Broadcasting the Final Solution: Nazi Anti-Zionism and Arabic-Language Propaganda in the Middle East Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This thesis examines why Nazi Germany continued to invest in Arabic-language radio

propaganda after the Axis defeat in North Africa, when the Middle East and North Africa

had, in military terms, ceased to be relevant to Berlin’s war effort. Drawing on American

diplomatic monitoring reports of Axis Arabic broadcasts alongside German Foreign Office

records, Nuremberg documentation, and key ideological texts, it analyses how

antisemitism and anti-Zionism, rather than residual strategic interest in the region,

structured the regime’s approach to Arab audiences. To explain why propaganda not only

persisted but intensified between 1943 and 1945, the thesis reconstructs how Nazi leaders

came to treat the prevention of a Jewish state in Palestine as integral to their war against

the Jews and shows how this outlook determined the themes and political views

championed in Arabic broadcasts. It demonstrates that, after El Alamein, these

broadcasts shifted from preparing the ground for a hypothetical German advance to urging

Arab listeners to block a Jewish state and to continue the struggle against the Jews

independently of German military success. By tracing how annihilationist antisemitism

was rearticulated in an anti-Zionist motif and projected into Arab political discourse

through radio, this thesis argues that Nazi policymakers used late-war Arabic propaganda

to relocate their project of Jewish annihilation into an imagined future in which it would be

taken up by Arabs in the Middle East even as Nazi Germany faced impending defeat.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter 1: The Formation of Anti-Zionist Antisemitism in Nazi Thought………………..12

Chapter 2: Nazi Propaganda and Engagement in the Middle East during the North African

War……………………………………………………………………………………..45

Chapter 3: After El Alamein: The Radicalization of Antisemitism in Nazi Arabic Radio

Propaganda August 1942-1945……………………………………………………………...74

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...94

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..102

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	History
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	History, Middle Eastern Jewish Studies History, European
Keyword	Nazis Germany Palestine Zionism
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Eckert, Astrid, Emory University
Committee Members	Levin, Geoffrey, Emory University Schainker, Ellie, Emory University

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