According to an Oxford historian who has been doing some great work on reexamining the crusades, Saladin had been completely forgotten by the Arabs in the Middle East until Kaiser Wilhelm II turned up in Damascus toward the end of the nineteenth century and told them about him. The Kaiser buttered up the Arabs and paid to have the memorial to Saladin built in Damascus.
So, long before Hitler came down the pike the Germans were busy stirring up trouble and resentment in the Middle East. It was part of their drive to build an empire on the model of French and British colonialism. As they later said, Germany was a great nation which deserved its own empire and desperately needed more Lebensraum.
Saladin was forgotten by the Arabs because he was a Kurd.