What do you know about the Muslim SS division during ww2?

Hi! I just discovered this video that explains us that Hitler signed with the Arabs during ww2 to fight against the Jews.

What do you know about this story? I'm surprised to learn about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfLvP2jTVq8&feature=youtu.be&bpctr=1424736122

 

AFAIK, the members were European muslims, not Arabs.
http://www.feldgrau.com/13ss.html

 

This is an interesting picture of the 13th Waffen SS Division saying prayers during their training in Germany in 1943.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Handschar_(1st_Croatian)

 

Such a peaceful religion...i think i just choked.

 

Firstly, be careful when enquiring into the Handschar.
Actual decent information on them is sketchy to say the least, and as they feed into several more modern dividing lines there is a mass of coverage out there that serves purely to serve one or other current political agendas. Axe-grinders love them.

'Arab' is indeed a misnomer for the 13th, and any over-egging of the Grand Mufti's involvement with them is somewhat suspect. He & the Golden square boys were interested in any support post a rather shaky coup or two. Their agenda was local to the Middle East & anti-imperialist, rather than analogous with any modern interpretation of 'Islamism'. His involvement in the Yugoslavian business was limited to say the least.

For the roots of the Handschar and their most base motivations, I'd say look to the Ustaše first. True bastard's bastards, masters of the vendetta who even repelled Gestapo men in their 'zeal' - if anything, the feldgrau Fez wearers were an attempt to bring those old hatreds to useful heel. And not really a terribly successful one.

Do search cautiously though - there really are some very iffy sites re. this stuff.

 

I was just about to say that they were most likely from the Balkans area, there may have been a few volunteers from places like Iran or Iraq.

 

And to possibly curb that thought maybe just a little in a WW2 context, though I doubt it will do any good, axe-grinders flocking to certain bits of history:

Tens of thousands of Muslims served with honour on the allied side.
Search 'Muhammad' on CWGC and perhaps you'll also enjoy sniggering at the 7375 dead that name alone brings up for those who fell under allied colours in WW2...

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Is this a WW2 history area? Or the stump?

 

Likely it is because your "Average Joe" has been sold on the idea that the SS only recruited the best of the best Aryan specimens, and they are quite surprised to learn that this is not true, the Germans made quite a few "honorary aryans." to swell their ranks.

 

I know that there were even Indians (from India) in the Waffen SS foreign ranks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Legion

It seems like a lot of foreigners such as Ukrainians, Indians, Muslims of eastern Europe, etc. wanted their countries free of colonial powers such as Britain and Soviet Union, and they were promised of a free state by the Nazis if they were victorious. Seems like a common method they used to recruit foreigners to fill their ranks.

 

In small numbers people from almost every ethnic group were in German military service during WW2. Besides those who were believers in the Nazi ideology, or joined in the hope of gaining freedom from the colonial powers there were others who were just caught up in the war (in the wrong place at the wrong time) and trying to survive.

There were even some black Africans in German uniforms. Some photos in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83b6DSdiSbI. Some French Colonial troops captured by the Germans in Europe were "recruited" into German service. There were also some mixed race Germans (Usually German mothers, African fathers)

An example of people just caught up in the war:

There is a Korean movie (based on a true story) about a Korean and a Japanese in Korea, who were initially boyhood friends but became bitter enemies after the Japanese boys grandfather is killed by a bomb set by a Korean revolutionary. As a young adults the Korean is drafted into the Japanese army and the Japanese becomes an officer. They are both captured by the Soviets and put in a brutal prison camp.. After the German attack on the Soviet Union they are forcibly recruited into the Soviet Army. They both survive a major battle and are captured separately by the Germans, forced separately into German service and eventually both are sent to Normandy where they meet again . On D-Day the Korean is killed , the Japanese survives and is captured by the Americans. Using the Koreans identification (so the Americans don't know he is actually Japanese) he is eventually repatriated to Korea where he lives for many years as the Korean even fooling the Korean's family. Eventually he admitted he was actually Japanese and wrote a book on which the movie is based. He was a track star and considered a hero in Korea, winning many medals as a member of the Korean Track Team.

There were even Jews in German uniform (including the SS) There are several threads about them on this site.

 

The Mufti could have been quite useful for Hitler in the end in recruiting men.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html

I read that Himmler had a Koran with him all the time to read ( in German).

https://books.google.fi/books?id=xgotAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT132&lpg=PT132&dq=himmler+and+koran&source=bl&ots=a2B1DHT8oO&sig=pRrF76cK2Amjk-t4Z7zSB3bzWYg&hl=fi&sa=X&ei=9kjsVMWNNYWGzAOq4oDgAg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=himmler%20and%20koran&f=false

 

I think the Mufti always thought more along the lines of Hitler being useful to him.
(Technically 'former mufti' I see... hadn't occurred to me that as the title was as much one of government rather than a pure religious one, it had been withdrawn.)
If there had been any substantial recruitment in that area & if the colonial regimes were somehow toppled, it seems extremely unlikely that any men raised would stray too far from their local area really, and given it would have taken a while to solidify the badly flawed Iraqi coup and further uprisings, those recruits would have had a very short time to be made ready for second Alamein, by which time things were pretty much over for Germany in Africa.

There's then the later question of Nazi attitude to the Ehrenarier, which would apply to support for the arabs & recruitment of the Handschar. I wonder how long the tolerance would really have lasted post-achievement of whatever the immediate aims were for these 'honorary aryans'... It's very hard to say really, the race theory being so peculiarly 'flexible' when needs drove it, but I can't help feeling the terms 'semitic' would nag at the mind of certain Nazi officials working with Arab recruits after a while.

 

A host of exiled political leaders—such as Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, Syrian guerilla rebel Fawzi al-Qawuqji, former Iraqi prime minister Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani, and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni (Arab nationalist and prominent Muslim religious leader)—escaped to Berlin, where they broadcast appeals to their home countries in order to foment unrest, sabotage, and insurrection against the Allies. In exile in Europe from 1941 to 1945, al-Husayni's status was that of a prominent individual anti-Jewish Arab and Muslim leader.

During the war, the Axis regimes broadcast daily propaganda messages in more than a dozen languages via powerful transmitters in Berlin, Bari, Luxembourg, Paris, and Athens. Some figures, such as American-born William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) and modernist poet Ezra Pound, gained notoriety and audiences for their provocative addresses. From Asia to the Americas, Axis radio bombarded listeners with anti-Allied and antisemitic rhetoric in the hopes of encouraging isolationism in neutral countries, defeatism in enemy lands, and unrest in Allied-occupied territories. Along with other Arab broadcasters, al-Husayni disseminated pro-Axis, anti-British, and anti-Jewish propaganda from Berlin to the Middle East. In radio broadcasts, he called for an Arab revolt against Great Britain and the destruction of the Jewish settlements in Palestine.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007667

 

This passage from there perhaps underlines just how seriously the Germans took him, other than as a 'useful idiot'.

Bose is always interesting. A kind of anti-Ghandi... perhaps similar aims, but very different ideas as to how to achieve them. Opportunist to the extreme.
I do feel a modicum of sympathy towards many members of the INA though - caught between a rock and a hard place with service, death, or death as a PoW being the options for many, I don't envy the chaps who sorted the post-conflict committed from the dilettante there, in the atmosphere of a fading Empire with partition boiling up.

 

IIRC there also was the sonderverband 288 that fought with Rommel in NA, originally raised to support the Iraq revolt in ended up in the AK as a conventional motorized unit.