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New Report Reveals Shocking Extent of America's Postwar Collusion With Nazi War

Criminals, Nazi-Arab Axis, Hitler-Husseini Palestine Conquest Plot

American Jewish Committee Responds to 'Sickening and Painful' Revelations

The American Jewish Committee (AJC ) on Sunday called a new National Archives report on collaboration between the United States government and Nazi officials immediately after World War II--as well as Nazi ties to Arab leaders during and after the war--an important contribution to establishing historical truths about the most tragic period of the twentieth century.

"The real shame is that these documents, critical for understanding our government's full role during the World War II era, were hidden for so long," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "To have absolute proof 65 years later about what the U.S. did in assisting notorious Nazi leaders like Klaus Barbie, Rudolf Mildner and others is sickening and painful."

The documents are referenced in a new U.S. government report, "Hitler's Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War," published Friday by the National Archives and reported in The New York Times.

"The depth and intimacy of the relationship between Nazi Germany and the main Palestinian leader of the time,Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, is particularly appalling," said Harris.

Hitler-Husseini Bond

"The National Archives now has left no doubt about Husseini's total collusion with the Nazis," said Harris. "The documents confirm that while Nazi Germany was exterminating the Jewish people across Europe, an alliance was forged with certain Arab leaders to go after Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine, which included the historic land of Israel."

According to the Times, the National Archives report revealed that Husseini had "energetically recruited Muslims for the SS, the Nazi Party's elite military command, and was promised that he would be installed as the leader of Palestine after German troops drove out the British and exterminated more than 350,000 Jews there."

The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat often proclaimed he was a descendant of the notorious Husseini.

The National Archives report also provides details of how several Nazi leaders, who had fled to some Arab countries, continued to channel their deep hatred of Jews.

"Whatever short-term gains our intelligence agencies had hoped to secure by giving a pass to Nazi mass murderers, letting them flee or colluding with them, stands out as a dark period in U.S. history," said Harris. "It is to the credit of this country, however, that, late though it is, the release of these revealing documents sheds needed light on that dark period."

EDITOR'S NOTE: The report's chapter dealing with the Hitler-Husseini relationship is republished below.

CHAPTER TWO

Nazis and the Middle East

Recent scholarship has highlighted Nazi aims in the Middle East, including the

intent to murder the Jewish population of Palestine with a special task force that

was to accompany the Afrika Korps past the Suez Canal in the summer of 1942.

Scholars have also re-examined the relationship between the Nazi state and Haj

Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as well as the postwar place

of the Holocaust in Arab and Muslim thinking. Newly released CIC and CIA

records supplement this scholarship in revealing ways.

Einsatzkommando Egypt

The 1946 testimony of Franz Hoth casts interesting light on both Nazi territorial

objectives and Jewish policy in 1940–42. British troops in Norway captured Hoth, an SS

and Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service or SD) officer who had served in a number of

different mobile killing units called Einsatzkommandos. When in March 1946 British

interrogators asked Hoth about the functions of the Einsatzkommandos, he studiously

avoided giving self-incriminating statements. His interrogator seems to have liked him:

“Hoth declares—and the interrogator is inclined to believe him—that throughout his

SD career, he tried to work in accordance with his ideals. It is not thought that Hoth

would consciously have made himself guilty of any crimes....” As a result of this

generous assessment, his interrogator let him get away with many evasive answers.

Nevertheless, Hoth gave useful background about the early 1941 training

of police officers slated for deployment in Africa when Germany expected to

establish a raw materials empire there. At the Security Police School in Berlin-

Charlottenburg, medical experts, Foreign Office officials, and other experts

lectured to three classes of about 30 police officers each; additional classes were

held for non-commissioned officers. “The purpose of these courses was to make

the students familiar with the history and problems of the former German

colonies in preparation for the day when these colonies would be retrieved by

Germany,” Hoth explained. Afterwards, all the German police officers went to

Rome (April 1941), attending an Italian police school where they learned how

the Italian police handled resistance in the Italian African colonies.

Hoth was friendly with a senior official of the Reich Security Main Office

(RSHA) named Walter Rauff, one of the inventors and distributors of the gas van

used to asphyxiate victims in Belarus and later at the Chelmno extermination

camp. Because of his connection with Rauff, who was slated for command of

an Einsatzkommando in North Africa, and his colonial training, Hoth was

appointed head of section I of Rauff’s Einsatzkommando Egypt, which was

assembled and dispatched to Athens in July 1942. There the unit waited for

General Rommel’s troops to conquer Egypt and move into the British-controlled

Mandate of Palestine, where roughly half a million Jews lived.

Rauff’s Einsatzkommando, technically subordinated to Rommel’s army,

reported directly to the RSHA in Berlin. After Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated

in Czechoslovakia, SS chief Heinrich Himmler took direct command of this

umbrella security-police organization. Two German historians have indicated

that Himmler conferred with Hitler about the deployment of Einsatzkommando

Egypt, which was to take “executive measures” against civilians on its own

authority, in other words, the mass murder of Jews. In 1946 Hoth commented

only that his Einsatzkommando was supposed to perform the usual Security

Police and SD duties in Egypt; he avoided saying that such duties elsewhere had

included the mass execution of Jews. But this context puts a rather different light

on what his British interrogator called Hoth’s idealism.

Hitler himself signaled his intention to eliminate the Jews of Palestine. In

a November 28, 1941, conversation in Berlin with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler said that the outcome of the war in Europe

would also decide the fate of the Arab world. German troops intended to break

through the Caucasus region and move into the Middle East. This would result

in the liberation of Arab peoples. Hitler said that Germany’s only objective there

would be the destruction of the Jews.

The British never prosecuted Hoth for his Einsatzkommando activities. But

he had also served in the Security Police in the French city of Nancy, and the

French military authorities found him guilty of crimes there. He was sentenced

to death and executed in 1949.

New Documentation: Haj Amin al-Husseini’s Contract

Recent books have added greatly to our knowledge of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s

activities as leader of anti-Jewish revolts in the British Mandate in Palestine in

1929 and 1936, as the impetus behind the pro-German coup in Iraq in April 1941,

and as a pro-Nazi propagandist in Berlin, broadcasting over German short-wave

radio to large audiences in the Middle East starting in late 1941.10 CIA and U.S.

Army files on Husseini offer small pieces of new evidence about his relationship

with the Nazi government and his escape from postwar justice.

The Nazi government financed Husseini and Rashid Ali el-Gailani, the

former premier of Iraq who had joined Husseini in Berlin after his failed coup

in Iraq. After the war Carl Berthold Franz Rekowski, an official of the German

Foreign Office who had dealt with Husseini, testified that the Foreign Office

financially supported the two Arab leaders, their families, and other Arabs in

their entourage who had fled to Germany after the coup. Husseini and Gailani

determined how these funds were distributed among the others. The CIA file

on Husseini includes a document indicating that he had a staff of 20–30 men in

Berlin. A separate source indicates that he lived in a villa in the Krumme Lanke

neighborhood of Berlin. From spring 1943 to spring 1944, Husseini personally

received 50,000 marks monthly and Gailani 65,000 for operational expenses. In

addition, they each received living expenses averaging 80,000 marks per month,

an absolute fortune. A German field marshal received a base salary of 26,500

marks per year. Finally, Husseini and Gailani received substantial foreign

currency to support adherents living in countries outside Germany.

Through conversations with other Foreign Office officials, Rekowski learned

that Nazi authorities planned to use both Arab leaders to control their respective

countries after Germany conquered them. Gailani was an Iraqi nationalist who

maintained good ties with the German Foreign Office. Husseini, however, was a

believer in a Pan-Arab state. His closest ties were with the SS. The other Arabs

were divided into one camp or the other.

SS-Sturmbannführer Wilhelm Beisner, like Hoth, an officer on Einsatzkom-

mando Egypt, had frequent contact with Husseini during the war. Beisner told

Rekowski that Husseini had good ties with Himmler and with Waffen-SS Gen.

Gottlob Berger, who handled the recruitment of non-German forces into the

Waffen-SS. SS leaders and Husseini both claimed that Nazism and Islam had

common values as well as common enemies—above all, the Jews.

Another independent source of information on Husseini’s ties with the SS was

the disaffected and abused wife of a young Egyptian, Dr. Abdel Halim el-Naggar,

who had worked in Berlin for the German Foreign Office and the Propaganda

Ministry. An Egyptian named Galal in Berlin edited an Arabic-language periodical

designed to stir up the Arabs to support Germany, and el-Naggar assisted him in

1940. By 1941 el-Naggar had his own Arabic publication for Middle Eastern audi-

ences, and in 1942 he took on the additional job of director of Nazi short-wave

broadcasts to the Near East. After Husseini came to Berlin, he wanted to coop-

erate with el-Naggar on Middle Eastern broadcasts, and for a time they worked

together successfully. Then el-Naggar established an Islamic Central Institute in

Berlin. Husseini had wanted to head this institute, and after el-Naggar refused him,

Husseini used his influence with the SS to get el-Naggar removed from the broad-

casting job.

In the fall of 1943 Husseini went to the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi

ally, to recruit Muslims for the Waffen-SS. During that trip he told the troops

of the newly formed Bosnian-Muslim 13th Mountain Waffen-SS division that

the entire Muslim world ought to follow their example. Husseini also organized

a 1944 mission for Palestinian Arabs and Germans to carry out sabotage and

propaganda after German planes dropped them into Palestine by parachute. In

discussions with the Foreign Intelligence branch of the RSHA, Husseini insisted

that the Arabs take command after they landed and direct their fight against the

Jews of Palestine, not the British authorities.

Today we have more detailed scholarly accounts today of Husseini’s war-

time activities, but Husseini’s CIA file indicates that wartime Allied intelligence

organizations gathered a healthy portion of this incriminating evidence. This

evidence is significant in light of Husseini’s lenient postwar treatment.

In the spring of 1945, a German Foreign Office official reached agreement

with Gailani effective April 1: his cash payments were raised to 85,000 marks, but

Gailani would repay the Germans after his forces reconquered Iraq. Similarly,

according to a newly declassified document, the Foreign Office and Husseini

signed a contract for subsidies of up to 12,000 marks per month to continue

after April 1, 1945, with the Mufti pledging to repay these amounts later. In April

1945 neither side could have had much doubt about the outcome of the war. The

continuing contractual relationships meant that Nazi officials and the two Arab

leaders hoped to continue their joint or complementary political-ideological

campaign in the postwar period.

Declassified CIA and Army files establish that the Allies knew enough about

Husseini’s wartime activities to consider him a war criminal. Apparently fearing

Allied prosecution, he tried to flee to Switzerland at the end of the war. Swiss

authorities turned him over to the French, who brought him to Paris.

Haj Amin al-Husseini’s Escape

Right after the war ended a group of Palestinian-Arab soldiers in the British

Army who were stationed in Lebanon had staged anti-French demonstrations.

They carried around a large picture of Husseini and declared him to be the

“sword of the faith.”20 According to one source considered reliable by the rump

American intelligence organization known as the Strategic Services Unit (SSU),

British officials objected to French plans to prosecute Husseini, fearing that this

would cause political unrest in Palestine. The British “threatened” the French

with Arab uprisings in French Morocco.

In October 1945 Arthur Giles (who used the title Bey), British head of

Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Division, told the assistant American military

attaché in Cairo that the Mufti might be the only person who could unite the

Palestine Arabs and “cool off the Zionists.... Of course, we can’t do it, but it

might not be such a damn bad idea at that.” French intelligence officials, bitter

at France’s loss of colonial territory in the Middle East, said they would enjoy

having the Mufti around to embarrass the British.

Husseini was well treated in Paris. Meanwhile, Palestinian Arab leaders and various

Muslim extremists agitated to bring him back to the Middle East. According to the

American military attaché in Cairo, this plan initially embarrassed moderate officials

in the Arab League. But as prospects for a peaceful settlement in the British Mandate

for Palestine declined and as other Arab prisoners were released or escaped (Gailani

escaped), sentiment changed. A delegate of the Palestine Higher Arab Committee went

to Paris in June 1946 and told Husseini to get ready for a little trip.

According to another American source in Syria, at a meeting in the Egyptian

Embassy in Paris, the ambassador, the ministers of Syria and Lebanon, and a

few Arab leaders from Morocco and Algeria worked out the details of Husseini’s

escape. The French government learned of, or was informed of, the plan, but

chose not to intervene in order to avoid offending the Arabs of North Africa.

Husseini flew to Syria, then went via Aleppo and Beirut to Alexandria, Egypt.

By 1947 Husseini denied that he had worked for the Axis powers during the

war. He told one acquaintance that he hoped soon to have documentary evidence

rebutting this slander, which the Jews were spreading. Similarly, after Adolf Eichmann

was brought to Israel for trial in March 1961, Husseini, by now in Beirut, denied

having ever met Eichmann during the war. He said that he had been forced to take

refuge in Germany simply because British wanted to capture him. Nazi persecution

of Jews had served Zionism, according to Husseini, by exciting world sympathy for

them. Husseini never worked for American intelligence; the CIA simply considered

him a person worth tracking. He died in Beirut in 1974.