Mick Hartley

Matthias Küntzel, the German political scientist who's written a book on the Nazi roots of current Arab and Iranian anti-semitism (and whose planned lecture, on “Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East”, was cancelled by Leeds University in 2007 as too controversial) looks here at the role of Nazi propaganda in Iran during the Second World War, and in particular at the immensely popular rabble-rousing  Radio Zeesen:

After the occupation of Iran by Soviet and British troops in August 1941, Radio Zeesen became all the more important. “They [Persian listeners] turn to the German wireless now as the only means of getting Axis news”, states a BBC report of June 1942. “Although action is being taken to make effective the ban on public listening to Axis broadcasts, it seems that listening in private houses is still widely practised. As a result it appears that many people are still convinced that the Axis powers will win the war; Hitler, moreover, is said to enjoy great personal popularity.” Some Sheikhs even deemed Adolf Hitler to be the Shi’ite Messiah, the “Twelfth Imam”.

During World War I, many Shi’ite clerics had already demonstrated reverence for the German Emperor as a protector and a secret convert to Islam. Hitler, for as long as the Germans were winning, was an even better figure upon which to project such a myth. A report on this matter by the German Ambassador in Tehran, Erwin Ettel, of February 1941 is illuminating: “For months, reports have been reaching the Embassy from the most varied sources that throughout the country clerics are speaking out, telling the faithful about old, enigmatic prophesies and dreams which they interpret to mean that God has sent the Twelfth Imam into the world in the shape of Hitler. Wholly without Embassy involvement, an increasingly influential propaganda theme has come into being, in which the Führer and therefore Germany are seen as the deliverers from all evil.”

The German short-wave radio station was happy to exploit these fantasies in its Farsi broadcasts. However, Erwin Ettel was not satisfied. The Imam-belief strengthened the love of Germany, but it contributed little to hatred of the Jews. Here was still work for him to do.

It was understood that German-style antisemitism would have little resonance in Iran. “The broad masses lack a feeling for the race idea,” explained the propaganda expert of the German embassy in Tehran. He therefore laid “all the emphasis on the religious motif in our propaganda in the Islamic world. This is the only way to win over the Orientals.” But how exactly could Nazi Germany, of all countries, conduct a religious propaganda campaign? Ettel had an idea.

“The way to directly connect up with Shi’ite ideas is through the treatment of the Jewish question, which the Muhammedan perceives in religious terms and which, precisely for this reason, makes him susceptible to National Socialism on religious grounds.” Just as hatred of Jews would provide the point of entry into the Shi’ite faith, so religion would serve as the natural medium for the propagation of Jew-hatred. “A way to foster this (anti-Jewish) development would be to highlight Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in ancient times and that of the Führer in modern times,” Ettel recommended to the Foreign Office. “Additionally, by identifying the British with the Jews, an exceptionally effective anti-English propaganda campaign can be conducted among the Shi’ite people.”

Ettel even picked out the appropriate Koranic passages: firstly, sura 5, verse 82: “Truly you will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans”; and, secondly, the final sentence of chapter 2 of Mein Kampf: “In resisting the Jew, I do the work of the Lord.” “By successfully bringing the country’s clergy under the sway of German propaganda, we can win over broad layers of the popular masses,” Ettel wrote in February 1941.

Ettel’s proposal demonstrates that the Nazis sought to use religion to create an implacable hostility to the Jews. The first step was to awaken religious anti-Judaism, using references to Muhammad and the Koran. Thus, they built on the foundations of a centuries-old Muslim anti-Judaism while at the same time radicalizing it.

In which task they appear to have succeeded:

Today, Khomeini’s heirs also repeat the rhetoric of Radio Zeesen verbatim. A Nazi party directive in May 1943 prophesied: “This war will end with antisemitic world revolution and with the extermination of Jewry throughout the world, both of which are the precondition for an enduring peace.” Ahmadinejad, in his speeches, has revived this kind of genocidal utopia: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated”, he promised to the audience at the Holocaust deniers’ conference in 2006 in Teheran. “If peace prevails in the world, the people of the world will eradicate Zionism.”

[Via Solomonia]