Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (8 page)

For the führer, as for the mufti, in their shared war against the British and the Jews, the enemy of my enemy became an ally and friend. The mufti’s long-sought alliance with the Nazis provided him with the opportunity to fight for Palestinian Arab independence from Great Britain and against further Jewish immigration to Palestine, while at the same time helping his new ally to achieve their shared goal of the extermination of
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Jews. Their passionately shared hatred of their common enemies brought them together, to the detriment of humankind.
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By all accounts, al-Husseini’s long-hoped-for meeting with the führer went exceedingly well. The mufti and the führer shared much in common. The mufti had found his soul-mate in the German führer and thanked him profusely for his unbending commitment to the radical Islamic cause. Leaving the Reich Chancellery, al-Husseini had been elated and inspired and had been convinced that his destiny was now assured. A partnership had been forged, which if successful would reshape the Middle East. As he reflected, the mufti was well aware of his good fortune, realizing that as a trusted ally and confidant of the führer, he would be able to do much to shape and promote the emerging alliance between radical Islam and Nazism and to mobilize support for Hitler’s war against the Jews. In the months ahead, his hopes and dreams were realized.

The Mufti’s Relationships with German Leaders

Throughout his years in Germany, al-Husseini enjoyed a close working relationship with several Nazi leaders, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Eichmann. As Hitler’s foreign minister, von Ribbentrop was to become a close ally of al-Husseini. Under his direction the section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for “Jewish Affairs,” Referat Deutschland, “vigorously defended Nazi anti-semitism abroad and denounced foreign attempts to ‘interfere’ in German Judenpolitik at home.”
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On November 2, 1943, the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, von Ribbentrop sent the mufti a telegram that established beyond any doubt the position of the German government when it came to the Middle East. “I send out my greetings to your Eminence and to those who are today in the capital of the Reich at the gathering under your chairmanship,” wrote von Ribbentrop. “Germany is tied to the Arab nation by old bonds of friendship and today more than ever we are allies. The removal of the so-called Jewish National Home, and freeing all Arab lands from oppression and the exploitation of the Western powers is an unalterable part of the policy of the Greater German Reich. May the hour not be distant when the Arab nation shall be able to build its future and establish unity and full independence.”
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In subsequent letters to the German foreign minister, al-Husseini asked von Ribbentrop for his assistance in ensuring that no Jews would be permitted to leave Europe to enter Palestine.
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Sharing al-Husseini’s passionate hatred of the Jews, von Ribbentrop was especially happy to promise to give this type of assistance. Al-Husseini and von Ribbentrop were in complete sympathy with each other’s hopes and aspirations. On April 28, 1944, von Ribbentrop established yet another division in the Foreign Ministry. The “Anti-Jewish Action Abroad” was designed to assist in the “physical elimination of Jewry,” thus to “deprive the race of its biological reserves.” Among those designated to be advisers in this effort to ensure the destruction of the Jews were Haj Amin al-Husseini and Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.
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Joachim von Ribbentrop was convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials, where he was sentenced to death and hanged for his crimes.

Of the major Nazi leaders, Heinrich Himmler was the one with whom al-Husseini collaborated most actively and consistently.
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The mufti’s first official meeting with Himmler, chief of the SS and the Gestapo, took place in March 1943. They quickly became close political confidants and friends. By July 1943, the mufti’s relations with Himmler warmed to the point that Himmler dedicated a picture of himself with al-Husseini, “To His Eminence, the Grand Mufti, in Remembrance.”
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This inscribed photo from Himmler would become one of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s prized possessions. That their first meeting had been an important one can be inferred from the note of appreciation the mufti sent Himmler: “This memento of our first meeting, which created the basis of our confiding, is of special value to me.”
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In his relations with Nazi leaders, al-Husseini always knew whom to flatter. In this same note, he stated that the picture would always remind him of Himmler “as an understanding, great and energetic man.” In October 1943, the mufti sent a letter to Himmler, on the occasion of the Nazi leader’s birthday, and used the opportunity to express the wish that “the coming year may make our cooperation even closer and bring our common goals even nearer.”
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One of the common goals shared by al-Husseini and Himmler, who was the architect and administrator of the Nazis’ “Final Solution,”
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was the extermination of the Jews. In the text of his telegram to the mufti sent on November 2, 1943, which was read at the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Himmler proclaimed the essence of their mutual objectives: “The National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany has, since its beginning, inscribed upon its flag, the battle against world Jewry. It has therefore always pursued with sympathy the battle of the freedom loving Arabs against the Jewish intruders. The recognition of this enemy and the common battle against him provides the firm basis for the natural ties between National Socialist Greater Germany and the freedom loving Moslems in the whole world. With this thought I convey to you, on the anniversary of the unholy Balfour Declaration, my deepest greetings and wishes for the success of your battle until final victory.”
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The mufti’s close working relationship and friendship with Adolf Eichmann, as with Heinrich Himmler, is well documented and indisputable. Following the capture of Eichmann in May 1960, the speculation about the relationship between these two men became a subject of active public discussion. In a press conference held at the time of the Eichmann trial, on May 4, 1961, al-Husseini denied any connection with Adolf Eichmann during World War II. Indeed, he claimed at this press conference that he did not even know who Eichmann was until he read about his capture in the newspapers.
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In fact, the mufti and Eichmann not only knew each other, but collaborated actively in their years of service to the Third Reich. At the Nuremberg trials, Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann’s senior deputies, would testify that the mufti “was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.”
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On this visit to Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly urged the guards in charge of the chambers to be more diligent and efficient in their efforts.
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One can only imagine how the mufti must have rejoiced as he toured the Auschwitz death camp complex. What he witnessed was indeed, in his mind, the final solution to his Jewish problem. With a sweeping audacity that was almost too bold to grasp, Hitler had determined simply to eliminate his perceived enemies. As he examined the details of the process that led to extermination, al-Husseini realized that he would not have to transport his Jews anywhere. The Jews were concentrated in the Tel Aviv/Jaffa region of Palestine. No railroad cars would be needed for transport. No “selection” would be necessary. No Jew would be needed to work or labor in any way for his Arab state of Palestine. All that the mufti would need would be the technical assistance of his good friends Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann to construct factories of death to eliminate the Jews from Palestine once and for all.

As the mufti left Auschwitz to return to Berlin, he could only marvel at Germany’s ruthless efficiency in solving its Jewish problem. With a smug certainty, he marveled at his good fortune in living at a time when he was blessed with such a superb ally and friend in the person of Adolf Hitler.

Eichmann and al-Husseini admired each other tremendously. Eichmann, as Dieter Wisliceny recalled in his testimony at Nuremberg, “was very strongly impressed with the Mufti.”
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The mufti, in turn, reciprocated this admiration. When he spoke of Eichmann in the presumed privacy of his diary, al-Husseini observed that he was a “very rare diamond, the best savior of the Arabs.”
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Hitler’s Voice to the Arabs: The Mufti and Nazi Radio Broadcasts to the Middle East

From the very outset of his stay in Berlin, it became apparent that the Nazis planned to employ al-Husseini as their chief spokesman in the Middle East. Working closely with Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s propaganda minister, the mufti organized and planned Nazi propaganda broadcasts throughout the Arab world. Throughout the war, al-Husseini appeared regularly on German radio broadcasts to the Middle East. He began making pro-Axis radio broadcasts from Berlin as early as December 1941.
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In February 1942, he asked the Japanese to broadcast his Berlin-based radio addresses to Muslim areas in the South Pacific and to India.
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From his Arab bureau office in Berlin, the mufti was able to coordinate and broadcast daily radio messages. All the German and Axis radio stations were placed at his disposal, and Arabic radio programs were broadcast daily to every country with a Muslim population.
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These broadcasts were vital to al-Husseini as a method of maintaining an active, live, audible presence throughout the Muslim world while he resided in Germany. Through these broadcasts, he was able to assert his leadership despite his physical separation from the Middle East and, in so doing, reach out to his extensive Arab constituency to further develop and expand his personal and political network in support of the German war effort.

Many of the mufti’s pro-German propaganda broadcasts to the Middle East were directed specifically against the British. Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt were called upon, “in the name of the Koran and for the honour of Islam, to sabotage the oil pipe lines, blow up bridges and roads along British lines of communication, kill British troops, destroy their dumps and supplies, mislead them by false information [and] withhold their support.” In these exhortations, the mufti frequently reiterated to his Muslim listeners that they could achieve eternal salvation by rising up and killing the Jewish infidels living in their countries.
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The mufti addressed a similar but special radio message to the Muslims of India, demanding that they rise up in rebellion against the British raj. Al-Husseini’s frequent radio addresses to the Middle East also warned his fellow Arabs to prepare for the moment when the German invasion force would come to liberate them. He, the mufti, would let them know when that moment had arrived.
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In several of the mufti’s radio broadcasts, he shared his microphone with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who had accompanied him to Berlin in the aftermath of their failed pro-German coup in Iraq and often joined him on German radio in issuing public calls for jihad against the British and their Western allies. On May 10, 1942, in one of their shared radio broadcasts commemorating the first anniversary of the outbreak of their pro-Nazi Iraqi coup, al-Gaylani ended his speech with the appeal “I call on you, O Arabs, to unite as one, to organize and fight for your independence and your rights. Unite, O Arabs, and rise against our common enemy, treacherous England.”
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For the mufti, as for al-Gaylani, however, the common enemy was not just Great Britain, but the entire Allied cause. The mufti often called upon the Muslims of the world to help Germany in the holy war it was waging against the British and their Western allies, especially the United States. Some of his radio broadcasts were devoted specifically to condemning American policy in the Middle East. In a radio broadcast from Berlin in March 1944, he denounced American policy with regard to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine: “No one [would have] ever thought,” he thundered, “that 140 million Americans would become tools in Jewish hands…. How could the Americans dare to Judaize Palestine?”
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Many of his most passionate radio broadcasts were classically anti-Semitic, designed to incite hatred and violence against radical Islam’s greatest enemy, the Jews. On November 2, 1943, at the public rally to protest the Balfour Declaration, al-Husseini used German radio to broadcast one of his most virulently anti-Semitic messages: “The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God’s chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals,” al-Husseini declared, “makes them incapable of being trusted.” In this radio broadcast, which included an inflammatory tirade against both the Jews and the British, interspersed with citations of Koranic texts against the Jews,
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the mufti said of the Jews: “They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals…. The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews.”
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In another Berlin radio broadcast, on March 1, 1944, the mufti urged his fellow Arabs to murder their Jewish neighbors: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.”
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The mufti made it abundantly clear that he fully supported Hitler’s goal—the extermination of the Jews. “If, God forbid, England should be victorious, the Jews would dominate the world,” he said in a November 11, 1942, broadcast. “But if, on the contrary, England loses and its allies are defeated, the Jewish question, which for us constitutes the greatest danger, would be finally resolved….”
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One year later, in his broadcast on Berlin radio, he praised Hitler for his results. “The Germans have never harmed any Muslim, and they are fighting our common enemy,” he explained. “But most of all they have definitely solved the Jewish problem.”
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