Free Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf

1938 to Germany by representatives of Saudi King Ibn Saud concerning arms purchases, the Nazi regime established diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in January 1939. In return for German political and economic support, the king and his advisers promised neutrality in the event of war.86 The Germans hoped that their previous absence from the area as colonizers would help them as anticolonial sentiment swept the region. Yet British and French colonialism fostered contacts, familiarity, and trust as well as revolt and opposition.
    In April 1939, after a trip to Palestine and Iraq, Hentig agreed with Grobba that relations with Saudi Arabia needed to be strengthened. He concluded that in 1939 there was no possibility of effective German activity in Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria. On June 8,1939, King Ibn Saud's adviser, Khalid al-Hud al- Qarqani, met with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (he had assumed the position in February 1938) and then with Hitler himself on June 17. Hitler assured him of his long-standing sympathy for the Arabs and his willingness to offer them "active assistance."87 Ibn Saud, aware as he was of British power and influence in the region, sought to keep the meeting secret. When it leaked, he stressed his need to be on good terms with both Germany and Great Britain. While Germany's strength and Hitler's challenge to the British Empire found Arab admirers, "the Germans were far away and the power of Britain and France was close at hand."88 As the date for the invasion of Poland approached, Hitler knew it carried a strong risk of war with England. That, in turn, would mean the end of restraint on German efforts to find supporters and allies in the Middle East. In that effort, the diffusion of anti-Semitism would be an important aspect of the regime's efforts to find Arab and Muslim collaborators. The hair-splitting policy discussions about the meaning of anti-Semitism and German racial legislation, the pro-Arab tilt, and the associated crystallization of anti-Zionism by 1938 all laid the groundwork for the subsequent paradoxical yet intensive wartime propaganda campaign that Nazi ideology at first seemed to preclude. By the beginning of the war, Nazi officials knew that Arab diplomats had expressed no opposition to anti-Semitism in principle so long as it was directed only at the Jews, and Arab and Islamist radicals gave evidence that they shared the Jew-hatred animating Hitler's dictatorship. Nazism's effort to win the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East was about to begin in earnest.

     

CHAPTER 3

Growing Contacts, First Broadcasts
1939 -1941
    rom the beginning of World War II, the Nazi message conveyed to the Arabs of North Africa and the Middle East, and to Muslims as a religious population more broadly, was a counterintuitive one. The Nazi regime was infamous around the world due, in part, to its loud and frequent assertions of the superiority of "the Aryan race." Yet its early radio broadcasts asserted that the leaders of the Third Reich were well informed about Arab politics and the religion of Islam, supported Arab aspirations for an end to British and French influence, and had a deep respect for and knowledge of the religious and cultural traditions of Islam. Nazi propaganda went even further, claiming that there were parallels and welcome affinities between National Socialism and Arab radical nationalism and the religion of Islam as the Nazis chose to interpret it.
    Yet by the time Hitler's government decided to intensify its effort to court Arab and Muslim support, it was not in a strong position to affect events on the ground in the Middle East. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which was in force during World War II, required the United Kingdom to withdraw all troops from Egypt except those necessary to protect the Suez Canal. But it also ratified an alliance that in the event of war allowed the British to use Egyptian territory and to