Islam and Nazi Germany's War by David Motadel

Author:David Motadel [Motadel, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780674724600
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2014-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

Discrimination and the Limits of Devotion

In the eyes of German officers, efforts to use Islam seemed destined to succeed in maintaining discipline and strengthening military morale. Yet, their work in the units encountered numerous obstacles, most importantly the potential lack of receptiveness of religious policies and propaganda and, more generally, religious beliefs, and the effects of discrimination, religious and racial, in the Wehrmacht and the SS.

Reports about the Muslims’ piety were ambiguous. Religious policies in the units continued throughout the war, which suggests that the Germans had not found them a complete failure. After the war, Köstring and others emphasized that, compared to Christian Orthodox volunteers, the Muslims had been notably more religious.144 Indeed, a number of reports from the field suggest that German efforts to employ Islam were not falling on deaf ears. Shortly after recruitment began in early 1942, a Wehrmacht instruction sheet insisted that the soldiers had joined the German ranks to seek both the “liberation of their home country from Bolshevism” and the “freedom of their faith.”145 This assessment may have derived from actual experience. A 1943 report on morale in a Muslim battalion explained that “the Mohammedan religion, as well as good rations,” was an “essential pillar” of military morale and discipline.146 From the Caucasus, Theodor Oberländer wrote to his wife about the enthusiastic reaction he had received from his Muslim soldiers when he had promised, in a public address to his unit, “complete religious freedom under German protection.”147 A newly recruited volunteer from the Caucasus, the forty-two-year-old Isa Musaiev, not only told his German interrogators that Bolshevism had erected a system of repression and economic exploitation but also complained that the “mosques were taken and used as storehouses, barns, and garages.”148 That this was more than empty rhetoric designed to pander to the Germans’ expectations becomes clear from the field mail sent home by Muslim volunteers.

Letters written by Crimean Tatars in the months after their employment by the 11th Army reveal a striking intensity of religious sentiment.149 Werner Otto von Hentig, who monitored some of these letters in spring 1942, stressed that they gave clear evidence not only of the Muslims’ “deep gratitude” and “willingness to fight and work” but also of their “deeply rooted religiosity.”150 “Allah and Adolf Effendi,” Hentig reported, were “inseparable terms” in the letters.151 The soldier Majid Habilov, for instance, wrote to his family: “Thank Allah and Adolf Effendi! We are well! If Allah protects us, we will endure not one year, but ten years, of war.” His comrade Ibrahim Said wished that: “Allah and Adolf Effendi may give the German army strength, so that we are victorious.” Reading the letters, Hentig also noted that many referred to prayers for Hitler.152 “We pray to Allah day and night for the health of Adolf Effendi,” asserted one soldier. Another told his family that he had attended a communal prayer in a mosque together with 120 of his comrades and officers, rejoicing: “From now on, we can go to the mosque together for every jumu‘a.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.