During World War II, the Nazi regime financed and facilitated anti-British and antisemitic broadcasts by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, an Arab nationalist and prominent Muslim religious leader, to mobilize support for Germany and the Axis among Muslims in the Balkans and the Middle East. At the close of the war, al-Husayni was arrested in the French occupation zone of Germany. After authorities moved him to France, al-Husayni fled to Egypt, where he continued to produce and disseminate inflammatory anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel propaganda. He died in 1974. (Source record ID: E39 Nr.1033/17)
Item ViewIn this German propaganda newsreel, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, an Arab nationalist and prominent Muslim religious leader, meets Hitler for the first time. During the meeting, held in in the Reich chancellery, Hitler declined to grant al-Husayni’s request for a public statement--or a secret but formal treaty--in which Germany would: 1) pledge not to occupy Arab land, 2) recognize Arab striving for independence, and 3) support the “removal” of the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Führer confirmed that the “struggle against a Jewish homeland in Palestine” would be part of the struggle against the Jews. Hitler stated that: he would “continue the struggle until the complete destruction of Jewish-Communist European empire”; and when the German army was in proximity to the Arab world, Germany would issue “an assurance to the Arab world” that “the hour of liberation was at hand.” It would then be al-Husayni’s “responsibility to unleash the Arab action that he has secretly prepared.” The Führer stated that Germany would not intervene in internal Arab matters and that the only German “goal at that time would be the annihilation of Jewry living in Arab space under the protection of British power.”
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The former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, meets Hitler for the first time. Berlin, Germany, November 28, 1941.
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Hajj Amin al-Husayni in the company of German SS and Bosnian members of the Waffen-SS during an official visit to Bosnia, ca. 1943.
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