The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Fuhrer

In my post How Israel Emerged In the Collapsed Ottoman Empire, I mention the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who allied himself with Germany and the Ottoman Empire during WWI and then Germany and Hitler in WWII -- both disasters for Middle Eastern Muslims. The loss of Germany in WWI caused the fall of the Ottoman Empire and their loss in WWII saw them lose control of their region that included the area now called Israel through large-scale Jewish immigration after 1948.

The Mufti literally sat at Hitler's right hand (see photo below).  I quoted Sol Stern, an American and Israeli citizen, has been writing about Israel for 50 years, as follows from his book A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism:

At the center of his account is the neglected and little known -- yet central -- figure of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Haj Amin al-Husseini. As the grand mufti of Jerusalem, he was the leader of the Palestinian movement from its inception in the 1920s in the wake of the British Balfour Declaration, into the 1950s, after which he was succeeded by his nephew Yasser Arafat......

Like Arafat and Abbas after him, time and again the mufti rejected any compromise. Driven by a sense of Islamic entitlement and Arab resentment of the West, insensible to the economic growth made possible by the relative prosperity of the Jews, the mufti urged his followers to embrace implacable hatred.

Siegel writes about the book:

In the Arab revolt of the late 1930s, Islamist crowds stormed through the streets of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter shouting slogans such as “Muhammad’s religion was born with the sword.” The mob killed, looted and burned. Two years of low-level war left the Jews stronger than ever and the local Arab economy in ruins, a scene that has recurred time and again. But the mufti saw hope for his cause in Hitler’s war against the allies and the Jews.

From the online article The Mufti and the Fuhrer:

"In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.

The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”¹

On November 28, 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti’s requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches....The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely....the Jews....” Hitler replied:

Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine....Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle....Germany’s objective [is]...solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere....In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely.²

Two German historians say that Hitler had a plan to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East and had forged an alliance with Arab nationalists. This is perhaps why Hitler met with the Mufti and provided him a budget of 750,000 Reichsmark per month to foment a jihad in Palestine. The alliance did not alter Hitler’s racist views toward Arabs reflected in his refusal to shake the Mufti’s hand or drink coffee with him.³

In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974.

A document attesting to the connection between Nazi Germany and the Mufti was released in March 2017. In the letter published by the National Library of Israel Archives, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler heaps praise upon Mufti al-Husseini, stating that the Nazi leadership  has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs - and especially in Palestine - against the Jewish invaders. Himmler ends the letter by bidding the Mufti warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the big victory.  This letter was delivered in the Fall of 1943, two years after the Mufti's famous meeting with Adolf Hitler.⁴

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Sources:
¹ “Grand Mufti Plotted To Do Away With All Jews In Mideast,” Response, (Fall 1991), pp. 2-3.
² Record of the Conversation Between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on November 28, 1941, in the Presence of Reich Foreign Minister and Minister Grobba in Berlin, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, Series D, Vol. XIII, London, 1964, p. 881ff in Walter Lacquer and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader, (NY: Facts on File, 1984), pp. 79-84.
³ Von Jan Friedman, “New Research Taints Image of Desert Fox Rommel,” Der Spiegel, (May 23, 2007).
⁴ Letter written to Grand Mufti from Himmler uncovered, YNet News, (March 30, 2017)