Also, Persia did want to get in on Europe and allied itself with Hitler, fighting more brutally than Hitler's own troops, and they changed their name in official record books from Persian to Iran.
Here's some deeper history regarding their relationship.
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Denial of Holocaust nothing new in Iran Ties to Hitler led to plots against British and Jews Sunday, January 8, 2006 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shot to the forefront of Holocaust denial with his rabble-rousing remarks last month. But it's more like self-denial. The president of Iran need only look to his country's Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were strongly connected to the Holocaust and the Hitler regime, as was the entire Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem. Iran's axis with the Third Reich began during the prewar years, when it welcomed Nazi Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use the city as a base for Middle East agitation against the British and the region's Jews. Key among these German agents was Fritz Grobba, Berlin's envoy to the Middle East, who was often called "the German Lawrence," because he promised a Pan-Islamic state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran. Relations between Berlin and Tehran were strong from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. At that time, Reza Shah Pahlavi's nation was known as Persia. The shah became a stalwart admirer of Hitler, Nazism and the concept of the Aryan master race. He also sought the Reich's help in reducing British petro-political domination. So intense was the shah's identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country "Iran," which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished. The idea for the name change was suggested by the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of Hitler's trusted banker, Hjalmar Schacht. From that point, all Iranians were constantly reminded that their country shared a common bond with the Nazi regime. Shortly after World War II broke out in 1939, the Mufti of Jerusalem crafted a strategic alliance with Hitler to exchange Iraqi oil for active Arab and Islamic participation in the murder of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe. This was predicated on support for a pan-Arab state and Arab control over Palestine. During the war years, Iran became a haven for Gestapo agents. It was from Iran that the seeds of the abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad were planted. After Churchill's forces booted the Nazis out of Iraq in June 1941, German aircrews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across Iraq's northern border back into Iran. Likewise, the mufti of Jerusalem was spirited across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British. His venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts in Tehran. The mufti was a vocal opponent of allowing Jewish refugees to be transported or ransomed into Jewish Palestine. Instead, he wanted them shipped to the gas chambers of Poland. In the summer of 1941, the mufti, with the support of key Iranian military and government leaders, advocated implementing in Iran what had failed months earlier in Iraq. The plan once again was for a total diversion of oil from the Allies to the Nazis, in exchange for the accelerated destruction of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the Nazis' support for an Arab state. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., Iran had already been supplying Hitler's forces in occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria. Now, the mufti agitated to cut off the British and the Allies completely and supply Germany in its push against Russia. In October 1941, British, USSR other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested, and the shah's son was installed in power. The mufti scampered into the Italian embassy, where he shaved his beard and dyed his hair. In this disguise, he was allowed to leave the country along with the rest of the Italian delegation. Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported "bureau," he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From Berlin and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for international Jewish destruction, as well as a pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime. He called upon all Muslims to "kill the Jews wherever you see them." In Tehran's marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, "In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler." When the mufti raised three divisions of Islamic Waffen SS to undertake cruel operations in Bosnia, among the 30,000 killers were some volunteer contingents from Iran. Iranian Nazis, along with the other Muslim Waffen SS, operated under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for barbarous actions against Jews and others in Bosnia. Recruitment for the murderous "Handschar Divisions" was done openly in Iran. Iran and its leaders were not only aware of the Holocaust, they played both sides. The country offered overland escape routes for refugee Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to Israel -- and later fleeing postwar Iraqi fascist persecution -- but only in exchange for extortionate passage fees. Thousands of Jews journeyed to Israel via Iran both during the Holocaust and during the years after the fall of Hitler, when Arab leaders, especially in Iraq, tried to continue Germany's anti-Jewish program. Iran profited handsomely. Since the shah's downfall, Iran has become a center for organized international Holocaust denial and has helped elevate the endeavor from fringe hate speech to a state-approved pseudo-intellectual debate. In international forums and on state-controlled radio, Iranian university experts and journalists help validate the revisionist views that Jews were never gassed or murdered in great numbers during the Holocaust. Indeed, Iran has become a refuge for the biggest names in European Holocaust denial. When in 2000, revisionist author Jürgen Graf was sentenced in Switzerland to 15 months in prison for Holocaust falsification, Graf fled to Tehran "at the invitation of a group of Iranian scholars and university professors who are sympathetic to Holocaust revisionism," according to the Institute for Historical Review, a denial clearinghouse. What's more, in May 2000, Iran's embassy in Vienna granted asylum to Austrian Holocaust denier Wolfgang Fröhlich, who testified as a so-called expert witness during Graf's 1998 trial. This saved Fröhlich from Austria's severe anti-Holocaust denial statutes. Fröhlich argued that evidence proved no Jews were killed by Zyklon B gassing. Earlier, about 600 journalists and 160 members of the Iranian parliament signed petitions supporting French revisionist Roger Garaudy, who was fined $40,000 by French authorities for his book claiming the Holocaust was a myth. When Garaudy landed in Iran, the country's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Sayyad Khamenei, granted him an audience and lauded his work. Iran has played a leading role in the Holocaust drama and now tries to deny it. That should be very hard in a nation that was named for Hitler's master race. Edwin Black is the author of "Banking on Baghdad" about the Nazi-Arab alliance. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com. This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle |
I have no grudge against you, and don't accuse you of anything. But because of my close and long-year knowledge of Iranian History (I lived in Iran before the Revolution), which I studied intensely, I want to educate others about the little-known history of Iran particularily the Pahlavi period.
I have in my personal possesion every single book on the Pahlavi dynasty and Reza Shah.
The Black article you posted is pure misguided propaganda and will take the time and dissect it entirely. Please take the time for my comment, as I will use my entire ressources at disposal.
If you are interested I can give you lengthy quotes from my library on the Pahlavis. The best source I recommend you is Yair Hirschfeld, an Israeli historian whose book is a standard on the Pahlavi dynasty. He sourced excellently that the propaganda against Reza Shah is baseless.
Okay, now I'll take apart the Edwin Black propaganda piece:
Iran and Iranians were strongly connected to the Holocaust and the Hitler regime, as was the entire Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem.
A blatant lie. The Mufti of Jerusalem and his friend the Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Galiani were pro-Nazi antisemites who tried to stage a coup in Iraq in Spring 1941. At that time Hitler was friends with Stalin. Iran was dead afraid of the Nazi-Soviets partitioning the Middle East. When the pro-Nazi Iraqis staged their coup in 1941, Reza Shah of Iran proposed to send Iranian troops to arrest Al-Galiani and destroy the pro-Nazi Iraqi rebels. He tried to win with this the favor of Britain, hoping to win their support against the Nazi-Soviet alliance, which he felt was dangerous for Iran. The Arab world and Balkan muslims were indeed largely pro-Nazi, as were many Iranians. However not the leadership which tried to keep neutral and to thwart foreign invasion of Iran.
Read Donald Wilber, Hirschfeld and Stewarts book “Sunrise at Abadan” on this issue.
Iran's axis with the Third Reich began during the prewar years, when it welcomed Nazi Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use the city as a base for Middle East agitation against the British and the region's Jews.
Half-true. Iran was long in focus of Russian and British imperialism. Therefore they sought for new trade partners. USA, Germany and smaller nation were courted therefore. Germany was at this time the leading producer of machines. Exactly what Iran wanted for modernisation. Therefore during the 1930's many German (and also other European and US) merchants and advisers entered Iran. There were proven to be only a dozen German agents, the most important being namely Schulze, Mayer, Gamotha and Ettel. The Anglo-Soviet claim of “thousands” of German agents was widely exaggerated and it was acknowledged later by British involved.
Key among these German agents was Fritz Grobba, Berlin's envoy to the Middle East, who was often called "the German Lawrence," because he promised a Pan-Islamic state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran
Grobba was special emissary to Iraq and liason to the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem. That's correct. However an “pan-Islamic” empire was solely the dream of the Nazi Mufti. The rulers of Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan were secuar Nationalists who fought Islamism. They would have never been part of an arabic Islamic superstate.
Relations between Berlin and Tehran were strong from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. At that time, Reza Shah Pahlavi's nation was known as Persia. The shah became a stalwart admirer of Hitler, Nazism and the concept of the Aryan master race. He also sought the Reich's help in reducing British petro-political domination. This is true except that Reza Shah was NOT an Hitler admirer. The ties with Germany were primarily economic Iranian as well as British sources that knew him personally report that he disliked Hitler as a lunatic and voiced this to Turkish ruler Ataturk in 1934. In 1933 Iranian students in Germany were beaten by Nazis, and the Iranian ambassador protested vehemently.
The Nazis sent their Youth Leader Schirach to Tehran who tried to convince the Shah of modelling Iran's youth like the Hitler Youth. But the Shah thought of Schirach to be a rude, aggressive runt and chastised his minister for arranging this meeting. Iran then insisted that their youth will be modelled after the British Boy Scouts, NOT the Nazi youth.
So intense was the shah's identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country "Iran," which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished.
One source for this dubious claim was German Ambassador Wipert von Bluecher, whose memories I have in my library. Bluecher was a personal enemy of Reza Shah and wrote a lot of nasty things about him. This was perpetualised by pro-Nazi Iranians after Reza Shah abdicated in 1941, and also by his enemies, the communists and British.
As I wrote already, Iran is since ever the Iranian's own name for their people and country. 1935 was the year Iran abolished Islamic laws for woman and wanted to renew itself. Thus they insisted on their own name being used for them. The theory that there is a Nazi link is a theory only, whithout conclusive proof.
Shortly after World War II broke out in 1939, the Mufti of Jerusalem crafted a strategic alliance with Hitler to exchange Iraqi oil for active Arab and Islamic participation in the murder of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe. This was predicated on support for a pan-Arab state and Arab control over Palestine.
This is true, but not attributable to Iran.
During the war years, Iran became a haven for Gestapo agents. It was from Iran that the seeds of the abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad were planted. After Churchill's forces booted the Nazis out of Iraq in June 1941, German aircrews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across Iraq's northern border back into Iran.
False on several levels. The few agents in Iran were “Abwehr” and “SD”, Gestapo was a German secret police. Not a spy agency. The seeds for the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq was planned in Berlin, Rome, Baghdad and Muslim Jerusalem.
I have in all my books never read of German pilots escaping through Iran. Infact it was Vichy-French controlled Syria that was the base for operations in Iraq. Iran as I wrote already was pondering to invade Iraq and arrest the pro-Nazi rebels. Iranian generals even proposed Britain that Iran would bomb Axis and Soviet refinieries in the Middle East. They called the operation of after Iranian Generals cited diplomatic and logistic problems. Reza Shah later said that he regretted not invading Iraq in cooperation with Britain.
Read Stewart “Sunrise at Abadan”, Wilber and Lenczowsky.
Likewise, the mufti of Jerusalem was spirited across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British.
Half true. The Mufti and Al-Galiani after the failed coup did escape to Iran icognito and later left Iran through Turkey on the way to Berlin, dressed as Italians. However there is no indication that the Iranian King was behind this.
His venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts in Tehran. The mufti was a vocal opponent of allowing Jewish refugees to be transported or ransomed into Jewish Palestine. Instead, he wanted them shipped to the gas chambers of Poland.
Tehran radio was state-censored. However the Nazis, Soviets and British used their own radios to send propaganda through Iran. Infact a pro-Nazi Iranian radio propagandist was arrested by Iran.
In the summer of 1941, the mufti, with the support of key Iranian military and government leaders, advocated implementing in Iran what had failed months earlier in Iraq. The plan once again was for a total diversion of oil from the Allies to the Nazis, in exchange for the accelerated destruction of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the Nazis' support for an Arab state. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., Iran had already been supplying Hitler's forces in occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria.
Totally false and absurd. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was fully operated by Britain. It would imply that Britain was delivering the Nazis. Also a 40-head pro-German circle of Iranian officers planned a coup in 1943 not 1941.
Now, the mufti agitated to cut off the British and the Allies completely and supply Germany in its push against Russia.
True, but unrelated to the Shah's action. The Iranians were indeed overjoyed when the Germans attacked their nemesis Soviet Russia and hoped for the Soviets to lose however voiced their hope to Brtain that Hitler and Stalin would bleed each other white.
In October 1941, British, USSR other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested, and the shah's son was installed in power. The mufti scampered into the Italian embassy, where he shaved his beard and dyed his hair. In this disguise, he was allowed to leave the country along with the rest of the Italian delegation.
Half true. The latter sentence is correct while the idiot author can't get the basic facts right. The Invasion of Iran was in late August 1941. Not October. The arrest of pro-German Iranian officers was 1942/43.
Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported "bureau," he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From Berlin and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for international Jewish destruction, as well as a pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime.
True, but unrelated to the Iranians, who by then were already occupied by the Allies.
He called upon all Muslims to "kill the Jews wherever you see them." In Tehran's marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, "In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler."
Dubious, since Tehran was occupied by British and Soviets. However after the Shah abdicated political groups of all kind popped up. Communists, Nazis and Islamists of all colors. Possible that a splinter group like the SUMKA nazi party used such slogans. However the Iranian government under the new Shah (the old Shah's son) was joining the Allies in 1943 already.
When the mufti raised three divisions of Islamic Waffen SS to undertake cruel operations in Bosnia, among the 30,000 killers were some volunteer contingents from Iran. Iranian Nazis, along with the other Muslim Waffen SS, operated under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for barbarous actions against Jews and others in Bosnia. Recruitment for the murderous "Handschar Divisions" was done openly in Iran.
Total nonsense and absurd. When the Handschar Islamic Waffen SS Division was prepared and created by the Mufti in 1942/43, Iran was occupied by the Allies. There would be no Waffen-SS recruitment posters in Iran without approval of the Allies. Also while some Iranian students in Germany at that time joined the German Army, there is no source to my knowledge (Mr Black doesn't provide it and I haven't read anything like that on the Handschar Division) that tells of “Irania contingents” in this Division. The Handschar was made up from Balkan Muslims. Arab volunteers served in the “Arabische Lehrbattalion” and “Free Arab Legion”. No Iranian units.
Iran and its leaders were not only aware of the Holocaust, they played both sides. The country offered overland escape routes for refugee Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to Israel -- and later fleeing postwar Iraqi fascist persecution -- but only in exchange for extortionate passage fees.
Again Iran was occupied by the Allies. All this action would have required the Allies approval. Again nonsense. Indeed hundred thousand of Polish refugees from Soviet Union arrived in Iran and praised the hospitality. Iranian officers were on good terms with Polish officers, since the Poles saluted Iranian senior officers, unlike the British and Soviets.
Thousands of Jews journeyed to Israel via Iran both during the Holocaust and during the years after the fall of Hitler, when Arab leaders, especially in Iraq, tried to continue Germany's anti-Jewish program. Iran profited handsomely.
As above nonsense. Also Black is an idiot as there was only British ruled Palestine then. No Israel before 1948. Also the “Arab leaders in Iraq” by then were British installed. The pro-Nazis were ousted in Spring 1941 already.
Indeed the Iranian ambassador to France rescued hundreds of Jews persecuted by the Nazis. This is acknowledged by Yad Vashem.
Reza Shah when becoming King gave Jews civil rights and bowed before the Torah in the Tehran Syangogue. His son Mohammed Reza Shah was a close ally of Israel and the US. The Iranian secret service SAVAK was trained by the CIA and Mossad since 1953.
The rest of Black's article is correct, as he writes about the current Islamic regime after the Revolution 1979, which overthrew the Shah. When we look for Iranian antisemitism we have to look at Islam, Khomeinism and their Revolutionary Ideology. This had nothing to do with the Pahlavi Shahs who were anti-Islamic, pro-Western and modern minded.
I hope I have clarified the matter.