Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf Read Free Book Online

as to citizens of any other state. Hence a non-Jewish Egyptian is not worse off than the citizen of any other state."24 Finally convinced that the Nuremberg race laws did not apply to them, the Egyptians decided to participate in the Berlin Olympics.

    In mid-June, the Iranian ambassador to Berlin assured German officials that "there was no doubt that the Iranian, as an Aryan," was "racially kindred" (artverwandt) with the Germans. Assertions suggesting that the Nuremberg laws applied to Iranians were simply "a Jewish propaganda maneuver."25 On June 22, the Foreign Ministry assured the Iranian Embassy in Berlin that the correct distinction in the Nuremberg race laws was one between "persons of German and related blood on the one hand and Jews as well as racially alien on the other" rather than one between "Aryans and non-Aryans." The importance of the matter was evident in the number of high-ranking government offices involved. The Foreign Ministry sent copies of its note to Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party; the Prussian Interior Ministry and its Ministry for Scholarship and Education; the Reich Propaganda Ministry; the Reich Justice Ministry; the Reich and Prussian labor ministries; and the Nazi Party's Office of Racial Politics, its Office for Foreign Policy, and its Foreign Organization (Auslandsorganization).26 On the same day, the Foreign Ministry informed the above-mentioned offices in Berlin that the Iranian ambassador now understood that "in place of the contrast between Aryan and non-Aryan," the Nuremberg race laws referred to the "distinction between persons of German and kindred blood, on the one hand, and Jews as well as related alien blood, on the other."27 Thus reassured, the Iranians, like the Egyptians, also agreed to participate in the Olympic games.
    This blizzard of memos was not only evidence of German efforts to convince Arabs that the Nuremberg race laws were not aimed at those Semites. Ger man officials were also trying to clarify for themselves how an officially racist government could appeal to Arabs and Muslims. On July 1, 1936, more than twenty high-ranking officials gathered in the Foreign Ministry to discuss a response to Egyptian and Iranian inquiries regarding the meaning of the concept artverwandt, "racially kindred."28 Attendees included Walter Gross, the director of the Nazi Party's Office of Racial Politics; State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart of the Reich and Prussian Interior Ministry; and officials from the ministries of Propaganda and Justice, the Prussian and Education ministries, and the Nazi Party's foreign policy and foreign membership organizations.29 Foreign Ministry officials observed that the Egyptians were concerned about protecting the legality of marriages between Germans and Egyptians, while the Iranians wanted assurance that they were considered to be Aryans under the terms of the Nuremberg race laws. Gross stressed that the Iranian issue "absolutely" needed to be addressed but that it was best to do so in conversations with the Iranian ambassador. The Iranians, however, "could not at all expect" that they "could be declared to be Aryans lock, stock and barrel." The Egyptian ambassador would have to make do with the statement that "the Egyptians are no worse off than members of other nations."30

    State Secretary Stuckart was chairman of the government's Committee for the Protection of German Blood and coauthor with Hans Globke of commentaries on the Nuremberg race laws.31 Regarding the question of who was artver- wandt or artfremd or racially kindred or alien, Stuckart pointed to the definitions he had offered in the famous commentaries. "All those peoples are [artverwandt] kindred who have the same type of blood [ blutarten] as the German people." He counseled, however, against publicly presenting the definition "in an official declaration of the German government because doing so must immediately lead to a conflict, above all with Japan." Foreigners did not