The authors contend that Husseini was himself partly responsible for the Holocaust. It was almost immediately after his meeting with Hitler on November 28, 1941, at which time the Palestinian leader demanded and received the cessation of all Jewish emigration to Palestine in exchange for Muslim support for the Axis, that Hitler convoked the Wannsee Conference. Having closed the door on the last possible escape route for the Jews, genocide became the "final solution."

It was Kaiser Wilhelm II who first set the template in his cynical World War I strategy of fomenting jihad among Muslim subjects in British, French, and Russian territories in the Near East and North Africa. One side-effect of this strategy was German complicity in the Armenian massacres, which could well have served as a model for Hitler's treatment of the Jews.

The Nazis were eager for this partnership. They established special
relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ba’th Party, the Young
Egypt movement, and radical factions in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Berlin
also hoped to build links with the kings of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
In 1939, for example, Hitler met Saudi King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud’s
envoy, Khalid al-Qarqani, telling him: “We view the Arabs with the
warmest sympathy for three reasons. First, we do not pursue any territorial
aspirations in Arab lands. Second, we have the same enemies.
And third, we both fight against the Jews. I will not rest until the very
last of them has left Germany.”
Al-Qarqani agreed, saying that the prophet Muhammad had acted
similarly in driving all the Jews out of Arabia. A Muslim could make
no more flattering comparison. Hitler asked al-Qarqani to tell his king
that Germany wanted an alliance and would arm both Saudi Arabia
and al-Husaini’s men.14
But first, Hitler had to decide precisely how “the very last” of the
Jews were to leave Germany. As late as 1941, Hitler thought this could
happen, in the words of Hermann Goring in July, by “emigration or
evacuation.”15 Yet since other countries refused to take many or any
Jewish refugees, Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated
by the League of Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed,
mass murder would be Hitler’s only alternative.
The importance of the Arab-Muslim alliance for Berlin, along with
the grand mufti’s urging, ensured that outcome. And al-Husaini would
be present at the critical moment Hitler chose it.
…
But Hitler had a higher opinion of the grand mufti’s value. All his
other Arab or Muslim partners had followers in just one country; al-
Husaini had transnational influence. The grand mufti sought to prove
himself worthy of these high expectations. At the Bellevue, he met not
only Arab politicians but also exiled Muslim leaders from the USSR,
India, Afghanistan, and the Balkans.
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was impressed, telling al-
Husaini, “We have watched your fight for a long time. We have always
admired you, fascinated by your dangerous adventures. . . .” Von
Ribbentrop assured al-Husaini of the Reich’s support.20 The Germans
accepted al-Husaini’s claim that the Arab masses would rally to their
side if Berlin guaranteed independence from British and French rule as
well as stopping all Jewish immigration into Palestine. In March 1941,
Berlin secretly promised to support Arab independence.21 In October,
Berlin and Rome publicly announced that policy.22
Among themselves, German officials called al-Husaini the most important
Muslim cleric and leader of the Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine,
Transjordan (today Jordan), Iraq, and elsewhere.23 Hitler called
him the “principal actor of the Middle East, a realist, not a dreamer.”24
A contemporary U.S. intelligence assessment agreed, claiming al-Husaini
was seen throughout the Middle East as “the greatest leader of the
Arab peoples now alive.”25
In recognition of this estimate, Hitler gave al-Husaini a ninety-minute
meeting on November 28, 1941.
…
Hitler greeted him warmly, “I am most
familiar with your life.”
His Arab guest returned the compliments, pleased to find Hitler not
only a powerful speaker but also a patient listener. Al-Husaini thanked
the German dictator for long supporting the Palestinian Arab cause.
The Arabs, he asserted, were Germany’s natural friends, believed it
would win the war, and were ready to help. Al-Husaini explained his
plan to Hitler. He would recruit an Arab Legion to fight for the Axis;
Arab fighters would sabotage Allied facilities while Arab and Muslim
leaders would foment revolts to tie up Allied troops and add territory
and resources for the Axis.

But there was another consequence of the al-Husaini–Hitler meeting
to cement their alliance. A few hours after seeing the grand mufti
Hitler ordered invitations sent for a conference to be held at a villa on
Lake Wannsee. The meeting’s purpose was to plan the comprehensive
extermination of all Europe’s Jews.
Considerations of Muslim and Arab alliances, of course, were by no
means the sole factor in a decision that grew from Hitler’s own anti-
Semitic obsession. But until that moment the German dictator had left
open the chance that expulsion might be an alternative to extermination.
When Hitler first told Heydrich to find a “final solution,” the dictator
had included expelling the Jews as an option. Already, the regime
estimated. it had let about 500,000 Jews leave Germany legally during
seven years of Nazi rule. Yet if the remaining Jews could only go to Palestine,
and since ending that immigration was al-Husaini’s top priority,
emigration or expulsion would sabotage the German-Arab alliance.31
Given the combination of the strategic situation and Hitler’s personal
views, choosing to kill the Jews and gain the Arab and Muslim assets
necessary for his war effort was an easy decision.32
Consequently, Hitler ordered the Wannsee Conference to devise a
detailed plan for genocide.33 Since this decision was linked to the alliance
with al-Husaini he would be the first non-German informed about
the plan, even before it was formally presented at the conference. Adolf
Eichmann himself was assigned to this task.
Eichmann briefed al-Husaini in the SS headquarters map room,
using the presentation prepared for the conference. The grand mufti,
Eichmann’s aide recalled, was very impressed, so taken with this blueprint
for genocide that al-Husaini asked Eichmann to send an expert—probably
Dieter Wisliceny—to Jerusalem to be his own personal adviser for
setting up death camps and gas chambers once Germany won
the war and he was in power.34

"The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz."

"In September 1943, intense negotiations to rescue 500 Jewish children from the Arbe concentration camp collapsed due to the objection of al-Husseini who blocked the children's departure to Turkey because they would end up in Palestine.‏²⁰¹

We combatted this enterprise by writing to Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Hitler, and, thereafter, the governments of Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries. We succeeded in foiling this initiative, a circumstance that led the Jews to make terrible accusations against me, in which they held me accountable for the liquidation of four hundred thousand Jews who were unable to emigrate to Palestine in this period. They added that I should be tried as a war criminal in Nurenberg.

The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart:

1. He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
2. At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
3. As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.

On november 28, 1941, three weeks after his arrival in Berlin, the mufti was received by Hitler. As recorded in the minutes of the meeting, Hitler urged his guest to remain patient:

At some not yet precisely known, but in any case not very distant point in time, the German armies will reach the southern edge of the Caucasus. As soon as this is the case, the Führer will himself give the Arab world his assurance that the hour of liberation has arrived. At this point, the sole German aim will be the destruction of the Jews living in the Arab space under the protection of British power.

There was no clearer proof of how the radical Arab nationalist and Islamist worldview paralleled that of the Nazis than al-Husaini’s “stump speech,” written in 1943 and used in his talks to SS soldiers and imam training courses.44 One of his translators, Zvonimir Bernwald of the Bosnian SS Hanžar Division, testified that he heard al-Husaini give this speech to classes of Muslim SS soldiers in Zagreb and Banja Luka in occupied Yugoslavia, and later in an imam training course at Potsdam near Berlin.45 Al-Husaini made a similar speech to Bosnian SS division imams in October 1944.46

Nazi Germany, said the grand mufti, was the Muslims’ natural ally. It had never invaded an Islamic land; it fought world Jewry, the archenemy of Islam; and it battled against England, the power that had destroyed the caliphate and the Islamic empire in India. Nazi Germany also fought against Communism, which tyrannized forty million Muslims and tried to destroy Islam.

These things would be sufficient to justify a strong Nazi-Muslim alliance, al-Husaini continued, but there was something else that brought the two sides together: the parallels between the Islamic world view and National Socialism. He gave a long list of such parallels, backing each assertion with quotes from al-Qur’an and Muhammad’s sayings:

• Belief in one God taught the need for a single, all-powerful leader. When Muhammad died, a caliph was chosen as sole ruler whom all Muslims must obey. Order, discipline and obedience were central to Islam: the imam led the prayer; the commander led the soldiers. This leader makes decisions alone, not bound by anyone else including voters or a parliament. National Socialism was built on this same principle, with Hitler as the German equivalent of the caliph.

• Islam saw its people as a single global community (umma) that should live within a single powerful state. The Nazis had the same view of the Germans.

• Jihad was one of Islam’s main duties. Every Muslim saw jihad and martyrdom as the crown to his deeds of faith. Many verses of al-Qur’an asked Muslims to fight and to sacrifice their livelihoods and blood. Nazism also stressed struggle, battle, and self-sacrifice.

• Islam put the community of believers first, with the common good being more important than any individual’s welfare. A Nazi Party motto, directed against the “Jewish materialistic spirit”—and even appearing on coins after 1934—was “The common good comes before the private good.”47

• Islam dealt with family as society’s basic organizational group. The father ruled the family; children must obey parents. Motherhood was revered. Having children was good; abortion was prohibited. This approach echoed Hitler’s doctrines including the idea—popular among Islamists—that a woman’s main job was to produce future soldiers.

• Islam and National Socialism both fought the Jews. Almost one-third of al-Qur’an deals with the Jews, warning Muslims to distrust and battle them, said al-Husaini. The Jews tried to poison Muhammad several times and thus the prophet had no choice but to kill them or drive them from Arabia. Al-Husaini drew up a detailed program from his reading of Muhammad’s example that paralleled Hitler’s policy: Step 1: Stop tolerating Jews. Step 2: Drive out as many as possible. Step 3: Kill all the males and enslave the rest, eventually annihilating them entirely.

• Reverence for labor. Islam protected and esteemed work so that everyone gave according to his ability. This argument was the kind of claim later made by radical Arab nationalists in the postwar era when they decided that they were “Arab Socialists” and aligned themselves with the Soviet Union.

• Finally, an Allied victory would be a triumph for the Jews and a disaster for Muslims and Islam. Since the war was a jihad, all Muslims must fight alongside the Germans. If they did so, the radical Arabs’ program would succeed: the war would be won, Islam saved, the Arabs united, and the Jews destroyed.48

Islamist and Arab nationalist ideology also paralleled that of the Nazis in being racialist. Al-Husaini rejected the claim that Jews and Arabs had common ancestors. No, he said, the two groups were totally different. Arabs were generous and courageous; Jews were greedy and cowardly. He and al-Kailani protested the Nazi use of the phrase “anti-Semitism” lest people think it included the Arabs, also Semites, as well. Hitler and Rosenberg ordered German propagandists not to use that term49 and instead refer only to being “anti-Jewish.”50 Al-Husaini also encouraged the airing of a radio broadcast in late 1942, written with Grobba’s supervision, saying that the Germans viewed the Arabs as a worthy race equal to the Aryans.51

The differences between the Arab and Jewish races, al-Husaini explained, were the reason for the eternal hostility between them. The conflict had intensified with the advent of Islam because the Jews plotted against Muhammad. This enmity had continued as Muslims recognized they must liberate themselves from the Jews. The struggle “between two races” was rooted in religion and would continue until “one race” was destroyed.52 Thus, genocide against the Jews was a necessity in al-Husaini’s own ideology, not an idea borrowed from Hitler or abandoned once the Third Reich fell.

42. PArchWGS, Office Of Chief Of Council For War Crimes, Doc. No. NG-5462–5570, “Eidesstattliche Erklärung” of Carl Rekowski, October 5, 1947, 6.

43. PArchWGS, “An Rosenberg, Rosenbergs Artikel im Völkischen Beobachter ‘Schmarotzerschutz: Heilige Pflicht der Demokratien.’” Berlin, August 2, 1944.

44. Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem, 240, suggested, perhaps following Kamal ad-Din Jalal, that the grand mufti got his “Points of Contact between Islam and National Socialism” from Rosenberg. This is unlikely. The stump speech about those points contains chosen verses of al-Qur’an and hadith that Rosenberg could not have known. The language of al-Husaini’s speeches was inspired, even in wording, however, by Hitler’s writings and speeches. Al-Husaini was often invited to Hitler’s public speeches, and received translations of others in writing.

45. Zvonimir Bernwald’s testimony is in the TV show by Stefan Meining, “The Pact between Radical Muslims and Hitler.” German ARD, Report Munich, July 17, 2006, 5.41 min; Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem, 231.

46. PArchWGS, al-Husaini’s stump speech, “Islam and National Socialism,” 1943, 5, and “Rede vor den Imamen der bosnischen SS-Division, 04.10.44,” 5; see also Gerhard Höpp, ed., Mufti-Papiere (Berlin: Schwarz, 2001), 218–222.

47. “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz” was part of the NSDAP program of 1920. The mint of Berlin produced one-reichsmark coins with this legend from 1934 on.

48. BArchP, AA, R27327, 298019–23; HA Ettel 6, 207; TL 15451.

49. PArchWGS, “Aktennotiz Dr. Koeppen, Aufgabengebiet ‘Überstaatliche Mächte,”’ Großmufti, Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Araber und Bezeichnung Antisemitismus, Berlin, 17.05.43, gez. Dienstleiter Hans Hagemeyer.”

50. Grobba, “Supplement,” 27; Weltkampf: Die Judenfrage in Geschichte und Gegenwart, no. 3 (1944): 168 (inquiry by Rashid Ali al-Kailani and response by Prof. Dr. Walter Groß of the NSDAP Office of Racial Policy, October 17, 1942; Groß explains that term “anti-Semite” is incorrect and that “anti-Jewish” (“Judengegner”) is preferable and adds that the expression “anti-Semitism” is also incorrect, since it would apply to Arabs and other speakers of Semitic languages); see also Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem, 239.

51. Grobba, “Supplement,” 27.

52. “Araber und Muslime befinden sich im Krieg mit dem Judentum,” Radio Berlin, January 28, 1944, in Jeffrey Herf, “Hitlers Dschihad,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, no. 2 (2010): 259–86.

Thus, genocide against the Jews was a necessity in al-Husaini’s own ideology, not an idea borrowed from Hitler or abandoned once the Third Reich fell.