Husseini sought refuge in Baghdad, where he helped orchestrate the May 1941 pro-Axis military coup led by Rashid Ali al-Kailani. The short-lived regime initiated the Farhud—a brutal, Nazi-inspired pogrom in Baghdad in June 1941 that saw over 170 Iraqi Jews murdered and hundreds injured. When British forces crushed the coup, al-Husseini escaped through Iran and Turkey, arriving in Berlin in November 1941 to a hero's welcome.
The Nazi regime treated al-Husseini as a visiting head of state and potential Caliph. He was housed in Castle Bellevue, given suites at the Hotel Adlon, provided with expropriated Jewish apartments, and awarded a personal monthly stipend equivalent to $12 million annually in today’s currency—funded directly from gold seized from murdered concentration camp inmates.
On November 28, 1941, Adolf Hitler granted al-Husseini a historic ninety-minute private audience in the Reich Chancellery. The transcript reveals a meeting grounded in explicit, genocidal alignment. Al-Husseini declared Arabs to be Germany's natural allies, bound by shared hatred of the British and the Jews, offering an Arab Legion, oil installation sabotage, and a global Islamic revolt.
Hitler responded by outlining Germany’s strategic objectives against the two citadels of Jewish power: Britain and Soviet Russia. Hitler gave al-Husseini a solemn pledge: as soon as German Panzer divisions broke through the Caucasus, Germany’s sole objective would be "the clearance of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power." Al-Husseini was designated to lead this projected empire and oversee the total destruction of Middle Eastern Jewry.
Following the summit, Hitler ordered Reinhard Heydrich to organize the Wannsee Conference to finalize administrative logistics for the Holocaust. Because genocide was linked operationally to the Axis partnership in the East, al-Husseini was the first non-German briefed on the Final Solution. Adolf Eichmann personally took al-Husseini into the SS map room, laying out the blueprint for murdering Europe's eleven million Jews. Enraptured by the presentation, al-Husseini requested that Eichmann assign SS officer Dieter Wisliceny to Jerusalem as his personal advisor for constructing gas chambers and death camps in Palestine once the Wehrmacht conquered the Levant.
Direct Complicity in The Holocaust: Blocking Escape Routes
Al-Husseini was not merely a passive cheerleader for Nazi atrocities; he actively intervened to ensure that the machinery of slaughter operated at maximum capacity. SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny testified under oath at Nuremberg that al-Husseini "was one of the originators of the systematic destruction of European Jewry... a permanent colleague, partner, and adviser to Eichmann and Himmler." Wisliceny famously remarked that al-Husseini "surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks."
Whenever Axis satellite states or Nazi officials attempted to negotiate exchanges of Jewish civilians for Allied prisoners, al-Husseini personally intervened to shut down the exits. He understood that any Jew permitted to leave Europe might eventually reach Palestine, demanding that Nazi leadership close every escape route.
In late 1942, an agreement was negotiated to exchange 10,000 Jewish children from Poland, held at Theresienstadt, for interned German civilians. Upon discovering the plan, al-Husseini lodged a fierce protest with Heinrich Himmler. Himmler capitulated, revoking the transfer order; the children were sent directly to the gas chambers. Similarly, in May 1943, when the British Parliament announced that 4,000 Jewish children and 500 adults were permitted departure from Bulgaria to Palestine, al-Husseini personally lobbied Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Bulgarian government. The deal was cancelled, condemning 4,500 people to death. In 1944, Eichmann explicitly cited his personal promise to al-Husseini as his reason for refusing to allow 1,681 Hungarian Jews to be routed to Palestine. Al-Husseini wrote repeatedly to the Foreign Ministers of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Italy, demanding they halt all Jewish emigration and deport their Jewish populations to Poland.
Furthermore, al-Husseini conducted direct inspections of the concentration camp system. In June 1942, his delegation toured Sachsenhausen’s newly constructed "Station Z" gas chambers and crematoria. Witnesses testified that al-Husseini visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek, observing gassing operations firsthand alongside Eichmann and Alois Brunner. In July 1943, Himmler hosted al-Husseini at his field headquarters in Zhitomir, Ukraine, where Himmler personally confided that Germany had already murdered three million Jews—a fact al-Husseini proudly recorded in his memoirs.
Military Collaboration and Propaganda
Al-Husseini’s collaboration extended directly onto the battlefield. As Allied forces closed in, he transformed into a military recruiter for the Third Reich.
In 1943, al-Husseini traveled to Zagreb and Sarajevo to recruit Balkan Muslims into the SS. His efforts birthed the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division Handžar ("Dagger"), a 20,000-man unit composed primarily of Bosnian Muslims. Wearing SS uniforms with fezzes adorned with the swastika, the Handžar Division engaged in counter-insurgency operations, massacres of Serbian civilians, and roundups of Balkan Jews. Al-Husseini also helped form the 21st Waffen-SS Division Skanderbeg in Albania and raised Turkic Muslim units from Soviet prisoners of war, organizing over 53,000 Soviet Muslims into the Ostlegionen (including the 162nd Turcoman Division and Azerbaijani Legion).
To provide ideological grounding, al-Husseini established SS Imam Training Academies in Dresden and Guben, appointing anti-Semitic scholars to train military imams commissioned as Waffen-SS captains. In lectures to SS units, al-Husseini fused Nazi racial theory with Islamic theology, arguing that National Socialism and Islam shared identical principles: absolute obedience to a Führer/Caliph, total devotion to jihad, glorification of martyrdom, and an obligation to destroy the Jews:
“Kill the Jews before they kill you! Kill the Jews who took your valuables... Arabs of Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, what are you waiting for?... This is your best chance to get rid of this dirty race. Kill the Jews! Set their possessions on fire! Demolish their shops!”
Had Rommel breached British defenses in Egypt, the Holocaust in the Middle East was fully prepared. SS-Obersturmbannführer Walther Rauff—inventor of the mobile gas van—was assigned to lead an Einsatzgruppe attached to Rommel’s army. In Tunis, Rauff executed 2,500 Tunisian Jews as a rehearsal for Egypt and Palestine. Al-Husseini’s radio station explicitly instructed Egyptians to compile registry lists of Jewish addresses in Cairo so that SS death squads could execute them immediately upon arrival.
Simultaneously, al-Husseini trained Arab commando paratroopers at SS sabotage schools in The Hague. In October 1944, he dispatched Operation Franz: a five-man German-Arab commando team, led by Hasan Salama, which parachuted into Jericho. Their mission was to organize local guerrilla cells, distribute weapons, and attempt to poison Tel Aviv’s municipal water supply with toxin containers provided by the Abwehr.
The War After the War: Western Enablement and Impunity
When Nazi Germany collapsed in May 1945, al-Husseini fled to Switzerland, which refused him entry. He was subsequently taken into custody by French forces near Konstanz and placed under house arrest near Paris. Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito formally listed al-Husseini as a Class-A war criminal for recruiting SS units that perpetrated atrocities against Yugoslav civilians, while the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) compiled extensive dossiers detailing his complicity in mass murder.
Yet, al-Husseini never faced trial at Nuremberg or anywhere else, as Western powers systematically allowed him to escape justice. In May 1946, the French government permitted al-Husseini to escape on a fake passport to Cairo. Simultaneously, the British Foreign Office and American State Department actively suppressed war crime reports and quashed extradition requests, fearing that prosecuting the Mufti would alienate Arab governments and spark unrest across the oil-rich Middle East.
Reinstalled as head of the Arab Higher Committee, al-Husseini financed his operations using checking accounts funded by looted Nazi gold—held in Swiss banks by his Swiss Nazi banker François Genoud—to purchase surplus Wehrmacht weaponry and recruit ex-Nazi military personnel. He appointed veteran Nazi collaborators, including Fauzi al-Qawuqji, Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, and Hasan Salama, to command Palestinian irregular forces ( al-Jihad al-Muqaddas) during the 1947–1948 war.
When moderate Arab leaders sought a negotiated partition, al-Husseini’s network eliminated them. On July 16, 1951, his operatives assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Riad as-Sulh for pursuing peace talks with Israel. Four days later, on July 20, 1951, al-Husseini’s gunmen murdered King Abdallah of Jordan in Jerusalem.
The Axis Legacy: Ex-Nazis in Arab Service and Ideological Continuity
The Middle East was the only region where escaped Nazi war criminals found active employment in state intelligence, propaganda, and military organs. Under Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, hundreds of ex-Nazis were integrated into government service. Goebbels' top anti-Semitic pamphleteer and SS-Standartenführer, Johann von Leers (Umar Amin von Leers), was hired by the Egyptian Ministry of Guidance. Converting to Islam under al-Husseini’s sponsorship, von Leers directed anti-Israel propaganda, published Arabic translations of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and trained Arab propagandists in Goebbelsian techniques. Ferdinand Heim (Tariq Farid Husain), a doctor who performed experiments at Buchenwald and Mauthausen, served for decades as a physician for the Egyptian military. Meanwhile, ex-SS and Gestapo officers Leopold Gleim and Joachim Doemling restructured Nasser's secret police, establishing concentration camps for political dissidents.
In Syria, Alois Brunner—Eichmann's chief deputy responsible for deporting 100,000 Jews to death camps—lived comfortably in Damascus under the alias Georg Fischer, serving as a senior advisor to Syrian military intelligence and training state interrogators in Gestapo torture techniques.
Ideologically, the Nazi-Islamist alliance left an indelible mark on modern Middle Eastern political movements. The founders of the Syrian and Iraqi Ba'ath Party, including Sami al-Jundi and Michel Aflaq, acknowledged that their 1940 founding structure was modeled directly on National Socialism. In Iraq, Khairallah Talfah—a participant in the 1941 pro-Nazi coup—became the mentor and father-in-law of Saddam Hussein, instilling in him a totalitarian worldview that governed Iraq for thirty-five years.
The Palestinian national movement maintained an unbroken line of succession. On December 29, 1968, at his home in Beirut, the 71-year-old al-Husseini formally anointed 39-year-old Yasser Arafat as his political successor. Arafat adopted al-Husseini’s two-stage strategy of using territorial footholds as launchpads to eliminate Israel, his practice of blackmailing Arab regimes, and his reliance on anti-civilian terror. Arafat’s chief of operations, Ali Hasan Salama ("The Red Prince")—architect of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre—was the direct son of al-Husseini's commando commander Hasan Salama.
Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, including Hamas, retained the genocidal anti-Semitism perfected during the Berlin years. The 1988 Hamas Covenant quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, cites The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and echoes al-Husseini's wartime broadcasts, framing the conflict as an apocalyptic religious duty to annihilate Jews worldwide. Modern Islamist theologians like Yusuf al-Qaradawi publicly praised Hitler's genocide as "divine punishment" and prayed for Muslims to carry out the next round.
The Unbroken Thread
The history uncovered by Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz is not a settled, distant past; it is an active, open wound in contemporary international relations. By detailing the wartime alliance between Adolf Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the historical record destroys the myth that Islamic anti-Semitism is merely a modern reaction to the creation of the State of Israel or Israeli policy. The ideologues who forged the Axis pact embraced National Socialism because its genocidal anti-Semitism, totalitarian state model, and hatred of liberal democracy matched their existing worldview.
When the Third Reich crumbled in 1945, its European perpetrators were brought to justice or forced into hiding, and their ideology was utterly repudiated by Western civilization. In the Middle East, however, the key perpetrators were sheltered, celebrated, and elevated to leadership. Western political cowardice allowed al-Husseini to escape the gallows of Nuremberg, enabling him to reignite the conflict in 1948 and pass the torch of rejectionism to subsequent generations.
The legacy of "Jihad Made in Germany" and the Nazi-Islamist alliance remains the central reason why peace in the Middle East has proven so agonizingly elusive. Until the region explicitly confronts and repudiates the genocidal heritage of Hajj Amin al-Husseini and his Nazi alliance, the unbroken thread of totalitarian hatred will continue to claim innocent lives.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As we witness the increasing level of anti-Semitism in Europe exemplified by recent attacks against Jews in Paris the role of Islamist ideology appears ever present. The perpetrators of the attacks were of Mideast origin and claimed to be associated with the Islamic State or ISIS. With renewed interest in the role of anti-Semitism and Islamist radicalism in Europe it is important to seek out the origins of these movements. Some political commentators point to the actions of Israel against the Palestinians, particularly its war against Hamas last summer resulting in the carnage caused by repeated missile launches to and from the Gaza Strip. Others, like historians, the late Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, acknowledge the role of Israel, but point out in their new book, NAZIS, ISLAMISTS AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST that the historical and ideological roots of the latest conflict between Israelis and Arabs goes much deeper. Citing the recent release of Nazi and Arab documents dealing with World War II from American and Russian archives, a more complete account of the interactions between Arabs, Muslims and Germans can now be presented.

To support their views the authors bring together a number of key elements. First, they explore the German role in the Middle East dating back to the late 19th century. Beginning with the beliefs of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the ideological, political, and strategic goals of Germany are presented by analyzing the intellectual and practical development of employing Islam and jihad as a vehicle for German expansion in the region which would continue through the reign of Adolf Hitler. Secondly, after the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 the alliance forged with these Middle East groups during the war would have long term ramifications. These groups would experience political victories over their European masters and over more moderate Arab and Muslim rivals. “Their success was so thorough that liberal democratic forces-not uncommon in the Arab speaking world before the 1930s-do not emerge again as contenders for power” until the Arab spring in 2011. Today, we are in the midst of another round in the conflict between revolutionary Islamism, one of the movements that cooperated with Imperial Germany through the end of World War I. Its cooperation would continue with Nazi Germany up until 1945, then reemerge to challenge its former partner Arab nationalism, that had crushed it in the 1950s. I agree with the authors that an “Islamist spring” has emerged today that spews its anti-Semitism and hatred of the west and it can only be understood by examining the role of the Nazi-Islamist alliance that culminated during World War II.

The narrative begins in June, 1942 as SS Chief Heinrich Himmler prepares for visitors at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Earlier in 1941 the facility had tested new camouflaged gas chambers with four new crematoria which proved very successful. At that time, the Arab visitors witnessed the results and they planned to build their own facilities near Tunis, Baghdad, and Jericho. The authors then present a letter from Amin al-Husaini, the Palestinian political and religious leader, to Adolf Hitler in January 1941 that asked the Nazi leader to “assist the Arabs in solving their Jewish problem the way it was carried out in Germany.” The introduction of al-Husaini, who was also the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is critical to the author’s arguments. During the First World War, the Kaiser tried to foment a jihad to encourage Muslim support during the war. His plan was doomed to failure as relying the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as his spokesperson was not sound, as most Muslims did recognize him as the religious leader of the Middle East (or caliph). By 1933, with Hitler’s ascension to power al-Husaini offered his services to the German Chancellor to carry out his plan against the Jews laid out in MEIN KAMPF. Thus, the relationship and alliance between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti began. Throughout the 1930s the Nazis supplied weapons and money to be employed in the 1936 Intifada against the Jews in Palestine, a people that al-Husaini referred to as “scum and germs.” al-Husaini saw himself as the leader of the Arab world and in return for Germany’s assistance in eradicating the Middle East of its Jewish population, and supporting his goal for the creation of a unified Arab state in the Middle East under his leadership, he would work to bring Muslims and Arabs into an alliance with Germany, spread Nazi ideology and wage terror against England and France. As a result of al-Husaini’s cooperation Germany was able to establish a special relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ba’ath Party and other radical groups in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, which still exist today. The author’s provide a detailed history of al-Husaini’s activities throughout his career as the self-styled political and religious leader of the Arab world. The evidence presented affirms the similarities between al-Husaini’s beliefs and those of the Nazis. To further their critique the authors offer a list created by al-Husaini that offers “parallels between the Islamic world view and National Socialism.” The list highlights eight parallels, with al-Husaini “backing each assertion with quotes from al-Qur’an and Muhammad’s sayings.” Views presented deal with the hatred of Jews, belief in a single powerful leader, the role of woman, and holy war. (182-183)

The documentation that the authors present is extensive in dealing with al-Husaini’s paramount role in Hitler’s vision for the Middle East. One aspect that they discuss even places some level of the blame for the Holocaust on the Grand Mufti. Up until 1941 the Nazis had not decided on the Final Solution and the Hitlerite regime concentrated on expelling Jews from Germany. The problem for al-Husaini was that most of those Jews would wind up in Palestine. Since part of the agreement with the Nazis was to close Palestine’s doors to Jewish immigration, that process was stopped. With one of the last places Jews could be sent now closed the Nazi regime moved on to plan the Final Solution. The timing of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 and al-Husaini’s activities including a conversation with Adolf Eichmann, “who had prepared the background briefing for the genocide discussion at Wannsee, was ordered to be give[n] to al Husaini….before any high-ranking Germans.” (163) As the war progressed and the German hierarchy realized the conflict was lost, they began to try to soften their role in the Holocaust and began trying to arrange the exchange of Jews for prisoners of war and low level war material. When al-Husaini learned of these activities in Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary and Turkey he immediately interfered to put an end to them. As a result, even more Jews perished in the ovens, all because of his hatred of Jews.

The critique of al-Husaini continues after the war and the evidence offered reflects al-Husaini’s role in the 1947-8 war that saw the creation of the state of Israel. After W.W.II, al-Husaini and his cohorts, many of which were Nazi collaborators worked to prepare for the next war, i.e.; uncovering Nazi weapons hidden since 1942, using Nazi funds to purchase new weapons, and employing escaped Nazis to train and lead Arabs. "Without al-Husaini’s presence as the Palestinian Arabs’ and transnationalist Islamist leader there might have been other options.” (200) The author’s conjecture that had moderate Arab leaders not bowed down to al-Husaini’s radical Arabism, and perhaps had the allies treated him as a war criminal as they should have the course of Middle Eastern history might have been different. Whether things would have progressed in another fashion is fine to speculate about but American, British and French fears of losing Arab support, the need for oil, and the emergence of the Cold War was more important and al-Husaini was allowed to proceed with his machinations for the rest of his life.

Another fascinating aspect that the authors address is the relationship between former Nazis and the Arab world following W.W.II. A detailed chapter is put forth that explores the role of ex-Nazis in Arab governments, particularly that of Nasser’s Egypt. Cairo became a haven for escaped Nazis and many were employed in Egyptian industries, intelligence operations, and military training to enhance Nasser’s national security apparatus. Another home for these men was Syria, under the Ba’athist regime, an Arab version of National Socialism, that mimicked Egypt to a lesser scale, but did hid the likes of Alois Brunner, who Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal labeled as “Eichmann’s right-hand man with brains.” In addition, he accompanied al-Husaini on his tour of Auschwitz around June, 1943. (225) Another important individual was Francois Genoud, al-Husaini’s personal banker since 1933, who worked with German military intelligence during the war. Later, he would finance the ODESSA network and bankroll the Ayatollah Komeini when he was in Paris until he came to power in 1979, and later helped fund al-Qaida and Hamas, until his operations were shut down after 9/11.

What is especially relevant about the author’s narrative is how they link the actions of al-Husaini and his radical Islamist allies to today’s political situation in the Middle East. As the authors explain, Nazi ideology may have died in defeat in 1945, but its basic concepts changed surprisingly little as practiced by radical Islamists today. Just substitute the word “Israel” for “Jew” and the similarities are clear. It is the belief in many Nazi principles by Islamists and Pan Arabs today that contribute to the inability to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. A case in point are the comments made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on March 8, 2015 that “Israel should be annihilated.” These sentiments were offered earlier in November,, 2014 by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khameini that the fate of Jewish state should be “elimination and annihilation.” If one examines the beliefs of Osama bin-Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Assad rulers, spokespersons for Hamas and Hezbollah, and of course ISIS, their comments have a certain familiar tone. But if we return to the earlier period, the speeches of Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yasir Arafat, who was a distant relative of al-Husaini and a disciple, we hear the same ring of Nazi ideology. It is fascinating to me that al-Husaini would only accept the leadership of an Arab state because of violence, in 2000, Arafat refused what many consider a reasonable deal with Israel because he too could not accept a Palestinian state unless it germinated from violent revolution. They are many more examples offered, the most important of which is the Muslim Brotherhood, that supposedly moderate organization that came to power in Egypt in 2011 during the “Arab spring.” I agree with the author’s assessment that “any effort to persuade the West that it should tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood requires erasing its legacy of cooperation with the Nazis, and of equal importance, the ideological parallels between the Nazis and the Brotherhood, as well as Islamists generally.” (250) However, what cannot be denied is that currently Europe and the Middle East are witnessing an increase in violent anti-Semitism, and Islamist anti-western hatred, that had its origins in the calls for jihad dating back to World War I.

There is much more to Rubin’s and Schwanitz’s effort including the intellectual development of many individuals and groups throughout the period under discussion. The range from Wilhelm I to Adolf Hitler to radical Islamist proponents today, for many will be startling. However, if one examines this scholarly and well researched monograph any doubts of their linkage will disappear. I would recommend this book to all who have an interest in the Middle East, and in general, the peace that seems so elusive.

Other books you might wish to consult:
Achar, Gilbert. THE ARABS AND THE HOLOCAUST (New York: Picador, 2010).
Dalin, David G.; Rothmann, John F. ICON OF EVIL (New York: Random House, 2008).
Motadel, David. ISLAM AND NAZI GERMANY’S WAR (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).

[Martin, I stand with ISRAEL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amin Al-Husaini is probably the most responsible for radicle Islam.

Al-Husaini Was a verdant supporter of the Nazis. His hope was that Hitler’s armies march into the land which is called Israel. After the Nazis arrived, they would round up the jews and put them into concentration camps. As one Nazi said “ he hated Jews more than Hitler did.

Al-Husaini met Hitler and other prominent Nazis many times and discussed how to get rid of Jews. Al-Husaini pushed his radical form of Islam onto other Arab countries. His work reverberates today as can be found with the war between the palestinians and the Israelis.

The question I have is why isn’t this brought to the attention of the world?

[Dorothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect this is the most thoroughly-researched and documented story of the history of the close collaboration between the Islamists and the Nazis from the 1930's on. It seems many of the ideas that I thought Islamists had "borrowed" from Nazis were actually original, implemented by the Nazis but still alive and thriving in the Middle East. Scary.

[AC]

Though the topic is interesting, this book is suspect. Written by two authors, we are not told anything about the collaboration. The book is written in a sensationalist English, based on archival research that is almost entirely in German and Arabic. Also, this book seems to have been one of the sources of Netanyahu’s recent claim that the Holocaust was inspired by the grand mufti, al-Hussaini

[Mehmet Koç · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2014, a well-documented book about the dramatic history of the Middle East focusing on the political and military relations between Arabs and the Nazis. However, while explaining the making of the Middle East, the role of the hatred against the Jews is exaggerated. On the other hand, the authors expect the readers to believe that all Arab states, leaders and NGOs (the Ba'ath parties, Arafat, Sadat, Naser, Muslim Brotherhood etc) were financed and instructed by the Nazis for decades. This biased approach harms the credibility of the book and authors.

[Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hajj Amin and Associates: Connections

A detailed assessment of the relationship between Nazi Germany and the Arab Nationalist movement in Palestine. The story begins even before WW I. German adventurer/scholars such as Max von Oppenheim and Carl H. Becker are backed by the German government to create a program of Islamic propaganda to generate uprisings that would weaken Germany's European rivals by destroying their colonial influence. By funding cultural centers throughout the middle east they exposed the locals to a variety of materials, both written and visual, advocating attacks against Christians and European infidels. In the short term this policy failed. The Germans misunderstood the lack of resonance the Ottoman Sultan and the Sheich ul-Islam had given that the Islamic world was fragmented into both Shia and Sunni as well as a number of different legalistic and traditional schools. The Allies countered by promising political independence after a preliminary period of guidance and development which stoked the national ambitions of Arabs, Greeks and Jews. However the German strategy worked in Russia where German backing of the Bolsheviks led to the collapse of the Russian front in WW I and it misfired horribly with the Armenian genocide.

These assets, relationships and strategies were picked up again on the eve of WW II and many of the same players used in the last round were redeployed in service of the Nazis.

Meanwhile in Palestine the authors take a brief look at the career of Hajj Amin al-Husaini who came to prominence in the 1920s and 30s. Most of this has been covered in better detail elsewhere but what is new here is evidence that at the end of WW I in 1917 operating out of Damascus he had acted as a double agent for the English and later for the French. Nor were his ambitions limited to Palestine - between 1918 and 1920 he worked for the General Syrian Congress as a lobbyist for an enlarged Syrian state including today's Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories with the Faisal as King. Beyond his connections as a member of one of Jerusalem's leading Arab families and in spite of his conviction the previous year for instigating the Nabi Musa riots and lack of religious qualifications, his family was able to convince the British to name him "Grand Mufti" of Jerusalem (which he later changed to "Palestine") and place him as head of the newly created Supreme Muslim Council who's sinecures provided him with both income and power base for years to come. Surprisingly the book skips over the 1929 riots, but instead focuses on his networking skills, his travels from India to Iran, and Egypt to Berlin along with his creation of the World Islamic Congress in 1931, with himself at the helm, with an impressive list of contacts including then current and future Islamic leadership.

Contrary to what has been written in other reviews, the authors do not portray Hajj Amin al-Husaini as the architect of the Final Solution or responsible for conditions that led to the creation of Israel. However, they argue, by making his alliance and (in Nazi eyes) the alliance of the Arab world conditional on stopping Jewish immigration to Palestine, a ploy his Arab Higher Committee also offered to the British, he was likely the catalyst in the change of German policy from expulsion to extermination. Backed generously by the Nazis he and Rashid al-Kalaini ran espionage and recruitment networks. Hitler made it clear that after a Nazi victory al-Kalaini, the lesser partner, would be given control of Iraq and that al-Husaini not only Palestine but much of the Arab world (with a degree of imprecision excluding territories promised to Italy and Vichy France), with a license to do to the Jews there what Hitler was doing in Europe - this they had as a common interest. They were also quite prolific in creating general propaganda and training material for military imams articulating a common ground between Islam and National Socialism, (pp182-183), even to the point of mixing Islamic eschatology and Nazi ideology by portraying the current war as the final jihad between Muslims and non-believers. (pp156).

Though he was well connected for the purposes of espionage and propaganda the Germans overestimated the Mufti's ability to deliver Muslim leaders to the Nazi side - with the exception of Jordan's King Abdallah most were interested but were waiting for decisive Nazi victories before they would be willing to switch sides. As a consequence the Arab nations proved to be poor partners for the Allies - for example the 1941 Iraqi revolt led by Rashid al-Kailani, and in Egypt the pro-Nazi sentiment ran so high as Rommel approached in 1942 the British found it necessary to demobilize and disarm most of the Egyptian troops.

After the war al-Husaini's influence continued, facilitating contacts and employment for former Nazis in Arab military, intelligence or propaganda portfolios, publishing his own Jerusalem newspaper al-Jihad and a joint publication in Damascus with the Muslim Brotherhood. So safe was the Arab world for some 4000 Nazi collaborators seeking refuge, not one was given up for prosecution. He continued to run the World Islamic Congress which gave him political access to Arab and Muslim leadership and standing within the Unaligned Nations movement while running secret terrorist cells that operated out of Jordan and Lebanon.

The authors conclude with a look at the Mufti's relationship with Arafat. Though al-Hussaini fully endorsed his successor and is remembered fondly to this day, the relationship divided on Arafat's decision to seek Soviet support rather than to continue with the backing of the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, however this is understandable given the eclipse of religion by populist revolutionary Arab nationalism until the 1990s. On the surface, they observed "it may seem peculiar that al-Husaini was revered rather than discredited" given his Nazi links, his failure to prevent the formation of Israel and his campaigns of terror and assassination direct against his Arab rivals but it made sense in a world of conspiracy oriented authoritarian regimes where strident militancy rather than compromise and accommodation would be the test for legitimacy. Hajj Amin survived, often at the expense of more moderate opponents. The lessons were not lost on his successors.

[Maria Wroblewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

jumps from date to date, back and forth...........a lot of unnecessary data...........would have wanted to see more on how the Nazi and Muslim association led to the present day jihad.....has made, ad nauseum, a case for the bond in the 30's through the 50's

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reception

Holocaust scholar Jeffrey Herf excoriates the book, writing that Schwanitz and Rubin "ignore the previous scholarship on Holocaust decision-making as well as the existing scholarship on Husseini's collaboration with the Nazis.

Partly as a result, they exaggerate the Mufti's impact on Nazi policy.

.........

They turn a series of coincidental correlations in time into causal chains."

Reviewing the book in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Matthias Küntzel raises a number of issues with the book, identifying some of its claims as "nothing but speculation" and concluding that "certain facts that do not fit the picture have simply been left out," damaging the book's credibility.

In another article in the same journal, Meir Litvak calls the book "controversial" and argues its "allegations, however, do not stand the test of historical scrutiny and have been largely discounted."

In his review, Houwink ten Cate describes the book as "seminal" and "extremely well-researched and documented" but makes a "minor criticism": he is not convinced by Schwanitz and Rubin's argument that the mufti convinced the Nazis to commit the Holocaust, which he considers to be refuted by research by Christopher R. Browning that the authors ignored.

David Mikics concurs, arguing that "the notion that al-Husaini played a key role in Hitler’s settling on the Final Solution is based on one piece of thin hearsay evidence."

He calls this claim "implausible, even silly."

Nils Riecken makes a similar criticism, that "temporal proximity remains their only argument."

He also criticizes the book for ignoring other research on the Holocaust, and sees the authors' methodology as "deeply problematic."

However, as one of the authors Schwanitz responded to Mikics, that he misrepresents the book and argues it "is not a biography of the grand mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husaini [...] and Mikics fails to show how it compares to related works."

David Rodman described the book as a "fascinating and insightful volume".

Rodman opined that Nazism is no longer prominent in the West, but radical Arab nationalism and Islamism continue to be prominent in the Middle East.

He called the book an "indispensable guide to explaining why the greater Middle East has been an utter shambles for the past seven decades".

On the other hand, a review in Countercurrents.org questions whether the book contributes anything of value due to its ideological biases, "highly problematic theses," and "bizarre theories."

Mia Lee contends that the book's "focus on the Mufti also creates a false link between contemporary anti-Semitism in the Middle East and the Nazis’ racial programme."

This is not a false link but an old one, responds Schwanitz. The perpetrators and their ideologies were connected before, in, and after both world wars. Born in the two decades before 1900, some experienced and later lead multiple genocides against local minorities while establishing from 1914 to 1918 a German-Ottoman axis and from 1939 to 1945 a Nazi-Islamist axis.

Often the same persons connected both regions also by their genocidal cooperation based on nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism. These efforts were led on the German side by about 100 key officials, politicians and Middle Eastern experts, and on the other side Islamists and nationalists that drove ahead their joint jihadization of Islamism.

Schwanitz shows this with the example of Jerusalem's Kedem auction house that posted three of six previously unknown photos on the Internet. On one photo taken in 1942, the grand mufti al-Husaini, Iraq’s former prime minister Rashid Ali al-Kailani, and the Hindu nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose inspect Trebbin’s satellite camp of the concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Berlin along with two Nazi officials who were involved in the Holocaust.

The photos of the visit to a Nazi camp associated with an SS artillery training school, both Arab leaders’ written genocidal pact with the Nazis, and their subsequent close involvement with the Final Solution demonstrate that they wanted the Jews of the Mideast to share the same fate as the Jews of Europe.

[Prentice Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent distillation of hidden history

This book provides a vital missing piece of the historical puzzle for understanding the big picture of why the middle east is the way it is today, a puzzle piece western liberals and leftists are robbed of by our media, universities and political leaders.

A must read for anyone who claims to have a firm grasp of real history.

[Jolanda Van der vorst-molleman]

https://likoed.nl/2017/11/nazis-islam... Translated it in to the Duch language. Thank you!

[Allan Nemer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dull couldnt finish

[Evan Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important history lessons abound.

[Doug J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never fully understood how intertwined the events in the Middle East of today are related to the plans and operations of the Germans in WWI and WWII.

[Brenda Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dry, very detailed chronicle of the close relationship of Nazis and Islamists. Covers WWI to the present day. It does explain some of background of the Muslim extremists.