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.