Personal Experience and Discourse - Arab Contemporary Contacts
with National Socialism, 1933-1945. Inquiring into a Memory Culture
The project inquires into Arab primary experience with National
Socialism. Contemporary debates on Nazi policy and ideology in
Arab countries will be confronted with personal Arab experiences
under National Socialist rule. Our point of focus is the link
between memory and personal experience, and between construed
and real encounter with National Socialism. Moreover we are trying
to locate our topic and its function in the (institutionalized)
memory culture of current North Africa and the Middle East. The
project aims to fill gaps in research on the extent and content
of contemporary Arab disputes on Nazism. So far the relationship
between the Arabs and the Axis powers and their ideology has predominantly
been presented from a European orientalizing perspective. Our
approach, however, intends to provide an authentic Arab point
of view based on primary experience as a contribution to the ongoing
debate. Thus anonymous "objects" of the relationship
will be pointed out in juxtaposition with well-known "actors"
such as Amin al-Husaini. This is due to the claim that apart from
Arab "perpetrators", there were Arab "victims"
as well.
"Discipline and Sacrifice." National Socialism in
Iraqi Discourse
Peter Wien
The sub-project focuses on Arab elites and how they related to
National Socialism. Furthermore it provides an analysis of the
public depiction of this topic in Iraq between 1933 and the second
British occupation of 1941. A close look at memory literature
and contemporary sources will result in challenging the current
thesis of research literature on Iraq's socio-political conditions
in the 1930s, which claims that the pro-German attitude of the
nationalist elite in 1930s Iraq led to a clear-cut pro-Nazi standpoint
and an ideological alliance with Germany. Instead, we argue that
sympathy for Germany formed part of a much broader and more complex
framework of nationalist imagery.
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