Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana show.
Speaker 1: I'm here with Thomas and building off of the episode
Speaker 1: that we the Deviation episode from thirty the Thirty Years War,
Speaker 1: in the same in the same subject matter, Thomas is
Speaker 1: gonna jump in, so take it away, Thomas.
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about.
Speaker 3: The relationship of the Third Right to the Islamic World,
Speaker 3: specifically Palestine, and Palestine was absolutely affiliated with the access
Speaker 3: powers in direct capacities, and there is very good offices
Speaker 3: between the Fear and the Grand Mufti ol Hussini, who,
Speaker 3: despite what propaganda and mainstream history suggests he was a
Speaker 3: he came from a lineage that very much had a
Speaker 3: claim to the manual of leadership in Palestine and from
Speaker 3: a very proud lineage that was and remains very respected
Speaker 3: among the Palestinians across the sectarian divide, Christian and Mauslim.
Speaker 3: In order to understand that relationship, though, it's important to
Speaker 3: deal with the relations between the German Reich in the
Speaker 3: Islamic World generally, and early on, the Third Reich viewed
Speaker 3: the Islamic World not in reductionist terms, but as very
Speaker 3: much a political force that had momentum in the historical process.
Speaker 3: But that also was an important ally to the cultivated
Speaker 3: in the war against Bullshevism and Jewry as they viewed it.
Speaker 3: And this wasn't just pragmatic. There was a basic affinity
Speaker 3: there with some qualifications, and this is important. And it's
Speaker 3: impossible to talk about this with people in interrational manner
Speaker 3: because they just go berserk if you mentioned Islam.
Speaker 2: They've been that brainwashed.
Speaker 3: Some of these people are just incredibly stupid, but you know,
Speaker 3: the majority continues to take their cues from legacy media
Speaker 3: and from regime ideologies. The only thing comparable to it
Speaker 3: is people go utterly berserk if I attack the president.
Speaker 3: I don't know what they think the president is doing
Speaker 3: for them lately, or why they think he's in some
Speaker 3: incredible personage. But you know, I'm not here to make
Speaker 3: friends or to try and convert stupid people to make
Speaker 3: them intelligent or reasonable.
Speaker 2: It's just.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the reasons I disdained social media
Speaker 3: is because it's impossible they have serious conversations there because
Speaker 3: aside from the paid agitators and disruptors, there's just this
Speaker 3: whole peanut gallery of idiots. You think it's like a
Speaker 3: video game or something, and they've decided, they've convinced themselves
Speaker 3: they have some take on everything, and even though they
Speaker 3: spend their days like exclusively in their own house or Walmart,
Speaker 3: they decided they have some take on Islam where they
Speaker 3: have no understanding of it whatsoever. So not just I mean,
Speaker 3: don't get me wrong, I'm very blessed there's anybody who
Speaker 3: spends time with capital t traditionalists authors, you know Mercia
Speaker 3: Eliotti Renegan on particularly because I mean, obviously he was
Speaker 3: a Sufi Maslim, Julius evil.
Speaker 2: They all rode extensive way.
Speaker 3: On a dar al Islam and Muhammad and his role
Speaker 3: in the historical process and things like that, and obviously
Speaker 3: I've got a fair amount of Mauslim comrades on the ground. Well,
Speaker 3: she and Sunny, you know, we're both good friends and
Speaker 3: reliable partisans. But who I can seek out to discuss
Speaker 3: compared to theology within things. So I'm not suggesting I'm
Speaker 3: isolating in that regard. It just it reaffirms why I
Speaker 3: am a vanguardist, because most people aren't built for this
Speaker 3: in all kinds of ways, and they don't even have
Speaker 3: their own prejudices. Their prejudices are are Jewish prejudices, or
Speaker 3: they're ones that you know they gleaned from from legacy
Speaker 3: media apparatus, or or a fucking around on the Internet
Speaker 3: with the people who are probably paid agitators, or like
Speaker 3: random guys in India or something just saying things. It's
Speaker 3: it's like it's staggering to re of ignorance. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I'll stop ranting at the subs. The general disposition of
Speaker 3: the Reich towards Islam, the Islamic world, like I said,
Speaker 3: they viewed it as a global force that was playing
Speaker 3: an essential role in the unfolding historical process. They also
Speaker 3: predicted that although there wouldn't there wasn't going to be
Speaker 3: the imminent orders of a new caliphate to replace the
Speaker 3: Sea of Daryl Islam that obviously was vacated by the
Speaker 3: collapse of the Ottomans. And to be clear that the
Speaker 3: Kaiser Reich and the Ottoman Empire were very close allies.
Speaker 3: So the Germans had a particularly the German academ which
Speaker 3: had a very strong Orientalist bent, and the Foreign service,
Speaker 3: many of whom remained.
Speaker 2: Into the Third Reich. They had a.
Speaker 3: Fairly highly developed understanding of Islam and of the several
Speaker 3: cultures that constituted. And obviously, as the war went on,
Speaker 3: the non European territories that were directly occupied by Wehrmacht
Speaker 3: were largely Islamic countries, and Sarajevo, which is the seed
Speaker 3: of European Islam, was occupied by by the Reich. So
Speaker 3: that's that's important. All these all these variables intertwined. And
Speaker 3: as I've written about in my manuscript, and I believe
Speaker 3: I've discussed here with Pete previously, the massacres. They it's
Speaker 3: the annihilation therapy that was perpetuated against minority elements in
Speaker 3: the nascent Turkish state. The world came to know about
Speaker 3: that owing to a maximum shooting a Richter who was
Speaker 3: deployed there, and he alerted both the Red Cross and the.
Speaker 2: And and you know, the Berlin.
Speaker 3: Foreign Office, and he was told to know on certain terms,
Speaker 3: to stop agitating for some sort of localized intervention or
Speaker 3: relief for these people, because relations with Ankara are very important,
Speaker 3: especially in these times of uncertainty. And I make the
Speaker 3: point that well, you know, and on shooting the rictor
Speaker 3: he fell at the at the Munich pouch in November
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty three, and Hitler what on record is saying
Speaker 3: that he was the one. He said the party never
Speaker 3: recovered from the death of shooting a rictor.
Speaker 2: He was an essential.
Speaker 3: Personage to the National Socialist Party and the revolution. And
Speaker 3: so I make the point in a manuscript. So if
Speaker 3: if from inception the NSDAP was this hyper racialized, you know,
Speaker 3: murderous conspiratorial cadre that simply hated all non Riian races,
Speaker 3: why was Richter the only man who was raising alarm
Speaker 3: about what was happening in an Asia Minor? Nobody seems
Speaker 3: to be able to answer that question for me. They
Speaker 3: simply ignore it, or sam lying, or move on without
Speaker 3: addressing it.
Speaker 2: But be as it may.
Speaker 3: The Third Reich, although arguably there's the deepest sort of
Speaker 3: diplomatic rapport and cultural rapport enjoyed with Daryl Islam, the
Speaker 3: other major Access nations made similar efforts to curate and
Speaker 3: mobilize Islamic support. Mussolini he famously, I mean, this was
Speaker 3: very performative and very stage managed. But in nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: seven he arranged for this ceremony where he was presented
Speaker 3: with a quote sort of Islam at a public ceremony
Speaker 3: in Tripoli, symbolically holding himself and the Kingdom of Italy
Speaker 3: out as a as a as a protector of the
Speaker 3: Maslim world against against communism, and he went on to
Speaker 3: declare that the quote laws of the prophet would would
Speaker 3: be honored. Gebels actually made a note of this, and
Speaker 3: his diaries prolific as he was as a diary, it
Speaker 3: was one of the reasons there's such a valuable artifact.
Speaker 3: He had kind of a cynical take on this. He said,
Speaker 3: you know, the duche never never passes up an opportunity
Speaker 3: to glorify himself as the protector of other people's you know,
Speaker 3: which was which was true? And I don't I don't
Speaker 3: think Duce had some deep affinity for his lom Or
Speaker 3: spent much time learning about its theological precepts. But it
Speaker 3: was imperative, particularly considering the primary battle space that Italy
Speaker 3: was committed to with that juncture, to try and curate
Speaker 3: the support these people, or at least mitigate any hostility
Speaker 3: that might be emergent otherwise. Similarly, the the Shintoist Japan,
Speaker 3: they established the Greater Japan Islamic League and simultaneously the
Speaker 3: Tokyo Mosque was established at nineteen thirty eight, and.
Speaker 2: They very much.
Speaker 3: Dedicated a lot of effort and resources, both military and
Speaker 3: capital to encouraging in Islamic uprising against the Dutch, you know,
Speaker 3: and radicalizing people in the in the Dutch Indies against them,
Speaker 3: both the British and and the Midlanders. And like I
Speaker 3: said this in the case of the right, this long
Speaker 3: predated the national socialist revolution.
Speaker 2: The central powers, you know, particularly the Kaiser right.
Speaker 3: The Ottoman Empire was an essential ally theirs, and until
Speaker 3: they got knocked out of the war, they played an
Speaker 3: essential role in allowing Germany to sustain a two front conflict.
Speaker 3: There's so much emphasis on the Western Front and the
Speaker 3: Maelstrom and slaughter that that represented. There's not enough inc
Speaker 3: dedicated to the US Front of World War One, where
Speaker 3: it wasn't the stalemate that it came to pass in
Speaker 3: the West because the open Step precluded it and facilitated maneuver.
Speaker 3: Poison gas was used to greater effect in in the
Speaker 3: East as well. And obviously you know until the when
Speaker 3: when when the after the Rustian Revolution, the the Reichs
Speaker 3: fail was victorious. I mean, that was one of the
Speaker 3: big soar points of the of the military in the
Speaker 3: wake of Versailles, is they were forced to give up
Speaker 3: these territories that they won on the battlefield.
Speaker 2: But you know, before.
Speaker 3: An entire army deployed to the east was freed up,
Speaker 3: you know, by the Red Revolution and the Treaty of
Speaker 3: Breast the Tusk. The Ottomans were playing an essential role
Speaker 3: in the Kaiser re jew strategic flank. And Wilhelm, who
Speaker 3: was not any kind of great diplomat or strategic thinker,
Speaker 3: he went out of his way to sustain good offices
Speaker 3: with the Ottomans. You know, whole Vegg was very much
Speaker 3: the political mind behind the kaiser Reich, but the Kaiser himself,
Speaker 3: particularly in dealing with you know, fellow monarchs, and uh,
Speaker 3: make the mistake, you know, the even in its waiting days,
Speaker 3: an Ottoman sultan, that great authority, it was essential for.
Speaker 2: It. Dictates and.
Speaker 3: Declarations and as well as insinuations both subtle and flagrant,
Speaker 3: come from the Kaiser himself. But you know, so German
Speaker 3: Atoman authorities, they collaborated and trying to cultivate Pan Islamic
Speaker 3: consciousness in North Africa and the Near East and Russia
Speaker 3: and India. I mean, this was this was a long
Speaker 3: standing effort. It's not just a question that emerged in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nine and in in World War Two as
Speaker 3: the himnachsaf ss. Even early on, as they found themselves
Speaker 3: deployed to Islamic lands, German authorities were explicit that Islam
Speaker 3: was of political importance and sold out and were instructed
Speaker 3: to respect religious customs and show respect for Islam when
Speaker 3: dealing with Moslems, and and to treat them as friendlies
Speaker 3: unless they you know, he exhibited disrespect for the Reich.
Speaker 3: It's it's heraldry or or for you know, the the
Speaker 3: personal honor a soldiers and officers.
Speaker 2: On the ust front.
Speaker 3: The uh, the Reich one as far as they were,
Speaker 3: the re establishment of mosques and madrasses, and they set
Speaker 3: aside pious endowments for the re establishment of Islamic religious life.
Speaker 2: I mean they did.
Speaker 3: They did the same thing with with Orthodox churches. But
Speaker 3: I mean that goes up saying if you know the
Speaker 3: history of the conflict and the political side of things,
Speaker 3: but uh, you know, they this went a long way
Speaker 3: to undermining the Soviet rule because Moslims were targeted with
Speaker 3: as much hostility as as the Orthodox were, you know,
Speaker 3: and Gurbles themselves made the point that the early Soviet
Speaker 3: cadres in KVD and the Czech They they hated the
Speaker 3: Moslems rethno sectarian reasons as much as they did the Christians,
Speaker 3: and viewed them as their repressors and did incredibly brutal
Speaker 3: things and tried to tried to tried to extricate relateous
Speaker 3: sensibility from Islamic communities Vermunt authorities. Also, they're very much cultivated,
Speaker 3: you know, the Ulama in Eastern territories and the Balkans especially,
Speaker 3: That's how headway was made. And as Uh the Balkan
Speaker 3: theater became this counterinsurgency quagmire that became very important. And
Speaker 3: Ante Pavolch Poglovnik of the Independent State of Croatia, he
Speaker 3: was raised in a town early in his life that
Speaker 3: had a very large Maslim population. And Uh Pavolos himself,
Speaker 3: he knew a lot about Islam and their rituals. There's
Speaker 3: a photographs of him wearing a fez when he's meeting
Speaker 3: with Bosniaks. It's very interesting and he he famously he
Speaker 3: viewed Bosniaks as quote racial Croatians and Sunni Islam. Uh
Speaker 3: was viewed as a state relied religion alongside Roman Catholicism,
Speaker 3: albeit secondary secondarily to it. But that that that that
Speaker 3: that sort of expedited this these efforts in the Balden Theater,
Speaker 3: which would have been a lot more difficult if the
Speaker 3: used to show was openly hostile to UH Bosnia populations
Speaker 3: and UH the UH the vermackd and UH the buff
Speaker 3: and SS they they granted a lot of religious freedom
Speaker 3: to Moslim recruits and UH Moslim formations. The religious calendar
Speaker 3: was taken into uh account dietary laws with respect to
Speaker 3: you know, the mess hall and things. Both of Vermacht
Speaker 3: and of off On SSS had emms service chaplains, and
Speaker 3: they launched h ideological education programs to explicate how you know,
Speaker 3: a Moslim should live as a national socialist, you know,
Speaker 3: and what the meaning was of national socialism to non
Speaker 3: Germanic yet Allied races. This was very, very detailed, whatever
Speaker 3: if any whether anybody agrees with this or not, you know.
Speaker 3: And these education programs were almost unfailingly delivered by by
Speaker 3: military emams. The only times they weren't is when an
Speaker 3: imam wasn't available, and Bosniak imams in particular played an
Speaker 3: outsized role. Again, Sarah Jevo only about two million Moslims
Speaker 3: lived in Sarajevo, but that's the European seed of Islam,
Speaker 3: and UH.
Speaker 2: The way Moslims viewed it throughout the.
Speaker 3: Moslim diaspora was, you know, being being sort of the
Speaker 3: seed of Islamic culture in Europe and also being very
Speaker 3: directly threatened by by Communism. There was a peculiar interest
Speaker 3: in the fortunes of the Bosniaks of Sarajevo and reciprocally
Speaker 3: pious Sunnis, you know, pious UH, the Bosniak Sunnis. They
Speaker 3: they had a strong interest in the fortunes of their
Speaker 3: coreligion is you know, behind the they were still behind
Speaker 3: the verbial wire in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: And in UH in Palestine. You know, the.
Speaker 3: UH military formal military policy towards Islamic peoples, and UH
Speaker 3: brought strategic terms.
Speaker 2: Really that.
Speaker 3: Policy paradigm first originated on July twenty fifth, nineteen forty,
Speaker 3: just after the fall of France, you know, and as
Speaker 3: the Battle of Britain was getting underway, a man named
Speaker 3: Max van Oppenheim. He was a retired diplomat and an
Speaker 3: Orientalist scholar. He spontaneously sent a memorandum, a seven page
Speaker 3: memorandum to the Foreign Office suggesting that it was both
Speaker 3: imperative to cultivate the populations and the enemies Islamic territories
Speaker 3: and do everything possible to incite a rebellion against the
Speaker 3: British authorities there, and moving forward to give whatever military material,
Speaker 3: aid and diplomatic encouragement as was reasonable and feasible, you know,
Speaker 3: And he said if he said, the time is nigh
Speaker 3: for a comprehensive strategy to mobilize the Islamic world against
Speaker 3: the British Empire. But he said, also if the British
Speaker 3: have time to consolidate forces and suppress a nascent rebellion,
Speaker 3: and well meanwhile holding you know, German forces at bay
Speaker 3: in theater, the opportunity will not repeat. He's also Oppenheim
Speaker 3: who'd spent most of his adult life traveling, and he
Speaker 3: is traveling and living in the Islamic world. He'd reached
Speaker 3: out directly as a private person since his retirement. He
Speaker 3: was in his early eighties. I believe to pan Islamic
Speaker 3: religious figures like Shakib Arslan and more most significantly to
Speaker 3: the Grand Mufti aminel Hussini, and they became very close
Speaker 3: and largely at Oppenneim's be hast. Hitler, who had a
Speaker 3: somewhat tempestuous relationship with the Foreign Office, he took this
Speaker 3: seriously and German officers were deployed to the entire Moslim
Speaker 3: corridor where there was a British imperial presence from Egypt
Speaker 3: to India. And of course subsequently the Grand moved Yea
Speaker 3: Lucenia was able to gain a personal audience of the Hitler,
Speaker 3: and we'll get to that, but this was the this
Speaker 3: was the origin of what became a a strategic imperative
Speaker 3: in political and military terms. I mean, that's important for
Speaker 3: its own sake, but also the Ribbontrop's other cast is
Speaker 3: some sort of fool or an incompetant, or the foreign
Speaker 3: officers cast is in the same sort of terms as
Speaker 3: the app there as this sort of a positive a
Speaker 3: fifth columnists. And Hitler's cast is this provincial nationalist who
Speaker 3: didn't understand the felt politique. I mean, all that is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: And this the relationship of the Reich to the Islamic
Speaker 3: world in particulars stands in a rebuttal to that inference.
Speaker 3: And so this is an important subject matter for that reason.
Speaker 3: And Oppenheim he he'd served in the kaiser Reich for
Speaker 3: decades and there's few people then living who knew as
Speaker 3: much about Islam and Islamic societies as he did, and
Speaker 3: more than any one man, he was responsible for shaping
Speaker 3: the Kaiser's disposition towards Islam generally. He was trained as
Speaker 3: a lawyer. By education, he'd become fluent in several Middle
Speaker 3: Eastern languages, including you know, various Arab dialects, as well
Speaker 3: as Turkish. He traveled for years through Africa and the
Speaker 3: Middle East, and in eighteen ninety six when he was
Speaker 3: officially recruited by the Foreign Office, he subsequently posted for
Speaker 3: twelve years in Cairo, where he directly monitored political developments
Speaker 3: and cultivated and enduring relationships with Arab in Islamic leadership.
Speaker 3: In Sudan during the Mahdi rebellion, he'd been on the
Speaker 3: ground there and what he attested to in subsequent years
Speaker 3: was that's when he first encountered is Lam as a
Speaker 3: political force. He always understood the deeply integral structure of
Speaker 3: Islam and conceptual terms, but this had all been at
Speaker 3: stress act or academic until this point. In Sudan, he
Speaker 3: came to realize that Islam had a strong role to
Speaker 3: play in the Burgening political process, that.
Speaker 2: It had an.
Speaker 3: Ability to animate pious elements towards direct military action, and
Speaker 3: therein it was a force multiplier, And that there is
Speaker 3: a peculiar interplay of deep theology and political and military
Speaker 3: imperatives in the Islamic world, and the Western power that
Speaker 3: could integrate that into its own political soldiery would carry
Speaker 3: the day in theater, and he he'd been able to
Speaker 3: gain Oppenheim, had he'd been able to gain audiences with
Speaker 3: the Ottoman Sultan, with a number of other luminaries, both
Speaker 3: reactionaries and reformers. What they were hold in common was
Speaker 3: a belief and advocacy of the pan Islamic cause in
Speaker 3: lieu of this sort of narrow ethno nationalism that was
Speaker 3: still characteristic in the colonized world in substantial measure. And
Speaker 3: Oppenheim's dispatches were delivered personally to the Kaiser, who basically
Speaker 3: viewed them as gospel in terms of how to proceed
Speaker 3: in the Near East and North Africa. And the Kaiser Wilhelm,
Speaker 3: for all of his shortcomings, was for myriad and he
Speaker 3: was in many respects. The Reich was unfortunately saddled with him,
Speaker 3: he did delegate to experts. That the other reason Halvegg
Speaker 3: subsequently had the sort of power he did. And on
Speaker 3: matters relating to h veldt politique, the Kaiser tended to
Speaker 3: defer to people he viewed as the experts.
Speaker 2: And that's very Prussian.
Speaker 3: And that's why, despite Germany not having a global profile
Speaker 3: in terms of directly colonies in the way that the
Speaker 3: United Kingdom or France, or the Spanish or the Portuguese did,
Speaker 3: they tend to do do very well at at cultivating
Speaker 3: allies in the developing world. And this went uh. Some
Speaker 3: of this was and we'll get into this in our
Speaker 3: Thirty Years War series. Isn't a side I want to
Speaker 3: cover this one I'm about to discuss as well as
Speaker 3: the sort of proxy war that was going on in
Speaker 3: Japan during the Thirty Years War between the Catholics and
Speaker 3: specifically Dutch Reformed elements. But the the Ottomans had granted
Speaker 3: asylum to Protestants, both Lutheran and Reformed, who were either
Speaker 3: refugees of hostilities in the thirties War or were wanted
Speaker 3: by the Inquisition, and a sort of cultural rapport developed
Speaker 3: between Protestant Germany and Sunni Islam, and I think that
Speaker 3: that's something that's understated and a lot of these otherwise
Speaker 3: very complete accounts of the subject matter, but even limited
Speaker 3: as the Kaiser ex colonial profile was, the Kaiser right
Speaker 3: did in the colonies that did have rule over did
Speaker 3: rule over Islamic populations in Togo and Cameroon, in Germany,
Speaker 3: East Africa now and maybe a you know, and obviously
Speaker 3: it was far easier. I mean, I mean, Africans are
Speaker 3: subterre and Africans are are just challenges to managing those
Speaker 3: populations just because of profound alienage. It's it's obviously, but
Speaker 3: the colonial authorities obviously found it easier to deal with
Speaker 3: Islamic elements than pagan ones who ascribed to some sort
Speaker 3: of folk animism or something, and from the outset curated
Speaker 3: good offices with Islamic elements in these territories, and local
Speaker 3: Islamic structures weren't disturbed so long as Muslim leaders accepted
Speaker 3: the colonial presence. In German Africa, sharia kor it's recognized
Speaker 3: Islamic endowments were we weren't touched or text madrasas were
Speaker 3: left open, religious holidays were acknowledged, and the Germans, uh wisely,
Speaker 3: they ruled through Maslim intermediaries and Islamic dignitaries. You weren't
Speaker 3: generally going to be visited in your township by some
Speaker 3: by by by a white man or a German colonial administrator,
Speaker 3: and it'd be an African Maslim intermediary.
Speaker 2: Or a.
Speaker 3: Respected man in in in the local mosque who you
Speaker 3: deal with, and he in turn to deal with the Germans.
Speaker 3: And on the one hand this left colonial governor somewhat isolated.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, it also meant that these
Speaker 3: intermediaries they had the might of you know, the Kaiser
Speaker 3: right behind them an event of an uprising, So indirect
Speaker 3: rule was highly effective, and that it's not discussed enough that, again,
Speaker 3: in comparative terms limited as the German colonial profile and
Speaker 3: experience was, it very much was a school of political rule,
Speaker 3: you know, and a high political intrigue, and they were
Speaker 3: very good at it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's.
Speaker 3: I think I think that's not often enough acknowledged, other
Speaker 3: than in very perfunctory terms. And this also led to
Speaker 3: as these kinds of colonial as more and more business
Speaker 3: was done in the colonies and as a geostrategic imperative
Speaker 3: developed around the German presence therapy. There was more and
Speaker 3: more of these sort of colonial congresses formal and informal
Speaker 3: between military and political and business authorities.
Speaker 2: Within the Kaiser Reich.
Speaker 3: This led to the development of a a cadre of
Speaker 3: experts in Islamic studies in German academ and there was
Speaker 3: always a streak of Orientalism in modern German academ anyway,
Speaker 3: but these guys who previously really only were focused on
Speaker 3: classical Islam and you know, the their relations with the
Speaker 3: Greeks and things, they shifted their conceptual focus very much,
Speaker 3: I think the contemporary Moslim world and what a proper
Speaker 3: imperial policy should be towards Islam qua Islam, and there
Speaker 3: really wasn't something comparable in the UK or France. There
Speaker 3: was philology type stuff, and you know, obviously a very
Speaker 3: advanced cultural anthropology, but a kind of political science of
Speaker 3: how European Christiandom should index with Islam and power political
Speaker 3: capacities that was pretty much exclusive to the Reich. There
Speaker 3: was a German Colonial Institute formally established. One of their
Speaker 3: big luminaries was a guy named Karl Heinrich Becker, and
Speaker 3: a couple of his colleagues Martin Hartman and D. D.
Speaker 2: Vestermann.
Speaker 3: Becker was was centered in Hamburg, Hartman and Vestman in Berlin.
Speaker 3: They placed themselves in their faculty at the full disposal
Speaker 3: of the German Empire, and the entirety of their labors
Speaker 3: and their endowment was put in the service of investigating
Speaker 3: and studying Islam, and the colony is accumulating knowledge on
Speaker 3: its spread, historical, contemporary, its impact on power political affairs.
Speaker 3: There was these massive surveys undertaken by Becker, Hartman Investorman
Speaker 3: in ninety six, ninety eleven, in ninety thirteen respectively, which
Speaker 3: were then submitted to the Kaiser, through the Colonial Institute,
Speaker 3: to the Foreign Office onward to the Kaiser, and this
Speaker 3: became a you know, viewed as power political dogma in
Speaker 3: terms of how to proceed in in policy terms, both
Speaker 3: formally and you know, the Low Board, the German Society
Speaker 3: for the Study of Islam, it published a periodical Defelt
Speaker 3: the Islams the World of Islam, and that became regarded
Speaker 3: as the seminal European academic journal on on contemporary Islamic
Speaker 3: faith and practice and politics. And you know, most people too,
Speaker 3: even in the UK, which opposedly is full of these
Speaker 3: you know, progressives and people who have a saying progressives
Speaker 3: and know what they're talking aboutbviously don't, but it'sacter ized
Speaker 3: supposedly by this this sort of progressive sensibility an academ
Speaker 3: And then on the other hand, these sort of machiavellian
Speaker 3: types of a deep understanding of alien cultures.
Speaker 2: And how to establish and maintain power.
Speaker 3: They're in most of the most of these German experts,
Speaker 3: their counterparts, they they just looked at, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: indigenous religions, whether they actually were savage, you know, forms
Speaker 3: of animism or paganism, and is Lam is just so
Speaker 3: much you know, so much nonsense or something you know, primitive.
Speaker 3: It was, Uh, it was these German philologists and cultural
Speaker 3: studies types and orientalists who you know, emphasize with the
Speaker 3: Kaiser and demonstrated within and without of their own cutsure
Speaker 3: to academ You know, look, this is Islam is a
Speaker 3: a formative civilizing element. The uh higher races within Daryl Islam,
Speaker 3: if you'll allow the descriptor.
Speaker 2: Produce extraordinarily high culture.
Speaker 3: And Islam is brought millions by millions of people out
Speaker 3: of ignorance and savagery and even if one doesn't accept
Speaker 3: that it's a singular power, political force that is playing
Speaker 3: an essential role in the political process underway in the
Speaker 3: then nast in twentieth century. And to be clear, you know,
Speaker 3: this is when Christianity was under full assault by the Communists, and.
Speaker 2: It was uh.
Speaker 3: When this, however, can try to me have been this
Speaker 3: enforced secularism reigned throughout the Western world. That's one of
Speaker 3: the things that set the stage for the Bolshevik Revolution.
Speaker 2: You know, So.
Speaker 3: Islam is this catalyzing element really stood alone among world religions.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't get me wrong, I there.
Speaker 2: Was, there was.
Speaker 3: Pious Christians who are quite literally waging a holy war
Speaker 3: against the Communists. And I yes, I believe in in
Speaker 3: symbolic psychological terms and anthropological terms that all politics is
Speaker 3: essentially theological. But I'm talking in terms of conscious religious
Speaker 3: practice and the ability of religious imperatives to anime political affairs.
Speaker 3: In the early twentieth century, Islam really stood alone in
Speaker 3: that capacity at global scale.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: For clarity, and that this was not lost obviously on these.
Speaker 2: These people that were talking.
Speaker 3: About probably the best known political theorists who devised a
Speaker 3: practice of imperial rule visa the Islam was Karl Heinrich Becker.
Speaker 3: He emphasized again and again he said Islam wasn't, as
Speaker 3: the British claim, a threat to colonial government. He said,
Speaker 3: not only is it not a threat, but that it
Speaker 3: should and can be used to bolster imperial rule and
Speaker 3: to guarantee peace stability in public order. He said that
Speaker 3: the main reason why the white Western powers were coming
Speaker 3: into hostile contact with Islamic cultures was because they were
Speaker 3: either treating Moslim populations like they were animatester pagan savages,
Speaker 3: or they were viewing observance of Islamic practice as somehow
Speaker 3: inherently subversive, you know, And that integral aspect of Islam
Speaker 3: not only did it render it an essential, essentially political
Speaker 3: confession in a way that other face or not, but
Speaker 3: it also meant that to attack any aspect of its observance.
Speaker 2: Was to.
Speaker 3: Attack every aspect of the reigning way of life in theater.
Speaker 3: And this wasn't a minority opinion among the German colonial authorities,
Speaker 3: both political, diplomatic and military. German colonial officers didn't have
Speaker 3: a hostile disposition towards Islam.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: They correctly viewed the anti imperialist elements and the pro
Speaker 3: communist elements in theater that claimed to be Pan Islamic.
Speaker 3: They weren't really because the two. It was an irreconcilable Veltisham.
Speaker 3: There was superficially Islamist language in Moscow's propaganda as well
Speaker 3: as within some of these anti colonial ideological subcultures, but
Speaker 3: there was no depth to it. Johann von Leers, and
Speaker 3: we'll get into him next episode.
Speaker 2: He's a.
Speaker 3: Lesser known personage within the Third Reich, and it was
Speaker 3: an essential personator to the to the to the national
Speaker 3: Insulti's resistance of the day of defeat. I hold him
Speaker 3: in great esteem. But he correctly recognized Islam's not reactionary.
Speaker 3: In fact, it tends towards a revolutionary paradigm, but it
Speaker 3: is socially conservative in in terms of its view of authority.
Speaker 2: And a assaultant.
Speaker 3: Or a king, or a colonial governor or a procurator
Speaker 3: or or an occupying in general, even if he himself
Speaker 3: is not of the faith and not of your people,
Speaker 3: if he protects Islam from its enemies and allows the
Speaker 3: free observance of Islam, you were obligated as a good
Speaker 3: Moslem to not revolt against him. For example, Wilhelm went
Speaker 3: as far as he in the autumn eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: he the Kaiser went on a tour of the German
Speaker 3: colonies and of the Holy Land and the Middle East generally,
Speaker 3: and he visited Damascus specifically to visit the tomb of Salhadeen,
Speaker 3: and he gave a speech to all these you know,
Speaker 3: assembled masses of people where he declared himself to be
Speaker 3: a friend of his lab and the German Empire, to
Speaker 3: be a friend of Islam and of quote the world's
Speaker 3: three hundred million Mohammedians, you know, to give you an
Speaker 3: idea of the priority that Berlin put on the cultivation
Speaker 3: of this relationship.
Speaker 2: It wasn't.
Speaker 3: Just a minor consideration emergent in the Foreign Office or
Speaker 3: or something that Colonial Office officers posted in theater. You know,
Speaker 3: we're we're we're trying to force the Kaiser and the
Speaker 3: government to take notice of you know, and uh, this
Speaker 3: paid uh this, this, this paid dividends. I mean not
Speaker 3: you know again, not only uh did it maintain good
Speaker 3: offices with the Ottomans, who were in real trouble then,
Speaker 3: but who were an essentral ally you know, within the
Speaker 3: boundar rationality of the power political paradigm that you know,
Speaker 3: reached critical Zenas in ninety fourteen. But there there was
Speaker 3: an enduring affinity between the Reich, the German people, and
Speaker 3: Dar Al Islam that endured to the Cold War. In
Speaker 3: my opinion, you know, it was h this is a
Speaker 3: bit of a tangent, but you know, the only the
Speaker 3: only Marxist Leninist Arab state was South Yemen, and it
Speaker 3: was a cadre of East Germans who really were the
Speaker 3: intermediary between the Warsaw Pact, the East Bloc and and
Speaker 3: and the uh, the indigenous Arabs there that uh the
Speaker 3: book uh John Kuhler is this uh cold war State
Speaker 3: department guy. He wrote a really interesting book on the Stazi.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's very much a a pro regime kind
Speaker 3: of guy, cold warrior type, but he and I believe
Speaker 3: he was probably like a lot of State Department people.
Speaker 3: I think he was probably an intelligence guy under diplomatic cover.
Speaker 2: But he, uh, he wrote.
Speaker 3: About the the Stazi, the National Folks Armies presence in Yemen.
Speaker 3: You know, he tried to cast as Pejoritaly as possible,
Speaker 3: you know, suggesting that you know, all these these these
Speaker 3: Germans swearing around like colonial overlord. It's like, well, ay,
Speaker 3: they're doing something right that the yemen the Yemenis didn't
Speaker 3: didn't open fire on him instead of packing. I mean,
Speaker 3: I and the Yemen's aren't exactly the people who who
Speaker 3: take a knee for others, just because you know, if anything,
Speaker 3: there as uh impossible to govern as the past tunes
Speaker 3: and they it was it was the DDR that really
Speaker 3: sold him on the idea of a Stalinism. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's South South Yemen. There there's a confusing pastiche of
Speaker 3: of of of political intrigues in Yemen. But I mean, obviously,
Speaker 3: and I'm not suggesting that the soul or even the
Speaker 3: primary approximate cause of them aligned with the East Block
Speaker 3: was East German persuasiveness or intrigues. But interestingly they're one
Speaker 3: of the one of the Yemeny militias today in the
Speaker 3: south of the country. They ride under the flag of
Speaker 3: South Yemen, you know, uh and they claim uh at
Speaker 3: a Drake lineage to that.
Speaker 2: Polity, you know. So it's that there's something there, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that I think that should be adequate foundation. Man, there's
Speaker 2: still there's a couple other.
Speaker 3: Authors I want to get into relating to the Orientalists
Speaker 3: academic culture and in the Kaiser Reik and then later
Speaker 3: the Third Reich and the impact that had on.
Speaker 2: Conceptual matters.
Speaker 3: But I want to get into the Grand Moftiel Hussini
Speaker 3: and Palestine and it's status as an access element and things,
Speaker 3: and then I promise after that we'll get back to
Speaker 3: the Thirty Years War. But this is important then, it's
Speaker 3: it's particularly timely in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you think you're gonna be able to talk
Speaker 1: about the ground Moftie and Ben von Leers in one
Speaker 1: episode or is this possibly going to be three?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: They might go three, but I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 3: I'll try and expedite it.
Speaker 1: Well, don't yeah, don't leave anything out just to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we can do three episodes. That'll be perfectly fun.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Of course, always head on over at Thomas A Substack
Speaker 1: real Thomas seven to seven seven dot substack dot com
Speaker 1: and his website is Thomas tom seven to seven seven
Speaker 1: dot com. The t is a seven and you can
Speaker 1: connect to everything from either one of those places. And
Speaker 1: if you want to try and find him on X
Speaker 1: where where you know, his account could be gone one
Speaker 1: day and back the next constantly.
Speaker 3: I mean X is an ex as a total pile
Speaker 3: of ship like it, like it really is. I I
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to play murder, but I only maintain
Speaker 3: an account there because people for some reason can't move
Speaker 3: on from it. And it's it's kind of the one
Speaker 3: stuff place, the index of people and stuff.
Speaker 1: As a kid say, as a kid say, or used
Speaker 1: to say this, this phrase is probably uh played out
Speaker 1: by now. It's really fake and gay.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's garbage. It's garbage, and yeah it's fake and
Speaker 2: gay as well.
Speaker 1: All right, Thomas taching a couple of days.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peakingiana Show.
Speaker 1: Thomas is back for part two, talking about the relationship
Speaker 1: between Islam and not only the Third Reich, but you
Speaker 1: know you talked about the Kaiser years in the first part,
Speaker 1: so jump right in.
Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And subsequently, I at least want to dedicate a brief
Speaker 3: addendum to discussing the post war resistance in exile and
Speaker 3: how that dovetailed with the cause of Palestinian liberation and
Speaker 3: Pan Islamic consciousness. Generally, I think we got into some
Speaker 3: of that when we were talking about the post war
Speaker 3: diasp of National Socialists in exile. We were talking about
Speaker 3: how der Veg with Johann von Weir's as well as
Speaker 3: Otto Rimer and Hans Rudel, was a major contributor to
Speaker 3: both in terms of his work product and capital investment.
Speaker 3: And when Argentina was no longer a friendly environment for
Speaker 3: that sort of partisan activity owing to Perone being forced
Speaker 3: out of office, Von Leers made his way to the
Speaker 3: Court of Nasser, and Egypt and Syria in particular were
Speaker 3: very much the loci of that kind of partisan activity,
Speaker 3: and that's significant because that plays into.
Speaker 2: The not just.
Speaker 3: The military culture of the region on the Arab side,
Speaker 3: many of whom were trained by for or National Socialists
Speaker 3: and Behrmax veterans, but also it impacted the culture of
Speaker 3: resistance in profound ways, and that's something that's overlooked. And
Speaker 3: we talked a bit about the odd dialectics of the
Speaker 3: DDR and the Rote Army fraction and Horse de Mahler. Obviously,
Speaker 3: the element he was representing when he was on the
Speaker 3: ground in the levant was there of the DDR and
Speaker 3: the Rote Army fraction, but he did a lot to
Speaker 3: facilitate deep contact and operational interdependence with the Popular Front
Speaker 3: for the Liberation at Palestine and the PLO and things,
Speaker 3: and this all ties together, not just conceptually, but in
Speaker 3: terms of a common nucleus of operative fact.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense. I let me see. I try.
Speaker 3: I always try to indicate in my outlines where I
Speaker 3: leave off. So if I'm repeating myself, please let me
Speaker 3: know I speaking of I raised mind lyrics. If memory serves,
Speaker 3: we left off talking about vvon Lears and some of
Speaker 3: his work early on and after the National Socialist Revolution,
Speaker 3: as early as ninety thirty four to thirty five, he
Speaker 3: was attempting to create good offices with you know, European
Speaker 3: Moslims in the Balkans as well as with the elements
Speaker 3: in Palestine and behind the the verbial wire in the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union, and von Lears very much had the ear
Speaker 3: of the Gebels as time went on. Gebels actually, through
Speaker 3: the Propaganda Ministry, he instructed the press to paint a
Speaker 3: positive image of Islam, or at least not a negative one.
Speaker 3: This long preceded the war, and he urged journalists under
Speaker 3: the number of the Propaganda Ministry to give credit to
Speaker 3: the Islamic world as a cultural factor that plays a
Speaker 3: historically significant role in the historical process, and that alliance
Speaker 3: between the national socialist cause and Pan Islamism and the
Speaker 3: liberation of the Holy Land is you know, completely commensurate
Speaker 3: with and a component of a national socialist of health politique,
Speaker 3: you know. And this is important for a few reasons.
Speaker 3: It says light not just on the deep ideological culture
Speaker 3: and philosophical disposition of national socialism its standard bears, but
Speaker 3: also it's yet another rebuttal of the claim that the
Speaker 3: Third Reich was this provincial state that didn't understand the
Speaker 3: cultural and strategic situation outside of immediate battle theaters. And
Speaker 3: that's preposterous for a lot of reasons, many of which
Speaker 3: are obvious. Germany was a very cosmopolitan country, not in
Speaker 3: the modern pejorative sense, I mean in the the nineteenth
Speaker 3: and early twentieth century European sense. Van Leers, of course,
Speaker 3: to he was a linguist. He was fluent in something
Speaker 3: like thirteen different dialects. He was a cultural anthropologist, I
Speaker 3: mean what we consider a cultural anthropologist.
Speaker 2: He was a philologist. He was an expert on.
Speaker 3: Islam and Oriental societies, and he was very much a
Speaker 3: right Hegelian and he wrote an essay, probably his most
Speaker 3: famous essay, and it's fairly accessible online. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you can find a translation that's not corrupted by
Speaker 3: Ai slap, but.
Speaker 2: It was titled.
Speaker 3: Judaism and Islam is Opposites, and in Hegelian terms, Von
Speaker 3: Leers viewed Islam as the dialectical antithesis and Judaism and
Speaker 3: a splendid repudiation of it.
Speaker 2: And he said.
Speaker 3: That that's one of the reasons why the Caliphate wasn't
Speaker 3: subverted by a hostile Jewish element within, because these were
Speaker 3: calcit truant people were locked behind ghetto walls, and every
Speaker 3: aspect of the Islamic cultural, social, and legal code precluded
Speaker 3: them mobilizing in a possile capacity to wage war from
Speaker 3: within by subject huge or any other way. And whether
Speaker 3: anybody accepts that perspective or not, or think that it
Speaker 3: is merit within the Hegelian paradigm or without, it's a fascinating.
Speaker 2: Theory.
Speaker 3: And I highly recommend any of von Lear's essays that
Speaker 3: you can run down. I mean, admittedly have got a
Speaker 3: discrete interest in the subject matter, and it's relevant to
Speaker 3: my own research, but I aside from that, I believe
Speaker 3: it's essentially having a complete understanding and conceptual terms of
Speaker 3: the Third Reich and the national socialist ideological culture. And
Speaker 3: von Leers wasn't alone in his overall perspectives. Ferdinand Klaus
Speaker 3: he was a well regarded racial theorist, and he was
Speaker 3: an associate of Hans Gunther Hans of Kate Gunther, who
Speaker 3: was another well known racialist. Both these guys in a
Speaker 3: profile comparable to Houston, Stewart Chamberlain or Authrop Startard. For comparison,
Speaker 3: Klaus's book Ross until Ross und Seal, Race and Soul
Speaker 3: was for all practical purpose is a best seller if
Speaker 3: memory serves, and for different reasons the Dad that he
Speaker 3: cited because again he Klaus and going through both had
Speaker 3: very much of a materialist view of race. But they
Speaker 3: were in substantial agreement with Julius Evil and Renee gain
Speaker 3: On and suggesting a basic eff between the master cast
Speaker 3: stratum of the Nordic race and that of you know,
Speaker 3: the Caliphate. In other words, Islam was emergent and curated
Speaker 3: by the natural racial overcast within Daryl Islam, and that's
Speaker 3: one of the reasons it's so splendidly tailored to this
Speaker 3: integral concept of sovereignty where every man is in his
Speaker 3: place and the cast system remains undisturbed because it it
Speaker 3: emerges from the natural hierarchy within, you know, the oriental
Speaker 3: paradigm from where it was emergent. Klaus wrote reports for
Speaker 3: the SS head Office on political affairs and strategic matters
Speaker 3: relating the anthropological considerations, and he wrote, he wrote a
Speaker 3: paper that was submitted titled Preparation of an Operation for
Speaker 3: winning over the Islamic Peoples, you know, and within it
Speaker 3: he reflected on and the good offices between the kaiser
Speaker 3: Reich and the Ottoman Empire. He talked about the warrior
Speaker 3: heritage of many of the STEP people who were you know,
Speaker 3: very very much culturally Muslim, and he said it's important
Speaker 3: to emphasize similarities and feltenscham between national socialists doctor and
Speaker 3: ethics and the Quran, you know, and that's very interesting.
Speaker 3: And to be clear, Klaus wasn't suggesting that national socialism
Speaker 3: was intended as some sort of aristots religion. I know
Speaker 3: that that's something a lot of anti fascists like to claim.
Speaker 3: And Bandy, he was acknowledging that the Islamic faith structure
Speaker 3: is very, very different than religion in the occident. It's
Speaker 3: the integral aspects of it that are significance, because Islam
Speaker 3: is a political doctrine and an ethical disposition as well
Speaker 3: as the theological system, and that's what's key. And if
Speaker 3: you're a Hegelian, which essentially every everybody associated with the
Speaker 3: Third Reich was to some degree or another, you view
Speaker 3: the development of religiosity as being very much bound up
Speaker 3: with the dialectical process within the relevant culture and the
Speaker 3: variables that the historical variables that created Islam were very
Speaker 3: congress with those that gave rise to national socialism, particularly
Speaker 3: the perennial existential ross and Kreeg against the Jew. So
Speaker 3: it's not really a stretch, you know. And again you've
Speaker 3: you've got to understand the conceptual parameters of the time
Speaker 3: and place that these ideas are being postulated.
Speaker 2: There was a unique.
Speaker 3: Receptivity actual potential, you know, and a lot of people
Speaker 3: who otherwise know the subject matter are overly dismissive of
Speaker 3: of that. Interestingly, Klaus, after the war he abandoned the
Speaker 3: biological racialism. He remained an orientalist academic, and he ultimately
Speaker 3: converted to Islam.
Speaker 2: That was the case with.
Speaker 3: Carl Wolff, the SS adjutants to the permanent SS adjutant
Speaker 3: to the Fear. Later he he commanded troops the field
Speaker 3: and he was highly decorated. He wasn't just a parade
Speaker 3: ground soldier. But he's a fascinating guy. In David Irving's
Speaker 3: True Himmler, which is a great book, I understand some
Speaker 3: people's lament that you can tell that it was intended
Speaker 3: to be two volumes, and Irv you know the infirmity
Speaker 3: of old age that strikes us all down, struck Irving
Speaker 3: before you complete it. But what there is of it
Speaker 3: is just fantastic. But anyway, Carl Wolf's testimony is cited extensively. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Carlo Wolf's daughter, Fatima Grimm, she married that check Bosniak
Speaker 3: Moslem guy, and she converted to Islam and she became
Speaker 3: an islam At theologian, and then she wrote extensively on
Speaker 3: jihad is a concept. And I realized Klaus and Fatima
Speaker 3: Griham and people like I'm at Hubert, who's it was
Speaker 3: a fascinating personage. I believe Hubert would have been indicted
Speaker 3: after nine to eleven had he not died, but that's
Speaker 3: a subject or a discussion for another day. I realized
Speaker 3: these people are outliers. I'm not suggesting that it's normative
Speaker 3: or some sort of natural progression within German cultural dialectics
Speaker 3: to convert to Islam. I've got too much respect for Islam.
Speaker 3: But I could never imagine converting to Islam. With the
Speaker 3: exception of somebody like Renet Ginon who truly went native.
Speaker 3: I mean that, you know, living among Moslims and living
Speaker 3: in the Orient for essentially his whole life.
Speaker 2: That's a different phenomenon.
Speaker 3: However, with those qualifiers, I there is some sort of
Speaker 3: internal logic, especially considered the catastrophe of the day of
Speaker 3: defeat and the subsequent occupation. There is some sort of
Speaker 3: internal logic to the peculiar spiritual journey of von Leers,
Speaker 3: of Fatima, Graham of Klaus. I believe, but I'm sure
Speaker 3: the buddle of that is that that's speculation.
Speaker 2: The UH and there was others too.
Speaker 3: There was other academic writers Schmidtz, Lindmann Reichhardt who posited
Speaker 3: not just an alliance at geo strategic convenience, but an
Speaker 3: ideological affinity for between Islam and the national social state
Speaker 3: on Hegelian grounds. Linderman went as far as to say
Speaker 3: that and some of the propaganda that he drafted intended
Speaker 3: for Islamic societies. He said, the fuer prinsip is the
Speaker 3: occidental variant of, you know, the same the principle that
Speaker 3: animates the caliphate, you know. And Raichar knew the Kuran
Speaker 3: very well, so he was able to cite passages that
Speaker 3: conveyed the notion that Muhammad was the fear of the believers,
Speaker 3: and subsequently the caliph represented that.
Speaker 2: Role, you know. And but he made it clear that
Speaker 2: the fear is comparable to the Madhi.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He's not suggesting the fear as a prophet. You know.
Speaker 3: It was very intelligently tailored before its purpose, you know.
Speaker 3: And of course Moslims were under tremendous pressure by the
Speaker 3: by the communists, you know, they were they were targeted
Speaker 3: as some early as as Orthodox Christians were, you know.
Speaker 2: In that also provided an.
Speaker 3: Avenue of ingress for this kind of discoursive affinity. And
Speaker 3: after as early as nineteen thirty six, the major transmitter
Speaker 3: of German propaganda to the Mediterranean and North Africa and
Speaker 3: the Middle East was in Zessen. Go to the small
Speaker 3: town south of Berlin, and it housed at the time
Speaker 3: one of the most powerful shortwave transmitters in the world.
Speaker 3: It had been built for the transmit for the ninety
Speaker 3: thirty six Olympics and after nineteenth. As of nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: nine the broadcast station ISS Zessen it brought it had
Speaker 3: an Arabic broadcast every day, you know, intended for Turk's,
Speaker 3: Iranians Maslims who were then within uh the British Raj.
Speaker 3: There was a journalist, Gustav Buffinger, who headed up what
Speaker 3: was called the orient Office.
Speaker 2: Of the radio station. They had.
Speaker 3: They had seventy or eighty permanent staff members a type
Speaker 3: as translators, announcers, and as the war went on, it
Speaker 3: broadcasts in standard Arabic, but in berber and in some
Speaker 3: of these.
Speaker 2: Could Cassius languages too.
Speaker 3: There was an Egyptian emigray named a Eunice Bari who
Speaker 3: was a big national socialist and he was a permanent
Speaker 3: fixture at the Zessen radio station. He's he's a shadowy guy.
Speaker 3: He disappeared at some point and it's pretty it's pretty
Speaker 3: clear if he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Murdered.
Speaker 3: He disappeared into the into the Middle East, and and
Speaker 3: and probably took it a new identity and ended up
Speaker 3: similarly in the court of Nasser or or in Syria.
Speaker 3: But you know this in the Zessen uh the Oriental
Speaker 3: broadcast from Zessen, they continued until just a month before
Speaker 3: the day of defeat, you know, in April ninety forty five.
Speaker 3: So it was it was a major thing. We've got
Speaker 3: to get into the life and times in Muhammad Amino
Speaker 3: Husseini for this to be anything approaching complete discussions. So
Speaker 3: forgive me for changing gears to you know, like a
Speaker 3: biographical discussion. You know, of course Hussein he was the
Speaker 3: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and he's a man who's very
Speaker 3: much light about and which comes with no surprise. Not
Speaker 3: only was he a Palestinian and a significant man in
Speaker 3: Sunni Islam, but you know, he also was allied to
Speaker 3: the Axis cause. So that's sort of a sort of
Speaker 3: a perfect storm carearacteristics that you know, make on a
Speaker 3: target for Slanders of the most hostile sort. He was
Speaker 3: pretty pretty much indisputably the most powerful leader of the
Speaker 3: Palestinian national movement during British rule over you know what,
Speaker 3: before it had been an Ottoman fief them for those
Speaker 3: that don't know it, from night approximately nineteen seventeen until
Speaker 3: ninety forty eight, that was the period of British rule over.
Speaker 2: Palestine, and.
Speaker 3: The mouftie was he reminds me very much a Sayid
Speaker 3: Kuta in his disposition. You know, people suggest he talked
Speaker 3: about both sides of his mouth and the issue of
Speaker 3: violent partisan activity. You've got to understand the role of
Speaker 3: the mufti, like a mofie is a learned man in
Speaker 3: Islamic jurisprudence, and soon he's put a premium on interpretation
Speaker 3: and application of the law.
Speaker 2: So a mouftie.
Speaker 3: He's not a governor as we think of it, and
Speaker 3: he's not a priest either. He's he's one part sort
Speaker 3: of a learned wise man within the tribe and one
Speaker 3: part intermediary between the congregation of the faithful and the
Speaker 3: outsider or secular authority.
Speaker 2: You know, and a lot of both Zionists and a.
Speaker 3: Lot of court historians, either out of ignorance or because
Speaker 3: they're how telling the the prejudice of the former, they claim, Oh,
Speaker 3: the the British invented the office of the Grand Mufti
Speaker 3: to have some sort of figurehead on the ground, you know,
Speaker 3: to to mitigate the difficulties of directly ruling over a
Speaker 3: Maslim population. That's not true, that's ridiculous. They British recognized
Speaker 3: him as the Grand Moutie of Jerusalem and seeded authority
Speaker 3: over Islamic holy sites to him. But you're you're talking
Speaker 3: about a role and a title and a function of
Speaker 3: mufti that that spans a thousand years, okay. But to
Speaker 3: bring it back to some of the similarities in him
Speaker 3: and Kutev and another.
Speaker 2: Islamic juris types.
Speaker 3: You know, it's there's a complex interplay between how a
Speaker 3: good Moslem relates to secular authority and how he manages
Speaker 3: a situation, and is such as that that, you know,
Speaker 3: the Palestinians were in vis a vis the occupation. They
Speaker 3: knew that some sort of race war was coming and
Speaker 3: that the Desionists wanted to ethnically cleanse them. They knew
Speaker 3: that British would be leaving at some point, and they
Speaker 3: knew that if a national state was going to be realized,
Speaker 3: they would have to make that divorce from British rule amicable.
Speaker 2: You know. And finally.
Speaker 3: A moved he's not a general and he's not a
Speaker 3: guerrilla fighter or a soldier, I mean his if he
Speaker 3: if he's called it, laid on his life for Jahad.
Speaker 3: That's what he must do, and he will do if
Speaker 3: he's worthy of the of the title. But you know,
Speaker 3: he's it's not his role to devise military solutions under
Speaker 3: conditions of occupation or it's his job to keep the
Speaker 3: people safe, you know, and to interpret the law is
Speaker 3: laid down by the governing structure in a way that
Speaker 3: allows from Islamic life to be realized, you know.
Speaker 2: And beyond that too that I'm not a Quran.
Speaker 3: Scholar, but so you know, I just want to get
Speaker 3: that out there. But when our revolt is permissible under
Speaker 3: the Quran, there's very discreete conditions for that, you know,
Speaker 3: even in apostate occupier or or Kelly. If he protects
Speaker 3: Islam and allows Moslims to freely worship, it's not it's
Speaker 3: it's not just or righteous to overthrow him or to
Speaker 3: disobey him, you know. And so there's that obviously, you know,
Speaker 3: he's a he's a hate target of mainstream historians in
Speaker 3: the Anglo sphere, but even a lot of Maslims. Some
Speaker 3: people try and paint him as some sort of extremist
Speaker 3: quasi national socialist. On the other hand, you you know,
Speaker 3: you a lot of passionate people behind the Palestinian cause.
Speaker 3: You know, they view him as some as some sort
Speaker 3: of machiavellian intriguer, you know, who didn't do enough to
Speaker 3: to protect Palestine. That's misguided in my opinion. You know,
Speaker 3: he was as part as in as he as was
Speaker 3: appropriate to the circumstances. And the fact that he the
Speaker 3: fact that he got a personal audience that off Hitler
Speaker 3: is pretty remarkable and the way that came about is
Speaker 3: fascinating too, and I'll get into that.
Speaker 2: But you know, the.
Speaker 3: On the one hand, uh, Hitler was cunning in who
Speaker 3: he would curate good offices with. But it's it wasn't
Speaker 3: some foregone conclusion Hitler would meet whoever the Grand Moftia
Speaker 3: Palestine was. Why would he? I mean, basically, the force
Speaker 3: of personality and the post persuasiveness of his polemic and
Speaker 3: his own sort of cunning and intriguing because he was
Speaker 3: something of an intriguer that's not a slander, is what
Speaker 3: brought him into a face to face meeting with the fear.
Speaker 3: And that's pretty extraordinary. You know, whatever's flaws that have
Speaker 3: to be acknowledged.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And it's also to the circumstances on the ground in Palestine.
Speaker 3: I mean to say nothing in the warriors, but from
Speaker 3: the conclusion, from the fall of the Ottoman Empire until
Speaker 3: you know, the declaration of the design Is state and
Speaker 3: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, there's an incredibly unstable and
Speaker 3: not just fluid but atinkly chaotic situation on the ground
Speaker 3: and the levant, you know, the the move. These views
Speaker 3: changed in accordance with the security situation and the historical situation.
Speaker 3: You know, there was basically at least two distinct phases,
Speaker 3: you know, from nineteen seventeen when the British arrived, until
Speaker 3: about nineteen thirty six, where he was, like say Kute,
Speaker 3: a kind of cautious, pragmatic traditional leader in the mofty role,
Speaker 3: you know, cooperating with British officials well uncompromisingly opposing Zionism.
Speaker 2: And then there was the exile phase.
Speaker 3: The moved. He was exiled after the Arab revolt, which
Speaker 3: was catastrophic, not his exile, I mean the outcome of
Speaker 3: the Arab revolt, but rightly or wrongly, he was swept
Speaker 3: up in the reaction of the crown to the revolutionary
Speaker 3: situation on the ground, and you know, he was identified
Speaker 3: as a partisan actor, if not an architect of the rebellion.
Speaker 3: But after he was understandably bitter being exiled from his home,
Speaker 3: you know. And again the Hussini family has a powerful
Speaker 3: and distinct heritage to this day. They remained important people
Speaker 3: in theater. But he became he became increasingly radical, and
Speaker 3: he gravitated ultimately to the axis, and he did become
Speaker 3: a partisan.
Speaker 2: You know, he.
Speaker 3: Ultimately he became essentially got loab Burger's right hand man
Speaker 3: and recruiting and mobilizing Masm populations to the vafinesss now
Speaker 3: again too. You know, Hussein he had been he'd come
Speaker 3: up through the Ottoman system. You know, those Sainy family,
Speaker 3: they were the most prominent political Palestinian family who were
Speaker 3: the direct intermediary for generations between the Palestinians and the
Speaker 3: Ottoman overlords.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So I mean exiling him was it was no small thing.
Speaker 3: And he wasn't He wasn't some upstart careerist or some
Speaker 3: random emam you know, who insinuated himself into a clerical
Speaker 3: and partisan role. Going to a nascent and then fully
Speaker 3: realized crisis situation.
Speaker 2: You know. So that's.
Speaker 3: All these things are, all these things are important to consider.
Speaker 3: What uh oh, I want to give me one second
Speaker 3: just to find my citation here. I'm sorry, I wanted
Speaker 3: to I wanted to get into how how the Grand moved.
Speaker 3: He got an audience with Hitler. Another personage who was
Speaker 3: essential to the development of the Third Reich's relationship with
Speaker 3: the Grand Muftie but Islamic populations generally, was a German
Speaker 3: officer named Veilhelm Hintersatz, also known as Harun al Rashid bay.
Speaker 3: He was an SS standard and feure. He was born
Speaker 3: in Brandenburg and during World War Two he commanded the
Speaker 3: Eastern Moslem Division OS turkisher Waffenveband Division, which was this
Speaker 3: sort of cosmopolitan pastiche of Kazakhs, Turkmen asiis.
Speaker 2: You name it but el Rashid. During the First World War.
Speaker 3: He served on the General staff of the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 3: with Enver Pasha, who was one of the young Turks.
Speaker 2: For those in know the history, and during his time
Speaker 2: there two things happened.
Speaker 3: He developed a strong admiration for Otto Lehman von Sanders,
Speaker 3: who he met Sanders was this Prussian aristocrat who was
Speaker 3: a non observant Jew who became this hero of the
Speaker 3: Ottoman Empire after spending his life there and and and
Speaker 3: and training their people and waging war when the Ottoman
Speaker 3: Empire went to war in command the Turkish troops. L.
Speaker 3: Rashid wrote a biography of Sanders later that got published
Speaker 3: in Berlin in the thirties that got a lot of
Speaker 3: fan fear. Anyway, during the war, during the Great War,
Speaker 3: he converted to his lamb and then he as when
Speaker 3: he became Haruin o rashid Bait. After his conversion, he
Speaker 3: h he met up with as the Great War was ending,
Speaker 3: there was a whole glut of POW's from the Russian
Speaker 3: Empire at Wunsdorff Camp and he met he met a
Speaker 3: bunch of Maslim POWs who had been drafted into the
Speaker 3: Tsarist army, and they further schooled him in Islam, and
Speaker 3: he developed an interest also in the Russian way of
Speaker 3: war because looking forward it was clear that you know,
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union was going to be the the prime
Speaker 3: geostrategic actor, not just in Europe and not just contra Germany,
Speaker 3: but you know, across his entire planet.
Speaker 2: Because he was.
Speaker 3: A an Aryan Maslim and an experienced combat officer, and
Speaker 3: he was multi lingual, and he had the implicit trust
Speaker 3: of other Moslems. He was recruited by Italian intelligence when
Speaker 3: they went to war in Ethiopia, you know, so he
Speaker 3: served il duce and further augmented his credentials and guys
Speaker 3: who served under him, like Italians and Germans, you know,
Speaker 3: who said it was uncanny that they said he quote
Speaker 3: prayed without timidity in a mosque and quote he had
Speaker 3: the implicit trust of the native Mohammedians who saw him
Speaker 3: as a fellow believer.
Speaker 2: He also.
Speaker 3: Viewed the United Kingdom as potentially Germany's Achilles heel, and
Speaker 3: he said, and this was even long before the ascendency
Speaker 3: of the War Party, but he said that the British
Speaker 3: Empire is gonna have to be neutralized because they're going
Speaker 3: to make war on the Reich. And he said the
Speaker 3: key instrumentality of the Reich prevailing in that conflict is
Speaker 3: an alliance with with with with Moslims on you know,
Speaker 3: currently under hostile occupation by by the United Kingdom. He uh.
Speaker 3: During open Our when operations Barbara Rosa kicked off.
Speaker 2: Or she.
Speaker 3: He was a liaison officer with the Reich Main Security
Speaker 3: Office and.
Speaker 2: The UH.
Speaker 3: Eastern populations, you know, the UH, the Moslim nations within
Speaker 3: Maslim nationalities within the Soviet Union, and in that role
Speaker 3: with the Right Security Main Office of the s S,
Speaker 3: he made contact with the Grand Moufty hodj I mean
Speaker 3: hodj I mean al Hussini and this became a a
Speaker 3: close friendship between the two men, and it developed into
Speaker 3: a deep alliance. And El Rashid and the Grand Mufti
Speaker 3: they began drawing up a plan. They believed that there
Speaker 3: there was two things happening here. This is one of
Speaker 3: the quagmire and the Balkans was emerging in earnest you know,
Speaker 3: which which was remained UH unmanageable for a substantial portion
Speaker 3: of the war. So She and the Grand Mufti they
Speaker 3: believe that the ideal place to deploy a Moslim division
Speaker 3: would be in the Balkans, you know. And thus hand
Speaker 3: Jar came about thirteenth SS. But additionally, Bosnia was the
Speaker 3: Moslem heartland within Europe. And again, like we talked about
Speaker 3: in the first episode, there's a prestige that attended that,
Speaker 3: and plus the ecumenical clout of the Grand Moftie of Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: who's a very respected man, going to Sarajevo and addressed
Speaker 3: not just Bosniaks, but all Moslims and particularly those behind
Speaker 3: the wire fighting communism. This uh, this, this, this was
Speaker 3: very politically savy a relative of the King of Egypt,
Speaker 3: King Farouk, a Prince Mansour dow El Rashid met him
Speaker 3: through the Mufti, and Mansour then began aiding in these
Speaker 3: recruitment efforts, and that that bolstered these propaganda efforts, and
Speaker 3: uh the resulting formation. Ultimately Hanjar was the first, and
Speaker 3: it was also Skanderberg, which was Albanian, Moslem and Kamma.
Speaker 3: But the true Pan Islamic division sized element was uh
Speaker 3: the Aus Turk Waffens Turkish Vafen SS Eastern Turkic SS cores.
Speaker 3: And again it was a it was turk Man, it
Speaker 3: was Kazakhs, it was a series.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: You know, all Uh, the nationalities of the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: who were of the Mauslim faith were represented. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: till we got okay it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Now, what's really interesting here is that, Yeah, the other
Speaker 3: said of ty personage ins was got Lot Burger He
Speaker 3: was a SS general as UH well as a higher
Speaker 3: SS and police leader, and he was responsible for the
Speaker 3: recruitment of non German nationalities into the and he was
Speaker 3: impressed with what he saw from L. Rashid in the
Speaker 3: Mufti and berger Uh decided that there had to be
Speaker 3: an effort to insinuate chaplains with a an national socialist
Speaker 3: ideological education into Islamic formations. So the position of military
Speaker 3: imam was first introduced in ninety forty two. And this
Speaker 3: again is that that Behastont got lobed Burger the command
Speaker 3: headquarters of the SS Eastern Turkish Division. They set up
Speaker 3: what amount to do an imam training school and it
Speaker 3: oversaw religious practices and the four Mauslim legions as they
Speaker 3: were designated.
Speaker 2: Find uh.
Speaker 3: A mola at division level and emms and clerics down
Speaker 3: to platoon level. The overall UH legion mola was a
Speaker 3: for the Isazabaijani legion for example, it was Iman Pasha IV.
Speaker 3: The Turkestan legion. It was a molla you know you
Speaker 3: to have, and so on down the line and legion
Speaker 3: and division molas. They were the equivalent of company commander.
Speaker 3: And these were fighting men. One of the most famous
Speaker 3: of the emms. He was a Bosmik named Hallem Malich.
Speaker 3: He held the Iron Cross and slew of other awards.
Speaker 3: You know, so these these guys weren't just actors or
Speaker 3: stand in propaganda elements. And it also this was a
Speaker 3: level of religious formalized religious hierarchy and institutionalization, which basically
Speaker 3: it was there's there's just there's something brilliant about it.
Speaker 3: That's not how Maslim armies were organized. It was really
Speaker 3: assimilating Islamic cultural coding into a Wehrmacht model, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the recruits really took to that. There were
Speaker 3: some Maslim legions that were terrible, and there were some
Speaker 3: that were absolutely savage, but this almost ecclesiastical structure that
Speaker 3: one would have found in the company in the Thirty
Speaker 3: Years War, for example, you know, transposed to an Islamic
Speaker 3: cultural paradigm. Like when it worked when the mentioned material
Speaker 3: constituting the company, platoon or division in question, when it
Speaker 3: was game fighters, and when it was mentioned material suitable
Speaker 3: for soldiery, it was a it was it was a
Speaker 3: fantastic formula. And it also it that's did wonders for
Speaker 3: discipline and morale. It was just a question of spiritual council.
Speaker 3: There was a way of conveying to these recruits that
Speaker 3: you know, this is a this is a jihad against
Speaker 3: Bolshevism and Jewry and being a good national socialist and
Speaker 3: being a good Maslam or synonymous. And where those tendencies converge,
Speaker 3: it's in the person of the Islamic national socialist political soldier,
Speaker 3: exemplified by the imam you know, who was both a
Speaker 3: cleric and a warrior, you know, and who you know
Speaker 3: and and in and not just a commander in in
Speaker 3: the path of Jahad that we are on, but you know,
Speaker 3: also a spiritual guide. The uh Ralph von Hagendorff, who
Speaker 3: was a career uh vermacht Off and an expert in
Speaker 3: military jurisprudence. In May nineteen forty three he issued a
Speaker 3: formal recommendation that in Moslem formations, before of course martial
Speaker 3: as sigence punishment to a defendant, there's to be a
Speaker 3: consultation with the divisional mulla on the scope and severity
Speaker 3: of punishment to legitimize the military justice system. And this
Speaker 3: was huge too. Hagendorff recalled also that he said often
Speaker 3: these emams what they'd recommend was usually substantially more severe
Speaker 3: than what the secular go to German military justice and
Speaker 3: the vermach and Sys otherwise demanded. You know, so in practice,
Speaker 3: these emails acted as intermediaries with a European and Christian
Speaker 3: military justice system that nevertheless, you know, abided Islamic principles
Speaker 3: and its punitive aspect. And this this insinuated legitimacy into
Speaker 3: it that otherwise would be lacking. Around the same time
Speaker 3: May ninety forty three, gottlab Burger he issued a formal
Speaker 3: decree from the main office. It was on the quote
Speaker 3: ideological spiritual education of them of the Maslim SS divisions,
Speaker 3: and it formally identified emovs as the most important transmitters
Speaker 3: of political and religious education within Moslim formations.
Speaker 2: It made clear that.
Speaker 3: The emphasis was to be on the common enemies of
Speaker 3: Germans and Moslims, you know, Judaism, quote Anglo Americanism, communism, freemasonry, secularism,
Speaker 3: you know, and that these shared ideals including militancy and
Speaker 3: the marshal ethos, the role of morality, of tradition, of
Speaker 3: upright manliness, and you know, like all this is what
Speaker 3: brought together national socialists of of of different faiths, you know,
Speaker 3: whether they be the Protestant, Catholic or Moslem. And you know,
Speaker 3: again Burger, the more I dive into I was I
Speaker 3: was researching his battle record and his career in the
Speaker 3: ss ohing to like a different, a related but distinguishable
Speaker 3: subject matter. And I he was just an amazing guy.
Speaker 3: You really only find footnotes about him as oh he
Speaker 3: was this big war criminal in this brute or he's described,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of similar terms to Martin Borman. It's just, oh,
Speaker 3: he was just a sort of creatiness function here, not
Speaker 3: not at all.
Speaker 2: And for.
Speaker 3: A military man he he had. He had a lot
Speaker 3: of deep esoteric interests. And I I think that Boa
Speaker 3: has attracted those types frankly, you know, not not just
Speaker 3: romantics and dreamers, but there was Orientalism was literally coded
Speaker 3: into it, you know. I mean, that's why the Proud
Speaker 3: and Book on Genghis Khan was required reading at SSH
Speaker 3: Younger school. And of course Yaka and Piper wrote his
Speaker 3: senior thesis on the Proud and Book and Genghis Khan.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I think it's I Schopenhower was an Orientalist,
Speaker 3: and I you know, Chopenhower, more than Nietzsche was the
Speaker 3: patron philosopher of the of the German right I think.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we're coming up on the hour man. I
Speaker 3: I uh, I hope he are finding this educational and
Speaker 3: interesting and we'll we'll wrap it up the next episode,
Speaker 3: I promise.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: Awesome, That's what I was gonna ask if we if
Speaker 1: you have another episode in this and is is that
Speaker 1: the up are you going to be getting into post war?
Speaker 2: I'd like to do war?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I mean, I mean it's your show literally,
Speaker 3: like I mean, if you're a minimal of that of
Speaker 3: the subs. The main thing is that you're happy and
Speaker 3: the subs are finding this interesting, and then I promise
Speaker 3: we'll get back to the thirty years War.
Speaker 1: No problem at all. Remind everybody go over to real
Speaker 1: Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com. It's probably
Speaker 1: the best way to connect to Thomas, and can go
Speaker 1: to his website Thomas seven seven seven dot com, the
Speaker 1: T and Thomas is a seven and basically you can
Speaker 1: connect to him everywhere from there. From those places, it's
Speaker 1: a firm Thank you, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Appreciate than Youddy.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekiniana Show.
Speaker 1: Thomas is here and a little meeting series doing on
Speaker 1: Islam and the Third Reich and Germany in general. We're
Speaker 1: going to close that out today. So you know, what
Speaker 1: we've heard from the subs is they're really enjoying this.
Speaker 1: So thank you for the recommendation on this great subject.
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot and you know, take it away.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That makes me very happy. And I appreciate
Speaker 3: the subs and their kind words and feedback. That's essential.
Speaker 3: This is an important subject matter for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3: I generally agree with Aarm's and lolty. Islamic dialectics are
Speaker 3: very important to the post Cold War historical process in
Speaker 3: conceptual terms. I don't think that needs to be said additionally,
Speaker 3: and I'm including this as sort of an addendum to
Speaker 3: my manuscript. That's one of the reasons I haven't submitted
Speaker 3: it for formal editing to a publisher. Yet there's this myth,
Speaker 3: some of which derives from the testimony of Albert Spear,
Speaker 3: which I consider it to be not remotely credible. Obviously,
Speaker 3: he described the final months of the German Reich as
Speaker 3: Hitler developing this sort of nihilistic apathy punctuated by fits
Speaker 3: of rage and an impulse to sort of burn everything down.
Speaker 3: Hitler's actions don't indicate that. And I've emphasized I'm bringing
Speaker 3: this back to the subject matter. I'm not on a
Speaker 3: CENL tangent, I promise I emphasize the fact of don
Speaker 3: and it's being designated as successor not just because Hitler
Speaker 3: thought that he was a man the Allies would find
Speaker 3: acceptable and they did. Other than the Yodel, he was
Speaker 3: really the only number of defendant that people in the
Speaker 3: United Kingdom, not just the Admiralty, but a lot of
Speaker 3: the aristocracy and even people in the war cabinet came
Speaker 3: to the defense of. But also there was an understanding
Speaker 3: that the post war world would need some sort of
Speaker 3: resistance legacy if Europe was going to survive, and if
Speaker 3: the national socialist cause was going to survive, albeit in
Speaker 3: a historically contingent configure. A And that's a subject for
Speaker 3: a whole weet, a whole series on that, And like
Speaker 3: I said, I'm dedicating the final third approximately of my
Speaker 3: manuscript to the subject matter. One of the only authors
Speaker 3: who I think truly understands that and who really understands
Speaker 3: that there was a fascist international of a sort during
Speaker 3: the Cold War and beyond is Kevin Coogan. He was
Speaker 3: an unusual guy. He wrote a biography of Francis Yaki,
Speaker 3: he called Dreamer of the Day Francis Perker Yaki in
Speaker 3: the Post Were Fascist International. This was released in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine. It's actually a fantastic book. H Ke Thompson
Speaker 3: contributed to it and allowed his testimony to be included.
Speaker 3: Elsa Davitt, who was a longtime mistress of Francis Yaki.
Speaker 3: She participated in and proffered a lot of her testimony
Speaker 3: as well as personal effects and papers that belonged to
Speaker 3: Yachi in the Things.
Speaker 2: You know. Coogan's definitely a left winger, but of a
Speaker 2: more serious type.
Speaker 3: And I mean the fact that some of these personages
Speaker 3: we're willing to participate in the book project speaks for itself.
Speaker 3: It's not a purely punitive treatment, but the real value
Speaker 3: of it, especially if you're reading it.
Speaker 2: As a researcher.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of hundred pages of footnotes and endnotes
Speaker 3: that are really incredible, including a substantial amount of material
Speaker 3: about Johann van Leer's about They're vague and the National
Speaker 3: Socialists distance in Argentina and then in the Near East,
Speaker 3: and I highly recommend that book to students of the
Speaker 3: subject matter as well as people who are just curious
Speaker 3: students of history want to get a better understanding of
Speaker 3: the subject matter. But I raised Coogan not just because
Speaker 3: I like that book, but you know, again, he's one
Speaker 3: of the only authors I know of who has a
Speaker 3: deep understanding of this phenomenon and the efforts, particularly of
Speaker 3: the SS and the SD to curate a national socialist
Speaker 3: sensibility among Maslim populations. This ramped up in earnest in
Speaker 3: the final year and a half of the war, when
Speaker 3: it became clear that en zeg was no longer possible.
Speaker 3: And it's not because everybody was delusional.
Speaker 2: It's not owing to some.
Speaker 3: Desperation born of manpower shortages or any of those.
Speaker 2: Confabulations. It was because.
Speaker 3: At Base and particularly in the s S, the truly
Speaker 3: diehard national socialists who were ideologically committed. They had a
Speaker 3: profoundly Hegelian view of the war and of the historical
Speaker 3: process generally, and of course Germany was not a stranger
Speaker 3: to these sorts of apocalyptic conditions. We're talking about our
Speaker 3: Thirty Years War series. I think in the first episode
Speaker 3: we were talking about a Hitler himself and Spear. Speaking
Speaker 3: of Spear as well as many personages within the traditional
Speaker 3: military establishment as well as the National Socialist.
Speaker 2: Cadre that took over the government.
Speaker 3: The historical polestar of these people was the Thirty Years
Speaker 3: War and the destruction of Germany, the destruction of the
Speaker 3: First Reich and the scattering of the German.
Speaker 2: Racial organism to the proverbial four wins.
Speaker 3: And in their mind, it had taken centuries to reconstitute.
Speaker 2: The German nation and to.
Speaker 3: Bring years into a organizational modality whereby it could fulfill
Speaker 3: its historical mission, and in their estimation, this had taken
Speaker 3: close to three centuries. So there was an understanding that
Speaker 3: a similar process was emergent in nineteen forty four forty five,
Speaker 3: and there was the added challenge of a world dominated
Speaker 3: by the communists and by the American Zionist occupation that
Speaker 3: was looming. Both of these challenges were related. That's why
Speaker 3: these ideological schema were quite literally allied, but they were
Speaker 3: also very distinguishable in terms of what they represented and
Speaker 3: what they were trying to accomplish, and in terms of
Speaker 3: creating a global political regime and the tactics required to
Speaker 3: counteract those efforts to break people up. Their identitarian characteristics
Speaker 3: and historical memory were somewhat different depending on whether the
Speaker 3: populations in question were those situated in the East or
Speaker 3: in the West, and Maslim populations were under unique pressure
Speaker 3: from the communists, and that this endured throughout the existence
Speaker 3: of the Soviet Union. The Islamic revolt was one of
Speaker 3: many proximate causes that ultimately brought brought the Soviet Union down.
Speaker 3: I think that's irrebutable. So that's something that is important
Speaker 3: to understand here, and that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 3: this remains a relevant, irrelevant subject matter. It's not just
Speaker 3: some sort of trivial curiosity related to aspects of the
Speaker 3: war that are sort of not commonly emphasized, but the
Speaker 3: role of the Grand movety to to change focused just
Speaker 3: a little bit. The way that he's cast in the
Speaker 3: historical record is somewhat incorrect. There's people with a superficial
Speaker 3: understanding of national socialism and there's some Palestinian liberation is
Speaker 3: to mean well, but they they're somewhat conceptually impoverished in
Speaker 3: their understanding of the historical record. They cast the movet
Speaker 3: he as almost like a Palestinian Naser. That's not really accurate.
Speaker 3: I mean the point that I believe if he can
Speaker 3: be analogized to any contemporary it'd be said Kutu. And
Speaker 3: if you know anything about Islam, and particularly highest Sunni Islam,
Speaker 3: the role of a moftie is not that of a
Speaker 3: political soldier. It's different. There's definitely a partisan aspect that
Speaker 3: goes up saying, but the move he also he didn't
Speaker 3: have a sense of pan Arabism. What became sort of
Speaker 3: the rallying cry of the of the resistance in the
Speaker 3: Near East, which was a combination of Pan Arabism and
Speaker 3: a an East block aligned but this but discernibly non
Speaker 3: communist uh sort of militant socialism. That was not what
Speaker 3: he viewed as the way forward for Palestinians. And he
Speaker 3: was absolutely a pan Islamist, but he didn't he didn't
Speaker 3: view pan Arabism as a meaningful concept. Then, frankly, it's not.
Speaker 3: On the other side, Zionists then and now have tried
Speaker 3: cast the move he as sort of a Palestinian Kodriano
Speaker 3: or some sort of or some sort of ethnosectarian national
Speaker 3: wist who's a mirror of themselves. Of themselves who wanted
Speaker 3: to annihilate Jewelry owing to some sort of highly binary,
Speaker 3: zero sum concept of racial and sectarian struggle in the region.
Speaker 3: That's naked propaganda. And interestingly, when people in the Churchill government,
Speaker 3: who are particularly sympathetic to designs perspective, tried to convince
Speaker 3: the Home Office of these things and as far as
Speaker 3: trying to push the British authorities is trying to capture
Speaker 3: the Al Husseini. This was quickly quashed and British intelligence
Speaker 3: simply refused to pursue it. And there was an internal
Speaker 3: memo that indicated that.
Speaker 2: This was.
Speaker 3: A propaganda effort devised by Zionus on the ground, who
Speaker 3: were concerned about a leadership cadre reconstituting among their enemies,
Speaker 3: which they pretty successfully decapitated by this juncture. And to
Speaker 3: be clear that mof he was in exile from nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty six on going to the Arab revolt, the Arab
Speaker 3: revolt is complicated. I don't want to deep dive into
Speaker 3: that now. Briefly, it was a general strike. It was
Speaker 3: it uprising as more and more European Jews streamed into Palestine.
Speaker 3: It became clear that the Palestinians were going to be
Speaker 3: ethnically cleansed, okay, And we talked about how the the
Speaker 3: British were inconsistent and how they responded to ethnosectarian violence
Speaker 3: and you know, categorical attacks upon Palestinians to realize annihilation
Speaker 3: oriented goals by the Desions. So this represented an existential fear.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just a question of resistance to Palestine being
Speaker 3: dominated by a hostile Jewish majority. On the ground, there
Speaker 3: was an element among the Palestinians under Arms two that
Speaker 3: had always favored an armed struggle, and their reasoning was
Speaker 3: we've got to pull the trigger now before the situation
Speaker 3: deteriorate the point that it's no longer possible. There was
Speaker 3: a a pious Islamist organization that was also highly militant,
Speaker 3: led by eas Alden al Cassam.
Speaker 2: He was a shakh.
Speaker 3: And something of a lesser aristocrat, but it was also
Speaker 3: a dedicated revolutionary and as early as the mid nineties
Speaker 3: twenties he was demanding that money that was coming into
Speaker 3: mosques the equivalent of alms, be spent on arms and
Speaker 3: military needs rather than on you know, proselytizing and and
Speaker 3: traditional ecclesiastical to activities and things of that nature, you know,
Speaker 3: the equivalent they're in. This caused tension between him and
Speaker 3: al Husseini. He'd approached al Husseini and and tried to
Speaker 3: cultivate his friendship and asked to be brought on to
Speaker 3: the Supreme Moslem Council as an itinerant preacher of sorts,
Speaker 3: and Husseini turned him away, but did help him find
Speaker 3: a permanent place and a mosque that would be more
Speaker 3: receptive to his revolutionary concepts. This is due to some
Speaker 3: people too, including again some Palestinian liberationists who mean well
Speaker 3: today as being perfidest and Alossini being political. I don't
Speaker 3: think that's fair. And Alssini also knew that his people
Speaker 3: weren't in a position to win at that moment. He
Speaker 3: was continuing to try and curate a relationship with the
Speaker 3: British too, out of necessity, owing to again the hopelessness
Speaker 3: of the military situation at that juncture. But as it
Speaker 3: happened in nineteen thirty six, a general strike did kick off,
Speaker 3: and once the uprising began, the move he stowed with Palestine.
Speaker 3: He was very much accused though of fermenting this and
Speaker 3: being a leader of it, the British commanders on the
Speaker 3: ground who he curated a relationship with, I believe they
Speaker 3: talked to the Foreign Office and British intelligence and that's
Speaker 3: why the move he wasn't harmed, He was allowed to
Speaker 3: live in exile relatively undisturbed at that juncture, because you know,
Speaker 3: it was it was clear that he wasn't devising a
Speaker 3: revolutionary resistance movement, He wasn't trying to force a kinetic
Speaker 3: outcome to then extend conditions. But this was when Alo
Speaker 3: was saying, he began approaching representatives of the Third Reich,
Speaker 3: and they began approaching him, and we talked about gottlab
Speaker 3: Burger and elements within the both the Algass and in
Speaker 3: various party offices who viewed this as imperative, and Alo
Speaker 3: saying he only met with Hitler face to face once
Speaker 3: in November nineteen forty one. But the fact that he
Speaker 3: met him at all is remarkable because it was not
Speaker 3: easy to get access to Hitler. What he was able
Speaker 3: to procure Hitler guaranteed and he convinced al Duce to
Speaker 3: co sign this guarantee that after the defeat of the
Speaker 3: British Empire Palestine would become an Arab state and it
Speaker 3: would be ethnically cleansed of Jews. Whether the Mufti would
Speaker 3: become the ruler of that state, I find that unlikely. Again,
Speaker 3: there's it's complicated how traditional Islamic authority is organized. You
Speaker 3: need to be clear. People get the people have this
Speaker 3: misconception because first of all, the look at the place
Speaker 3: like Iran, and of course there's a there's a sectarian
Speaker 3: divide there because She and Sunni are very different, and
Speaker 3: even within those broad sects, there's there's there's there's differences
Speaker 3: within Sunni Islam and She Islam that are profound. The
Speaker 3: Iranian government and called itself the revolutionary government because it's
Speaker 3: not this reactionary regime. The FUCO one of the few
Speaker 3: essays he wrote that's oriented towards ideological practice, that that's
Speaker 3: a in a you know, direct capacity. He went to
Speaker 3: Tehran as the revolution was underway, and he made the
Speaker 3: point that this was something people hadn't seen before. It
Speaker 3: wasn't some reactionary regime of clerics. It was very much
Speaker 3: an Islamic movement, but it was a hybrid ideology that
Speaker 3: was a truly third position, as tendency in the true sense.
Speaker 3: Okay Al Hussini didn't represent some Sunni of that.
Speaker 2: And also.
Speaker 3: Once what became the Palestinian Liberation movement, it's proverbial dna
Speaker 3: is in the Arab revolt and in the men who
Speaker 3: they took inspiration from and the move he wasn't really
Speaker 3: part of that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He definitely was a partisan, and he took on the
Speaker 3: function of a political soldier as he became insinuated into
Speaker 3: the SS organization. But military command and political credibility became
Speaker 3: inextricably bound up in theater, and that some of that
Speaker 3: duras to this day. But you know, it's not this
Speaker 3: idea that the move He simply approached Hitler because he
Speaker 3: had ambitions to become Emperor of Palestine or the the
Speaker 3: boss of the Arab Committee or something, and wanted to
Speaker 3: parlay that into authority over a Palestinian ethno state that
Speaker 3: was going to emerge. At NC guy that I don't
Speaker 3: think that's credible. What was important was that he got
Speaker 3: a guarantee from Hitler.
Speaker 2: He had the patronage of the Axis, and.
Speaker 3: It guaranteed that forces would be brought to bear, and
Speaker 3: Hitler made clear to him. Hitler said he believed in
Speaker 3: the Arab people, and he believed in the in the
Speaker 3: Santy's cause, which I think was true. But he also
Speaker 3: said that the German Reich had essential interests in the
Speaker 3: region and they expected the Palestinians to help those things
Speaker 3: be realized. So obviously it was a real politic aspect
Speaker 3: of this too. But both men came to realize also
Speaker 3: that this had become a planetary struggle, you know, And
Speaker 3: by November nineteen forty one, America wasn't as a I
Speaker 3: mean America the fact it was at war with Germany
Speaker 3: from September ninety forty one onwards, the Reich was the
Speaker 3: Wehrmacht was closing in on Moscow, and it became clear
Speaker 3: that the struggle was global in character, and even after
Speaker 3: final victory was realized, which appeared to be eminent as
Speaker 3: a November nineteen forty one, no Germany needed allies in
Speaker 3: newly liberated, formally colonial spaces.
Speaker 2: But there was also a basic.
Speaker 3: Affinity and that's coded into national socialism through influences like
Speaker 3: Schopenhauer and things, and the German character generally. Hitler wasn't
Speaker 3: some orientalists like von Weiers, but I think it's clear
Speaker 3: to all but the most literal and binary minds. When
Speaker 3: I'm getting it and towards that I mentioned before about
Speaker 3: Oprah group and Feler and Genaha Devafansis got lab Burger,
Speaker 3: who I think was a fascinating individual, and he was
Speaker 3: a key personage in forcing the through policies within the
Speaker 3: SS relating to the alliance with not just the Palestinians
Speaker 3: and al Hussini, but with the Islamic nationalities in the East.
Speaker 3: He clarified. Berger said, and I'm paraphrasing the relationship between
Speaker 3: Islam and national socialism. There's a vocush imperative, but what
Speaker 3: is not intended is a synthesis.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 3: Quote it is not intended to find a synthesis of
Speaker 3: Islam and national socialism or to impose national socialism in
Speaker 3: the Maslims. Rather, national socialism is to be seen as
Speaker 3: the genuine, focused German worldview, while Islam is to be
Speaker 3: seen as the genuine focused Arabic worldview. He was using
Speaker 3: Arabic as a stand in for I mean, obviously the
Speaker 3: land of the Prophet and the Arabic language and Muhammad
Speaker 3: himself means that Arab cultural forms have an outsized significance
Speaker 3: in Islam. He was using Arabic in the Arabic world
Speaker 3: view in a Shpangalarrian sense to include, you know, in
Speaker 3: most of the Islamic element under the Reich authority, where
Speaker 3: we're not Arab. And again there was this emphasis on
Speaker 3: Sarajevo in specifically in Bosnia.
Speaker 2: As the.
Speaker 3: As the heartland of European Islam, and thus they were
Speaker 3: to be given priority. And Berger emphasized that. And mind you,
Speaker 3: Berger was h he was second only to the Reich's
Speaker 3: fear ss Himmler in his rank. He had a rank
Speaker 3: equivalent to Paul Hauser and scept Dietrich.
Speaker 2: So he.
Speaker 3: His word was a law within the organization. Then he
Speaker 3: clarified that the Moslems, the Balkans were racially part of
Speaker 3: the Germanic world well ideologically and spiritually part of the
Speaker 3: Arab world. So he said, among other things, these Balkan
Speaker 3: Moslem peoples, they represent, you know what the complimentary aspects
Speaker 3: are of this alliance and this unity of veldenstrong against
Speaker 3: communism and jewelry. And he continued by saying, through the
Speaker 3: deployment of a Moslim SS division, speaking of the Bosniacs
Speaker 3: here they're made hereby for the first time. The established
Speaker 3: a connection between Islam and national socialism, or rather between
Speaker 3: the Arab and the Germanic world, and an open, honest
Speaker 3: basis as this division in terms of blood and race
Speaker 3: is influenced by the North in terms of ideology and
Speaker 3: contrast by the orient I think I got into in
Speaker 3: the last episode. I tried to clarify by reference to
Speaker 3: my outlines what I covered, So stop me if I'm
Speaker 3: being redundant. But in nineteen forty four the SS head
Speaker 3: office at behest of Burger, they established two Islamic centers
Speaker 3: for religious education. The first one, which I think I
Speaker 3: got into a bit, was open in April nineteen forty four.
Speaker 3: It was in a small town called Kuben in Brandenburg.
Speaker 3: This was this was the e Mom Institute, and we
Speaker 3: talked about emoms in NAVAF and SS and the important
Speaker 3: role they played at not just division level of a
Speaker 3: company and even platoon level. And this El Hussini himself
Speaker 3: attended a ceremony with the gott Love Burger and an
Speaker 3: email nam Hussein Disozo, who was a Bosniac. More significant,
Speaker 3: particularly to the subject matter that I started this discussion
Speaker 3: with with what was colloquially called the ss Mullus School
Speaker 3: it was, it didn't formally It wasn't formally established until
Speaker 3: November forty four, and once again there was an inauguration
Speaker 3: ceremony tailored to celebrate enough to size a Germanic Maslim alliance.
Speaker 3: The opening speech was proffered by Walter Schellenberg, and the
Speaker 3: end of the Soviet was interesting because again it it
Speaker 3: seemed very much codd Swards of post war world and
Speaker 3: proceeding under hostile occupation without without resulting the language that
Speaker 3: suggested what in the national social ideological culture would be
Speaker 3: looked upon pejoratively as defeatism. But the crux of Schellensberg's
Speaker 3: speech was the historical associations, the traditional bonds between the
Speaker 3: kaiser Reich and Daryl Islam, the longstanding support for Moslim
Speaker 3: peoples who were besieged by Jewish tyranny. And it emphasized
Speaker 3: too that the Soviet Union, by its very existence it
Speaker 3: represented a slow.
Speaker 2: Not just on.
Speaker 3: Focused ways of life, but on all confessional practices and
Speaker 3: cultural spread Usians first among them Islam, and Schellenberg specifically
Speaker 3: said that the focused core of Russia had been destroyed
Speaker 3: for all practical purposes and totally deracinated, and that the
Speaker 3: non Russian people under occupation and on the periphery of
Speaker 3: the Soviet Empire were similarly being targeted for destruction and
Speaker 3: their fate would be the same as that of the
Speaker 3: Russians if an effective resistance wasn't cultivated, and the only
Speaker 3: way that that could be realized is by the dual
Speaker 3: commits meant of to racial hygiene and confessional piousness. And
Speaker 3: in this respect, Schellenberg said Islam was the quote custodian
Speaker 3: of the Eastern people and their biological substance as well
Speaker 3: as their confessional heritage in linear terms back to the
Speaker 3: time of the Prophet, and he concluded by saying that
Speaker 3: because the Bolsheviks lack traditions of the past, they're not
Speaker 3: long for this earth, but that Moslims are able to
Speaker 3: cope with the future no matter what hardships emerge, because
Speaker 3: not just to the racial purity of the several populations
Speaker 3: who are very tribally randed who constituted the Eastern Mauslims,
Speaker 3: but that basically their faith would carry them through the
Speaker 3: historical destruction of Bolshevism and the and the racially impure
Speaker 3: uh interventioned who are the standard bearers of the Bolshevik ideology,
Speaker 3: who are really just the vestigial remnants of the Russian
Speaker 3: racial corps that died in the Soviet death camps.
Speaker 2: Very very heady stuff, not.
Speaker 3: Not not typical, just sort of grab bag propaganda, you know,
Speaker 3: And this is important. And the Moullas School it was,
Speaker 3: it was far larger than the Email School. It was
Speaker 3: based at this villa in uh, this affluent neighborhood outside
Speaker 3: of Dresden. There was this Victor Klemper. He was this
Speaker 3: Jewish writer who curiously, you know, didn't get like shot
Speaker 3: shot into space or something by the Nazi Holocaust. But
Speaker 3: he was a lot of people, I think, including Shier,
Speaker 3: William Shier, who wrote a very silly book that a
Speaker 3: lot of quote historians hold out as some great treatment
Speaker 3: of the Third Reich. Of course Shira pulled it. There
Speaker 3: was a rise and fall of the Third Roag and
Speaker 3: then there was the Nightmare Years. That's a that's an
Speaker 3: objective and not at all a sterical title for a
Speaker 3: history book. But Victor Klemfery he kept diaries and he
Speaker 3: documented his observations on various things.
Speaker 1: They really like to keep diaries, don't.
Speaker 3: They, Well, to be fair, that was something people did
Speaker 3: in those days. I mean I'm talking actual people, not
Speaker 3: fictitious diaries of you know, girls who wrote like Judy
Speaker 3: Bloom books that were marketed for like nineteen seventies junior
Speaker 3: high students. You know most I mean, Goebels was especially prolific.
Speaker 3: But Yodel kept a diary, So did Kitle, so did Rosenberg,
Speaker 3: Alfred Rosenberg, so did Erhard Milch. But no, I take
Speaker 3: your point. But Klemper's diary I believe was real. And
Speaker 3: he noted he was observing, obviously from without the you know,
Speaker 3: what was going on in this old but rather stately property,
Speaker 3: which I believe is a repurpose to hotel in blasphets
Speaker 3: this this neighborhood of Dresden, and he said there was
Speaker 3: a quote mysterious Moslem study group there.
Speaker 2: This if you want to relate.
Speaker 3: But I uh, when I read that, I just I
Speaker 3: had this funny image of this like little neverish dude
Speaker 3: like kicking out at uh at things like ss going
Speaker 3: out of this coughing building and say, what's what is
Speaker 3: going on?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Maybe uh, I.
Speaker 3: Am from the silly, silly kind of ship like that,
Speaker 3: But uh moving on.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 3: Uh, it can't uh something that something you can't you
Speaker 3: can't you can't chug this up to.
Speaker 2: Some sort of you know, effort to corral.
Speaker 3: Halfless pow us in the frontline service or something the
Speaker 3: flesh out the ranks of.
Speaker 2: Of devastated divisions and battalions. You know.
Speaker 3: The people suggest that sort of thing, don't know the
Speaker 3: the subject matter. And there was a a a guy
Speaker 3: named Rayner Shakcha Olshacha. He was assigned to set things
Speaker 3: up in the Moulla school and uh make it culturally
Speaker 3: compliant with the students who'd be attending it. So old
Speaker 3: Shaka ol Shatcha. He decked out the interior building in
Speaker 3: ways that reflect did Islamic architectural styles. The main entrance
Speaker 3: hall was decorated with a mosaic patterns, specifically after mosques
Speaker 3: in Central Asia. There was a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: Islamic artifacts on loan from museums in the Greater German Reich.
Speaker 3: There was Kuranic verses and calligraphy painted into the walls.
Speaker 3: There was a prayer niche in one of the main
Speaker 3: assembly areas. There was an ornate prayer hall which was
Speaker 3: sort of the center of activity.
Speaker 2: On the ground floor, you know, And so I mean
Speaker 2: the ass went out of their.
Speaker 3: Way to create an authentically Islamic environment, and they went
Speaker 3: as far as.
Speaker 2: To hire.
Speaker 3: Kurt Erdman. He was the foremost expert on Islamic culture
Speaker 3: and art history in the Oriental department of the Pergamon
Speaker 3: Museum in Berlin, and he consulted with architects from Berlin
Speaker 3: and Dresden to mock this up. And it took half
Speaker 3: a year. You know, there was a great library. It
Speaker 3: had Islamic, authentic Islamic texts from France, from Bosnia, from
Speaker 3: the Netherlands, including rare, ancient and texts that have been purchased.
Speaker 3: In Sarajevo. Around this time, anybody, no matter there, any uh,
Speaker 3: any Folks, Deutsche or any any any non Jewish Auslander
Speaker 3: could obtain a free Koran from the Propaganda Ministry just
Speaker 3: by asking for one. There weren't a lot of Qurans
Speaker 3: that have been properly translated into German, so an effort
Speaker 3: was made to remedy that by the Propaganda Ministry. And
Speaker 3: one of the reasons for these efforts was the s
Speaker 3: S wanted to attract top religious scholars and imams to
Speaker 3: teach at the school, but also to attend it for
Speaker 3: political education and military education within the SS model. And
Speaker 3: reading between the lines, you know, again this is the
Speaker 3: last year that wore under desperate conditions. They were looking
Speaker 3: to build cadres. They were looking to build dedicated national
Speaker 3: socialist cadres within these populations for a post war world,
Speaker 3: you know. I that should be clear to anybody who
Speaker 3: understands what they're looking at. Metaphorically speaking, I think Alan
Speaker 3: John Idris or Idris, he was coveted as director of
Speaker 3: the Mullus School, but he was still in the service
Speaker 3: of the Propaganda Ministry as well as the Foreign Office,
Speaker 3: and he was the top man in charge of propaganda
Speaker 3: in the Islamic world, and neither the Foreign Office nor
Speaker 3: the nor Goebels would let him go, you know. And
Speaker 3: again this they were emphasizing the propaganda aspect in the
Speaker 3: theater in Palestine as well as in among the nationalities
Speaker 3: and in the Soviet Union, and uh of course in
Speaker 3: in Bosnia. But the Bosniacs again, they they they were
Speaker 3: they were racial Europeans, and most of them were multi
Speaker 3: lingualed just because o where they lived, you know, and
Speaker 3: they had a privileged position within within the the Reich.
Speaker 3: So it was it would have been a redundant to
Speaker 3: make them the focus group of these efforts, if you
Speaker 3: follow me. But nevertheless, ultimately the propaganda ministry they let
Speaker 3: Idris preside over the Moullas School three days a week.
Speaker 3: He was young, comparatively charismatic. He was very modern and
Speaker 3: had Western habits. He had a great admiration for the
Speaker 3: European culture, and he assimilated very well into Germany culturally.
Speaker 3: But he was also a very, very UH dedicated Moslim.
Speaker 3: He was kind of viewed as the model Maslim national socialist.
Speaker 3: He had a son who UH worked as an interpreter
Speaker 3: and then ultimately joined UH the Eastern Maslim SS.
Speaker 2: Corps in the final year of the war. And that
Speaker 2: obviously was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I anybody who joined that late in the
Speaker 3: game knew there's a good chance they weren't coming home.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was a dedicated he was coming to
Speaker 3: the jihad. But he this also was something of a
Speaker 3: propagandic coup.
Speaker 2: You know, look, this wealthy Malas offering up his son
Speaker 2: to fight for the Reich. It's no small thing obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, and.
Speaker 3: The and the SS UH it says that I'm only
Speaker 3: employing Moslims as teachers in the mother school in contrast
Speaker 3: to the Wehrmacht and in contrast to other party institutions
Speaker 3: that dealt with the education and putical indoctrination of Moslim peoples.
Speaker 3: The SS took this very seriously, you know, and that
Speaker 3: that tracks with its overall orientation, you know, the It's
Speaker 3: a fascinating.
Speaker 2: Sort of.
Speaker 3: Aspect to the Reich's relationship to Romania. You know, Hitler
Speaker 3: uh Antonescu and Hitler are very close, and Antonescua was
Speaker 3: probably the fears best ally, and I mean Romania sacrificed
Speaker 3: tremendously for the Axis cause and also the fact that
Speaker 3: they when Stalin began World War two with his War
Speaker 3: of Conquest, obviously Romania was very much in the crosshairs
Speaker 3: of of Moscow. So there was an existential imperative as
Speaker 3: to why they'd welcome the Vermacht deploying its scale there.
Speaker 3: But also obviously Escu not only to commit close to
Speaker 3: a quarter million men the Barbarossa, but he availed Romania
Speaker 3: as a staging ground for a huge component of like
Speaker 3: forces and being in operational terms. But later, you know,
Speaker 3: Anton Escu. He presided over the brief national legionary state,
Speaker 3: and then he banned the Iron Guard owing to what
Speaker 3: he viewed as their revolutionary subversion. This was in the
Speaker 3: aftermath of this is when Sema had succeeded Kodriano, who'd
Speaker 3: been murdered. But the SS famously they backed the Iron
Speaker 3: Guard against Kodrianuh, who the fear of himself, you know,
Speaker 3: unconditionally back Kadriyanu. That there was an SS ideology into
Speaker 3: itself which was very pan European, very revolutionary, very very different,
Speaker 3: not just from the Wehrmachten, traditional German society and even
Speaker 3: traditional German military culture, but distinguishable from the mainstream of
Speaker 3: the NSDAP as well. And I find it fascinating. But
Speaker 3: to bring it back to the subject at hand, one
Speaker 3: thing that the Mulla School emphasized, and this is another
Speaker 3: reason why they insisted on on Moslim teachers exclusively the
Speaker 3: theological program. It was very oriented towards overcoming sectarian hostilities,
Speaker 3: and in the SS tried to prioritize bridging the divide
Speaker 3: between scenes and sites. There's a constant emphasis against religious
Speaker 3: sectarianism among Moslems, you know, and traditionally in in Wehrmacht
Speaker 3: units where traditionally she and sounes we were segregated, and
Speaker 3: the ss were not only refused to do that, but
Speaker 3: they pursued an anti sectarian line.
Speaker 2: And the emphasis again was that this schism was contrived
Speaker 2: by men who coveted worldly power after the the center
Speaker 2: of the prophet of heaven, and that the current struggle
Speaker 2: where the the dual.
Speaker 3: Threat in existential terms to the Islamic faith and to
Speaker 3: the race of the nationalities and populations that constituted darl Islam.
Speaker 3: That calls for a healing of the schism, even were
Speaker 3: it not a contrivance promised on worldly.
Speaker 2: And thus.
Speaker 3: Actually vertically corrupt the ambitions, you know. And again the implication,
Speaker 3: in my opinion is obvious.
Speaker 2: It's you know, we a political soldier looking ahead circa
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four forty five needs to.
Speaker 3: Adopted as primary concern the racial survival of his people
Speaker 3: and the continuity of his faith on this planet, you know,
Speaker 3: in the face of the dual assault of Zionism and communism,
Speaker 3: and will will stop. It's there. I hope this wasn't.
Speaker 3: I hope people got something out of this. I mean,
Speaker 3: I I presume they did. Because people have been very
Speaker 3: nice in their feedback.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, if anything, I would like to hear
Speaker 1: more people not talk about Islam like they're a boomer
Speaker 1: right after nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean they're they're they're idiots. That's one
Speaker 3: of the reasons. I mean, they're we we we've got
Speaker 3: Islamic comrades who are great. But beyond that, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't. But the same that people lip off at
Speaker 3: me about World War two or about the law. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: you're the expert, you know how, Like you watch a
Speaker 3: lot of you watch a lot of TV, you watch
Speaker 3: a lot of cable legacy media, so you're you're an
Speaker 3: Islam expert.
Speaker 2: I mean, I that's why.
Speaker 3: That's the reason I emphasize these topics because even in
Speaker 3: supposedly dissit encoded spaces, these people are conceptual a literates
Speaker 3: by and large, but you can't.
Speaker 2: The only reason I'm trying to get more.
Speaker 3: More guys who have a theological expertise or their background
Speaker 3: is you know, in in a Bible, Christianity or Catholicism
Speaker 3: or Orthodoxy or Islam, because that's I mean, at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, I mean, I like what we've
Speaker 3: talked about. It's I'm more a capital T radical traditionist
Speaker 3: than I am anything probably. I mean you're talking about
Speaker 3: like my political philosophy, you know, I mean, I identify
Speaker 3: as a yacky as national socialists.
Speaker 2: But what the uh.
Speaker 3: It's reneeing on. It's Mercia Eliotti, Julius Evil. That's a
Speaker 3: substantial part of my canon if you want all it
Speaker 3: like that, okay. And there's this kind of dummy anti
Speaker 3: intellectualism that's just hostile to theology and religion, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean that that's common to any epoch really, you know,
Speaker 3: even people I've verad that point with some of our
Speaker 3: Orthodox friends and some of our Catholic friends who view
Speaker 3: the Medieval era as a period of high culture that's
Speaker 3: unduly maligned, which is absolutely true. Casting the Middle Ages
Speaker 3: is a sort of hellish time of cultural poverty. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's ridiculous. I mean, I don't know how any I
Speaker 3: don't know how any Anglophone person can think that way anyway.
Speaker 3: I mean arthury and lore and the Ulster cycle. If
Speaker 3: you're somebody like me, that's second only to the King
Speaker 3: James Bible, you know, you know, like I and that
Speaker 3: that that comes out of the horrifying medieval era, you know.
Speaker 3: But beyond that, I think some people they kind of
Speaker 3: view with the orals colored glasses, they this idea, Oh well,
Speaker 3: then there's this, there's this integrated concept, you know that
Speaker 3: they mean in terms of trifunctional hypothesis, but they mean
Speaker 3: that religious life informed everyday sensibilities. And that's somewhat true.
Speaker 3: But I think it was and I think most people
Speaker 3: and not about class. This this this doesn't know class
Speaker 3: in terms of where these sensibilities are concentrated. But I
Speaker 3: think most people even then it was a very kind
Speaker 3: of superficial thing. You know, people always gonna look at
Speaker 3: scance at you if you take religion seriously and you
Speaker 3: want to emphasize it as the subject matter that it is,
Speaker 3: is your sort of the topical focus.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I people like that are I don't know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I.
Speaker 3: I I've had to get eventuated in tuning out ignorant
Speaker 3: people because they're all around me and.
Speaker 2: They're all really noisy. They're a.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, I'm not I'm not here
Speaker 3: to educate morons, and I'm not I'm not here to
Speaker 3: like listen to assholes lip off on things they don't
Speaker 3: know about. So I just the minority of people who
Speaker 3: want to talk about serious stuff, and I think like
Speaker 3: little fucking kids. I mean, you know, of the people
Speaker 3: I want to interact with.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, go over it to Thomas A substack
Speaker 1: real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com and
Speaker 1: check out his website Thomas seven seven seven dot com.
Speaker 1: The t is a seven and you can hook up
Speaker 1: with him uh from there. Thank you, Thomas, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you man.