Relations between Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and the Arab world ranged from indifference, fear, animosity, and confrontationI Gershoni, J Jankowsi "Confronting Fascism in Egypt" (Stanford University Press, 2009) https://www.sup.org/books/middle-east-studies/confronting-fascism-egyptLine Khatib Quest for Democracy: Liberalism in the Modern Arab World (Cambridge University Press, 2023) to collaboration.Copeland, Miles. The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's original political operative. 1989. p. 181. "Most of them (the Nazis) were also anti-Arab, although they had the wit to conceal that fact." The Arab intellectual elite (including liberals, Marxists and left-wing nationalists) was very critical of Nazism, perceiving it as totalitarian, racist, antisemitic and imperialist. However, Nazi hostility against the United Kingdom and Francewhich held colonies in the Arab Worldoffered an avenue of cooperation for some Arab and Muslim leaders. Nazi Germany used collaborators and propaganda throughout the Arab world in search of political allies. German Arabic propaganda was launched to stoke anti-Allied sentiment in the region. Nazi Germany established Barid Al Sharq, an Arab-language newspaper, as well as an Arabic station in Radio Berlin. Nazi propaganda alleged that Germany held a common anti-colonial interest, despite some of its allies also having colonies in the Arab world, namely Spain, Vichy France and Italy.
During the Anglo-Iraqi War, the Golden Square (a political clique of four generals led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani) overthrew the pro-British Abd al-Ilah regency in Iraq and installed a pro-Axis government; this was swiftly overthrown by British forces.Nafi, Basheer M. "The Arabs and the Axis: 1933–1940". Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 19, Issue 2, Spring 1997Churchill, Winston (1950). The Second World War, Volume III, The Grand Alliance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 234; Kurowski, Franz (2005). The Brandenburger Commandos: Germany's Elite Warrior Spies in World War II. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Book. , 10: p. 141
Minor Nazi Party branches were established in the Middle East before the war by local German diaspora. In June 1941, Wehrmacht High Command Directive No. 32 and the "Instructions for Special Staff F" designated Special Staff F as the Wehrmacht's central agency for all issues that affected the Arab world."German Exploitation of Arab Nationalist Movements in World War II" by Gen. Hellmuth Felmy and Gen, Walter Warlimont, Historical Division, Headquarters, United States Army, Europe, Foreign Military Studies Branch, 1952, p. 11, by Gen. Haider Nazi Germany along with Fascist Italy sent officials and military equipment to pro-Axis forces of the Golden Square during the Anglo-Iraqi War, part of the larger Middle East theatre of World War II.
Despite Amin al-Husseini's efforts to acquire German backing for Arab independence, Hitler refused to support them, remarking that he "wanted nothing from the Arabs". Nazi Germany was reluctant to initiate disputes with the Italian Empire or Vichy France colonies.
Nazi Germany and the Arab World
Nazi perception of Arabs
In private, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were recorded making complimentary statements about Islam as both a religion and a political ideology, describing it as a more disciplined, militaristic, political, and practical form of religion than Christianity is, and commending what they perceived were Muhammad’s skills in politics and military leadership.Hitler's apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi legacy, Robert S. Wistrich, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 17 Oct 1985, p. 59 Hitler was transcribed as saying: "Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers […] then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world." Conflicting this, however, are instances of likely false attributions: al-Husseini in his post-war memoirs may have mistaken Gottlob Berger’s statement of sympathy for Islam concerning the Ottoman Empire as being Himmler’s, as an earlier interview with an SS officer confirmed Berger as having made the statement. Hitler’s case is more controversial; historian Mikael Nilsson has noted that Hitler's Table Talk, from which many of these quotations originate, consisted of heavily edited notes often taken the next day by Martin Bormann and his staff and further revised after the war. Bormann would routinely alter the transcripts to reflect his own anti-Christian agenda, while those entrusted with recording—Henry Picker and Heinrich Heim—acknowledged that Bormann frequently inserted statements not actually heard. Ritter, one of the 1951 edition’s publishers, even deleted Hitler’s use of the word “Crusade” to describe Operation Barbarossa. François Genoud, who later possessed most of the Table Talk manuscripts (the original German versions of which were “lost”), distorted them further and was also responsible for fabricating “Hitlers politisches Testament”—not to be confused with the Political Testament within the last will and testament of Adolf Hitler—in which he inserted pro-Arab and anti-colonial sentiments for his own political purposes. Hitler purportedly made warm references toward Islam, such as: “The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France.” This line originated from “Hitlers politisches Testament”, which has been conclusively proven to be a forgery. Genoud, a Swiss Nazi sympathizer connected with al-Husseini, falsely claimed to have obtained the document from Walther Funk, though multiple eyewitnesses denied Funk’s involvement and confirmed the impossibility of the events Genoud described. Linguistic inconsistencies—including traces of retranslation from French to German—and anachronistic details further expose the text as inauthentic. Nilsson and other scholars have demonstrated that Genoud not only forged this document but also manipulated the German text of Table Talk when producing his French translations, inserting new anti-Christian and pro-Arab passages that were absent from any verified sources.
An exchange occurred when Hitler received Saudi Arabian ruler Ibn Saud's special envoy, Khalid al-Hud. Earlier in this meeting, Hitler claimed that one of the three reasons why Nazi Germany had some interest in the Arabs was:
Lebanese academic Gilbert Achcar wrote that Hitler "did not deem it useful" to point out to his Arab visitors at that meeting that, until then, he had incited German Jews to emigrate to Palestine (see Aliyah Bet and timeline of the Holocaust), and that the Third Reich assisted Zionist organizations avoid British-imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration as a means to rid the country of its Jewish population.
Hitler had told his military commanders in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II: "We shall continue to make disturbances in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash." The official Nazi racial ideology considered Arabs racially inferior to Germans, a sentiment which was echoed in deprecating statements made by Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Referring to the Arab world, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (1925): "As a völkisch man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of my own people with theirs." In the preceding text, he had scornfully mocked the Muslim’s idea of “Holy War”.
When German troops were stationed in North Africa, one Arab complained:
Despite the Nazi racial theory, which denigrated Arabs as racially inferior, individual Arabs who assisted the Third Reich by fighting against the Allies were treated with dignity and respect. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, for example, "was granted honorary Aryan" status by the Nazis for his close collaboration with Hitler and the Third Reich. After a meeting with al-Husseini, Hitler remarked:With his blonde hair and blue eyes, he gives the impression, despite his shrew-like face, of a man whose ancestors were more likely to have been Aryans, and who perhaps is descended from the best Roman blood...In sheer intelligence he almost comes close to the Japanese."Goebbels wrote in his diary regarding al-Husseini: "The Führer has the same impression of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as I have. He considers him to be a descendant of the crusaders, and he also looks like one ... This Grand Mufti makes a very good impression on me. One might almost believe that it is about his completely Nordic appearance."
Nazi persecution of Arabs
While Arabs were a small population in Europe at the time, they were not free from Nazi persecution. Nazi harassment of Arabs began as early as 1932, where members of the Egyptian Student Association in Graz, Austria reported to the Egyptian consulate in Vienna that some Nazis had assaulted some of its members, throwing beer steins and armchairs at them, injuring them, and that "oddly enough" the police had not arrested the perpetrators, but the Egyptians. The Nazis attackers were later acquitted; one of the police officers, penciled the word "Jude" [Jew] after the names of three of the attacked Egyptians. In February 1934, the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin complained to the Reich Ministry of the Interior that a student had been attacked and insulted in a dance hall in Tübingen. The perpetrator had complained that he was not permitted to dance with a "German" because he was "black" and of a "lower race" and was punched. The attacker was not punished. On the onset of war, Egyptians living in Germany were interned in response to the internment of Germans in Egypt.
Mohammed Helmy was one of those Egyptians, a doctor who was fired from his hospital and banned from practicing medicine for being a "Hamite", an old term referring to black people. He was also barred from marrying his German fiancé due to his race. The Egyptian government was able to secure his release due to his ill health. Despite being targeted by the regime, he helped foreign workers and Germans avoid conscription and hid a Jewish patient, Anna Boros, during the war. He obtained documents to protect Boros, including a certificate of her conversion to Islam and a marriage certificate. Helmy also assisted Boros' family by finding hiding places for them. He later became the first Arab Righteous Among Nations.
Hans Hauck was born in Frankfurt in 1920. Since his father was Algerian, he was persecuted for being half-Arab. At the age of 17, he was summoned by the Gestapo and was sterilized. Lucie M., a 14-year-old, was sent in 1943 to Ravensbrück concentration camp for being a "Moroccan half-breed". The Nazis sterilized hundreds of "half-breeds", Germans mixed with Maghrebi Arabs.
The Arab collaborators with Nazi Germany, Amin al-Husseini and Rashid Ali al-Gailani, were aware of the Arab inmates, yet did nothing to free them. Al-Husseini refused to intervene when a Palestinian called Boutros S. was arrested for "political expressions" and sent to a work camp near Berlin. In December 1943, an Iraqi student Sayd Daud Y was arrested for helping the desertion of his future brother-in-law, a grenadier in the Wehrmacht. Daud was engaged to the soldier's sister and had a child with her, but for "racial considerations" was not allowed to marry her. His brother tried to help him by appealing to al-Kailānī and to the Grand Mufti to intervene, though they refused to help. He was brought to Dachau in April 1945.