Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World Read Online Free PDF

formed the basis for a fresh interpretation of Nazi propaganda. This is even more the case when examining the vastly less well known texts of the regime's Arabic-language propaganda.

    Some Arabic-language printed materials distributed in North Africa and the Middle East did find their way into the German Foreign Ministry archives, especially from the files of the embassies in Paris and Rome.28 English-language translations-those done by Kirk's staff in Cairo and more recent ones of print matter done for this book-are now the most comprehensive documentation available of Nazi Germany's wartime Arabic propaganda. Where possible, I have compared original German-language policy guidelines and texts of leaflets and speeches with the English-language translations of the Arabic broadcasts produced by the Americans in Cairo. I've concluded that the American translations reflect the letter and spirit of the originals. Moreover, the translations done in the American Embassy in wartime Cairo render texts that are very much in accord with everything else we know about the themes and even word choice of Nazi propaganda. I hope that one result of my work will be to bring the "Axis in Arabic" documents to the attention not only of historians of the Nazi regime but also of those working on the history of the Middle East during and after World War II. Now that these documents have, albeit belatedly, entered into historical scholarship, readers can judge what to make of the propaganda campaign documented in the pages that follow.
    The material in this work demonstrates that the Nazi leadership viewed radical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as indispensable points of entry into Arab and Muslim hearts and minds.29 Throughout the war, Nazi Arabic radio repeated the charge that World War II was a Jewish war whose purpose in the region was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine that would expand into and dominate the entire Arab and Muslim world. Moreover, the broadcasts asserted that the Jews in the mid-twentieth century were attempting to destroy Islam just as their ancestors had been attempting to do for thirteen centuries. They claimed that an Allied victory would be a victory for the Jews, whereas an Axis victory would bring liberation from first British and then American and also "Jewish" imperialism. An Axis victory would prevent the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine and create a Europe dominated by powers that respected and had much in common with the traditions of Islam. Throughout the war, the Americans, the British, and the Germans concluded that the association with the Jews and Zionism was a drag on Arab support for the Allies while the antiZionist policies of the Nazi regime fit well into a broad current of political sentiment in the Middle East. In their Arabic-language materials, Nazi propagandists moved seamlessly between references to the secular conspiracy theories of modern anti-Semitism, on the one hand, and quotations from the Koran and other religious texts and authorities, on the other. In this propaganda, there was no distinction between hatred of the Jews and opposition to Zionism.

    The issue of the impact of fascism and Nazism on the Middle East and its aftereffects has become inseparable from contemporary political controversies about anti-Semitism, radical Islam, "Islamo-fascism;" and international terrorism since the attacks of September 11, 2001.30 Indeed, my own scholarly interest in these issues emerges partly from reflections on the blend of modern and reactionary elements in both Nazism and fascism in the 194os and radical Islamism of recent decades.31 Yet this work is first and foremost a work of history. It presents previously unknown or little-known material that adds greatly to our understanding of Nazi Germany's effort to gain allies, supporters, and collaborators among Arabs and Muslims during World War II and the Holocaust. It is a study of the diffusion of ideology and of a meeting of hearts and