Arab
Nationalists, Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust: an unlucky
contemporaneity
Peter
Wien
The
formative period of Arab nationalism as an ideology co-incided with
the German persecution of the Jews in Europe and their genocide. The
advent and finally the emergence of the Jewish State in Palestine
carried the aftermath of the European catastrophy into the Middle
East without Arab involvement.
The Arabs
were accused after the war that they had shown sympathy with the
devil, that they had taken up racial aims of the Nazis and at worst
taken part in the Holocaust. The latter accusation rests on two
columns one of which is the supposed involvement of the Mufti of
Jerusalem Amin al-Husaini in the planning of the Holocaust during his
exile in Berlin from 1942 to 1945. The second column is the short
alliance between a nationalist government in Iraq and Germany during
the British-Iraqi war in May 1941. It was taken for granted that this
tenuous alliance rested on ideological parallels, an assumption which
gained support from the ”Farhud,” a pogrom that took
place in Baghdad’s Jewish quarters at the end of the war. It
resulted in numerous Jewish deaths and casualties.
The
allegation against the Mufti to be a collaborator in the Holocaust
was in parts a consequence of Husaini’s instrumentalisation in
the Arab-Israeli conflict after 1948. Especially in the course of the
Eichmann trial and the 1967 war the Mufti became for one side a
friend and helper of the perpetrators of the Shoah, and thus a
pars-pro-toto for the Arab nationalist movement. For the other side
he remained a glorified hero of the Arab struggle for freedom. In
addition to doubts about the evidence against the Mufti –
raised by Hannah Arendt in ”Eichmann in Jersualem”, for
instance –, this triangular construction is specific for the
existing views on Arab nationalism and its tenuous relation with
Germany in the 1930s and early 40s. The affair could not be assessed
without regard to the history of the Near East conflict after 1948:
The traumatic experience of persecution and mass murder coincided
with the struggle of the Jewish people for nationhood, however in a
detached region. The Arab people – deprived of independence and
self-determination and in a competition for land with the Jews –
was demonised, an attitude apparently justified by contacts with the
perpetrators of a deed, which, however, had nothing to do with these
contacts. The Arab quest was for assistance against imperialism,
Zionism appearing to be merely a part of it. Hence the triangle: Two
uncomparable lines of relations with Nazi-Germany coincided: the
Holocaust and the anti-imperialist effort of the Arabs. Both lines
did not cross but in a common point of reference. Nevertheless their
contemporaneity does make it impossible in hindsight to treat each in
its own independent regard.
The meaning
of ”Unlucky Contemporaneity” stands out clearly in the
British-Iraqi war and the Farhud as well. The breakout of regional
war in a framework of decolonisation was facilitated by the European
war taking place parallely. Nevertheless the British-Iraqi war
emerged out of regional issues. The very meagre support by a German
air-squadron co-incided with the anti-Jewish pogrome that was rather
a consequence of Arab concerns about Palestine and a reaction to Arab
nationalist propaganda, than a consequence of racial furor, as well
as it was a mob of looters, murderers and roaming soldiers who
brought calamity and murder to the Baghdadi Jews. It was not a
planned racist effort.
The very
presence of German troops made it easier, however, first to
interprete the ‘41 war in hindsight as an Arab effort in favour
of the Nazis, second to interprete the pogrom as a racial
anti-Semitic endeavor and thus part of the Holocaust.
To sum up,
the Arab nationalist efforts and the anti-Zionist atrocities had
nothing to do with German Nazi barbarity except for a parallelity of
time. For Iraqi nationalists a misunderstood prospect of German
support against British imperialism facilitated the declaration of
war, but besides that the Anglo-Iraqi war of 1941 had in its
underlying causes nothing to do with the European war.
In an
elaborated version of this essay a short episode of the Iraqi
diplomatic efforts of 1940/41 to gain support from Germany will
highlight the misunderstandings between the two parties. The episode
will underline the detached nature of the particular interests of
both groups. It will present clearly how German sources manage to
create artificially a link between German anti-Jewish policy and Arab
anti-Zionism which had nothing in common.
In mid 1940
the core group of pan-Arab nationalists in Iraq sent Amin al-Husaini’s
private secretary Uthman Kamal Haddad as an emissary to Berlin in
order to negotiate the resumption of diplomatic relations between
Iraq and the Third Reich. Result of this first of several diplomatic
contacts between the Axis powers and the Arab nationalists in Iraq
during the war was a joint declaration of both Germany and Italy in
favour of Arab nationalism.
Since the
fall of France many Arab nationalists had been convinced that Germany
was on her way to victory and thus was the right partner to combat
British and French imperialism in the region. Especially in Iraq
there was a group of nationalist politicians and army officers whose
strength had been growing ever since a series of military coups had
started in Iraq after 1936. After the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in
Palestine in 1936 Zionism and the Palestine problem had increasingly
become an issue of nationalist rhetorics in Iraq. This had
repercussions on the situation of the Jews in Iraqi society as well.
After more than a decade of successful co-existence between the
commercially dominant Jews and the politically dominant Muslims, Jews
became more and more marginalised and were accused of Zionist
activities. This tendency gained support when Iraq became a refuge
for many Arab nationalist activists who had had to leave Palestine
and Syria, among them Amin al-Husaini. Shortly after his arrival in
Baghdad late in 1939 he gained influence on politicians such as
Rashid Ali al-Kailani – Prime Minister of the government that
later went to war with Britain – and a group of four officers,
known as the ”Golden Square”, who were in control of the
army. The Mufti was deeply affected by his experiences during the
Arab revolt and the high costs of lives and loss of fatherland. He
had become an embittered hater of Britain and Zionism. This
combination had driven him since several years before to seek
unsuccesfully the assistance of Hitler’s Germany.
In Baghdad
Husaini met people who had been active over years in trying to
implement Arab nationalism on a deeply segregated society, a rather
hopeless effort in a country which counted a large number of Kurds
among its population and a majority of Arab Shi’ites who were
not keen on a Greater Arabia which would have turned them into a
small minority among the mainly Sunni Arab peoples. Nevertheless the
dominantly Sunni political elite believed in the strength of the
imagery they used in their nationalist endeavor: the strong state,
the national awakening and the need for a strong personal leadership
as they encountered it in neighboring states such as Turkey, Iran,
but also in European Fascism. This imagery met a certain sympathy
with Germany which had been brought into nationalist curricula of
schools and army by the former Iraqi Ottoman officers who had
accompanied Iraq’s first king Faisal into the country after
they had fought under him in the Arab revolt of World War I. During
their officer education on Istanbul academies they had been taught by
German instructors, and some had been sent to Germany for further
study and training. Some of these officers became crucial figures in
the formation of the Iraqi state and occupied high ranks in pivotal
institutions such as the army. However, Germany was never much more
than a remote example in Iraqi nationalist imagery, and in the 1930s
there were only few attempts to increase economic and cultural
exchange which never came to a level to challenge the British
political, economic and cultural influence in Iraq. Palestinian Arab
nationalists approached several German diplomatic missions in the
Arab world in order to gain financial support in their struggle, but
they were always turned down.
However,
there was an ambitious group among German diplomats who regarded the
Arab East as their starting point of a career. An outstanding
character in this framework was Fritz Grobba. Grobba is an example of
a further triangular construction in the framework of Middle East
diplomacy. The first and only German envoy to Iraq between 1932 and
1939 had a good reputation among Arab nationalists in Iraq following
his personal efforts to exert influence on Iraqi politicians and to
create sympathy for the Nazi regime. In the same time Grobba was a
protagonist of a faction of Middle East specialists in the German
Foreign Ministry. They favoured a strong commitment of Nazi-Germany
for Arab nationalism. This group was opposed to a group of diplomats
that had started their career in the oriental adventures of the
German Reich during World War I. It appears that much of the
controversy about Nazi-Germany’s political role in the Middle
East and the commitment during wartime functioned along the lines of
envy and personal dislike between diverging factions in the German
foreign service. At the end of the day the Arab politicians fell
victim to tactical moves and promises made in order to preserve
personal influence.
Uthman Kamal
Haddad’s mission to Berlin shows how the emissary had to weigh
promises and reservations of the different German players he
encountered. In that context we find the record of a German
declaration as proposed by the Arab emissary. At one point it
mentions that the Arabs would claim the right to solve the ”Jewish
Question” in Palestine according to the German model. Naturally
this formulation gives rise to a lot of painful questions. However, a
comparison of several sources gives hints that this clause entered
the respective document rather through personal interference of the
German diplomat Fritz Grobba than through a deliberate adoption of
Nazi principles from the Arab side. Clearly, this event was driven by
dynamics of the Arab-German-Jewish triangle: Jews were involved as
victims of Nazi-German racism, but in the same time as one of several
opponents of the Arab nationalists in the framework of their
anti-imperialist efforts. The Arabs were confronted with a set-up
they could not see through at this moment in history.
Peter Wien,
M.A. M.St.
Zentrum
Moderner Orient, Berlin
Kirchweg
33
14129
Berlin
Tel.:
0049-30-80307-224
peter.wien@rz.hu-berlin.de
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August 2001