Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (25 page)

The "Appeal to Arab Youth" was directed to "all young men of the Arabian tribes, whom English propaganda and English military officials are trying, with the use of deception, to convince to join the [British] army; to the Arab volunteers in Palestine; to the Libyan fighters; the indigenous troops for the various Syrian districts; to all youth organizations in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Transjordan." England needed soldiers "to defend its colonies and its `empire,' an empire that is dissolving and disappearing. It needs `armies' to defend its policy of occupation, colonization, and tyranny and to do so under the same flag with the Bolsheviks and the Jews. It wants to drag you into the slaughter so that you will bleed for it and the blood of your youth will be sacrificed. Arabs, stay away from these British maneuvers. Don't believe a word you hear from British officials who are colonizing your country. Don't believe what their slaves and dependents tell you. And rest assured that Germany as well as its allies wish only the best for you and your country." The English "will send you to the front lines to sacrifice you as it has already done with the Palestinians who were sent to Greece and who were abandoned by their soldiers as they retreated." They "sacrificed the French in Dunkirk and they were best of friends. Just as they have sacrificed the Greeks, Serbs, Chinese, Dutch-Indies Indians in Singapore, and the Canadians in Hong Kong." England had "already lost the war, even on the seas, which it claimed to control. Its most recent ally, the U.S.A. with its Jewish government follows it [on the path to defeat]. Do not work for England's colonial policy. Do not sacrifice yourself for an already lost cause. En gland's allies are only the Bolsheviks, who are mistreating your Iranian brothers, and the Jews, who have caused so much Arab blood to flow in Palestine. The hour of liberation approaches. 11136

The almost 300,00 copies of "Borders of the New Zionist Kingdom" included a color map with a flag with Stars of David planted on Jerusalem, Beirut, Amman, Damascus and Aleppo, Mosul and Baghdad, and Alexandria and Cairo. The caption read: "Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chaim Weizmann divide the Arab countries for the Jews." A dotted red line indicated "the borders of the new Zionist kingdom." 137 The text of "The New Kingdom" ("Das Neue Koni- greich"), apparently identical to the text labeled "The New Jewish Kingdom," accompanied the image and was distributed in Syria in July 1942. It included a heavy dose of anti-Jewish themes.

Arabs, do you recognize this flag? We don't think so because it is a new flag. It's the flag of the new kingdom of the Jews thatwill consist of the countries of Palestine, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This new kingdom is supposed to be established according to agreements between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chaim Weizmann in the Middle East with ... [cooperation from] King Abdullah of Transjordan-this traitor to the Arab cause.

The American-English-Jewish statisticians have already figured that one could bring 17 million Jews from all over the world to this new kingdom. Who cares that millions of Arabs already live in these areas and that they inherited the land from the fathers and forefathers? The occupants of the countries will be driven out with the well-known Jewish methods!

The New York Jews made Roosevelt the president of the United States. He has become their strongest tool. Two long-sought goals will be accomplished with the foundation of a new Jewish kingdom: The Jews will have a large national state. The English and the Americans will have a secure fortress, from which they can oppress and exploit the Islamic countries as well as India. Every American who comes to the Arab countries, goes there for the interests of the Jews, whether he knows it or not. While England promises the Arabs freedom and independence after the war, the Jews from all over the world wander [to Palestine] in ever greater groups. Ever larger parts of the fertile soil go into Jewish hands with the help of money from American Jews. In the last three months alone, 23,045 dunom [a quarter of an acre] of fertile soil have gone over to Jewish ownership!

Arabs, do you grasp the complete duplicity of the English and Americans in the difference between their promises and their actions? But this time, the deception of the Arabs of 1918 will not be repeated because all the plans of the English, Americans, and the Jews can only be implemented if England wins the war. And this time, England, with God's help, will not win! For already General Rommel at the head of the brave Axis troops is shaking the last doors of English power!

ARABS! Help your friends achieve their goals: the destruction of the EnglishJewish-American domination. ARABS! OUT WITH THE ENGLISH, JEWS, AND AMERICANS FROM YOUR COUNTRIES! 138

The themes of the inherently expansionist character of Zionism as well as the intimate connection between the Americans, the English, and the Jews remained major themes of Axis propaganda throughout the war.

Conversely, a widely distributed photo of Rashid Ali Kilani being greeted by Hitler in the presence of Foreign Minister Ribbentrop underscored the links between Nazi Germany and this representative of one current of Arab poli- tics.I39 The leaflet "Egypt for the Egyptians" read as follows:

Egyptians!

The hour of freedom is here. Your friends are near. They have come to bring an end to your suffering. They have come to confront the common enemy, the oppressors of the Egyptians and enslavers of the Arabs. There is only one enemy, the English and the hordes they have compelled to their side and their groups of homeless thieves. They are paid by England to devastate your country, oppress and misuse you. They say they are defending your country but they really want your food and your cotton. This is about the whole theft [of Egypt's] goods by the English.

You can fight against them, these homeless riffraff and the bandits that England has sent to your country. Think of your glorious past. Think of the early years of your thousand-year-old culture. Think of Mehemet Ali and Zaghlul Pascha. The Egyptian soul is not dead. It lives and it will give your land new blood, just as the water of the Nile gives fertility and prosperity to your soil. Now is the time. Leave the ranks of the English. Refuse to serve them. Drive them out of your cities. Destroy their weapons. Hide your food-for yourself. Protect your houses-for your women and children. Guard your supplies of water-for you and your animals.

Keep an eye on bridges and dams-for your future.

Call for the withdrawal of your oppressors from Cairo and your other large cities. Make Cairo an open city so that it does not serve as a base for the English, and so that you will not be destroyed when the English are destroyed.

Greet the Axis soldiers as friends. Protect them in danger just as they will protect you. Help them with all your power, so that they can help you. Thereby you will achieve Egypt's political freedom and independence. The governments of the Axis powers have declared that they respect and will secure the independence and sovereignty of Egypt.

The soldiers of the Axis will shorten the era of suffering and terror. They will restore order and peace so that the common enemy will be destroyed. They fight with you and for you. They fight for the future of your Egyptian nation.

EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS!140

The 300,000 copies of"Oh, Egypt" distributed in Egypt in summer 1942 denounced "British injustice and its unjust, violent, criminal empire" and announced that the English were now fleeing and receiving "the destiny which their guilt merits." It recounted a long list of "many English crimes" beginning in the late nineteenth century.

England is breaking apart. The English have been pushed out of all of Europe. The British cannot stand on European soil. They have been driven out of Burma and Singapore. Their Bolshevik allies, their final illusion, will be defeated, as if they were worm-infested palm trees. The hour has arrived for the English have been driven from Europe. All that remains is their ugly history and an evil memory, their empty promises, breaking of treaties and crimes that will endure in time. England's collapse does not mean the liberation of Egypt alone but, God willing, of all the Arab countries. England's fall will bring an Arabic Egypt into the circle of the Arab world where it will receive respect and an important position. Arab unity will be restored. England's ruin will mean that the price of cotton will return to its old standard. The peasant will be able to earn his bread and have the necessary medicines. In short, it means the liberation of Egypt from its chains. EGYPTIANS, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?141

In other words, Nazi propaganda presented World War II as the war that would bring about Egypt's national liberation from British imperialism.

Over the course of the summer, as American supplies and reinforcements continued to arrive in North Africa, Axis broadcasts intensified their attacks on the Jews and the United States. On August 27, Bari in Arabic falsely asserted that Roosevelt stated "that one of his reasons for entering the war was to support and strengthen Judaism. There is nothing strange about this, since the highest American officials are puppets of the Jews. They have reached their high places of office through Jewish money and thus the Jews are able to dominate public opinion through them. A colloquial proverb says: `Who eats the Sultan's bread, will wear the Sultan's sword.' Roosevelt has not only eaten the Jewish bread, but has gorged himself with it. Therefore it is natural he will wear their sword." 142 The Jews were a danger for the Arabs. "A Jewish victory is a defeat for us. There are three kinds of enemy: firstly, your enemy; secondly, the enemy of your friend; thirdly, the friend of your enemy. Roosevelt is all three." 143 On September ii, VFA announced that the Jews' "only hope" lay in an Allied victory. Thanks to Roosevelt, the United States was "governed by a handful of Jews against the wishes of the American people," most of whom opposed American intervention because they considered the war "a Jewish-Imperialistic war" and hate "the Jews who are living as parasites on the nation's wealth." 144

Rommel's last major offensive took place from August 30 to September 5 in the battle of Alam el Halfa. Aided by the arrival of 200 American tanks along with knowledge of German military communications gathered by the Allies' ULTRA code-breaking operations, the British Eighth Army was able to vanquish Rommel's forces. In the wake of this defeat, German Arabic broadcasts intensified attacks on "the Anglo-Saxons and the Jews" while Ribbentrop tried to accentuate the positive. In a memo to Hitler of September 7, Ribbentrop wrote that the mood in Iran was "on our side." Further, the Foreign Ministry intended to call for a general revolt against England in the whole Arab sphere with the help of broadcast and print appeals from the Grand Mufti and Kilani. If the Germans succeeded in Egypt, Ribbentrop was "certain that such appeals will contribute to making the English position in Palestine, Transjordan and Syria untenable. 11115 But Ribbentrop did not seem to understand or admit that with Rommel's military setbacks the hopes for an Arab revolt were diminishing.

In its 7:30 p.m. broadcast of September 16, Berlin in Arabic reported, "The Jews, the Americans and the British work hand in glove." Their cooperation was demonstrated by American and British leaders speaking of "the ties of friendship existing between Anglo-Saxons and the Jews." Typically it gave no source for these assertions. The station warned of a "plot which the Americans and the British are trying to put into operation in order to give the Jews control of the Suez Canal." 146 Three hours later, the station returned to the subject of the Jews with an example of how Nazi propaganda commented on American government statements. On September 3, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had condemned the Vichy regime's participation in the deportation of French Jews. L47 Perhaps with Hull's statement in mind, Berlin in Arabic attributed to him the following message on the occasion of the Jewish New Year: "In this grave hour the Jews of the world do not stand alone without a friend. America stands beside them." The broadcast continued: "We are indebted to Mr. Hull for this statement as it reveals something which the Allies have for so long tried to keep secret. It is true that the Jews are not alone. They are surrounded and helped by the Americans and by the other Allies. Each of them has found a sincere friend and each has helped the other. The American Jews control industry and commerce and they depend on Roosevelt for the building of their great Jewish nation. America is run by the Jews. 11148

Nazi propagandists seized on any and every expression of anger, sympathy, and solidarity with the Jews of Europe expressed by anyone in Britain or the United States as evidence in support of their claims about Jewish domination of those countries. These anti-Semitic outbursts took place too frequently and were too pervasive to be understood primarily as a tactical riposte to specific statements. On September 30, the VFA returned to the subject of "the Jews." It stated that "a Jewish paper entitled Economist issued in London and directed by Jews" had "revealed the main object of the Jews in this war." The broadcast did not reveal what that object was other than to say that the Jews were not willing to fight. It asserted that "this war should be called `the Jewish war,' because this war is really a Jewish one which has been waged by them and from which they alone will profit if Britain is victorious." 149 Just as Nazi propaganda in Germany and Europe was doing, the German Arabic-language broadcasts accustomed listeners to a wide range of unsubstantiated assertions merely placing the adjective "Jewish" before a variety of nouns.

On August i9, R. H. Bruce Lockhart, of the Foreign Office's Political Intelligence Department, conveyed the main lines of the British propaganda response. Following a summary of the region's strategic importance for the outcome of the war, and of the themes of German propaganda and developments in Egyptian domestic politics, Lockhart made the following recommendations. It was crucial to convince the Egyptians that the Allies were going to win the war. Germany's reputation for invincibility, which had been established by its victories in Europe, by Rommel's achievements in Libya, and "by German radio propaganda, which is widely listened to in Egypt," needed to be undermined. British broadcasts should exploit the Egyptians' hatred of the Italians for their actions in Ethiopia in order to foster hatred for the Germans and Japanese as well. The Egyptians knew little about the Germans but tended to regard them "with admiration and awe." The best way to rouse antipathy to the Germans was by associating them with the Italians and by "showing that they possess all the qualities, in an even more unpleasant form" which "inspire hatred of the Italians in Egyptian minds." The Egyptians and the Arabs were "likely to be tempted by German promises, because they have never had any direct experience of German rule as they have had of British." Therefore it was "important to bring home to them what has happened to other peoples who believed in German promises, and what the New Order would mean in practice in Egypt in terms of forced labor, transportation, destruction of religion and family life." 150 Indeed, the "most effective way of implementing this objective" could be to "describe to the Egyptians how the Nazi policies here enumerated would actually be applied in practice in Egypt if the country were to fall under Nazi domination." It was also important to emphasize that "Nazi race theory classifies the Egyptians as a `non-Aryan' and therefore inferior race, to whom all the privileges of the `Aryan' race, and notably that of higher education, are to be denied." 151 While all of this made eminent sense, Lockhart did not specifically refer to the fate of the Jews who had fallen under "Nazi domination."