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Third Reich dictator Adolph Hitler had a little-known plan to destroy the Jews in Palestine.

Beginning in the 1930s, Hitler began communicating with Palestinian leaders to forge an alliance against the cause of a Jewish homeland.

In 1937, the German Consulate in Palestine stated in a report, “The formation of a Jewish state ... is not in Germany’s interest because a [Jewish] Palestinian state would create additional national power bases for international Jewry...”

In July 1938, Nazi agent Adam Vollhardt was sent to Palestine for face-to-face meetings with Arab leaders.

There were also personal meetings of Haj Amin al-Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) with Hitler and Adolf Heinrich Himmler. Hitler told Husseini,

“Germany’s objective ... [is] solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere” (“The Holocaust: The Mufti and the Fuhrer,” Jewish Virtual Library).

Husseini was the instigator of murderous rampages against Jews in Palestine. He spent most of World War II in Germany broadcasting Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda to the Middle East, including calls for the destruction of Jewish settlements. On March 1, 1944, Husseini stated on a Berlin radio Arabic broadcast,

“Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases Allah, history and religion. This serves your honor, Allah is with you” (Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, p. 213).

Husseini lived in a luxurious villa at Nazi expense and received a massive 90,000 Reichmarks monthly stipend, at a time when only 17 percent of Germans had annual incomes of 2,400 Richmarks or more (“Haj Amin al-Husseini,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jan. 5, 2016).

Concrete plans were laid for the Nazis and Arabs to work together toward the extermination of the Palestine Jews.

Hitler’s Afrika Corps entered North Africa in February 1941 with the objective to destroy the British army in Libya and Egypt. Under the leadership of the brilliant Erwin Rommel (called “the Desert Fox”), the British were pushed farther and farther east.

At the time, the German forces appeared invincible. They occupied western Europe and appeared to be on the verge of defeating Stalin in Russia.

In the event of defeat in Egypt, the British planned to take a final stand in Iraq to protect their oil fields, which were essential for the war effort. That would have left Palestine open for the Germans.

In expectation of a victory by the Africa Corps over British forces, German units were assigned to the Corps to join the Arabs in exterminating Jews as soon as the way was open. These units were Einsatzkommando mobile killing squads (composed of SS and Gestapo) and SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence agency of the SS), the primary Nazi agents tasked with exterminating the Jews in Hitler’s “Final Solution.” The units assigned to the Afrika Corps were trained in Greece by SD officer Walter Rauff, the originator of the gassing van experiments in Poland.

“The culmination of these plans came in the summer of 1942, when the extermination of the Jews that had begun in Europe was to be expanded to the Yishuv [Jewish settlement in Palestine] as well, with the active assistance of local Arab collaborators” (Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, p. viiii).

The Jewish Haganah was aware of what was happening and planned to move the Jews of Palestine to a base on Mount Carmel in a last ditch effort against the Germans and Arabs. They said, “If we are destined to fall, let us fall here ... the Hebrew flag in the Land of Israel will be worthless if the Jews of Palestine do not rise up in a last heroic attempt to defend it” (Yitzhak Tabenkin, cited from “The Nazi invasion of Palestine, 1942,” The Times of Israel, Apr. 19, 2015).

The “Carmel Plan” to relocate a half million Jews from various parts of “Palestine” to the mountain and build defensive systems was prepared in detail by Yitzhak Sadeh, commander of the Haganah, and Yochanan Ratner of the Technion University. There were to be air strips, agriculture, cave redoubts, etc. They planned for supplies to be air dropped by the Allies. They even trained a squad of German-speaking Jews with “Aryan looks” who would infiltrate, gather intelligence, and kill German troops.

But by the end of 1942, the war was unexpectedly going against the Germans on both fronts. In Russia, the battle of Stalingrad began to turn in Russia’s favor. In Africa, the British and Americans gained the ascendency over Rommel’s forces. In November 1942, the Nazis suffered a major defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt that turned the tide of the war in Africa. In May 1943, the Afrika Corps surrendered.

This was the end of Hitler’s dream of liquidating the Jews of Palestine.

After El Alamein, Walter Rauff shifted his Einstazkommando killing units to Tunisia. He was joined by Oswald Pohl, who had organized the concentration camps in Eastern Europe. Many Jews were murdered and died in labor camps in Tunisia, but the work of the German killing squads was cut short when the Afrika Corps surrendered to Allied forces.