Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world

Relations between Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and leaders in the Arab world ranged from indifference, resistance, collaboration, to emulation in some instances, and was often influenced by propaganda and the efforts of Nazi collaborators.

Quotes

• Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. ... This was the decisive struggle; on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England's power for their ends....the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.
  • statements from Hitler to al-Husseini: Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Series D, Vol XIII, London, 1964, p. 881 Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Series D, Vol XIII, London, 1964, p. 881 Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939–1945, ed. by Walther Hubatsch (Frankfurt: Bernard und Graefe, 1962) pp. 129–39

• The grand mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and his active involvement in the Jewish genocide have figured prominently in Israeli efforts to prove the tangible collaboration between the "Arab world" and Nazis. Here, it is imperative to distinguish between "official" and academic efforts. Although scholars are certainly more cautious in depicting the Husayni and Arab-Nazi collaboration, sometimes their work mirrors the generalization that indicts Arabs at large as active supporters or sympathizers with Nazism. The Arab-Israeli conflict's escalation and its redefinition as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict reinforced this mutual demonization. On the Israeli-Jewish side, it has triggered an emphasis on Holocaust denial and extensive, sometimes disproportionate, study of the intimate Nazi-mufti collaboration that is embodied by Husayni's unabashed enthusiasm for Nazi antisemitism and his historical role in the atrocities.
  • — Israel Gershoni, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism - Attraction and Repulsion, p. 3.