Summary
David Motadel: Islam and the War of Nazi Germany
David Motadel's research is devoted to one of the important manifestations of Nazi policy during World War II? attempts to attract to the side of the Axis and the mobilization of volunteers from among the Muslim population, along with a wide propaganda campaign in the occupied territories of the Soviet Central Asian, Caucasian peoples and Crimean Tatars, as well as among Muslims in the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Metohija and Albania (the result is the creation of two SS divisions: "Handžar" and "Skenderbeg"). These volunteers had to be included in that part of the German war machine which until then was reserved exclusively for the "racially most valuable" members of the German people. An attempt to encourage a similar process in the Arab countries of the Middle East and the Maghreb by the British and French colonies, using the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, did not produce the expected results. Motadel also points to the role of influential religious and political leaders of local Muslims, who accepted active cooperation with the Nazi regime, as was the case with Jerusalem's Grand Mufti Amin El Husseini, who led a propaganda campaign among the local Muslim population. in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This action, on the other hand, sought to mitigate some of the ideological positions of the Nazi racist ideology about the "racial inferiority" of the new volunteers.
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