Unmasking Hajj Amin al-Husseini through his wartime letters and diaries

In the first week of May 1945, as the third Reich approached unconditional surrender, the Palestinian leader and ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, fled the Austrian Mountain resort of Bad Gastein, leaving behind his personal papers, compiled since 1940. The US Army found the material, analysed and indexed it, and then archived it. They secretly shared it with the Israelis, but only released it to the public many decades later.

The Mufti was and remains notorious. Scholars often blame him for the Palestinian failure to achieve statehood. The Palestinian revolt of 1936-41, which he led hoping to reverse British support for Zionism, ultimately wrought disaster. He murdered Palestinian rivals and refused to compromise when the revolt was crushed, instead seeking refuge among Britain’s enemies. His ties to the Nazi SS made the principal Palestinian leader a war criminal by 1945.

This latter issue has dominated public discourse about the Mufti. Indeed, he helped raise Bosnian SS battalions and was therefore indicted by Yugoslavia at the United Nations War Crimes Commission. However, public figures in Israel have accused him of inspiring the Nazi Final Solution. His Nazi links are often held up by Israelis – unfairly, to be sure – as evidence that Palestinian national ambitions are inherently genocidal.

It's now possible to set the record straight. Researchers have lacked access to direct primary evidence about Husseini’s time in Germany and Italy during 1941-45. Lack of evidence has hampered research about Husseini’s aims, motives, and decisions. Most of what we know about him has derived from his own memoir, written decades later, compared against colonial archives.

Both of these sources can be problematic. However, Husseini’s personal archive was never weeded. It was never meant to be exposed to the public, and therefore it offers a rare, pure, look at the Mufti’s relations with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, other Palestinian leaders, and his views on the events of the war, and the future.

Using Husseini’s recently declassified letters and diaries, this project will settle the public debate about his relations with the Nazis.

It will provide new answers to the question of Palestinian failure to achieve statehood. This grant will translate his archive to English, and will produce one or two journal articles on how he led Palestinian resistance during the Second World War, and contribute to a monograph on Britain’s decision to quit Palestine in 1947.