Alliance of Evil, the Grand Mufti & the Nazis
Both the Nazis and the Grand Mufti were looking to extend the Final Solution to the Middle East – to broaden the map of extermination beyond Europe’s borders.
In 2017, the National Library of Israel revealed the discovery of a telegram from the Reichsführer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. This damning document, sent on the 26th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration (1943) lays bare the level of ideological kinship between the Nazis and Jihadists, and their common cause of destroying the Jewish people. Himmler wrote in laudatory terms:
“To the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini,
The National-Socialist Movement of the Greater German Reich has since its inception upheld the fight against World Jewry.
It is for this reason that it closely follows the struggle of the freedom-seeking Arabs – and particularly in Palestine – against the Jewish invaders.
The common recognition of the enemy and the joint struggle against it is what creates the firm foundation between Germany and freedom-seeking Muslims around the world.
In this spirit, I am pleased to convey to you, on the anniversary of the execrable Balfour Declaration, warm wishes for your continued struggle until the great victory.
Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler”1
To put things into perspective, between 1942 and 1943, Operation Reinhard murdered over 1.7 million Jews in Poland (indeed, in one particularly intense and frenzied period of murder, 1.47 million Jews were killed in approximately 100 days in 1942). In the words of one mathematical analyst (Lewi Stone): “The Holocaust kill rate is some 10 times higher than estimates suggested by authorities on comparative genocide.”2 This was who the Mufti and his followers were in bed with. Indeed, Husseini later wrote that Himmler personally informed him in the summer of 1943 that the Nazis had killed 3 million Jews to date.3
Following his conviction in absentia for his role in fuelling the Hebron Massacre (1929), Husseini soon fled to Germany in 1941. Once in Germany, the Mufti made a declaration of Axis support for destroying the Jewish Home in the British mandate. He met with both Mussolini and Hitler seeking their support, along with other key figures (including Himmler and Ribbentrop). In one of the multiple drafts he sought approval for, it declared that “[the Axis Powers] accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”4
In other words, the Mufti was looking to extend the Final Solution to the Middle East – to broaden the map of extermination beyond Europe’s borders. This appealed greatly to Hitler, who declared to Husseini that: “Germany is determined to call on the European nations one by one to solve the Jewish problem and, at the proper moment, to address the same appeal to non-European peoples.”5
Indeed, in a private meeting with Hitler, Husseini called the Arabs “Germany’s natural friends” due to their common enemies of the English and the Jews.6 Subsequently, in their conversation, Hitler responded that at the hour of Arab liberation: “Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.” Furthermore, “[I]n that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world.”
Despite his own racist objections to Arabs (Hitler refused to shake Husseini’s hand or drink coffee with him during their meeting), Hitler was celebrated as a quasi-prophet in the Middle East and a supposed liberator from the bonds of colonialism and international Jewry. To this end, the Mufti proved to be a valuable mouthpiece to stir up hate and violence in the mandate (he was provided with a monthly budget of 750,000 Reichsmark to fund his jihadist activities).
However, the Nazis were not content with mere “trouble-making”. Much more tangible measures were required. Soon the evil apparatus perfect in Europe was slowly rolled out in the Middle East. In July 1942, a dedicated SS unit was created to operate behind the lines of the advancing German army in North Africa. Led by SS Obersturmbannführer, Walther Rauff, their purpose was to purge the conquered/liberated populations of their Jews.7 For Rauff had been integral to the development of roaming extermination vehicles, which the Germans used to murder Jews behind the lines of their military campaigns in Poland and the USSR. Furthermore, the SS established labour camps in German territories including Tunisia which would claim the lives of 2,500 Tunisian Jews. With the apparatus in place and plenty of eager volunteers in the region, the Nazis looked set to extend the murder of innocent Jews across the Middle East (including to the Jews now residing in their ancient homeland in what would become Israel).8
Save for the heroic stand of the British army at El Alemein in the Fall of 1942, there would have been no stopping the Nazis. Thankfully, Alexander and Montgomery’s determination proved enough to stop the advance of the Desert Fox and helped to turn the tide of the war.
Despite this setback, Husseini remained in Berlin for the remainder of the war, broadcasting his hatred into the Middle East in the hopes of inciting the Arab populations against the Jews and working with the Nazis to at the very least comprehensively implement the Final Solution in Europe. In one report, the Mufti is reported to have visited Auschwitz and scolded the camp officials for not working diligently enough. Indeed, following the defeat of the Nazis, Yugoslavia sought to try the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting more than 20,000 Muslim volunteers to serve in the SS who joined the killing of Jews in Croatia & Hungary.9
Wherever he could, the Mufti drove forward the persecution and slaughter of the Jewish people. During the Nuremberg Trials, Dieter Wisliceny – a Deputy of Adolf Eichmann and who was executed as a war criminal – made the level of Husseini’s complicity in the Shoah clear for the world to see:
“The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry...and had been the permanent collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan. According to my opinion, the Grand Mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities...the extermination of European Jewry. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.”
Yet despite being arrested in France, the Mufti somehow managed to escape and lived out the rest of his days in Egypt (a very suitable retirement home given Egypt’s several wars of annihilation waged against the Jewish state between 1948 and 1974 [the year of Husseini’s death]).
After the war, the Mufti wrote in his memoirs that: “Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world.”10 His purpose and that of his followers were clear, this was not about self-determination or any of loftier idea. Their common cause was the elimination of the Jewish people wherever it could be achieved. In the pursuit of his ultimate objective he was unsuccessful, but there should be no mistake that Jewish blood is on Husseini's hands – be they the Jews of Europe or Hebron.
The National Library of Israel blog, “Revealed: SS Chief Heinrich Himmler’s Warm Wishes to Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini” (2017): https://blog.nli.org.il/en/himmler_/
Lewi Stone, “Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide” [2019] 5(1) Science Advances 7292: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6314819
Gilbert Achcar, “The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives” (Henry Holt & Company, 2010)
Jewish Virtual Library, “The Mufti and the Fuhrer (November 1941)”: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-mufti-and-the-f-uuml-hrer
John Rosenthal, “The Mufti and the Holocaust” (Hoover Institution, March 2008): https://www.hoover.org/research/mufti-and-holocaust
Times of Israel, “Full Official Record: What the Mufti said to Hitler” (October 2015): https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitler/
Jan Friedmann, “New Research Taints Image of Desert Fox Rommel” (Der Spiegel, May 2007): https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/world-war-ii-new-research-taints-image-of-desert-fox-rommel-a-484510.html
Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, “Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine” (Enigma Books, 2010)
Jewish Virtual Library, “The Mufti and the Fuhrer (November 1941)”: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-mufti-and-the-f-uuml-hrer
Shimon Ohayon, “Exposing the myth of the Arab bystander to the Holocaust” (Jerusalem Post, January 2014): https://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/exposing-the-myth-of-the-arab-bystander-to-the-holocaust-339430