In the beginning of my research, more than 30 years ago, I naturally wanted to know how Auschwitz could happen and why my parents were able to love Adolf Hitler as teenagers. To understand this, I focused on Nazi ideology, and specifically Nazi antisemitism.
Since the 9/11 attack in 2001, I began to study Jew-hatred in Islamic societies and especially the Muslim Brotherhood. In doing so, I discovered that the Nazis played a major role in spreading antisemitism in the Arab world. In 2004 I was very much surprised to discover Radio Zeesen and to learn that the Nazis used very well done radio broadcasts in Arabic language to spread their hate propaganda in the Near and Middle East. This fact has never been mentioned in my many books about the Middle East’s modern history.
So let me start with some words about the background of Radio Zeesen:
Nazi Germany had very early on adopted a radical anti-Zionist stance. Already in 1921, Alfred Rosenberg, later to become the Nazis’ chief propagandist, published a book entitled Zionism: Enemy of the State (Der staatsfeindliche Zionismus). In Palestine, wrote Rosenberg one year after the founding of the NSDAP, the Jews are using “the old method of exploiting and driving out by ‘legal’ means the real population that has lived here for thousands of years in order to create a purely Jewish . . . gathering point for pursuing a wide-ranging oriental policy.”
In 1925, Hitler developed this thought further in Mein Kampf: the Jews, he wrote about Zionism, “only want an organizational center for their international world-swindling … a place of refuge for convicted scoundrels and a university for up-and-coming swindlers.” We have here the origin of later anti-Zionist terms of abuse, such as “entity” and “settler regime”.
Nonetheless, until 1937 the Nazis did not adopt an openly anti-Zionist policy. As long as the Germans still retained a glimmer of hope that they could remain on good terms with the British, they diligently avoided any blatantly anti-British acts. In the summer of 1937, however, a new situation arose due to the Peel Commission’s partition plan, which included the creation of a tiny Jewish state in Palestine. German Foreign Minister von Neurath emphasized in a memorandum that “the creation of a Jewish state” was not “in Germany’s interest” since such a state “would create an additional position of power under international law for international Jewry. Germany therefore has an interest in strengthening the Arab world as a counterweight against such a possible increase in power for world Jewry.”
From then on, Nazi Germany actively allied itself with the antisemitic forces in the region - the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state at all costs. Thus, during the late 1930s, meetings took place between Nazi agents in Cairo and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood with Joseph Goebbels‘ explicit approval, as documents from the British National Archives prove. The Germans transferred large sums of money to this Islamist group; they organized common „Palestine meetings“ and joint education events on „the Jewish question“ and supported the Brotherhood’s most important ally, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Finally, at the end of 1937, associates of the Mufti urged the German Nazis to set up their own Arabic-language radio operation which would later become Radio Zeesen.
At the beginning of World War II German short-wave transmitters were broadcasting in 15 different foreign languages. However, of all the foreign-language broadcasting units, Radio Zeesen’s “Orient Zone” was given “absolute priority”. It broadcast to Arabs and Persians, but also to Turks and Indians and employed about 80 people, including some 20 presenters and translators.
At that time, technically advanced short-wave radios offered an entertainment and information medium with a great power of attraction. We can compare it perhaps with today’s attraction of TicToc. In his memoirs, Grand Ayatollah Husain Ali Montazeri recalls the installation of a radio in an Isfahan coffee house at the end of the 1930s: “Thousands of people” had come to see and hear the radio including Montazeri himself, who was wondering, “what is a radio?”
In those days listening to the radio was a public occasion. People did so in coffee houses and bazaars. Sometimes the radio would be placed on a pedestal in the town square around which the information hungry would gather, sometimes a set located in the mayor’s garden would provide a meeting point for the village elders. What had been heard would immediately then be talked about, further extending the reach of the program’s message. It has been estimated that by the start of the 1940s, about a million people were regularly listening to the radio in the Middle East and North Africa.
In April 1939 the Nazis’ first Arabic-language broadcast came on air; the last would be on 26 April 1945. This six-year barrage of sound embedded Islamic antisemitism in the consciousness of the “Arab Street” and continued to exert its influence even in the postwar period. Editorial control was in the hands of the Nazi’s Foreign Office Radio Policy Department and the program content was determined in cooperation with the Propaganda Ministry and the Wehrmacht High Command’s Foreign Propaganda Department. The broadcasts were recorded in Berlin, Kaiserdamm no. 77 and then transferred by a special telephone line to Zeesen, a small village 40 kms south of Berlin.
The transmitter systems in Zeesen were equipped with state-of-the-art directional antennae. The American radio expert César Searchinger described the “huge” short-wave radio complex in Zeesen as “the biggest and most powerful propaganda machine in the world” and its “supremely cunning technology of mass influence” as “the most formidable institution for the dissemination of a political doctrine that the world has ever seen.”
While exaggerated, the assessment is not wholly false. While all the combatant powers in the Second World War used short-wave transmitters in different languages, the Zeesen radio had some special features.
Firstly, in 1936 the Olympics took place in Berlin. The overhaul of the Zeesen short wave equipment carried out in preparation for this event had greatly improved its long-range sound quality. No other station provided a better listening experience than Radio Zeesen.
Secondly, The Orient Zone editors succeeded in recruiting Younis Bahri, formerly of Iraqi Radio, as their announcer. With his incisive voice, his ability to modulate the volume of his voice and his aggressive speeches that sometimes spilled over into rants, his programs soon became a trade mark.
Thirdly, the Zeesen broadcasts employed a crude and folksy antisemitism. Jew-hatred was the core of Nazi doctrine, but in this context it was also a tactical ploy to win over the audience. On this topic facts were irrelevant and incitement everything. Thus, the United Nations, already in the making from the start of 1942, was derided as the “United Jewish Nations” and Emir Abdullah of Transjordan was mocked as “Rabbi Abdullah” for his moderate stance. A report dated 13 October 1939 on the impact of German radio propaganda prepared in Palestine for the British War Office describes the style.
“In general it may be said that the middle, lower middle and lower classes listen to the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin with a good deal of enjoyment. They like the racy, ‘juicy’ stuff which is put over. … What the average Palestine Arab does imbibe, however, is the anti-Jew material. This he wants to hear and to believe; and he does both. To that extent German propaganda is definitely effective.”
Fourthly, the Nazi radio producers disguised themselves as particularly devout friends of Islam. It was understood in Berlin that German-style antisemitism would have little resonance in Iran. “The broad masses lack a feeling for the race idea,” explained the propaganda expert of the German embassy in Tehran. He therefore laid “all the emphasis on the religious motif in our propaganda in the Islamic world. This is the only way to win over the Orientals.”
Therefore, in the programming for the Arab world Islam was central: Radio Zeesen addressed its audience not as Arabs but as Muslims. Every news report would begin with the recitation of verses from the Koran. For this purpose, Berlin had obtained special permission from the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo. A great deal of the available time was devoted to Islamic religious holidays etc. Let me quote historian David Motadel: “German propaganda combined Islam with anti-Jewish agitation to an extent that had not hitherto been known in the modern Muslim world.”
The style and wording of the incitement broadcast by the Nazis to the Arab world are well-documented. Due to the efforts of the American Ambassador to Egypt, Alexander C. Kirk, the Zeesen broadcasts in Arabic were recorded in shorthand and translated word for word into English. Each week Kirk sent a compilation of these records to the US State Department where the documents were stored. Historian Jeffrey Herf was the first to discover this trove in the USA’s National Archives and present an analysis of it in his pioneering 2009 study, Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World. These documents prove that Radio Zeesen’s most important message was Jew-hatred. Why was this the case?
It was Hitler’s declared will to expand the mass murder program known as the “final solution” to the approximately 700,000 Jews of North Africa and the Middle East. The main goal of this radio-disseminated antisemitism was therefore to prepare Muslim societies for the commission of all-out mass murder. And it almost happened: as Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika embarked on its apparently unstoppable march towards Cairo in summer 1942, a special SS unit of seven senior officers and 17 lower-ranking officers was sent to join it. This unit was entrusted with implementing the murder of Jews, with the help, so it was believed, of a sufficient number of local Arabs.
In order to spread Jew-hatred, the Nazi-rulers used Islam and at the same time misused Islam as the most important entry point to Arab and Muslim listeners. Radio Zeesen repeated only those verses from the Koran again and again that are suitable for presenting the Jews as “enemies of Islam.” Day after day the Age of Muhammad – 7th century – was combined with the 20th century and the alleged irreconcilability of the two religions stressed. Thus, on 28 January 1944 Radio Zeesen stated in Arabic “that this enmity and this struggle between Arabs and Jews will always continue until one side or the other is destroyed. The struggle and war between Arabs and Jews relates to religious beliefs and such conflicts can end only through the destruction of one side.” According to David Motadel, “Berlin made explicit use of religious rhetoric, terminology, and imagery and sought to engage with and reinterpret religious doctrine and concepts to manipulate Muslims for political and military purposes”.
The Zeesen broadcasts did not only propagate antisemitic words; they also encouraged antisemitic deeds. Such incitement to action was further stepped up when Rommel advanced on Egypt in summer 1942. Let me quote what Radio Zeesen broadcast on 25 June 1942 at 9:15 pm:
“Arabs of Syria, Iraq and Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill your children and to destroy you. According to the Muslim religion, the defense of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. This is your best opportunity to get rid of this dirty race, which has usurped your rights and brought misfortune and destruction on your countries. Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores, annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.”
On the whole the radio propaganda had little immediate impact on Muslim behavior. The uprisings called for by the Mufti in the British and American-occupied territories failed to materialize. One terrible pogrom, however, incited by Radio Zeesen, took place: The so-called Farhud in Bagdad in June 1941with at least 180 Jewish women and men murdered. More important were the long-term consequences of radio Zeesen for the image of Jews in the Arab world. The Nazis could build on the latent aversions expressed in the anti-Jewish verses of the Koran and the centuries-old status of the Jews as dhimmis. They could also use the local conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arabs in Palestine to escalate it in antisemitic terms and to torpedo compromise solutions. Many contemporary sources emphasize the German broadcasts’ attractiveness and popularity. Let me quote what the Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Department reported on 15 September 1939: The Arabs in Palestine listened to the Nazi radio “most attentively, particularly in town and village coffee shops where large crowds gather for the purpose. Whilst the distorted information does not have any great effect on the intelligentsia, the uneducated classes are undoubtedly being influenced”. This finding is corroborated by an internal report of the Jewish Agency that cites an Arab informant, who on 7 October 1939 observed a crowd in an Arab coffee house in Jaffa.
“10 days after the war broke out, the police in Nablus imposed a ban on listening to Arabic-language broadcasts from Berlin. I was told that there is a similar ban in place in Jaffa, but in reality even in the coffee houses this station is turned on. One of the informants told me that on the eve of the Sabbath (7 October) he went into a café and heard a German broadcast. Arabs were standing around the café – even on the surrounding balconies – to listen to the program.”
The Allies tried to limit Radio Zeesen's influence with jamming transmitters and other measures. They were unable, however, to find an antidote to Radio Zeesen's most important unique selling point, its antisemitism. The antisemitic tinged anti-Zionism that German radio spread day in, day out was popular throughout the Arab world, far more popular than was Nazi Germany itself. On this front, the BBC and the other Allied broadcasters remained speechless until the end of the war. Why?
Because none of them wanted to be seen as defenders or even 'accomplices' of the Jews. This, they feared, could appear as a confirmation of Nazi propaganda, according to which the Allies were stooges of the Jews. The greater the support for the Nazis in the Middle East, the less willing they were to confront their antisemitism. So if there was anything that Nazi radio propaganda succeeded in doing, it was this: spreading and escalating hatred of Jews in that part of the world.
The reverse conclusion is that in Muslim population centers that could not be reached by the waves of hatred from Radio Zessen, hatred of Jews was lower. This was the case in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, where around 950,000 Muslims and 14,000 Jews lived. Here, the Nazis only had texts at their disposal to incite Muslims against Jews; there was no radio propaganda in Serbo-Croatian. Antisemitism did not gain a foothold among the Muslims of this region, the Middle East conflict always remained a marginal issue for them, and in the post-war period there were virtually no attacks by Muslims on Jews. For the Arab world, on the other hand, the constant exposure to the modern media every evening proved to be a caesura that made a huge contribution to the creation of a mass antisemitic consciousness and divided the history of the Middle East into a before and an after.
The Nazi radio in Arabic language had to cease operation in April 1945 but its frequencies of hatred remained virulent. One of the most important themes of the Nazi propaganda was the claim that Zionism was intrinsically expansionist and directed against Islam. The Jews, asserted Radio Zeesen on 8 September 1943, would not stop until they had made “every territory between the Tigris and the Nile Jewish.” If they succeeded “there will remain not a single Arab Muslim or Christian in the Arab world. Arabs! Imagine Egypt, Iraq and all the Arab countries becoming Jewish with no Christianity or Islam there”. The clearer it became that Nazi Germany was going to lose the war, the more insistent such warnings became. This demonization of Zionism and the Jews took firm root in the minds of millions of Arabs. Thus, the idea of thwarting a Jewish state at any cost lived on especially in Egypt where, after 1945, the Muslim Brotherhood built the world’s largest antisemitic movement. By 1948, its membership has risen to over one million.
On 14 May 1948, after the UN decision in favor of a two-state solution for Palestine, Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment oft he state of Israel. A few hours later, five Arab armies invaded the infant country. During the decisive months preceding the outbreak of this first Arab-Israeli War the Muslim Brotherhood could draw on the lingering echoes of the antisemitic Nazi propaganda in which preventing the emergence of a Jewish state at any cost had been a constant theme. The Brotherhood was thus able to create an atmosphere in which war against the new founded Israel seemed to be the only logical solution. They formed a nationalist and religious mass movement that longed for the catharsis of a military confrontation and whipped up a tidal wave of public anger that no one could withstand. In this feverish atmosphere, no Arab leader felt able to successfully resist the Brotherhood’s warmongering. It was, however, this war by six Arab armies against Israel that created what we call since then the Middle East conflict: This war triggered the refugee crises for Arabs of Palestine as well as for the Jews of Arab countries.
But the story doesn't end here: The few years of exposure to Nazi ideology brought about a long-lasting change in the Arab world. While the Arab world was indeed nazified in terms of its view of the Jews and the Middle East conflict, the denazification that took place in the German-speaking countries after 1945 never occurred in the Arab world.
Nowhere else have Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust been so openly defended after 1945 as in that region. The alliance between the Nazis and the Mufti has never been seriously criticized there. On the contrary: the terror against dissidents, which the Mufti established in the 1930s, continues uninterrupted to this day: in both Gaza and Ramallah, anyone who speaks out in favour of normal relations with Israel risks their life. To this day the anti-Jewish passages in the Koran are incessantly repeated, as in the Hamas Charter. To this day the course of events is interpreted through the lens of the Protocols oft he Elders of Zion, as in the Hamas Charter. To this day we witness a genocidal rhetoric towards Zionism, as in the Hamas Charter. It is thus no coincidence that Hamas speaks the language of the Nazis when it comes to Jews. And it is no coincidence that when Hamas first encountered unprotected Jews on October 7, it tortured and murdered them as only the Nazis had done before. At the same time, the Nazi-like hatred of Jews, which we find faithfully reproduced in the Hamas Charter of 1988, has been further radicalized with the help of the Islamist martyr ideology and integrated into the global programme of Islamism. But that’s another topic. Thank you very much for your attention.
This is a summary of chapter 3 („1939-1945: Goebbels in Arabic“) of my book on „Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East. The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II“, published by Routledge in 2024.
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