By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Palestine: A British Dilemma

There are three competing elements in dissecting the Palestine question in the lead-up to the creation of Israel in 1948: (1) Zionism, (2) Arab Nationalism, and (3) competition among European powers. The four European powers of World War II—Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany—intervened directly and indirectly in Palestine in the lead-up to the conflict. In these geostrategic machinations between the Axis and Allies, Palestine occupied a unique role in Nazi Germany’s foreign policy thinking. It formed the potential for anti-Allied activities in the Middle East that was exploited by the Abwehr (German military intelligence organization), which was headed by Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris. The Germans identified and empathized with the psychological impact of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. As an aggrieved nation, German officials understood the power of playing the victim of global events. In particular, Germany’s shared outrage with the events and treaties of post–World War I caused a psychological linkage of stoking anti-British and anti-French sentiments among the Arabs. Among the events that shaped the thinking of the region, were these:

•​ The implementation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved Arab domains of the Ottoman Empire into French and British spheres of influence.

•​ The 1919 Revolt in Egypt, stimulated by the British incarceration of Egyptian Nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul (d. 1927), who traveled to Versailles to petition for an independent Egypt.

•​ The 1920 San Remo Conference, in which the British and French agreed that Iraq and Syria were to be British and French mandates, respectively.

•​ Iraq’s 1920 Revolt that took less than a year to suppress and was caused by the Iraqi outrage that their country was to be administered as a mandate.

The Balfour Declaration acknowledged the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but not at the expense of indigenous populations.

•​ The proposed Peel Commission Plan that recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections in 1937

The armed conflict of the First World War, along with diplomatic bargaining, promises, and political agreements connected with them established the future of the Arab countries and of Arab Nationalism over the next quarter century. With the First World War drawing to a close, British policy became committed to the notion of establishing a Jewish home in Palestine, among the post–World War I efforts to restructure the borders of the evolving modern Middle East from the remnants of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. The British would sideline pledges made to the Arab populations and the ruling Hashemite clan under Meccan ruler Sharief Hussein ibn Ali for support against Ottoman forces in the Levant and in Arabia. This commitment to the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine came in the form of a letter signed by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild and endorsed by the League of Nations. As you read the text of the Balfour Declaration, note promises made to Jewish and non-Jewish communities in a form of diplomatic doublespeak that haunts efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute to this day.

 

Foreign Office

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

 I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

 I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation. 

 

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

 

A complicating factor was the basis of British engagement with Sharief Hussein of Mecca that was expressed in vague political promises contained in a series of ten letters to and from Sharief Hussein and Sir Henry McMahon, British high commissioner in Egypt, between July 1915 and January 1916. The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence would be a symbol in Arab collective memory of the many empty promises made by the British government in support of Arab autonomy and the recognition of the Arab national identity. The ten letters were riddled with platitudes and ambiguities. Hussein and McMahon would read through the flourishes more into the words, and each preferred to make the sentences fit their idea of what Arab independence meant based on their respective interests. The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and the 1917 Balfour Declaration may be marked in history as giving the impetus for Arab Nationalism in the twentieth century because they led various Arab subjects of the former Ottoman dominions to unify around grievances, discontent, and the broken promises of self-determination. Of note, President Woodrow Wilson’s call for self-determination brought out the likes of Ho Chi Minh, as well as Indian and Chinese Nationalists, calling for independence from colonial rule. For a truly empathetic look at the little-known personalities who shaped the twentieth century from the remnants of colonialism, such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the Middle East, among others, read From the Ruins of Empire, by Pankaj Mishra.

The multifaceted policies by the British laid the groundwork for a British-dominated Arab Middle East where both Jewish Zionist and Arab Nationalist goals were to prove irreconcilable over time. Consequently, a system of rule would prevail over Palestine from the time of the country’s occupation in 1917–1918 until the British withdrawal of its mandate in 1948. It is important to understand that Arab Nationalism’s love affair with Fascism is a result of anticolonial sentiment and a perception of betrayal after the World War I victorious Allied Powers denied Arab self-determination at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the 1920 San Remo Conference, and the 1921 Cairo Conference.

When Winston Churchill visited Palestine in March 1921 as secretary of state for the colonies, the debates concerning the future of Palestine and the recriminations over the broken promises were reaching a feverish pitch. In Haifa, a delegation of Muslim and Christian Arabs met with Churchill to express their concerns on the intensifying issue of the status of Palestine. Churchill was given a prophetic warning from Arab leaders that has a profound significance in the modern history of the Middle East: “Today the Arabs’ belief in England is not what it was. . . . If England does not take up the cause of the Arabs, other powers will. From India, Mesopotamia, the Hedjaz [sic], and Palestine the cry goes up to England now. If she [England] does not listen, then perhaps Russia will take up their call someday, or perhaps even Germany.”

After Hamas-led militants massacred hundreds of Israelis on October 7, prominent observers argued that the group’s ideological intransigence left Israel with no option but to eliminate it. US President Joe Biden rejected calls to “stop the war” because “[a]s long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.” Senator Bernie Sanders dismissed the prospect of “a permanent ceasefire with an organization like Hamas which is dedicated to destroying the State of Israel.” “People who are calling for a ceasefire now,” former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted, “don’t understand Hamas.” The group “will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.” The practical corollary of this reasoning was set out with disarming frankness by the Economist. In an editorial published November 2, the August journal acknowledged that “Israel is inflicting terrible civilian casualties” in Gaza, accepted that Israel “has unleashed a ferocious bombardment against the people of Gaza,” recognized that a prolongation of Israel’s offensive would cause “the deaths of thousands of innocent people” in Gaza—and concluded that “Israel must fight on,” because “while Hamas runs Gaza, peace is impossible.” Given its lethal-cum-genocidal implications, the claim that no lasting truce or peace agreement with Hamas is possible merits scrutiny.

Diverse methods were used in attempts to spread ideas of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers’ party) to the Arab East. These included broadcasts in Arabic from Germany that started around April 1939, of programs of Quran recitals, Arabic music, literary texts, and political commentaries. One of the Arab speakers, the Iraqi journalist Yunus al-Bahri, later wrote his memoirs in 1955 about his time with Radio Berlin under the title Huna Berlin! Hayyi l-’arab (This is Berlin! Salutations to the Arabs), which was the customary start of his broadcasts. Radio Berlin-Zeesen also edited an Arab bulletin Barid al-Sharq (Orient-Post) that frequently carried excerpts from Hitler’s speeches. Of note, Zeesen was a town south of Berlin that had a powerful shortwave broadcasting station that reached the Middle East and beyond. This would be supplemented by Italy’s Radio Bari which maintained broadcasting stations in the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as the port city of Bari.

However, the immediate requirements of Hitler’s foreign policy in Europe during the 1930s necessitated German support for the post–World War I status quo in the Middle East. Hence, support for the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the British mandatory position in Palestine, and British interests in the Middle East were not challenged by the Nazis in the early 1930s. This German noninterference in British colonial affairs also included a refusal by Berlin of any support of Arab Nationalism. The impending war would inevitably change these policies and see an attempt to alter the status quo in the Middle East. An excellent volume that delves into this is Lukasz Hirszowicz’s, The Third Reich and the Arab East. This book is currently out of print; it was translated from the 1963 Polish edition and published in English in 1966. Hirszowicz demonstrates the cold politics of realism the Nazis were engaging in, and the quick shift in Nazi Middle East policy as a means of destabilizing French and British interests in the region.9 Hirszowicz is essential reading on Axis policies and decisions about World War II Middle East.

Owing to the scarcity of economic resources required for Nazi expansionism, the initial success of the German Afrika Korps in North Africa, and the need to undermine Allied control of vital communications links in the Middle East, the Third Reich gradually saw the strategic interest in its involvement in the Middle East. Until Operation Torch in November 1942, the most secure logistical lines of the Allies to the Middle East were from India then around the Cape of Good Hope into the Red Sea, and on to Egypt’s major ports. Direct involvement of German forces was stimulated by the poor showing of Italian forces in North Africa under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, commander in chief of Italian forces in North Africa. This required Hitler to divert German military resources to rescue Mussolini’s forces from humiliation. Hitler would also be drawn into military involvement in Greece because of the humiliation Mussolini’s legions were enduring in that country. Additionally, developments in Palestine led the Germans to seize the opportunity to adopt a political position on Arab affairs with the objective of agitating Arabs and Muslims against the British. This had less to do with the concepts of self-determination and more to do with a cold calculus that stoking the flames of Arab Nationalism could divert Allied resources into the Middle East. This opened multiple fronts for the British, drawing forces to suppress discontent in Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, and Transjordan. Even India, at this time, was ripe for a Muslim revolt or Indian Nationalist agitation against the British. Chandra Bose took the opposite position from Mohandas K. Gandhi, organizing an Indian Nationalist army with the aid of the Japanese. As can be seen in a map of the world in 1941, the possibility of the European Axis powers aiding the Japanese who had signed the Tripartite Pact with Hitler and Mussolini in 1940 could not be ignored; this worry manifested itself in vigorous discussions between Churchill and his generals from 1939 to 1942. Of course, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 would change these possibilities, and see Rommel complaining of ever-dwindling supplies and troops. Hitler’s obsession with Stalin and a Judeo-Bolshevist conspiracy would blind him from seeing the full opportunities the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East had in crippling the British economically.

After decades of frustration, hostility toward the British mandate in Palestine was always under the surface throughout the 1930s. Arabs in Palestine and in the Middle East greeted the emerging Nazi regime in Germany with enthusiasm. More than a few Arab Nationalist intellectuals viewed the Nazis as liberators coming to rescue the region from decades of British rule. These Arab Nationalist leaders bought the robust Fascist propaganda, or simply saw the Germans as a means of ridding themselves of the British and French, who had occupied various parts of the Middle East for decades. This perception of shared post–World War I victimization of the Germans and Arabs by the British and French would be carefully nurtured by German intelligence operatives in Egypt, Iraq, the Levant, and Palestine. Unlike Britain, Germany capitalized on not being viewed with suspicion and mistrust in the Middle East during the period between the two world wars. Arab Nationalist organizations and societies began to identify with elements of the NSDAP agenda and viewed it as a means of counterbalancing Zionism and European colonial imperialism. The inequities of the 1919 Versailles Treaty imposed on Germany at the end of the First World War held substantial appeal for Arab leaders, who considered the mandate for Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement part of the many injustices that Arabs shared along with the Germans and what was termed the hated “Diktat” of Versailles. This sentiment was fostered and exploited by the Nazis in shaping a favorable atmosphere for Arab uprisings in Palestine and elsewhere in the British and French spheres of the Arab world. The articles and books by Dr. Francis Nicosia of the University of Vermont offer an excellent way to explore these strands of ideological melding between German and Arab victimization narratives.10 Nicosia’s work would be used as a basis for discussion between the authors and America’s service members interested in understanding the impact of long-term strategic communications used as a weapon to cultivate hostile areas of operation in the twenty-first century.

Palestinian Arab leaders wasted no time in publicizing their positive assessment of events in Germany in 1933. The German consul general in Palestine, Heinrich Wolff, maintained a consistent dialogue with the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini. The mufti’s views, conveyed to Berlin on March 31, were summarized by Wolff: “The Mufti made detailed statements to me today to the effect that Muslims inside and outside of Palestine salute the new regime in Germany, and hope for the spread of Fascist anti-democratic leadership to other countries.”11 The mufti informed Wolff that Arabs in Palestine were ripe for revolt against the British. The Nazis keenly looked to the future of the spread of Fascism throughout the Near East by capitalizing on pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. The German consulate in Beirut and the German embassy in Baghdad, headed by Ambassador Fritz Grobba, received letters from Syrian and Iraqi citizens expressing their admiration for Hitler and the NSDAP ideals; these letters also included proposals for closer ties between the Arab world and Germany. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi minister of propaganda, obtained favorable reports from sources in the Near East on the extent of pro-German feelings. Goebbels noted in his diaries, noting how the Middle East figured into his thinking. Many Arabs hoped to pursue the aims of Arab Nationalism in Palestine by creating a movement based on the NSDAP model and experiences.12 In October 1941 Hitler resolved a dispute between German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Goebbels by assigning primary responsibility for foreign-language propaganda to the Auswärtige Amt (German foreign ministry). In the foreign ministry’s political department, Wilhelm Melchers would direct overall policy concerning the Middle East, and Kurt Munzel would lead the Department of Radio Policy section that focused on Arabic radio broadcasts.13

 

A report outlined Germany’s favorable position and the positive propaganda potential throughout the region:

I have been able to discern with happiness in all the countries of the Near East that, except the Jews, all the people are following events in the new Germany with much sympathy and enthusiasm. Especially among the youth, national Fascist units are being established against England and France as the oppressors. Everywhere people wish for a man and leader such as Adolf Hitler. German newspapers are read with keen interest, and there is a demand for more propaganda material and newspapers in French and English, as only a few speak German. Such propaganda will be useful for the Reich.14

Scholar Francis Nicosia writes in his book, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, the following, which I have paraphrased: Among German diplomats in the Middle East, there was a consensus that Arab enthusiasm for Nazi Germany lacked any understanding of the substance of NSDAP, the goals of the movement, or the significance of Adolf Hitler. The German consul in Jaffa, Timotheus Wurst, summarized this view in 1935, observing that the Arabs were driven primarily by the anti-Jewish policies of the Hitler regime and to some degree by the disciplined, militaristic, and Nationalistic posture of the Nazi Party.15

The German foreign office was hesitant in giving support to Arab efforts to create an Arab national socialist party in Palestine. An unsigned memorandum from the Near East section of the foreign office provided the following explanation:

The objections that Herr Wolff has raised against the promotion of an Arab National Socialist movement by official German representatives are fully supported here. Given the notorious political unreliability of the Arabs, one must surely assume that, as a result of Arab indiscretion, such ties would soon become known not only in Palestine and the Near East, but also to London and Paris. Since the end of the war, our efforts in the eastern countries have had the objective of German economic and cultural expansion through meddling in the internal affairs of these countries by our official representatives would likely result not only in economic setbacks, but, because of the preeminent strategic position of Britain and France in the east, would also have adverse consequences for Germany’s policy in Europe.16

Nicosia further outlines how Wolff was instructed to discourage contact between pro-Nazi Arabs and the various local branches of the Nazi Party in Palestine catering to German expatriates. Moreover, Arab membership in the existing Nazi Party branch in Palestine was further precluded by a decree issued by Ernst Bohle of the Overseas Organization of the Nazi Party in June 1934. According to this decree, party membership abroad was denied to foreigners and reserved exclusively for Germans so that “any appearance of meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries can be scrupulously avoided.”17 Efforts were made to avoid official contact with politically motivated Arabs in order to retain the goodwill of the British administration toward German consular representatives. This situation would change within a few years to overt agitation of Arabs in the region.

The Abwehr tradecraft capitalized on idealism and on those who despised a foreign government’s domination of their homeland. They also made ample use of Germans living in the region, exploiting their homesickness to recruit agents and obtain information. Specific mention was made of Algerians who yearned for independence from France; Algeria had been a French colony since 1832. This tradecraft was implemented by the Abwehr through five hundred North African POWs serving in the French army, who the Abwehr utilized as potential agents and sources. Before reaching judgment, empathize (but do not sympathize) with being a subject people, treated as a second-class citizen within the French colonial system. One’s advancement in a colonial system would be based not on merit, but on race or religion. Russian prisoners who spied for Germany did so for various reasons, including a hatred for Communism or a belief that Stalinism had betrayed the original ideals of Communism. David Kahn, in his book Hitler’s Spies, makes mention of Algerian POWs spying against France, due to over a century of colonial rule of their homeland.18

Hitler’s views on Palestine can be uncovered by carefully examining a few of his speeches from April 1922 to August 1939. In an address in Nuremburg on September 12, 1938, Hitler conducted a lengthy attack on Bolshevism and democracies before turning his attention to German minorities in Czechoslovakia: “I am in no way willing that there in the heart of Germany through the dexterity of other statesmen, a second Palestine should be permitted to arise. The poor Arabs are defenseless, and perhaps deserted. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenseless nor are they deserted, and folk should take notice of that.”19 In this speech he compares the plight of the Palestinians’ gradual loss of their land to that of the Sudeten Germans. But only a month later in a speech commemorating the anniversary of the 1923 failed Munich Putsch, Hitler used the Palestinian question as a means to justify German dominance in Central Europe:

The gentlemen of the English Parliament can assuredly be quite at home in the British World Empire, but not in Central Europe. Here they lack all the knowledge of conditions, of events, and of relationships. They will not and must not regard this statement of fact as an insult, we for our part are in the last resort not so well informed on India, or Egypt, not to speak of Palestine. But I could wish that these gentlemen would at this moment concentrate the prodigious knowledge which they possess and the infallible wisdom which is their peculiar property on let us say, precisely, Palestine. What is taking place has a damnably strong smell of violence and precious little democracy. But all that I merely cite as an example, in no way as criticism, for after all I am only the representative of my German people and not the advocate for the cause of others. And that is where I differ from Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden who are advocates for the entire world.20

The Palestine question had been an issue of contention since World War I, and provided Hitler an opportunity to wage a strategic communication campaign against the British. In a speech in Wilhelmshaven on April 1, 1939, Hitler stated, “Certainly these Englishmen might answer in Palestine the Germans have nothing to seek and what is more, we [Germany] do not want to seek anything in Palestine. But just as little as we Germans have anything to seek in Palestine, precisely so little has England anything to seek in our German living-space (Lebensraum).”21

Arab governments were not the first to exploit the Palestinian question to justify expansionist tendencies or to justify the rationale for war. In a speech to the Reichstag on April 28, 1939, Hitler used the British and French colonization of Arabs and Africans to answer President Franklin Roosevelt’s appeal to Germany to cease threatening its neighbors in Europe and Africa. Hitler blurred the lines between European colonialism and the rise of benign American exceptionalism and lumped or aggregated all democracies in one basket. The Middle East today engages in a similar practice of lumping French, British, and American experiences with secularism and democracy as one or finding a new colonialist in the United States with such slogans as American imperialism. Addressing the Reichstag, Hitler said, “As for the fact, however, that one nation in Africa is alleged to have lost its freedom—that too is but an error; for it is not questioned if one nation in Africa having lost its freedom—on the contrary practically all the previous inhabitants of this continent have been subject to the sovereignty of other nations by bloody force, thereby losing their freedom. Moroccans, Berbers, Arabs, Negroes, & c., have all fallen victim to foreign might, the swords of which however were not inscribed, Made in Germany but Made by Democracies.”22 This came in response to President Roosevelt declaring that Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Ethiopia had seen their independence terminated.

Hitler responded to Roosevelt’s request for assurances that the German armed forces abstain from invading several dozen nations, among them Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. Hitler replied in this long Reichstag speech:

Finally, Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the German Armed Forces would not attack and above all would not invade the territory and possessions of the following independent nations [he lists thirty], in the same way, Ireland, the fact has escaped Roosevelt’s notice that Palestine is at present occupied not by German troops but by the English and that the country is having its liberty restricted by the most brutal resort to force, is being robbed of its independence and is suffering the cruelest maltreatment for the benefit of Jewish interlopers. The Arabs living in that country will therefore certainly not have complained to Mr. Roosevelt of German aggression, but they do voice a continuous appeal to the world, deploring the barbarous methods with which England is attempting to suppress a people that loves its freedom and is but defending it.23

Toward the end of his speech, he mentioned the Arab East again, to attack Roosevelt’s logic of a world threatened by Hitler’s aggression, and stated, “It is true that I could not cause inquiries to be made of certain of the states and nations mentioned [by Roosevelt in his telegram] because they—as—Syria are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are occupied and consequently deprived of their rights by the military agents of democratic states.”24 The propaganda and recruitment value of such a speech was not lost on the Germans, as it was rebroadcast throughout the Arab world to incite anti-British sentiment and to provide opportunities for Axis agents operating in the region. Hitler’s speeches demonstrated the failure of the Allies to anticipate a response in which he attempted to portray Fascism as equal to and even less hypocritical than Western democracies in areas of the world where Western democracies maintained the double standard of a colonial administration and a military presence. It is worthy to debate the utility of President Roosevelt’s mention of subject states like India, Palestine, and Syria in which he argued with Churchill in the 1943 Casablanca Conference. The president argued with the prime minister that maintaining the British colonial status quo was becoming untenable when fighting for democratic ideals against the Axis powers. The anti-American sentiment would grow in the Arab East after the Roosevelt administration; that sentiment stemmed from the ambiguous expression by U.S. public officials, culminating with President Truman’s overt sympathy with Zionism in Palestine, the creation of the state of Israel, and what was seen in the Middle East as a selective alliance with Britain against Arab independence. This led the Arabs to believe that the United States supported Britain’s policies in the Arab world as evidence of the hypocritical attitude of the United States in advocating independence and self-determination for minorities on the one hand while supporting British imperialism on the other. President Truman’s secretary of state, General George C. Marshall, would attempt to repair this misperception during the Cold War.

 

Italian Engagements In Palestine

It is impossible to discuss the events of World War II without understanding the ending of World War I, and events in the Middle East are no exception. Italy’s disappointment with the Paris Peace settlement of 1919 strengthened French and British dominion in the Mediterranean and fueled the sentiments of Fascist Italy after 1922. Mussolini’s aim was for the Mediterranean Sea to be mare nostrum (Latin for “our sea”). The Italian dictator’s goal was to replace Britain and France as the dominant power in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Except for a desire to share in the control and operation of the strategic Suez Canal, Italy posited no specific claims against the British in the Near East. Though anxious to protect and promote its influence in Palestine, Italy did not seek to replace the British as the mandatory power.25

Before the Second World War, Italy’s policy, with the exception of its policy toward Libya, was one of peaceful penetration that consisted of developing ties with Arab leaders, tapping into their demand for arms, and presenting Fascism in a favorable light via various Italian-sponsored propaganda outlets. Italy adopted an assuring policy concerning the Islamic religion; that policy served as a tool for both colonial and foreign policy purposes. Italian propaganda efforts included the construction of mosques in Libya and East Africa, the encouragement of Islamic academics in Italy’s colonies, and the assistance for pilgrims from Italian domains to perform the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). These were all conducted to improve Italy’s image in the Arab East, and explore the potential of empowering the Muslim minority against the Christian majority in Ethiopia. Italy’s financial subsidies to Ethiopian Muslim pilgrims wanting to travel to Mecca were welcomed by the Saudi government. The ruling al-Sauds, whose finances were adversely affected by both the loss of revenue caused by the world depression and the decrease in Muslim pilgrims visiting Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, needed revenue from where they could get it. In 1937 the Italian authorities in Ethiopia and representatives in Jeddah made efforts to accommodate the pilgrims and to ensure their transportation from the port of Jeddah to Mecca. Italy helped some 1,900 Muslim Ethiopians reach the holy places, where they publicly praised the generosity of Mussolini and spent much-needed Italian cash in the holy sites controlled by the al-Saud family.26

Mussolini accepted London’s need for a link with British India through Palestine and Transjordan and did not dispute British control of these territories; however, Italy expressed interest in succeeding France as the mandatory power overseeing the Levant and other territories. Albania, Corsica, Nice, Syria, and Tunis were the major aims of Italian revisionism in the Mediterranean during the interwar period—that is, the recreation of Roman glory. Mussolini was supportive of the aims of the Zionist movement and the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s. He was once of the opinion that European power and influence in Palestine and the Near East were best promoted through the support of Zionism, but was torn. Both Italy and Britain came to the realization in the late 1930s as the clouds of war began to descend over Europe that support for the Arabs would prove fruitful. The Italo-Ethiopian War from 1935 to 1936, followed by the Spanish Civil War that began in 1936, forced Mussolini to conclude that his aims could only be achieved by confronting Anglo-French opposition to his expansionist policies and by striving to make Italy a respected power among nations.

Toward this end, Rome began an anti-British campaign in the Near East and a program of financial support for Arab insurgents in Palestine. In 1934 Mussolini initiated a program to improve the Italian image in the Arab world in preparation for his Ethiopian campaign. Repressive policies, particularly in Libya, were scrapped, and a new public works program, to include the building of schools and hospitals, was implemented in the Libyan colony, described by the Italians as the three sections of Fezzan, Tripoli, and Cyrenaica, a remnant of how the Ottomans had divided Libya before Italian colonization. Previous to the Ottomans, it was a designation of the region made by the Romans—for instance, Fezzan is a Latin-derivative of Phasania, meaning land of the pheasants.

Mussolini was interested in winning Arab sympathy for Italy at the expense of Britain and France; the Palestinian turmoil provided him with the opportunity to do so. On May 24, 1934, Italy pioneered the first Arabic language radio broadcasts on its Radio Bari station. Radio Bari began broadcasting daily Arabic language programs with anti-British propaganda, which was intensified during the Palestinian Revolt. At times Italian propaganda in Arabic also criticized the Jews in Palestine. Radio Bari broadcast to its Arab listeners popular anti-British propaganda. One of the drawbacks to Radio Bari was that it broadcast in a formalized literal Arabic instead of in regional dialects; however the novelty of the radio station and being the first to broadcast in Arabic made up for this deficiency.27 British foreign secretary Anthony Eden would face two occasions in Parliament when questions by lawmakers were posed about Radio Bari and the anti-British influence they were having in the Near East.28

In the course of researching this book, the authors stumbled upon a newspaper article first published in London on January 9, 1938, and reprinted the next day in the Sydney Morning Herald, with the headline, “Arabs Prefer Bari.” The article discusses the challenges British officials have in countering Italian propaganda.29 In addition, Italian propaganda was not limited to radio broadcasts: Italian aircraft scattered leaflets in Arabic boasting of Italian conquests of British Somaliland and claiming air superiority over Gibraltar and Malta.30 This became one of the major points of friction in Anglo-Italian relations during the late 1930s. In response to Radio Bari’s anti-British propaganda, the British established the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1936; and BBC Arabic Service broadcasting through the entire Middle East would air in 1938.31 Not to be outdone, Radio Berlin began its virulent anti-British Arabic broadcast in 1938, with the Iraqi journalist Yunus al-Bahri, opening the broadcast, “This is Berlin! Salutations to the Arabs.”32 This war of the radio waves was another aspect of the World War II Middle East, with Radio Berlin-Zeesen even broadcasting readings from the Quran to attract listeners and alternating broadcasts with the opening, “This is the Voice of Free Arabism.”33 When the Germans occupied Greece, they established a transmitter in Athens to increase their reach into the region. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) and Special Operations Executive (SOE) began to set up radio transmitters in Jaffa starting in 1941 to compete with the aggressive Axis propaganda radio inciting the region.34 Ironically, the British set up Egypt’s radio in 1926 but handed it over to Egyptian programmers and directors, and did not utilize it for propaganda purposes. In 1936 King Ghazi of Iraq set up his radio station inside his al-Zuhoor Palace; the king delivered anti-British speeches to Baghdad listeners. That same year Radio Baghdad came online. In March 1936 the Palestine Broadcasting Service aired from British-mandated Palestine delivering programs in Arabic, Hebrew, and English; the transmitter was in Ramallah. In April 1940 Radio Tehran delivered Farsi programs, music, and shows to the Iranian masses. Reading about the various radio stations and the competition for hearts and minds made me recollect the controversy surrounding Donald Rumsfeld’s short-lived idea of creating an Office of Strategic Communication in 2003. It was viewed as a propaganda arm instead of understanding the secretary’s view of how media, perception, and disinformation were killing American combat troops in Iraq. He was searching for ways to address the toxic atmosphere created by anti-American media outlets in the region. Italy established relations with Amir Shakib.

Arslan (hereafter Arslan) of Syria.35 A fierce Arab Nationalist born into a Druze family and residing in the Swiss city of Geneva, Arslan served as the unofficial representative of Syria and Palestine at the League of Nations. He was also the editor of the newspaper La Nation Arabe (the Arab Nation).36 Of note, Arslan oversaw the translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Arabic before the project was canceled due to cost overruns. What is unique in the Arslan translation is his attempt to mimic Arabic literary style versus the editions that were published in Arabic by the German foreign ministry. Jeffrey Herf discusses this in his 2009 book, Nazi Propaganda and the Arab World.37 The next translation of Hitler’s manifesto would be completed in 1963 by Luis Heiden (aka Luis al-Hajj), an escaped Nazi war criminal who was hiding in Egypt.38

Arslan was influenced by both the teachings of the Persian Islamist Nationalist, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897), and by al-Afghani’s disciple the Egyptian grand mufti and Islamic reformer, Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905). Arslan was particularly hostile toward France and sought to exploit Franco-German and Franco-Italian friction to win both Germany and Italy for the Arab cause. He was a strong supporter of the Ottoman Empire and carried negative sentiments toward the Hashemites for their support of the Arab Revolt during the First World War. Arslan, unlike other leading Arab figures of practical politics, realized the futility of seeking an alliance with the Axis. Instead, despite his early flirtation with the Italians, Arslan eventually advocated Arab neutrality in the upcoming conflict.

There is also evidence the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem received money from Italy throughout the 1930s and that Arslan acted as the intermediary between Rome and the Grand Mufti.39 In September of 1940 Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian foreign minister, told the German ambassador to Rome, Hans Georg von Mackensen, that he maintained relations with the mufti for years and provided him substantial financial aid.40 In April of 1939 Ciano stated to chief of the Luftwaffe (German air force) Hermann Goering that Italian money helped pay for smuggled arms into Palestine.41 Italy’s efforts to sway Arab opinion were designed to put pressure on Britain to accept the annexation of Ethiopia and to attain some measure of national equality among European colonial powers in East Africa and the Red Sea, rather than to undermine the Allied position in the Levant. The result of Italian involvement in Palestine and the Arab East as a whole was an unlikely partnership between an aspiring colonial power (Italy) and an anticolonial movement (Arab Nationalism). Incompatibility between Fascist colonial aspirations, Nazi domination, and Arab Nationalist yearnings were bound to come to the surface. “Ideological and strategic incompatibility” is a description aptly used in Francis Nicosia’s title of his article, “Arab Nationalism and National Socialist Germany: Ideological and Strategic Incompatibility,” and can also be fixed on Fascist Italy’s efforts to manipulate the emotions of the Middle East.

 

Origins Of The Arab Revolt Of 1936

It is important to understand the origins of the Palestinian revolt that occurred in 1936. It is usually viewed as being caused by the following four major events:

1.​The incitement made by Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam

2.​The establishment of the Arab Higher Committee chaired by Hajj Amin Al-Husseini

3.​The Peel Commission interlude

4.​The recommencement of the revolt

On April 19, 1936, riots began in Jaffa initiated by the followers of Sheikh Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam, the spiritual leader and founder of Al Kaff Al Aswad (the Black Hand), an anti-Zionist and anti-British underground Islamist militant organization. Al-Qassam, born in 1882 on the coastal city of Jableh in northern Syria, was educated in the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Upon graduating he spent a short time in Turkey as a religious teacher. After the Italian-Turkish War concluded on October 18, 1912, he began collecting funds and enlisting 250 volunteers for Omar Mukhtar, the famous Libyan resistance leader who fought Italy from 1911 to 1931.42 As you will read in chapter 9, the Egyptian war minister during the outbreak of World War II, Saleh Harb Pasha, would be impacted by the Italo-Libyan War, leading the Libyans fighting Italian forces alongside another famous leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who would also provide leadership in battle against the Italians in the deserts of Libya.

Al-Qassam later enlisted in the Ottoman army during World War I; there he received military training and acted as a Muslim chaplain at an Ottoman army base near Damascus. Following the implementation of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, he conducted guerrilla warfare against French forces in the Levant. With the establishment of the Black Hand organization, classified as a terrorist group by the British mandatory authorities, he arranged cells and enlisted men to conduct a widespread campaign of attacks against Jewish communities, British installations, and rail lines.43

Al-Qassam often cooperated with and received financial assistance from Al-Husseini. However, the two men went their separate ways, presumably due to Al-Qassam’s independent activities committed without the consent of the mufti. Al-Qassam found financial relief from Hizb al-Istiqlal (Arab Nationalist Independence Party) founded by Awni Abd al-Hadi. His continued attempts to forge a coalition with the mufti failed since the mufti was engaged in diplomatic negotiations with the British at that time. In November of 1935 Al-Qassam, fearing British reprisals, moved his base to the hills between Jenin and Nablus. The British police launched a manhunt and surrounded his safe house in the West Bank town of Ya’bad, thirty-two miles from Jenin. In the consequent gun battle, Al-Qassam was killed. His death became an inspiration for militant organizations in subsequent years. The militant wing of Hamas was dubbed Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam brigades, and they used artillery called “Qassam” rockets.44

With the death of Al-Qassam, the Qassamiyun (devout followers of Al-Qassam) staged a general strike in Jaffa and in Nablus and launched attacks on Jewish and British quarters. These strikes were prompted by the Arab Higher Committee, the political foci of the Arab community in Palestine, chaired by Al-Husseini. Substantial funding arrived from Italy, among other sources.45

The mufti explained to Italy’s consul general in Jerusalem, Mariano de Angelis, that his involvement in the conflict with the British arose from the trust he reposed in Mussolini’s backing.46 In Massimiliano Fiore’s book, Anglo-Italian Relations in the Middle East, 1922–1940, readers gain an idea of the sums of money provided to the grand mufti; several payments of £20,000 were not uncommon. With this money as well as cash collected from donors in the region, the mufti formed a paramilitary youth organization, al-Futuwwah (the Youth Vanguard) that was based on the Hitler Youth. The Arab Higher Committee stated that the strike would continue until the British administration agreed to halt Jewish immigration. Palestinian guerrillas targeted a major oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa to put pressure on the British colonial administration in Palestine.47

Dr. Fritz Grobba can be described as Nazi Germany’s most effective agent and foremost German envoy of Middle Eastern affairs. Among his duties was German ambassador to Iraq in 1932 and to Saudi Arabia in 1938. Grobba was born in Gartz, Germany, on July 18, 1886. He obtained his degree in law and oriental languages from the University of Berlin, was well versed in Arab culture and Near East history, and was fluent in Arabic and Turkish. We often pay much attention to British Arabists and neglect the Arabists that the losing side of World War II produced. Grobba harbored much faith in the potential of the pan-Arab movement, and in late 1937 believed that the friendship of the Arabs for Germany was, in his own words, “almost instinctive.” He wrote those words when two Axis-sympathetic governments were installed in Iraq.48 In 1938 the grand mufti met with Nazi intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris with plans to smuggle weapons into Palestine for anti-British Arab cells through Saudi Arabia. The operation was aborted, however, because of concerns the British would link the weapons to Berlin.49

Reeva Simon’s book on the militarist origins of tyranny in Iraq, Iraq between the Two World Wars, contains an excellent collection of writings and quotes by Grobba, including these: “[T]he friendship of the Arabs for Germany [was] still active in the leading class in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine” and, “[E]ven if Arab friendship towards Germany is determined above all by the Arab’s own interest, it is an important factor for Germany, which we can make both political and economic use of.”50

Grobba would receive requests from Arab sources for weapons and other supplies for Arab insurgents in Palestine. One such request came from Fawzi El-Qawukji, a former officer in the Iraqi army who commanded Arab units in Palestine during the revolt. El-Qawukji requested large amounts of German weapons, to be paid for by the mufti’s Higher Committee. In January 1937 Grobba was visited by members of the Arab Higher Committee who hoped to secure German arms and money for future efforts in Palestine.51 Francis Nicosia’s book, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, republished in 2000, is an essential volume in attempting to begin to trace the Axis money trail to Middle East insurgencies in World War II.

Although the Peel Commission did not finish its deliberations in Palestine until six months later, there was anticipation in the Middle East and in Europe that the Commission would recommend the creation of an independent Jewish state in part of mandatory Palestine.

The source of weapons used by the Arab insurgency remains unclear to this day; it was difficult for Britain to trace the origin of the weapons during the first phases of the revolt leading up to the subsequent unrest and violence. Nicosia discusses how British foreign office and German foreign ministry records indicate that both London and Berlin suspected financial and arms assistance for the Palestinian Arabs from diverse sources, such as the Soviet Union and Italy. The statistics of the Handelspolitische Abteilung (Section for trade policy) in the German foreign ministry revealed a relatively modest export of German war materiel to the Arab states of the Middle East between 1936 and 1939. The most likely and immediate sources of weapons and financial assistance were neighboring Arab states. According to the deputy inspector general in Palestine in 1936, large sums of money had been collected in Egypt and the Levant by the mufti’s Central Relief Committee for the Arab cause in Palestine. In August of 1936 German consul general in Jerusalem Hans Dohle reported to Berlin that weapons and ammunition were coming into Palestine from Transjordan, despite King Abdullah I’s (ruled 1921–1951) efforts to mediate between the rebels and British authorities. In October Grobba reported from Baghdad that the Palestinian rebels had procured weapons through an Anglo-Belgian consortium for the Ethiopian government in its war against Italy, but that one ship with weapons was transferred by the Saudi government to Palestine via Transjordan.52

In early 1937 Grobba again reported to Berlin on his suspicions about Russian (Bolshevik) assistance to the Arabs.53 This report was not unreasonable; during the attempts to create the French and British mandates in Syria and Iraq, Bolshevist operatives circulated propaganda to undermine their efforts in an attempt to spread Communist ideals. A report made by Hans Dohle to the mufti and published in Nicosia’s Third Reich and the Palestinian Question stated, “The elite units of the Arab terror organization are moving more and more under Russian influence. With Russian help, Arab guerrillas have to possess good, modern weapons. After a recent visit of a Soviet-Russian trade representative in Jaffa, the possibilities of Russian weapons deliveries for the Arabs via the southern Palestine coast have been discussed. Given the intense supervision of Greek ships, which played a role in weapons smuggling during the recent unrest, agreements were concluded for the use of Egyptian sailboats.”54

The Peel Commission Committee would meet on November 11, 1936, led by Lord William Wellesley Peel. It investigated the reasons behind the uprising and proposed a solution, issuing its report on July 7, 1937. In that report the Committee proposed ending the mandate and dividing Palestine into two parts.55 While an ongoing contentious issue, the partition was not equal portions of Palestine given to the Palestinians and the Israelis, and the plan would prove impossible for the Palestinians to accept due to the inequity and quality of the land designated to its people. Yet understanding the history is just the beginning as we attempt to find an acceptable solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

The Peel Report recommended the transfer of Arab Palestinians from territories allocated for the Jewish state. Arab leadership consequently rejected the plan, and the revolt resumed in the autumn of 1937. With the assassination of British district commissioner Lewis Yelland Andrews, Britain declared martial law and outlawed the Arab Higher Committee.56 An arrest warrant for Al-Husseini was issued. Although the 1936 Revolt was futile, it signified the birth of the national Arab Palestinian identity and features prominently in the narratives of Palestinians, whether Nationalist or Islamist.

The Grand Mufti: Hajj Amin Al-Husseini

Perhaps the most prominent figure and symbol of Arab Nationalist and Nazi collaboration in World War II was Al-Husseini. His influence extended beyond Palestine and saw no boundary between religion and politics, and played a major role in integrating Palestinian and Arab Nationalism with Islamic schemes. Born in 1895 to the prominent Al-Husseini clan in Jerusalem, he belonged to the Hanafi jurisprudence of the Sunni sect of Islam, one of four Sunni schools of Islam. His father, Tahir Al-Husseini, was chief justice of the Sharia (Islamic) courts of Jerusalem. After learning to speak Turkish fluently at an Ottoman government school in Palestine, he attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 1912, where he studied Islamic theology, Arabic studies, and Islamic jurisprudence.

While in Cairo, Al-Husseini attended an educational institution known as Dar al-Dawa wal-Ershad (the Institute for Propagation and Guidance) created by the Syrian Islamist Salafi intellectual Mohammed Rashid Rida (1865–1935).57 Rida politically promoted a rejuvenation of the Caliphate for pan-Islamism. Rida witnessed the forcible French eviction of King Feisal ibn Hussein from Syria in 1920 in the Battle of Maysaloon. King Feisal would later be installed by the British as king of Iraq (ruled 1921–1933) in a British-orchestrated plebiscite designed to bring calm to Iraq’s 1920 Revolt, which was objecting to the British mandate over Iraq. These colonial events shaped Rida, who, while living in Egypt, stoked Islamist political sentiments and directly influenced such young students as Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.58

At Dar-al-Dawa wal-Ershad, Al-Husseini was also exposed to the teachings of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, which taught him the tactics of Islamist incitement and radicalism. In this view, the Middle East was colonized because of the Muslim’s lack of faith and the need to reestablish the ethic of jihad. Al-Afghani and his disciples also believed that Muslim rulers who enabled colonization were apostates who should be killed. It was Al-Afghani who would inspire two strands of Salafism: the radical strand of Rashid Rida, and the progressive strand of Muhammad Abdu, who wanted to reform society and make it compatible with the challenges of the industrial age. Al-Husseini continued his studies at Cairo University College of Literature and received formal training in leadership and administration at the secular Ottoman School for Administration in Istanbul. After attending the military academy in Istanbul, and following the outbreak of World War I, he received his commission as an artillery officer in the Ottoman army, entering the College for Reserve Officers.59

Al-Husseini joined the 46th Infantry Regiment stationed at Izmir in southwest Turkey and had a follow-on assignment to the 47th Infantry Regiment stationed in the Turkish city of Smyrna. His allegiance to Ottoman Islamic unity was gradually eroded by the harsh Ottoman Turkification of the Arab provinces and the suppression of Arab Nationalist organizations. In November 1916 he left the Ottoman Army on disability leave and returned to Jerusalem, where he began aiding the Arab Revolt led by Feisal bin Al Hussein Bin Ali El-Hashemi, who later became King Feisal I of Iraq. After the Treaty of Versailles, Al-Husseini was embittered by the sidelining of the Arab Revolt prompted by the Sykes-Picot Agreement and by the influx of Jewish immigrants into British-mandated Palestine. Rioting broke out among Palestinian Muslims during the procession of the Nabi Musa (the prophet Moses) festival, which was used as an occasion to protest the implementation of the Balfour Declaration of a Jewish homeland. Al-Husseini, then an Islamic tutor at the Rashidiya School in East Jerusalem, was charged with incitement and sentenced by military court to ten years’ imprisonment, but was among those agitators pardoned by British authorities in an attempt to not further inflame Arab civil discord.60

With Arab protests at their peak after the First World War, the Palin Commission (formally the Palin Court of Inquiry) was set up in May of 1920 by Major General P. C. Palin to examine the rioting in Jerusalem during April 4–7, 1920, in the wake of violent Arab protests against the growing presence and political demands of the Jewish community. The report was completed on July 1, 1920, at Port Said, and was submitted in August 1920, though it was never published. Palestinians attacked Jewish inhabitants in Jaffa and five Jewish colonies on May 1, 1921. The British high commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, appointed the chief justice of Palestine, Sir Thomas Haycraft, to determine the causes of the Arab violence; hence, another commission was set up to investigate the Jaffa riots of 1921.61

The Haycraft Report highlighted Arab fears that extensive Jewish immigration would lead to Palestine becoming a Jewish dominion. With the ineffective conclusions of the Palin Report and the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry in the early 1920s, Al-Husseini directed his efforts to thoughts of pan-Arabism and the idea of a Greater Syria, to consist of Palestine, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Syria, with Damascus as its political heart. However, this plan collapsed in the face of British and French determination in implementing the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement through several post–World War I conferences, beginning with Versailles in 1919 and ending with the Cairo Conference in 1921. Al-Husseini turned from Damascus-centered pan-Arabism to a Palestinian ideology centered on Jerusalem, which sought to block Jewish immigration to Palestine. From the time of his election as mufti, Al-Husseini exercised control over the anti-British and anti-Zionist underground groups, Al-Fida’iyya (the Self-Sacrificers), and Al-Ikha Wal-Afaf (Brotherhood and Purity).62

British High Commissioner of Palestine Sir Herbert Samuel, in an attempt to appease Arab Nationalists, granted Al-Husseini amnesty in April 1921 following the death of his half-brother, the mufti Kamil Al-Husseini. This allowed him to return to Jerusalem, where he took the position of grand mufti of Jerusalem. The following year the British established the Supreme Muslim Council and appointed Al-Husseini to lead the organization, designed to transition Arabs toward self-governance and give them a representative voice. Al-Husseini, making use of his new position, took an active role organizing anti-Jewish riots in 1929. The British hope of giving him responsibility, as a means of incorporating him in the British mandatory system, backfired, as he resorted to incitement and violence as a means of garnering influence through populism. The appeasement of Al-Husseini only elevated his hatred of both the British and Jews. He was among the leaders that formed the Arab Higher Committee that incited discord and managed the uprising in 1936. In 1937 the British outlawed his committee and he escaped to Damascus once again, where he continued his rebellion against British authorities.63

The rise of Nazism increased pressure on Britain from Zionist groups to allow larger numbers of immigrants into Palestine. Al-Husseini, in an attempt to find a European patron, expressed solidarity with Nazi Germany as early as 1937. His earliest contacts were with the German consul in Damascus declaring his support for the Third Reich. In 1937 the mufti met with Nazi officials Hauptschanführer Adolf Eichmann and SS (Schutzstaffel, or protection squadron) Oberscharführer Herbert Hagen in Syria. Following this meeting Al-Husseini became an agent of the Third Reich. His close association with the Nazis became a subject of discussion in the testimony of SS officer and Eichmann subordinate Dieter Wisliceny, who supplied an affidavit on the grand mufti’s close association with the SS during the Nuremberg tribunals.64 However, the British failed to charge the grand mufti and found Wisliceny’s testimony to be suspect.65

One of the most essential of these stops was Baghdad where, in April 1941, a group of army officers led by an Iraqi lawyer and politician, Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani, seized power and established a pro-Axis regime in Iraq. One of the officers supporting the Gaylani coup was a young officer, Khairallah Tulfah, who became better known as the uncle, paternal mentor, and later father-in-law of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Tulfah, impacted partly by Fascist propaganda, would write a perverse pseudo-intellectual ten-page pamphlet in the 1940s, “Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies,” that would be made into Ba’athist propaganda in 1981 and distributed as part of the ideological indoctrination to children.66

 

1. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 96. Note: Albert Speer was discussing this topic with Hitler at the Obersalzburg, the führer’s mountain retreat; these events might have occurred if Islam had absorbed Europe, according to Hitler’s alternative history, as recounted by Speer.

2. The title sherief is an honorific given to those claiming descent from Prophet Muhammad’s family.

3. Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism 1600–1918, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 83.

4. Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012). Read the chapter on Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in Mishra’s work to begin to unlock the origins of pan-Islamism.

5. Aaron Klieman, Foundations of British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 260.

6. Stefan Wild, “National Socialism and the Arab East between 1933 and 1939,” Die Welt des Islams 25 (1985): 128.

7. Ibid., 143.

8. Yunus al-Bahri, Huna Berlin! Hayyi l-’arab (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Nashr lil-Jami Tiyin, 1955).

9. Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Toronto, Canada: Toronto University Press, 1966). Originally published in Polish as III Rzesza i arabski Wschod (Warsaw: Ksiazka Wiedza, 1963).

10. Nicosia, “Arab Nationalism and National Socialist Germany, 1933–1939.”

11. Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 16. See also Basil H. Aboul-Enein and Youssef Aboul-Enein, “Axis and Allied Strategic Posturing in Palestine: Hidden Lessons from World War II,” at http://www.benning.army.mil/armor/eARMOR/Heritage.html. This is part of the U.S. Army e-Armor Heritage Collection and was first published in the U.S. Army Armor Journal in the winter of 2009. This chapter is an expansion of this essay, which stimulated discussion among U.S. Army readers.

12. Nicosia, “Arab Nationalism and National Socialist Germany, 1933–1939.”

13. Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 39.

14. Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2000), 86. Originally published, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.

15. Ibid., 87.

16. Ibid., 91.

17. Ibid.

18. David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 275.

19. Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. 2, April 1922–August 1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), 1497.

20. Ibid., 1558.

21. Ibid., 1596.

22. Ibid., 1639. See also Louis L. Snyder, ed., Hitler’s Third Reich: A Documentary History (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), 619, for further context and analysis.

23. Baynes, Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. 2, April 1922–August 1939, 1647.

24. Ibid., 1649.

25. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, 177.

26. Manuela Williams, Mussolini’s Propaganda Abroad: Subversion in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1935–1940 (London: Routledge, 2006), 47.

27. Claudio G. Segré, “Liberal and Fascist Italy in the Middle East, 1919–1938,” in Uriel Dann, ed., The Great Powers in the Middle East, 1919–1939 (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1988), 208.

28. Ibid., 208.

29. “Arabs Prefer Bari,” Sydney Morning Herald, January 10, 1938, National Library of Australia archives, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17437732 .

30. Sir John Hammerton, The Second World War, vol. 3, Under Siege (Naples, FL: Trident Press International, 2000), 330.

31. Callum MacDonald, “Radio Bari: Italian Wireless Propaganda in the Middle East and British Countermeasures,” Middle Eastern Studies 13 (1977): 195–207. Radio Bari began broadcasting on May 24, 1934; Radio Cairo began a week later on May 31, 1934, and was controlled mainly by Egyptian nationalists; Radio Algiers was controlled by the French and later Vichy French who entered the mass-media market in the region in 1935; Jerusalem on March 30, 1936; Baghdad on July 12, 1936; Ankara on July 12, 1937; Beirut (French controlled) on September 3, 1937; Tripoli (Italian controlled) on December 29, 1937. Segré, “Liberal and Fascist Italy in the Middle East, 1919–1939,” 211.

32. Peter Partner, Arab Voices: The BBC Arabic Service 1938–1988 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1988), 5. See also Tamara Chalabi, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family (New York: Harper, 2011), 183. Note the author is the daughter of the highly controversial Ahmed Chalabi, whose advocacy and questionable sources brought the United States closer to undertaking what would become Operation Iraqi Freedom. The RAF, so concerned about Axis radio propaganda, set up Al-Sharq al-Adna (Near East) Radio with its transmitter in Jaffa in 1941. In two years the British Special Operations Executive had taken over the station as part of its political warfare section. See Douglas A. Boyd, “Sharq al-Adna/The Voice of Britain, The UK’s Secret Arabic Radio Station and Suez War Propaganda Disaster,” Gazette: The International Journal for Communications Studies 65, no. 6 (2003): 443–445. The first time an Egyptian king was heard on radio by his subjects was when King Farouk delivered his 1937 coronation speech.

33. Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 267.

34. The SOE was a section of British Intelligence in charge of sabotage, propaganda, and organizing resistance. It technically fell under the Minister of Economic Warfare until 1941, when it became an independent intelligence agency run under the Political Warfare Executive. The SOE was dissolved by Prime Minister Clement Atlee in 1946.

35. Martin Seth Kramer, The Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), chap. 5, “The Arab Nation of Shakib Arslan,” 103–110.

36. Ibid.

37. Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 24–26.

38. Sean O’Neill and John Steele, “Mein Kampf for Sale in Arabic,” the UK Daily Telegraph, March 19, 2002, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1388161/Mein-Kampf-for-sale-in-Arabic.html .

39. Williams, Mussolini’s Propaganda Abroad, 88.

40. Howard Morley Sachar, Europe Leaves the Middle East, 1936–1954 (London: Allen Lane, 1974), 167.

41. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, 104.

42. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 360.

43. Ibid., 361.

44. Ibid., 362–363.

45. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, 104.

46. Massimiliano Fiore, Anglo-Italian Relations in the Middle East, 1922–1940 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 92–94.

47. McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express, 362.

48. Reeva S. Simon, Iraq between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny (New York: Columbia University Press), 2004, 38.

49. Shelomo Alfassa, Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs during the Holocaust: A Concise Guide to the Relationship and Conspiracy of the Nazis and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in North Africa and the Middle East during the Era of the Holocaust (New York: International Sephardic Leadership Council, 2006).

50. Simon, Iraq between the Two World Wars, 37–38. Also see James Scott, “Germany, Great Britain and the Rashid Ali al-Kilani Revolt of Spring 1941,” commonly referred to as “Nazi Foreign Policy in the Middle East” (Master’s thesis, Portland State University, 1995), http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/scottjc/title.htm, 22nd para.

51. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, 102.

52. Ibid., 103.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid., 103.

55. Rudolf Bernhardt, Encyclopedia of Public International Law, vol. 12, Geographic Issues (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1990), 156.

56. Steven M. Gelber, No Balm in Gilead: A Personal Retrospective of Mandate Days in Palestine (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989), 100–101.

57. Salafi means a return to the pious founders; there are hundreds of Salafi groups because there is no single agreement on who constitutes the pious founders. How to recreate a society in their image? Salafis are a subset of Sunni Islam; some are benign proselytizers, others are politically active, and a minority advocate direct violent action to bring about an Islamic social order in their image. Some are reformist progressives and others are radical.

58. Beverly Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 24.

59. Jennie Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini and National Socialism, trans. Paul Munch (Belgrade, Serbia: Chigoja, 2007).

60. Howard Morely Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Knopf, 2010), 170.

61. Sahar Hunaydi, A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, 1920–1925 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 133.

62. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, 104–108.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid.

65. Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 105–107.

66. David Blair, “He Dreamed of Glory but Dealt Out Only Despair,” Daily Telegraph, March 18, 2003, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1424980/He-dreamed-of-glory-but-dealt-out-only-despair.html?pageNum=1 .

 

 

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