Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (10 page)

German empathy for the Arabs was not limited to the political sphere. For many years, German scholars had studied the "books, spirit, civilization and scholarship of the Arabs." The broadcast informed its Arab and Muslim listeners that many institutes of Oriental studies existed in Germany; these institutions created a "bond of mutual understanding between Arabs and Germany." German scholars devoted particular attention "to the prophet and his life story." Thereby theywere able to "appreciate and admire Islam" and arrive at insights that "can be regarded as the greatest scholarly investigations about the Koran and Islam studies." Germans had also turned to the study of the Arabs' "new national movements." The German press and media had praised the revolts and the leaders of revolts against British and French colonialism in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. "With heartfelt feelings of friendship for the Arabs and with full sympathy for them, Germany has followed the revolt in Palestine, which England ignited and which the Jews, who want to rob the Arabs of their fatherland, continued with the English." As a result of all of these things, friendship between the Arab peoples and Germany was "on a firm foundation" and would "remain so in the future and bear fruit. 1141

In a remarkable blend of an attack on the idea of a pluralist, liberal democracy with an evocation of fundamentalist Islam, the December 19, 1940, "religious talk" of the week again stressed the link between Islam and "community."

Oh, servants of God! Islam calls on Muslims, indeed it commands you to be brothers, to do good and avoid evil. It gives you these commandments because they are useful to you and are in your interest. Nothing leads to the good and happiness of the individual more than community, unity, and cooperation. Con flict and division, on the other hand, are an incurable disease that has already led many people to ruin.

If you look at nations today, you will see that a nation's strength depends on its unity and cooperation. However, if its [social] classes are split, the structure of the state collapses. Strength comes from unity. Weakness comes from division. No distinction between rich and poor should exist other than work. The young, upward-coming nations represent this idea, nations that have replaced weakness with strength and defeat with recovery.

Oh Muslims! It is thus no surprise that Islam calls you to unity and cooperation and forbids disunity and conflict. In God's book and in the traditions of the Prophet you will find many verses that make this point. In the Koran, one reads: "Be loyal to God and do not divide yourselves!" The Prophet said: "The believer should act toward other believers as a building whose parts support one another.....

Oh Muslims! Your enemy ... has tried to divide you and disperse your unity so that different parts of your people will fight one another. As a result your enemies can more easily rule, oppress, and exploit you. As there is no bond amongst you, it's no surprise that you're now in a condition that your enemy hoped to put you in. God will not help you until you unite and heal your souls from the sickness of this conflict. Victory and glory will only be yours when you are unified and no longer engage in conflict! Today, it is more important than ever for Muslims to unify and to stick firmly together. May God help you and lead you to this unification! Truly, he is the answer and the salvation!!42

This text offered religious legitimation to the fascist and Nazi association of weakness and national decline with pluralist, democratic institutions. The Nazi lesson from Germany's defeat in World War I and from the postwar era was that Germany had suffered from too much democracy. The path to strength and renewal required an end of division offered by dictatorship. This broadcast from Berlin made an implicit link between, on the one hand, the Nazis' totalitarian vision of the "people's community;" the Volksgemeinschaft, and, on the other hand, the association of strength with unity and faith stemming from passages in the Koran.

Partisanship for Arabs in Palestine also was present in these early broadcasts. It remained a central aspect of the Arabic-language broadcasts throughout the war. In "England's Betrayal of the Arabs in Palestine" of December 24, 1940, German radio declared that "from pre-Islamic times" to the outbreak of World War I, Palestine was an "undivided part of Arab land. Its inhabitant consisted of pure race Arabs [ reinrassigen Amber]." After "Islam defeated the Jews" they (the Jews) had no share in the country and finally had to leave it "to stir up disorder and harm elsewhere in the world." The broadcast attacked the Balfour Declaration and its support for establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. It described the declaration as being the product of Jewish money and support during World War I. "Arabs, remember again the rivers of blood that had to flow as a result of that Declaration and this promise [to the Jews]." With reference to what it described as "Arabs' futile sacrifices" during World War I, the text concluded with a verse from the Koran: "Memory serves the believers."43 As the Arabs, according to this narrative, were the real victims of contemporary history in 1940, it was a religious duty to keep the memory of this victimization alive.

The "religious weekly talks" often affirmed generally if not universally held values to be distinctive contributions of Islam. A broadcast of December 26, 1940, drew a sinister implication from the value of truth rather than falsehood. He who made false statements in order to "mislead or blind the people as today some newspaper people in the Orient do, is a hypocritical liar and a traitor to his fatherland and his people. At the same time, however, he violates the laws of his religion. These laws prescribe that such a man must be fought, yes he must be killed [ja getotet werden muss] because he is a harm to the nation and will slowly bring it to ruin." The text closed with: "Oh Muslims! Be truthful ... and think of God's word: `Oh believers, fear God and be among the truthful.... If you are truthful with God, it will be better for you. 11144 With religious arguments, it made the case not only for censorship but for murder of those who disagree.

The "cultural talk" of December 31,1940, "Truth and the Strength of Belief," used a famous story from the Koran to make a political point. An "enemy" of Mohammed tried to assure him that he actually had no hostile intentions. The son of this "hypocrite" told the Prophet that his father intended to kill Mohammed. If Mohammed wanted to kill the father, the son begged permission to do the deed himself because, as the Koran stated, he feared that Mohammed would order someone else to kill his father. In that case he would be forced to take revenge for his father's death and kill a believer for the sake of an unbeliever. The text continues: "What truthfulness and strength of belief, but also strength of sacrifice is expressed in these words! The love for his father was surpassed by the honor of his belief." Mohammed declined to kill the man and instead extended his pity. The son's religiously based willingness "to devote his private interests to the general welfare of Islam" was a great example of "loyalty and sincerity" and one all Arabs should remember.45 Here again the political and religiously grounded collectivist message was clear. The broadcast praised this devout believer because he placed the demands of religious belief ahead of the life of an individual, in this case, his own father.

The broadcast of January 8,1941, began with attacks on England and the Balfour Declaration and then introduced anti-Semitic arguments.46 It told its listeners that in 1917, Balfour "met often with an American Jew" who was "a fanatical member of the Zionists." These meetings were said to have led the British government to "promise Palestine to the Jews." The Balfour Declaration was a history of a "threefold betrayal ... the most shameful hypocrisy and deceptions ever in history." Britain's promises to the Arabs were forgotten at the Versailles Peace Conference. Palestine, Iran, and Transjordan remained under English control. "These events are the foundation of the great Arabic freedom struggle [Grossarabischen Freiheitskampf] for justice, honor, and freedom of the Arabs. 1147 The phrase, "great Arabic freedom struggle," was a borrowing from the German phrase Grossdeutschen Freiheitskampf, "great German freedom struggle;" which was the term used in some Nazi accounts to describe World War II. The broadcast drew a parallel between Nazi Germany's "great freedom struggle" and that of the Arabs.48

On January 16,1941, a religious homily addressed the supposed connection between "selfishness" and national decline. It presented Germany after 1933 as a model for the Arab and Islamic world.

Oh Muslims. Nothing is uglier than selfishness and favoring the personal welfare over the good of the community. Selfishness is an incurable disease. If a nation succumbs to it, it will not only be weakened but will slowly collapse because the individual members of the state will be in constant conflict with one another as they look after their personal interests. Because Islam is the religion of a community, not the individual person, and prescribes mutual aid, it orders every single believer to forget the self and to do everything for his fellows. The highest of all social orders demands that the Muslims be members of a firm and equal community.... Extreme selflessness of early Muslims ... gave them strength, power, and glory. However, the later generations have forgotten so many of the commandments of their religion and have become egoists instead of being selfless. They have borne the consequences of their unbelief. They have fallen into weakness and division.

Muslims should see that "the strength of the powerful, young nations [i.e., Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany] lies in the fact that the social relationships between all classes of the people are strong and close. As Mohammed's many statements demonstrate, Islam demands the same from you.... May God help the Muslims to act according to the commandments. After their decline, may he make them powerful again so that they can be victorious over their ene- mies."49 Hitler told the Germans that they had lost World War I and suffered economic and political crises under the Weimar Republic because of internal division. Hence one unified Reich, one people, and one Fiihrer would bring Germany strength and renewal. The text of January 16 presented the same themes about the virtues of uniformity and the dangers of individualism, but in religious terms. Again, Nazi radio invoked Islam and the Koran, not contemporary Nazi texts, to support these arguments. As past division had led to weakness, political revival called for combining the injunctions of the Koran and Islam with the modern example set by the German dictatorship.

In the text of several broadcasts of January 31 and February 1, 1941, Munzel made a connection between propaganda in modern times and in Mohammed's. Propaganda, he wrote, was one of the weapons needed to make great ideas easier to understand and convey to a broader audience. Early Islam had faced many opponents. The Prophet not only turned to the Koran to spread the ideas of Islam but to poetry as well. Poets had confronted the enemies of Islam and answered their attacks. Islam, in contrast to England, offered propaganda that was true.50 Here again, the entry point into Arab and Muslim hearts and minds lay in the National Socialist reading of the Koran and in its interpretation of the traditions of Islam, not in texts by Hitler or other European exponents of Nazism and fascism.

On February 6,1941, Berlin radio returned to the connection between the erosion of religious faith and political decline, on one hand, and religious revival and political strength, on the other.

Oh Muslims, you have been in a deep sleep and amnesia for a long time. In that time, you became prey for all, for you permitted everything. You experienced this weakness and decline because you turned away from the correct path of your religion and because you acted contrary to it and did what was forbidden. You've done much injustice and many bad deeds and filled your minds with empty notions. Therefore you've become a community that no longer has any bonds. The wealthy among you use the weak, and the ignorant among you raise themselves with pride over the learned. Therefore your strength is divided and your weapons have become dull. The word of the Koran now applies to you. "You have forgotten God. Therefore he himself has forgotten you and thus you now are among the guilty." Oh Muslims, I should show you a way that will rescue you from this torture. "Believe in God and his prophets and fight for God with your goods and your Soul ."51

Belief in God, according to Berlin's Arabic broadcast, was "the foundation for all good deeds." It had been "unshakable among the earlier Muslims" and helped them "overcome all misfortune." God, the broadcast continued, told the Muslims to fight for him with their goods and souls. The result was a battle "of the soul and the sword" without which a nation cannot exist. So long as Muslims fought both battles "they were strong and were able to frighten God's enemies.

God's religion became widespread, and a powerful state emerged. Today, however, Muslims believe with their tongues but not with their hearts. They have turned away from the battle for God and turned to the unbelievers in hopes that they will get help from them in their hour of need. Now, however, the hour has struck. Oh Muslims, wake up from your long sleep and show the world that you are God's followers, firmly defend his religion and always recall that "God sees all who only do good and that those who do evil will be seen by God." This is the path I call you to take. May God give you work that satisfies you. May he take you on the path of good and help you against your enemies. Truly, he is all power- ful.52

As a rich body of scholarship has informed us, the relationship between Christianity and Nazism was closer than postwar denunciations of its atheist or pagan character suggested.53 Although Hitler presented himself as a prophet, his anti-Semitism drew on centuries of Christian-inspired hatred, and the liturgy of Nazi mass rallies drew on older religious themes, National Socialism was fundamentally a secular political ideology. Mein Kampf, not the New Testament, was its bible.54 But in its appeals to Arabs and Muslims, Nazi radio advocated a Muslim religious revival. Its message echoed the appeals of Muslim fundamentalists for an awakening from an alleged "long sleep" and a return to the message of the Koran as a precondition for Islamic political resurgence.