Free Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf Page A

supply, train, and assist Egypt's army. Britain remained the Mandate power in Palestine, controlled the waters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and had air bases in Iraq, Egypt, and Aden. French influence encompassed French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Syria. While the Arab governments had little desire to enter the war on either side, they understood the realities of British and French armed forces in the region. In each country, there were Arab political leaders who supported the democracies against Nazi Germany. Despite some sympathy for Germany in parts of the Egyptian officer corps, the Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Italian sentiment from King Farouk and his circles, and broad support for neutrality, the Egyptian government broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on September 3, 1939, closed the German Embassy (and its intelligence operations), and interned German citizens. The government of Iraq also severed diplomatic and economic ties to the Third Reich. In October 1939, Haj Amin el-Husseini and his entourage (Jamal Huseini, Amin Tamimi, Fawzi el-Qawugji,ArefAbd er-Razeq, and Sheikh Hasan Salama) had to leave French-controlled Beirut. They went to Baghdad, where Husseini played a key role in the pro-Axis coup of March 1941. Of the Arab states, only Saudi Arabia and Yemen retained diplomatic and economic ties to the Third Reich. Despite their unhappiness about restrictions on immigration set by the British White Paper, the Jews in Palestine overwhelmingly supported England, as did moderate Palestinians associated with the Nashashibi clan. In fall 1939, due to British and French wartime censorship of the pro-Axis sentiment in the local press and media, and the closing of German and Italian embassies and consulates, Nazi Germany had fewer possibilities to exert political influence, engage in espionage, or support Arab sympathizers in the battle against "Britain and the Jews" than it had before it began the war in Europe.'

    In this situation of Allied presence and Axis absence, shortwave radio broadcasts from Germany (in conjunction with older Italian broadcasts) moved to the center of Nazi Germany's propaganda efforts aimed at North Africa and the Middle East.' Given the high rates of illiteracy, radio would have been central even if Germany had a greater presence on the ground. On April 25, 1939, in the town of Zeesen south of Berlin, the Nazi regime began broadcasting in Arabic with powerful shortwave transmitters. At the beginning of 1940, the Zeesen stations transmitted two Arabic broadcasts daily. By summer 1940, they were sending three broadcasts daily, 95 minutes in all.3 By October 1939, the Zeesen stations were on air for 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, in 113 daily broadcasts. The number of daily hours on air increased to 22 by January 1940, 31 by summer 1940, and 53 by 1943.4 National Socialist radio transmitted literally around the globe in Arabic, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, and Turkish. In the year following September 1939, the Nazis produced 89,500 foreign-language broadcasts that took up 30,500 hours of radio time. By the end of 1940, about 500 people were working in the various offices of German foreign-language radio broadcasting. The broadcasts went to Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. The most frequently used foreign languages were English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Afrikaans, Russian, and Arabic. By February 1941, German shortwave radio was broadcasting every day 740 minutes to "Asia" and 400 minutes to Africa. Prominent exiled politicians, such as Subhas Chandra Bose from India, Rashid Ali Kilani from Iraq, and Haj Amin el-Husseini, were frequent speakers.' German journalists working on the Arabic broadcasts did not speak Arabic and often knew little about Arab and Muslim societies.' Hence the native Arabic speakers working on the stations provided a