Rommel and the Nazis’ Plans for a Middle Eastern Holocaust

You see it in nearly every movie about WW II: one the one side, you have the evil Nazi fanatics, Hitler and Goering and the like; on the other side, you have Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, a gifted tank commander far removed from the genocidal machinations at Wannsee. Think Patton.

As it turns out, the truth is a bit more complicated. New historical research indicats that Rommel only enjoys his sterling reputation because his efforts in North Africa failed. According to that research, the North African campaign was intended to create an unholy alliance between the Nazis and Arab nationalists who shared Hitler’s dream of a world without Jews:

A new documentary broadcast on Germany’s ZDF television channel this week seeks to correct Rommel’s image as a gentleman warrior whose campaigns in North Africa weren’t connected with the murderous wars of destruction Nazi Germany unleashed in Europe.

Separately, recently published research by two Stuttgart-based historians, Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, claims that Hitler had worked out plans to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East, and that the Nazis had forged an alliance with Arab nationalists who wanted to drive the Jewish refugees out of Palestine — a murderous version of German-Arab friendship founded on common hatred of Jews. Jews living in the Middle East were petrified by Rommel’s victories. After seizing the British fortress of Tobruk in Libya in June 1942 he set his sights on the Suez Canal, on Palestine and the oil fields of the Middle East.

“Those fighting Jewry can always rely on the sympathy of the Arab population,” the German army general staff wrote in an information booklet to prepare troops for the conquest of Palestine.

Hitler was celebrated in large parts of the Arab world, and some newspapers even likened him to the Prophet. The Desert Fox was almost as popular as Hitler. “Heil Rommel” was a common greeting in Arab countries.

Many Arabs thought the Germans would free them from the rule of the old colonial powers France and Britain. Hitler had shown how to burst the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles. After Germany defeated France in 1940, chants against the French and British echoed around the streets of Damascus: “No more Monsieur, no more Mister, Allah’s in Heaven and Hitler’s on earth.”

Adolf Hitler assured the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, at a meeting in Berlin in November 1941 that his goal was the “destruction of Jewry living in Arabia.” The Führer had racist objections to Arabs as well, though. He declined to shake the Mufti’s hand and refused to drink coffee with him.

Hitler nevertheless provided the Mufti, who later sponsored Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, with a budget of 750,000 Reichsmark per month to foment Jihad in Palestine. In an example of ideological flexibility, the SS even recruited Muslim volunteers and declared that the Muslims living in the Balkans belonged to the “racially valuable” peoples of Europe.

Behind the front line of Rommel’s Afrikakorps, a special unit was created in July 1942 to to plan the murder of Jews in the region. It was led by SS Obersturmbannführer, or Lieutenant Colonel, Walther Rauff, an experienced mass murderer who helped develop the mobile gassing vehicles the Germans used to murder Jewish people in their campaign in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Rauff and his men were empowered to “take executive measures against the civilian population”, Nazi jargon for robbery, murder and enslavement.

The Jews of Palestine were spared that fate. In October 1942 the Allies halted the German advance at the Egyptian town of El Alamein and thereby destroyed the myth of Rommel’s invincibility. The Desert Fox had to evacuate his beaten army to Tunisia, back where his African campaign began.

The SS had established a network of labor camps in Tunisia. More than 2,500 Tunisian Jews died in six months of German rule, and the regular army was also involved in executions.

[snip]

Rommel’s reputation was spared only because his strategy failed. He was later dispatched to Italy and then to France, where his contact with the plotters who tried to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, cost him his life. He committed suicide after Hitler ordered that he be given the choice between killing himself and being tried in court.

To be sure, the new research does not indicate that Rommel himself was a Nazi fanatic. But it makes clear that Rommel’s all-consuming ambition blinded him to the possible consequences of what a military victory in North Africa would have meant for the Jews.

So much for another legend, this one of the “clean war” fought in North Africa. As usual, fact proves messier than fiction.