(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)June 20, 2016

On April 19, the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies hosted Dr. David Motadel, who discussed his recent critically acclaimed and important book, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, published by Harvard University Press in 2014. The program was supported by The Clara and Morton Richmond Endowment.

In outlining Nazi Germany’s dealings with the Muslim populations of North Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus, Motadel made it clear that inherent and self-imposed impediments made for limited success. Early in the war, Nazi racial policy had difficulty in distinguishing Jews from Muslims. Echoing the conflicts that arose after the break-up of Yugoslavia, the enmity between the Muslim Bosnians and their Croatian and Serbian neighbors that arose on national as well as political arenas assured that the Germans’ only accomplishment was recruiting a fairly large number of Muslims to serve in the Wehrmacht and the S.S.

In North Africa, Motadel explained, the German occupation was too fragmented and did not last that long. Somewhat similar conditions prevailed on Soviet territory occupied by the Germans, but there they managed to entice an assortment of Kalmyks, Turkmen, Tatars, Azeris and other adherents of Islam to serve under the swastika. Although approximately 300,000 soldiers from the Islamic world served in German ranks during the war, many more Muslims served in the Allied armies.

The Third Reich’s attempts to win over Muslims, however, only met with limited success. In the end, as Motadel explained, not only a host of external circumstances, but a German lack of sincerity and consistency made for a string of short-lasting and less far-reaching gains. For the Soviet citizens who served under the Nazi flag, retribution came quickly with Stalin initiating population “transfers” even before the war ended and deporation to the gulags of Siberia afterwards. Although less harsh, retribution also followed in Tito’s Yugoslavia.

In point of fact, Motadel explained, many of the Muslim volunteers from the Soviet Union who joined the Nazi cause did so from prisoner of war camps, where, in their minds fighting on the German side was a tactic of survival. The calculation in the Balkans and the Crimea was different, where protection from partisan attacks and anti-Bolshevism were frequent motivators.

Currently, the Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, this summer, Dr. Motadel will take up an Assistant Professorship in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. He completed his M.Phil. (2006) and Ph.D. (2010) in history at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar. He subsequently took up a Research Fellowship in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge (2010-15).

In addition to Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, he was the editor of Islam and the European Empires (Oxford University Press, 2014). A prolific scholar and commentator, Motadel’s articles have been published in a number of journals and periodicals, including Past & Present, the Journal of Contemporary History, and The New York Times.

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