Hitler's Muslim moment

“Islam and Nazi Germany's War” is a book about how Hitler's Third Reich, with varied degrees of success, attempted to win the allegiance of various Muslim groups. Books of this kind usually concentrate on the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husayni (often spelled Al-Husseini) and his personal dealings with Adolf Hitler. By contrast, David Motadel gives the reader a more panorama-type overview of Nazi strategy and tactics towards the Muslim populations of the Middle East and North Africa, the Balkans and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The Grand Mufti is mentioned, of course, but only as one player among many. Motadel also attempts to place the Nazi wooing of Muslims in a broader context.

Germany attempted to win the Muslim world already during World War I, even instigating a formal call for jihad against the Allies from the caliphate of Constantinople and a similar call from the Shia Muslims at Najaf. At the time, both Constantinople and Najaf were controlled by the mostly Muslim Ottoman Empire, a German ally. These calls for a jihad fell on deaf ears, however. The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the Young Turks, a modernizing movement regarded as apostate by traditional Muslims, who therefore considered this particular exhortation to “holy war” hypocritical. Despite the failure, the idea of a German-Muslim alliance against Britain and France became a staple of right-wing German “geopolitics” after the war. The Nazis were initially indifferent to the Muslim question, since Hitler's original strategy was to expand towards Russia, letting Britain, France and Italy keep their colonial possessions in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. After the defeat of France, Hitler permitted the collaborationist Vichy regime to keep the French colonial possessions. As Nazi Germany expanded its military operations, however, the Muslim question came to the fore. It became especially pressing after the setback at Stalingrad. Both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS recruited Muslims en masse to boost the Nazi war machine.

The Nazis saw Islam as a potential ally due to its real or perceived hostility to British and French colonialism, Bolshevism and the Jews. Nazi strategists interpreted the aspirations of Muslims in politicized, pan-Islamist and frequently anti-Semitic terms. Al-Husayni was put forward as a kind of pan-Islamist leader, toured the German-controlled regions of the Balkans and sent messages to the Muslims in the occupied zones of the Soviet Union. Dealing with the Muslims as a unified bloc based on religion also made it possible for the Nazi authorities to sidestep the more complicated problem of local nationalism and the future political status of German-occupied Muslim regions. The Nazis didn't want to encourage pan-Arabism or pan-Turkism, two movements which could have complicated the political picture considerably. By contrast, concessions to the outer strapping of religion were easily made: the German military could order the re-opening of mosques, permit the keeping of Muslim holidays, hand out pocket Qurans, etc. While most Nazi propaganda directed at Muslims was political, often mentioning the real or perceived oppression of Muslims in British colonies or Stalin's Soviet Union, attempts were also made to tie-in Nazism with the religion of Islam. Thus, Nazi propaganda often quoted anti-Jewish passages from the Quran, and used Muslim “feasts of sacrifice” to preach sacrifice for the war effort. A more quirky example was the attempt to portray Hitler as the Mahdi (a Muslim Messianic savior figure) or even identify him with Jesus (in Muslim eschatology, Jesus returns shortly before Judgment Day to create a Muslim state centred on Jerusalem).

The Nazi attempts to appease Muslims and cultivate their support met with varied fates. In North Africa and the Middle East, public opinion was divided, but more Muslims fought on the Allied side. In India, the jihadists in the Northwestern Frontier Province supported Germany, but the main Muslim organization, the Muslim League, remained loyal to the British Raj during the war. In the Balkans, by contrast, many Muslim groups collaborated with the Germans, fearing Serb nationalists and Communist partisans. The Chetnik irregulars around Serb nationalist leader Draza Mihailovic were particularly notorious for massacring Muslim civilians. Nominally, the Muslim areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina were under Croatian suzerainty, Croatia being a Catholic puppet state of the Reich. In practice, the Nazi German authorities dealt with the Bosnian Muslims separately, kindling hopes that an “independent” Muslim state under German protection would eventually be formed. When the war turned decisively against the Germans, however, the Bosnian Muslims switched sides, many siding with Tito's partisans (who opposed both Serb and Croat nationalists) or forming independent “green” detachments. The biggest success for the “pro-Muslim” policy was registered in the Muslim areas of the Soviet Union. Many Crimean Tatars and Caucasians collaborated with the Reich and joined various Muslim units of the German Army or the Waffen-SS. Stalin's revenge was terrible: entire Muslim peoples were forcibly deported to Central Asia, the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens being the most well known victims of this collective punishment. In contrast to the Balkans, the Nazi collaborators on the Eastern front remained loyal to the Third Reich until the bitter end, knowing very well that death awaited anyone who fell into the hands of the advancing Red Army.

Of course, German attitudes “on the ground” were often different from the official ones. During the interwar period, German right-wing propaganda had often been anti-Muslim and, in addition, anti-Black. After World War I, parts of Germany had been occupied by French colonial troops, many of them Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa. The average Germans soldiers were steeped in racist hatred, and often mistreated Muslims in North Africa, especially those of darker complexion. Similar problems existed on the Eastern front, since “Tatars” (a catch-all term for many non-Slavic ethnic groups in the Soviet Union) had been depicted as “Untermenschen” in pre-war Nazi propaganda. German officers and the SS tried as best they could to implement the new policy from Berlin. This was singularly ineffective in the case of Germany's Axis allies. The tug-of-war between Croatia's anti-Muslim Ustasha regime and the Germans concerning the Bosnian Muslims have already been mentioned. The Italians were also openly disdainful of Muslims, and so were the Orthodox Christian Romanians and Bulgarians, the former occupying some Soviet territory, the latter holding Yugoslav Macedonia. Two Muslim groups were targeted even by the Nazis themselves: Jewish converts to Islam, and Muslim Roma (Gypsies), who were both considered racially inferior and therefore fit for extermination.

The most fascinating (if that's the word for it) part of Motadel's book deals with the private attitudes towards Islam and Muslims of top Nazi leaders. It turns out that both Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler (the top leader of the SS and one of Hitler's confidantes) had a very positive appreciation of Islam, or whatever they understood of it. Himmler said in conversation with Al-Husayni that Europe in general and Germany in particular would have been better off had the Muslim Ottomans conquered Vienna! In contrast to Christianity, which Himmler saw as weak, unmanly and “Jewish”, Islam was a manly warrior creed excellently fit for the mentality of the Germanic pagans. Hitler agreed with Himmler's musings. He was bizarrely fascinated by a contrafactual historical scenario, in which Charles Martell after having defeated the “racially inferior” Arab Muslims, converted to Islam himself, thereby uniting the Islamic warrior creed with the German Volk, conquering and strengthening all of medieval Europe in the process. During the war against the Soviet Union, Hitler repeatedly asserted that Muslim troops were more reliable than (Christian) Armenian and Georgian ditto (the Georgian collaborators were the protégés of Alfred Rosenberg, the chief Nazi ideologist, who presumably didn't see eye to eye with his Führer on this point). In the bunker at the very end of the war, Hitler supposedly declared that Nazi policy towards the Muslim world had been a mistake. Nazi Germany had been too coy and pragmatic. Instead, the Reich should have actively and systematically incited the Muslims against the British and the French from the start, even granting independence to Vichy's and Italy's Muslim colonies. The results of such a Nazi policy are frightening to contemplate!

“Islam and Nazi Germany's War” ends on a cautionary note. During the Cold War, the United States “took over” those Nazi Muslim collaborators who had managed to escape to the West. The U.S. began cultivating Islam as a bulwark ("the green belt") against Soviet Communism, the most notable example being the arming of the Afghan mujahedeen during their war against the Soviet Union and the leftist PDPA regime in Kabul. While the author doesn't say so, this strategy had a bitter aftertaste. Think 9/11…

Since “Islam and Nazi Germany's War” is a scholarly study, the book is voluminous and can be difficult to get through. However, it's not badly written, and also contain interesting photographic material. Photos include Muslim SS recruits praying, German soldiers chatting with veiled women in Sarajevo, and the notorious Nazi-Muslim Ramadan parade in Kislovodsk in Northern Caucasus. The notes are very extensive and contain a lot of tips for further reading.

Five stars.