More on Arabs' Hitlerism: Ahmed Hussein [Husayn] ('Young Egypt') & H I Katibah [Katibeh] - Activist for Arab-Palestine

Submitted by Roberta (United States), Oct 2, 2022 at 18:20

* Young Egypt's Ahmed Hussein [Ahmad Husayn], had been repeatedly chasing after Hitler, while he was given a cold shoulder; the group adopting Nazi ideas and slogans.

Grand Mufti's link to Young Egypt's formation.

* Habib Ibrahim Katibeh (Katibah, Habib Ibrahim, Habeeb Ibrahim), his 1933 pro Hitler propaganda; his links with Nazi Bund; his distribution of Ahmed Hussein fascistic material. He was Syrian born, "Arab-Palestine" activist.

* The pro Nazi general atmosphere in the Arab world.

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The Palestine Post⁩, 1 August 1938⁩.

[https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/pls/1938/08/01/01/article/3].

YOUNG EGYPT LEADER WRITES TO HITLER EGYPT ABOUT TO SURPRISE THE WORLD
CAIRO , Sunday . — Mtre . Ahmed Hussein , leader of Young Egypt (formerly the Green Shirts) who has been making political and economic studies in England, Czechoslovakia and Germany, and is now in Italy, has sent a long letter of thanks to Herr Hitler while giving his impressions of Germany....

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EGYPTIAN NATIONALIST REQUESTS A MEETING WITH HITLER

[https://www.alexautographs.com/auction-lot/egyptian-nationalist-requests-a-meeting-with-hitl_C8E42ECB3F]

A retained copy of a Reich Chancellery memo dated July 22, 1938, first mentions a letter being received from 'Ahmed Hussein, Leader of the Young Egypt Party'

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Gershoni, Israel. Jankowski, James. Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s. United States: Stanford University Press, 2009.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=BXaDYtApXj4C&pg=PT404].

Husayn's open letter to Hitler was published, in both Arabic and French, in JMF, July 6, 1939, 1–4. It was reprinted in pamphlet form, with texts in Arabic and English, after the war as Ahmed Hussein, Message to Hitler

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Shukrī, Ghālī. Egypt, Portrait of a President, 1971-1981: The Counter-revolution in Egypt, Sadat's Road to Jerusalem. Kiribati: Zed Press, 1981. p. 286.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=MplyAAAAMAAJ&q=ahmed+hussein+%22egypt+above+all%22].

... Aziz Al-Masri and Ahmed Hussein never disguised their sympathy for nor their relationship with Hitler's Germany ... The Young Egypt Party proclaimed the slogan, 'Egypt above All', while maintaining contact with the Axis.

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Die Welt des Islams. Germany: D. Reimer, 1985. p. 134.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=vOJVAAAAYAAJ&q=ahmad+hussain+hitler p. 134].

From its beginnings in the early Thirties the party shared many outward appearances with the European fascists: a uniform (green shirts), a salute (outstretched right arm, palm open and finger pointing to the sky), a flag, a para-military organization which demanded absolute obedience to a leader.
Like the PPS in Syria, Young Egypt used ultra-nationalist slogans, based on "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles": in the case of Young Egypt, "Egypt, Egypt, above all..."

When in 1934 Ahmad Hussayn payed a visit to the German envoy in Cairo, Eberhard von Stohrer, "in order to express his sympathy for the new Germany," the ambassador "refused to see the young man, when Hussayn asked for a second meeting and also reported their one conversation to the Egyptian Department of Public Security." ...

The climax of admiration was reached in 1938, when Ahmad Hussain visited Europe and Germany. In an open letter to Adolf Hitler Ahmad Hussain called the Reichsarbeitsdienst (German Labor Front)...

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Cahiers D'histoire Mondiale. Switzerland: Unesco., 1972. p. 767.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=frYfAQAAIAAJ&q=%22young+egypt%22+%22Egypt+uber+alles%22].

In Egypt, the alternatives in the 'thirties and 'forties were (1) the foundation of the Younanti-parliamentarianism; but somehow distantly flirtingg Egypt Party, with a frank platform of Egypt über Alles, of xenophobia, of anti-parliamentarianism; but somehow distantly flirting with Arabism and Islamism (actually they wore green shirts and had their ecstatic Sieg Heils and their gruesome para-military parades, but they also ravaged public bars and burned down a few cinemas)...

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Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress. United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948. p. 4570.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=NcwtQjSiv6cC&pg=SL1-PA4570].

Arab Racist Propaganda Rebuked by Judge

Extension of Rernarks by Hon. Arthur G. Klein

June 19, 1948

... The most conspicuous Arab publicist in the United States, H.I. Katibah, was revealed as the author of the lead article on pro-Hitler propaganda monthly published in Boston, Mass., in 1933.

Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress, Volume 92, Part 11. United States. Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946 pp. 3634-5.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=zz44AQAAMAAJ&pg=SL1-PA2634].

Arab office Linked with Fascist Jew Baters -- President Truman Is Asked to Investigate Arab Propaganda in the United States

EXTENTION OF REMARKS OF
HON. EMANUEL CELLER OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

[...]

Outstanding publicist for the various Arab groups involved is H. I. Katibah, editor of the monthly Bulletin, and of other publications of the Institute for Arab-American Affairs, Inc. Katibah, the Anti-Nazi League charges, was one of the original incorporators and most active workers in the notorious Arab National League, founded shortly after Hitler seized the German chancellorship and incorporated at New York in 1938, and used to disseminate totalitarian propaganda among Americans of Near Eastern antecedents. The Arab National League operated in close association with the German-American Bund, then under the leadership of Fritz Kuhn, and its activities were regularly reported in the Nazi newspaper, Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, until that publication was sealed up by the FBI after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition to Katibah, whose name appears near the top of the institute's letterhead, it is significant that both the original bund-associated body and the present institute were formed under New York corporate charters containing much identical language and written by the same lawyers. Furthermore, the names of several of the other top officers of the institute, including the present chairman of its executive committee, are to be found among the names of the eight original incorporators of the old bund-associated Arab National League.

This same H. I. Katibah, on May 2, 1946, and again on May 9, 1946, was the signer of full-page paid advertisement appearing in a number of principal newspapers, advancing the propaganda cause of the Arab League, and attributed to a high nebulous source called the League for peace with justice in Palestine. The original announcement address of the latter organization is merely the address of an advertising agency located at 345 Madison Avenue, New York City.

Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress. United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946. pp. 4938-40.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=-hoRiPo9xZsC&pg=SL1-PA4938]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=-hoRiPo9xZsC&pg=SL1-PA49].

British Treatment of Jews in Palestine Cries to Heaven While Arab Office Turns Out Propaganda

Extension of Remarks by Adolph J. Sabath
August 12, 1946.

Let me, then, read a single inflammatory statement from a letter dated June 21 , 1946, on the letterhead of the League for Peace With Justice in Palestine, 420 Lexington Avenue, New York 17, and signed by R. M. Schoendorf, Habib I. Katibeh, and Ben H. Freedman.

The first paragraph of this letter reads:
World War III may burst upon the world if an attempt is made to transplant into Palestine, against the wishes of the Arabs, 100,000 displaced European Jews and using for this purpose the armed forces of the United States and Great Britain.

[...]

The chief propagandist and editor for the Institute for Arab-Anerican affairs is a man named H. I. Katibah, and he is the very same man who was director of the prewar Arab organization in the United States that was associated with the Nazi Bund. Just as the bund was supposed to make German-Americans into Nazis, so the Arab National League, of which this man was director, was supposed to make Americans of near eastern extraction into Nazis.

As a matter of fact, not long after Pearl Harbor, the leading Arabic newspaper in America, Al-Hoda, openly admitted this Arab-Nazi connection, and urged Arab -Americans no longer to follow the false leadership of the German affiliated agitators.

Carlson, John, R.. (pseud.) Cairo to Damascus. New York: Knopf, 1951. p. 55.

[https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-5UIiCSQccCwZoezi/Cairo+To+Damascus_djvu.txt].
[https://books.google.com/books?id=MDZ9CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT79]

AHMED HUSSEIN — ARAB FUEHRER

HAVING had these indications of how Egypt treated the stranger, I warily began my investigation of Ahmed Hussein, fuehrer of the fanatic Green Shirts, more formally known as Misr el Fattat, the Young Egypt Party. I was sure I could meet Hussein by posing as a friend of those he knew in the United States. I knew Hussein's background. During the war he had been placed in custody for pro-Fascist sympathies. In 1942, with Rommel and his Afrika Korps hammering at El Alamein, one of Hussein's colleagues, a Green Shirt leader, led street demonstrations, screaming at the top of his voice: "Advance, Rommel. Please, Rommel, come quickly to Egypt."

Before the war Hussein had visited Italy, toured Fascist youth camps, and returned tremendously impressed. He also went to Germany, but got a cool reception. He then wrote a pamphlet, "Message to Hitler!" inviting Hitler to achieve peace of soul by embracing Islam, "the religion of God's unity and of solidarity, the religion of order and leadership." In New York some of Hussein's writings were distributed by Habib Katibah (the same Katibah whom Shawa Bey in London asked me if I knew), who was frequently seen with Hussein when the latter visited the United States in 1947. Katibah's background is revealing. He had founded the Arab National League, a propaganda agency which received the endorsement of World Service, the notorious Nazi propaganda mill, for its efforts in "spreading the truth." Another founder, Dr. George Kheiralla, received assurances from James Wheeler- Hill, once Bund national secretary: "Our own organization will work with you 100% and do whatever possible to assist you." After Pearl Harbor the League was dissolved, but in 1945 Katibah suddenly reappeared on the letterhead of the stream-lined Institute of Arab American Affairs, listing on its advisory board such prominent Americans as Kermit Roosevelt, Virginia C. Gildersleeve, dean emeritus, Barnard College; and William E. Hocking, professor emeritus, Harvard University. After a while Katibah's name disappeared from the letterhead, and was replaced by that of Khalil lotah as executive director. Katibah, however, remained very much on the scene.

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Knee, Stuart E.. The Concept of Zionist Dissent in the American Mind, 1917-1941. United States: R. Speller, 1979. p. 226.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=6_qAAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Habib+I.+Katibah+distributed+some+of+the+writings+of+Ahmed+Hussein,+founder%22 p. 226].

By 1941, the Grand Mufti was leading the pro-Axis Arab revolt in Iraq and was in the pay of the Reich. In the United States, the anti-Zionist feeling among Arabs was considerable. The State Department conducted an Arab-American attitudes survey in April, 1943, which revealed that the A.N.L. "favored the development of an independent, federated Arab...

The disappointments proved too great for American Arab nationalist leaders and the A.N.L., their principal political organization. In 1941, the League received the endorsement of the Nazi-run World Service and American Bund National Secretary, James Wheeler Hill. After Pearl Harbor, the A.N.L. was dissolved
In the same year, Habib I. Katibah distributed some of the writings of Ahmed Hussein, founder of the Fascist Green Shirts and Young Egypt Party; the suicide of Fuad I. Shatara threw American Arabs into confusion and left a leadership gap in the community that would not immediately be 1997 filled.

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Stav, Arie. Peace : the Arabian caricature : a study of anti-semitic imagery. Israel: Gefen Publishing House, 1999. p. 119.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=vPcNAQAAMAAJ&q=%22AHMED%20HUSSEIN%22].

Immediately upon Hitler's accession to power, parties emulating National Socialism were formed throughout the Arab world.

One such party, established in Syria by Anton Sa'ada, adopted all the outer forms of Nazism with alacrity. Sa'ada, who presented himself to the world as "Fuehrer of the Syrian Nation", included in his party's platform the claim that "Syrians are a 'master race' by their very nature".

Hitler himself was Islamized, acquiring the new appellation of "Abu Ali" (and in Egypt , for some reason, "Mohamed Heidar").

However, the one party on the Nazi model in the Arab world whose impact transcended the period of the 1930s and which, to a considerable extent, fashioned the regime in the principal Arab land subsequent to the Second World War, was the Green-Shirted Young Egypt, which specifically copied the forms of the Hitler Youth and the Brown Shirts of the SA. The party was founded by Ahmed Hussein in October 1933 on the German model, replete with raised -armed greetings, a general staff, storm troopers, torch-light parades, and Nazi slogans (including a literal translation into Arabic of "One Nation, One Party, One Leader", and "Egypt über alles"), gangs of strong-arms to deal with opponents, and, needless to say, the status of "Fuehrer" for Ahmed Hussein.
Nazi anti-Semitism was also incorporated into Young Egypt, including a boycott of Jewish businesses, physical harassment, and incitement to violence.

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Cynthia Farahat, "The Arab Upheaval: Egypt's Islamist Shadow," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2011, pp. 19-24.

[https://www.meforum.org/2887/arab-upheaval-egypt-islamist]

The group spread its xenophobic and militant ideas through its magazine, al-Sarkh'a (Scream), which combined vicious attacks on Western democracy with praise for Fascism and Nazism and advocacy of the implementation of Shari'a rule. In a famous letter, Hussein invited Hitler "to convert to Islam." This outlook was shared by the Muslim Brotherhood's publication, al-Nazir, which referred to the Nazi tyrant as "Hajj Hitler," and by the society's founding father, Hassan al-Banna—an unabashed admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, who "guided their peoples to unity, order, regeneration, power, and glory."

(Al-Masry al-Youm (Cairo), Oct. 8, 2009. [https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/70059

Accusations were brought against Ahmed Hussein of being a traitor because of his contact with the Germans, and because of the message he sent to the German leader Hitler, and the fact that Ahmed Hussein's message to Hitler was calling him to convert to Islam, an order was issued to arrest Ahmed Hussein during May 1941, but he managed to escape...

)

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Perdue, Jon B.., Johnson, Stephen. The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism. United Kingdom: Potomac Books, 2012. p. 72.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=TcNy985Q-LQC&pg=PA72].
[https://dokumen.pub/the-war-of-all-the-people-the-nexus-of-latin-american-radicalism-and-middle-eastern-terrorism-1597977047-9781597977043.html]

Arab support for Hitler was wide spread at the time he rose to power. And when the Nazis announced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to legalize the confiscation of Jewish property, "telegrams of congratulation were sent to the fuhrer from all over the Arab and Islamic world."

Soon afterward, the rise of the Third Reich became a rallying point for many Muslim leaders, who fostered a bit of Muslim mythmaking by claiming that both Hitler and Mussolini were closet Muslims. One rumor had it that Hitler had secretly converted to Islam and that his Muslim name was Hayder, translated as "the brave one." Mussolini, the rumors told, was really an Egyptian Muslim named Musa Nili, which translated into "Moses of the Nile."
It was Hitler's relationship with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, that did the most to cement early ties between the Islamists and the Nazis. Husseini is said to have created the first fedayeen in modern times. These would-be martyrs attacked moderate Arabs who were not sufficiently supportive of his cause.

And as far back as 1933, Arab nationalists in Syria and Iraq were supporting Nazism. Young Egypt, an early Egyptian fascist group also known as the Green Shirts, was said to have been helped in its formation by Husseini.
Husseini first traveled to Berlin to meet Hitler in November 1941, where he offered his full support. This meeting, it is said, was the genesis of Nazi-influenced anti-Semitism as a mass movement in the Arab world. Husseini stayed in Berlin throughout World War II and was treated as if he was a foreign dignitary. Hitler even offered to make him the "Arab führer" after the war.
Husseini would eventually help Hitler by traveling to Bosnia in 1943 to set up the Waffen-SS Handschar Division, a unit of Bosnian Muslims, and by making radio broadcasts transmitted throughout the Arab world to encourage Muslims to take up the Nazi cause. In return, Husseini was rewarded by being named the supreme religious leader of the Muslim troops fighting for the Axis powers.
Many other smaller Muslim units were also established, such as in Chechnya and Uzbekistan.

A number of other extreme-right luminaries would visit the grand mufti after World War II, including the infamous Otto Ernst Remer. Remer also got to know Yasser Arafat, a cousin of the grand mufti. Arafat often stayed with the grand mufti while he was studying engineering at the University of Cairo. From this initial contact, Remer formed an enduring alliance in the coming years with Arafat, who helped bridge the gap between the far right and the far left.

Arab support for Hitler was widespread by the time he rose to power. And when the Nazis announced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to legalize the confiscation of Jewish property, "telegrams of congratulation were sent to the führer from all over the Arab and Islamic world."

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Sachar, Howard Morley. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996. p. 196.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=epRtAAAAMAAJ&q=telegrams+nuremberg+arabs].

[2007 - https://books.google.com/books?id=-cpvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA196].

By 1935, therefore, the Nazi propaganda bureau was subsidizing a wide variety of Middle Eastern courses, institutes, and journals, and spending millions of marks on the "educational" activities of German cultural and press attachés in the Islamic world. Beginning in 1938, the newly equipped German radio station at Seesen transmitted propaganda to the Middle East in all the languages of the area (except, of course, Hebrew). Combined with the broadcasts of Radio Bari and Spain's Radio Sevilla, these programs won a large and appreciative reception in the Arab world. So did the "good will" visits to the Middle East of eminent Nazi figures, among them Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and Baldur Von Shirach.

One particularly successful Axis technique of winning favor among the Arabs had its basis in ideology. German journalists and diplomats constantly drew parallels between Nazi Pan-Germanism and "the youthful power of Pan-Arab nationalism [which] is the wave of the Arab future." More significantly, the Arabs were reminded of the enemies they shared in common with the Nazis. Even in the mid-1930s, when Berlin exercised a certain restraint in ventilating its animosity against Britain and France, German diplomats evinced no hesitation whatever in publicizing the Nazi anti-Jewish campaign. Hardly a German Arabic-language newspaper ormagazine appeared in the Middle East without a sharp thrust against the Jews. Reprints of these strictures were widely distributed by the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee (p. 200).

Upon introducing the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935, therefore, Hitler received telegrams of congratulation and praise from all corners of the Arab world . The Palestine newspaper al-Liwa eagerly borrowed the Nazi slogan "One Country, One People, One Leader." Ahmed Hussein, leader of the "Young Egypt" movement, confided to the Lacoro Fascista that "Italy and Germany are today the only true democracies in Europe and the others are only parliamentary plutocracies."

A delegation of Iraqi sporting associations, returning from a trip to Germany in September 1937, expressed their profound admiration for "National Socialist order and discipline." During a visit to Transjordan in 1939, Carl Raswan, a noted German-born journalist, was struck by the near-unanimity of Arab opinion that only
Italy and Germany were strong, and England and the whole British Empire existed only by the grace of Mussolini and Hitler."

Throughout the Arab Middle East a spate of ultra-right-wing political groupings and parties developed in conscious imitation of Nazism and Italian fascism.

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Raswan, Carl Reinhard. Escape from Baghdad. Germany: Olms Presse, 1978. p. 67.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=KiKxlbov0_UC&pg=PA67].

What struck me was that these natives had a naïve conception of the status of the military powers in Europe . In their eyes only Italy and Germany were strong , and England and the whole British Empire existed only by the grace of Mussolini and Hitler. I tried to explain to these natives of Ma'an (and later in other places)...

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