Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World: With a New Preface » (New Edition)

Jeffrey Herf is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Jeffrey Herf, a leading scholar in the field, offers the most extensive examination to date of Nazi propaganda activities targeting Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust. He draws extensively on previously unused and little-known archival resources, including the shocking transcriptions of the “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” radio programs, which convey a strongly anti-Semitic message.

Herf explores the intellectual, political, and cultural context in which German and European radical anti-Semitism was found to resonate with similar views rooted in a selective appropriation of the traditions of Islam. Pro-Nazi Arab exiles in wartime Berlin, including Haj el-Husseini and Rashid el-Kilani, collaborated with the Nazis in constructing their Middle East propaganda campaign. By integrating the political and military history of the war in the Middle East with the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the propagandistic diffusion of Nazi ideology, Herf offers the most thorough examination to date of this important chapter in the history of World War II. Importantly, he also shows how the anti-Semitism promoted by the Nazi propaganda effort contributed to the anti-Semitism exhibited by adherents of radical forms of Islam in the Middle East today.

TABLET

“Reading Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World is a reminder of how powerful such lies can be. . . . We have not yet heard the end of the ideas whose birth Herf documents in this frightening, necessary book.” — Adam Kirsch, TABLET

1 Introduction 1

2 Defining Anti-Semitism: 1933-1939 15

3 Growing Contacts, First Broadcasts: 1939-1941 36

4 Propaganda and Warfighting in North Africa and the Middle East in 1941 57

5 "Kill the Jews before They Kill You": Propaganda during the Battles in North Africa in 1942 88

6 "The Jews Kindled This War in the Interest of Zionism": Propaganda in 1943 as the Tide Turned against the Axis 158

7 "The Americans, the British, and the Jews Are All Conspiring against Arab Interests": Propaganda from 1944 to Spring 1945 194

8 Postwar Aftereffects 233

Conclusion 261

Notes 267

Bibliography 311

Index 323