Nazi-Germany’s Anti-Zionist Propaganda and Its Impact on the War of 1947/48

Abstract

This article demonstrates that the 1948 Arab war against the United Nation’s decision in favor of the partition of Mandatory Palestine was not inevitable. Even though the Arab world rejected the Partition Plan, there was at the same time a general reluctance to go to war, not only among the Arabs in Palestine but also among the governments of major Arab League states such as Egypt. Why did this war – so costly for both sides – nevertheless take place? The article examines the influence of Nazi Germany’s radio propaganda in the Arabic language that – from April 1939 to April 1945 – urged their listeners to prevent the birth of a Jewish state and exterminate the Jews living in Palestine. It shows how Nazi officials co-operated with the Muslim Brotherhood in secrecy before WW II and deals with the mobilisation of the Muslim Brotherhood after WW II that dragged Egypt and other Arab states into a full-scale war against the Jews of Mandatory Palestine. It states that there was not only a temporal proximity between the Arab war against Israel and the Nazi war against the Jews three years before, but also an ideological proximity so that the war of 1947/48 might appear as an aftershock of the war before.