According to a German TV programme based on newly released foreign ministry material, Nazi plans for extending the Final Solution to Palestine, with the enthusiastic support of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, were further advanced than had hitherto been realised:
The gentleman-warrior image of Desert Fox general Erwin Rommel has been shattered in a new German documentary, which paints him as a lickspittle of Adolf Hitler whose victories were meant to pave the way for the export of the Holocaust to the Middle East.
The controversial two-part programme, aired this week, claims that if Rommel had succeeded in driving the Eighth Army, under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, out of North Africa, he would have led his troops into Palestine to begin the round-up, deportation and executions of Jews living there – many of them Germans who had managed to escape Nazism.
The programme – Rommel’s War, Rommel’s Treasure – claims the plans for the widening of the Holocaust out of Europe were far advanced.
Much of the material for the programme was based on what was found within the last three years in archives in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Rommel lived. The makers also accessed hitherto sealed foreign ministry files in Berlin.
Jörg Müllner, a historian and co-producer of the programme, said: “The Allied defeat of Rommel at the end of 1942 had prevented the extension of the Holocaust to Palestine. If Rommel had beaten the Allies in the desert and invaded Egypt, a push into Palestine would have followed and the unit would have deployed there.
“The most important collaborator with the Nazis and an absolute Arab antisemite was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. He was a prime example of how Arabs and Nazis became friends out of a hatred of Jews.”
Mr Müllner said it was a “lingering myth” that Rommel fought a clean war in the desert, adding: “He may not have been a racial fanatic himself, but with his victories, he was simply preparing the way for the Nazi extermination machine.”
The programme chronicled how the Jews in Palestine “quaked in terror” at the blitzkrieg successes of Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
Most sinisterly, the programme alleges that a secret department within the Afrika Korps – a “special command” – busied itself with the planning for the murder of Palestine’s Jews if and when Rommel’s forces succeeded in kicking the British out of North Africa.
The plans included sending mobile gas wagons to murder Jews. This SS unit was designed to function like the Einsatzgruppen, or “action squads”, that followed the German army into Russia, shooting close to a million Jews and political enemies before the killing centres, such as Treblinka and Auschwitz, were established in Poland.
Husseini had met Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s chief architect of the Holocaust, several times to settle details of the slaughter.
Update: Amin al-Husseini also makes an appearance in this excellent article by Matthias Küntzel (via Will):
The majority of Arab Palestinians wanted to accept the United Nation’s two state solution in 1947. After all, at this time around 10, 000 Palestinians were working in predominantly Jewish-led industries such as citrus farming. But the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, rejected the two state solution without consulting his fellow Palestinians and persuaded the leaders of the five neighboring Arab nations to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state by all means. The war of 1947-48, just as disastrous as it was avoidable…
Mick Hartley 
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