Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine

273 Pages·2010·3.56 MB·English

by  Klaus-Michael Mallmann

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Klaus-Michael Mallmann
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Nazi Palestine

The Plans for the Extermination
of the Jews in Palestine

Published in Association with the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Enigma Books
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The International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by
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New York
www.enigmabooks.com

Published in Association with the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise without the written permission of Enigma Books.

The assertions, arguments, and conclusions contained herein are those of the author
or other contributors. The do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Publications of the Ludwigsburg Research Unit
Stuttgart University, Vol. 8
Edited by Klaus-Michael Mallmann

Copyright © 2005 by WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), Darmstadt
Copyright © 2010 by Enigma Books for the English Translation

Translated from the German by Krista Smith

Original German title:
Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina

First English Edition

ISBN: 978-1-929631-93-3
eISBN: 978-1-936274-18-5

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication

Mallmann, Klaus-Michael
[Halbmond und Hakenkreuz. English]
Nazi Palestine : the plans to exterminate the Jews in Palestine / Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin
Cüppers ; [translated from the German by Krista Smith]. -- 1st English ed.

p. ; cm.

Original German title: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina.
“Publications of the Ludwigsburg Research Unit, Stuttgart University, Vol. 8”--T.p. verso
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-929631-93-3

1. Jewish-Arab relations--History--1917-1948. 2. Palestine--History--1917-1948. 3. Jews—Palestine--
History. I. Cüppers, Martin, 1966- II. Smith, Krista. III. Title. IV. Title: Halbmond und Hakenkreuz.
English

DS119.7 .M3513 2010
956.9404
Contents

Introduction vii

I. Jihad in Palestine: The Arab Rejection of the Jews 3

II. Nazi Sympathies: Middle East Supporters of
the Third Reich 29

III. Shifting Priorities: Jewish Emigration and
Germany’s Arab Policy 44

IV. War in North Africa and Mesopotamia:
Cyrenaica and Iraq 56

V. After Barbarossa: Germany’s Mediterranean Strategy
in 1941–1942 73

VI. The Grand Mufti: Axis Ally 88

VII. Rommel and the Road to Cairo 102

VIII. The Einsatzkommando and the Afrika Korps 116

IX. Arab Opinion 126

X. The Jews of Palestine React 140

XI. The Turning Point: El Alamein and the
End of the Caucasus Option 154

XII. Einsatzkommando Tunis: The Second Front 167

XIII. Muslim Units in the Wehrmacht, SD,
and Waffen SS 185
XIV. Endgame: Agents and Infiltrators 198

Epilogue 204

Abbreviations 219
Archival Sources 223
Bibliography 226
Index 243

Introduction

T he economic and financial restructuring known as “globalization” has
radically transformed societies and national economies that for better or
worse have become increasingly interconnected. But the lowering of barriers
and greater interaction has created a clash of cultures and even violent resis-
tance to the cultural, economic, and financial standardization that the West has
imposed on the world through a form of non-violent coercion. An increasingly
militant encounter between Western values and the most radicalized, funda-
mentalist elements of Islam turned violent since the 2001 attacks on New
York, taken as the symbol of Western domination and oppression. The
struggle between the West and Islamic radicalism has not stopped over the
course of the intervening years, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to Iraq, and
present among these new conflicts the 60-year Israeli-Arab and Palestinian
antagonism that appears destined to remain without a tangible solution.1
This book offers no prognostications regarding the conflict; rather, by
examining the past structure of the clash in Palestine, the authors seek to trace
and analyze the historical dimensions of the origins of the broader conflict in
one of its most important arenas. This volume returns to a very specific period
in German history and examines the relations of the Third Reich with the Arab
Islamic world. The shared hatred of the Yishuv (Hebrew for “settlement”), and
of the Jewish minority in the British Mandate of Palestine, created an in-
creasing convergence leading to a momentous shift in German foreign policy,
which in the late 1930s switched its focus from seeking the acceleration of
Jewish emigration to providing direct support for Arab nationalists. The ideo-

1. Primarily Lewis, Wut; on Iran: Küntzel, Spaltung.
viii Nazi Palestine
logical consensus, the shared perception of common threats, the protection of
one’s specific cultural identity, and notions of achievement, was quickly
followed even before the outbreak of World War II by shipments of weapons
and financial support given to the Islamic nationalists. Direct German inter-
vention in the Arab world began with the arrival of the Afrika Korps in Libya
in February 1941. For the National Socialists, this event was directly related to
far-reaching strategic plans for the conquest of the entire Middle East.
Numerous joint German-Arab plots intending to expel the British from
their land route to India were also to eliminate the Jewish national homeland
promised by the Balfour Declaration. The culmination of these plans came in
the summer of 1942, when the extermination of the Jews that had begun in
Europe was to be expanded to the Yishuv as well, with the active assistance of
local Arab collaborators. Although the German units required for this under-
taking were ready and waiting for their marching orders, Rommel’s defeat at El
Alamein prevented the implementation of these plans. Collaboration with the
Arabs did not end, however, with the military defeat in Egypt. The Axis forces
landing in Tunisia in the fall of 1942 was followed by plans to foment revolu-
tion in the states of the Maghreb using Arab agents and to launch infiltration
attempts in the Middle East. This came at the same time as the broad effort at
recruitment of Muslims into the Wehrmacht and SS (Schutzstaffel). Certain
Arab expatriates knew about the killing of the European Jews and, in view of
the looming defeat, personally advocated a partial expansion of the extermina-
tion efforts.
Until now there has been no comprehensive and scientific study of the
period between 1933 and 1945 tracing the development of German-Arab re-
lations, with an analysis of their philosophical affinities, and a discussion of the
joint schemes shared by the Germans and the Arabs. In general, existing
studies end with the outbreak of the war in 1939 or, at times, with the pro-Axis
coup in Iraq in March-April 1941, thus omitting the decisive phase of 1941–
1942—the period of the impending occupation of the Middle East. In addi-
tion, many authors tend to be largely uncritical, by playing down the relation-
ship between Arab nationalists and National Socialists, and dismissing anti-
Semitic propaganda and action in the Islamic world as an expression of cultural
differences, and, warning in this regard, against a “Eurocentric” view. One sig-
nificant exception is Matthias Küntzel’s study Djihad und Judenhaß (Jihad and
Anti-Semitism). Though Küntzel writes without examining archival sources, he
convincingly conveys the ideological affinities that existed between National
Socialism and political Islam.2 Reference should also be made to Klaus

2. Küntzel, Djihad.
Introduction ix
Gensicke’s impressive biography of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem and a loyal supporter of Hitler.3 The fact that the Palestinian Jews’
very existence was under direct threat because of the presence of the Einsatz-
kommando of the security police and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) assigned to the
Afrika Korps has been until recently completely overlooked by academic
researchers.4 Helmut Krausnick, who is still considered the leading expert on
the Einsatzgruppen,5 had joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in January 1932
while he was still a student.6 In 1942, despite severe war shortages, he was
rewarded with a second printing of his dissertation.7 He understandably failed
to undertake that research.

****

We must thank the many people whose assistance made this book pos-
sible: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft in Darmstadt immediately declared
itself ready to accept the volume into its program, and its editor, Daniel
Zimmermann, attended to the book’s development in exemplary fashion. At
the archives we visited, we found many professionals who were ready to listen
and eager to help. We would also like to thank several colleagues who offered
advice, criticism, and help: Dr. Andrej Angrick (Berlin), Dr. Jochen Böhler
(Warsaw), Dr. Jürgen Matthäus (Washington, D.C.), Dr. Dan Michman
(Ramat-Gan/Jerusalem), Dr. Jacek Młynarczyk (Warsaw), Dr. Wolfram Pyta
(Stuttgart), and Stephen Tyas (St. Albans). Dr. Manfred Rommel (Stuttgart)
willingly provided us with information about his father, the former commander
of Afrika Korps. Special thanks go to Heidrun Baur (Ludwigsburg). For
months she obtained mountains of literature, collected texts, proofread, com-
piled back matter, and generally did much more than should be expected of a
secretary at our research center.
We would like to dedicate this book to two great Jewish historians, whose
lives were closely connected to the events that we describe and analyze here:
Dr. Arnold Paucker, director of the Leo Baeck Institute in London from 1959
to 2001, and Dr. Yehuda Bauer, professor emeritus for Holocaust studies at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the International Institute
for Holocaust Research at the Yad Vashem memorial from 1996 to 2000. Both
kindly shared their personal recollections and impressions of Palestine in 1941–

3. Gensicke.
4. Addressed for the first time by Mallmann/Cüppers.
5. Krausnick, Hitlers.
6. BAB, NSDAP-Zentralkartei 3200/L 0083, Helmut Krausnick membership card; cf. Berg, p. 405.
7. Krausnick, Holsteins.