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

officials learned that they could reconcile Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish policies with efforts to find allies among non-Jewish Semites. They also learned that at least some Arab and Persian diplomats had no principled opposition to anti-Semitism so long as it was aimed only at Jews and even had become accustomed to thinking about peoples and nations in the racist categories emerging from the National Socialist regime.

    The dilemma of how a racist regime could appeal to Arabs and Muslims surfaced in the Nazi regime's efforts to produce an Arabic-language edition of Mein Kampf36 Sections of the work first appeared in spring 1934 in newspapers in Baghdad and Beirut.37 Fritz Grobba played a key role in urging publication. One of the Foreign Ministry's leading experts on the Arab world, he had served in the German legation in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1923 and retained his interest in the region when back in the Berlin office. Grobba was the German ambassador to Iraq from 1932 until the break of diplomatic relations at the beginning of the war in Europe in September 1939. From Berlin, he was involved in German policy toward Iraq during the attempted pro-Axis coup of spring 1941. Then he met Rashid Ali Kilani, one of the leaders of the coup who was briefly the Iraqi prime minister. Grobba served as Kilani's primary contact in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. In 1942 he was working in the Office VII /Orient of the Political Department.38 From Baghdad in 1934, Grobba initiated discussions in the Foreign Ministry, in the Propaganda Ministry, and with Hitler himself about whether an Arabic translation should be allowed. Grobba thought that a translation would be met by Arab readers "with great interest" but suggested that those parts of the book dealing with the race question should be modified "in ways that correspond to the sensitivities of the race conscious Arabs." Grobba's modifications included replacing the term "anti-Semitic" with "anti-Jewish;" and "anti-Semitism" with "anti-Judaism."39 Hitler's chapter "Nation and Race" posed a seemingly insoluble problem, for in it Hitler clearly asserted that there was such a thing as an "Aryan race," standing at the top of a racial hierarchy.4o Grobba suggested inserting the following sentence at the head of the chapter: "German racial legislation does not want to pass judgment on the quality and worth of other peoples and other races." In July 1934, Grobba sent the Arabic newspaper installments to Berlin and requested official government agreement for the publication as a book. Two years later the Propaganda Ministry informed the Foreign Ministry that Hitler had agreed to a translation with Grobba's edits. While his core racial ideology could not be expunged, Hitler agreed to modify his racist arguments and delete the passages bound to offend Arabs and Muslims. Bernard Moritz, an Arabist consulted by the Foreign Ministry, declared the Arabic translation sent by Grobba to be "a collection of fragments from the original, taken out of context and incorrectly rendered, often to the point of incomprehensibility."41 This edition was not published.

    The Nazi Propaganda Ministry then tried its hand at its own translation. Despite Moritz's negative evaluation, this translation was published in 1937 in an edition of about 200 pages. In response to this edition, the Arab weekly published in Cairo, Rose El Youssef, drawing on a 1930 German original edition, cited relevant passages to confirm that Hitler thought the Egyptians were a "decadent people composed of cripples."42 One of the German diplomats in Cairo wrote that deleting the offending passage would be noticed in the Arab world. He suggested including an introduction with the statement that the Egyptian people "were differentially developed and that the Egyptians standing at a higher level themselves do not want to be placed on the same level with their numerous backward fellow Egyptians."43 For most Egyptians, that would only add insult to injury.