Nazi Germany and the Arab World

by Francis R. Nicosia

This book considers the evolving strategic interests and foreign policy intent of the Third Reich toward the Arabic-speaking world, from Hitler’s assumption of power in January 1933 to 1944, a year following the final Axis defeat in and expulsion from North Africa in May 1943. It does so within the context of two central, interconnected issues in the larger history of National Socialism and the Third Reich, namely Nazi geopolitical interests and ambitions and the regime’s racial ideology and policy. This book defines the relatively limited geopolitical interests of Nazi Germany in the Middle East and North Africa within the context of its relationships with the other European great powers and its policies with regard to the Arabs and Jews who lived in those areas.

Genres: History, Middle East, World War II

316 pages, Hardcover

First published October 29, 2014

About the author

Francis R. Nicosia was an American historian at the University of Vermont with a focus on modern history and Holocaust research. Prior to taking up his position at the University of Vermont, he taught at Saint Michael's College from 1979 to 2008, and research stays in 1992 as a Fulbright scholarship holder at the Technical University of Berlin and in 2006 at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Reviews

[Ramzey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Book parts company from the some of the recent assumptions in scholarly works about the Arab enthusiasm for National Socialism and The Third Reich based mainly on German assessments of Arab attitudes gleaned primarily from regular contact with Arab exiles in Wartime Berlin. With it's focus on German intent and policy in the region, this study takes a somewhat different side position regarding the German side of the equation.

This book concludes there was no "synthesis" or "fusion" of German intentions and those of Arab nationalists, Islamic fundamentalists or the politcal and intellectual elites in the European- Controlled Arab states in the middleast and North Africa.

This Author's 1980's eassay in the in the International Journal of Middle East studies concludes that the Nazi policy towards Arab Nationalist aspirations in Palestine during the 1930's, prior to the outbreak of the war in 1939, reflected an "ideological and strategic incompatibility " insofar as the Nazis and their specific interests and aims were concerned. The goals of Nazi racial and foreign policies prior to 1939 had included a determination to force Jews to emigrate to Palestine and other overseas destinations, to avoid threatening Great Britian's imperial position in the Middle East and elsewhere, to support Mussolini's quest for a greater Italian presence in the Mediterranen area, and to answer Arab overtunes of friendship and Solidarity with Nazi Germany with responses that ranged from polite but noncommittal expressions of sympathy, to indifference, to outright rejection. During most of the war after 1940, Palestine ceased to be a central component of Nazi Jewish policy. Moreover, Nazi acceptance of , and support for, British Imperial interests in the Arab world and beyond gave way to a policy of support for, British imperial interests in the Arab world and beyond gave way to a policy of support more or less for the integrity of the French empire throughout the Mediterranean region, and it's coexistence with Italian and Spanish colonial interests in the Arab world. Notions of compatibility usually reflect some degree of shared intent, even in the absence of parity, in the mutal interests and goals of two or more parties. This study contends that there was clearly an absence of shared intent from the German side throughout the years of the Third Reich with regard to the achievment of Arab indepdence. It is not in a position to assess the conclusion drawn by Mallman and Cuppers that, "Not in spite of, but because of their virtulent anti-semitism, sympathy for Hitler and the Germans increased among the Muslims of the Near and Middle East. However it does maintain the characterization of the German-Arab relationship as one of incompatibility on both the idelogical and strategic levels. In the end Nazi Germany's unambigous and consistent refusal to accept and commit to Arab aspirations for full sovereignty and Indepence of European rule precluded any sort of Arab-Nazi compability or synthesis.

With the outbreak of war in Europe and the decision two years later to systematically murder all of the Jews in Europe, German tactics with regard to the Arab world did change. However , tactics and intent are not the same thing. Given the need to defeat Britain and the United States in the region by all possible means , Arab hostility toward Britain and Jews was recognized in Berlin as a potentially useful instrument in the Axis war effort, certainly insofar as Germany's wartime propaganda campaign was concerned. At least in terms of the popular message of Nazi Propaganda., the interests of the Axis powers created a surface "compatibility" with the interests and aims of Arab Nationalism, namely the defeat and end of of the Anglo-French colonial rule over much of the Arab world. Of course, this was only superficially related to the substantive intent of German policy. Herf's conclusion that "Nazi Germany's arabic language propaganda during world war II was the product of a remarkable political and idelogical synthesis that took place in wartime berlin" no doubts reflects what was in the minds of the Mufti and some other Arab notables living and working in exile in Berlin. Again without making judgements about the Arab component of this "synthesis" and certainly not in terms of the entire arab world beyond the limits of Berlin and Rome. This book contends that a nazi component was simply absent. Hitlers regime did not intend to fight or otherwise contribute toe the Arab goal of national full sovereignty and independence, despite the inferences in it's propaganda campaign toward the Arab world. Beyond seeking to influence Arab public opinion in General to support the Axis war effort in the region by contributing to Anglo-French difficulties in the Middleast and North Africa, there was no Nazi belief in or intent to equate the interests and objectives of the German Recih with those of an Arab/Muslim world. Nazi propaganda in the Arab world remained simply that propaganda, filled with the manipulative slogans and platitudes that usually forms the substance of propaganda in the time of war.



This study departs from the conclusions of Mallaman and Cuppers that Hitler viewed Arabs and muslims as Germany Natural and future allies.

It is highly questionable in the late 1930's and intensifying during the war, as largely superficial and decidedly negative with regard to Arab ambitions. It points to the regimes tendency to improvise when facts on the ground necessitated an unwelcome or temporary move in a particular direction, and to so primarily in the regim's war time propaganda to the Arab world. In the end therefore this study argues that the Arab-Nazi relationship between 1933 and of the second world war was and remained "ideologically and strategically incompatible"