When Islamists Joined the Nazis

"The history of the 13th SS Handschar Division sheds light on a Nazi-Islamist alliance that continues to shape the Middle East's ideological landscape."

The American Spectator

These Muslims were used to kill Jews. How ironic that if today's Israelis fought them, the Jews would be called "Nazis" by the keffiyeh-klad ignoramuses produced by the Bernie-AOC-Squad-Mamdani wing of education. The Tunnel Dweller

Muslim (NOT Israeli) Nazis at prayer call

"If you missed Shmuel Klatzkin’s July 18 American Spectator essay, “The Nazis and the Mullahs,” please follow the link and take a moment to read it. It’s well worth your time. In our present historical moment, when leftists minimize the evil of the Iranian regime, he reminds us, in chapter and verse, of the mullahs’ historical alignment with the definitive evil of modern history. This is particularly important when our new generation of democratic socialists align themselves with radical Islam, while tossing the “nazi” label at everyone they disagree with — even, absurdly, at Israel.

"As a one-time student of the Nazi period — I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the antecedents of the Gestapo — I was particularly struck by the essay’s accompanying illustration, a period photograph showing the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem inspecting soldiers of the 13th SS division. The story behind this captured moment deserves telling, as it underscores just how deeply Nazism and Islamism were intertwined and — particularly — how much they hated Jews. Muslims were not simply aligned with Nazis. Some of them were active participants in the Holocaust itself.

"Which brings us to the curious history of the 13th SS Mountain Infantry Division “Handschar.” The picture used with Klatzkin’s article shows these soldiers in battle dress and wearing steel helmets. Had they been depicted in ordinary parade dress, they would have crowned their SS uniforms with a Fez, the cap associated with the Ottoman Turks, and, specifically, worn by the Ottoman gendarmes who’d once policed Bosnia and other Balkan regions during the time of Turkish rule. Nor was the division’s honorific title, “Handschar,” incidental. The term referred to a ceremonial sword carried by the Ottoman gendarmes.

"Casual students of Nazi history often assume that their notions of racial supremacy were rigid and built entirely based on the so-called “Aryan” race. This concept, confected of all manner of weird anthropological mumbo-jumbo, somehow conflated “Aryan,” a term with a basis in ancient India and Persia, with a race of blond, blue-eyed, Nordic supermen. The term never quite worked even in the realms of Nazi fantasy. Hitler was short and dark-haired while Goebbels was so diminutive that his enemies referred to him as the “Giftzwerg,” or “poison dwarf.” None of these figures, not even Himmler, the head of the SS, much resembled the Nazi racial fantasy." . . . More...