“This is Berlin; long live the Arabs!” With this unmistakable catchphrase, Yunis Bahri (1903–1979) opened his first German broadcast of the pan-Arab shortwave station on April 7, 1939. Bahri—later enveloped in layers of intrigue and myth—was already a celebrated Iraqi propagandist and journalist. Before arriving in Germany in 1938, he had served as the star host of King Ghazi of Iraq’s radio station. Described by contemporaries as an Iraqi “Lord Haw-Haw,” Bahri was bawdy, quick, and irreverent. He possessed a booming, commanding voice, impeccable Arabic diction, and an unrivaled knack for barbed wit and sly wordplay.
From 1939 until the end of the war in 1945, the Voice of Berlin captivated listeners across the Middle East. It broadcast religious sermons, political bulletins, and urgent appeals for armed revolt—each message wrapped in the trappings of Nazism’s most potent arts: conspiracy-mongering, antisemitism, and theatrical demagoguery. Arab sympathy for Nazi Germany, already considerable, surged into a mass phenomenon. Hatred of Jews, the United States, and Great Britain became woven into the fabric of modern Arab mass culture at its inception. Radio Berlin was, in effect, the first modern Arab mass-media platform in the region.
The promises it made to Arab audiences were direct and incendiary:
peasants; Germany will sponsor pan-Arab unity.
“All these things,” contemporary observers declared, “are attractive to the Arabs, especially in Iraq.” German propaganda aimed above all to “create an atmosphere of distrust regarding the British promises” while offering German pledges as the superior alternative. Hitler’s Directive No. 30 spelled out the campaign’s core line:
The unifying theme was hostility to Zionism and the “Jewish menace.” Broadcasts railed against alleged Jewish conspiracies across the Middle East and beyond, accusing Jews in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt of every form of intrigue. They spun elaborate myths of a united imperialist front—world Jewry, the United States, and Great Britain—whose domination Germany would break, delivering the Arabs to national liberation.
Bahri’s role was pivotal. He read news bulletins, translated Hitler’s speeches into Arabic, offered running commentary, and narrated fabricated reports of Arab massacres by Jews in Palestine. He warned of British schemes to raise a Jewish army to seize the Middle East.
Bahri read news bulletins, translated Hitler’s speeches into Arabic, offered running commentary, and narrated fabricated reports of Arab massacres by Jews in Palestine.
Even before the war, Nazi Germany had fascinated segments of the Arab public—especially in Iraq—with its heady mix of aggressive nationalism and the hypnotic personality cult surrounding Hitler. As early as the 1930s, Arab admirers sought to translate Mein Kampf into Arabic, dispatched youth delegations to Nazi events, and banned anti-Nazi works such as The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror from circulation.
Nazi officials recognized this fertile ground. In 1937, Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth, toured Syria and Iraq, drawing enthusiastic crowds of Arab nationalists. Among those greeting the Nazi delegation at Damascus airport—after the French authorities refused them entry—were members of Michel Aflaq’s family, long before Aflaq would found the Ba‘ath Party. German diplomats in Baghdad imported and screened propaganda films of Hitler Youth parades and SA marches, extolling “the great nationalist enthusiasm which came forth in Hitler’s bloodless revolution to awaken the glory of Germany.”
Although not Arab, Iran too looked to Europe’s revolutionary ferment for inspiration. In fact, the very name Iran — which officially replaced Persia in 1935 — was adopted during the height of Nazi ascendancy, meant to foreground the supposed Aryan origins of its people. Yet no Middle Eastern country absorbed Nazi propaganda more deeply than Iraq.
Germany’s popularity ran so deep among Iraq’s poorer classes that women sang in the streets:
Let the alarms cry out each day,
Let the alarms ring loud, O brothers.
We wait for the German bombs to fall,
To avenge on every Briton.
Long live the men who took the Nazi name,
Nazis they are — the old and the young.
All lift their prayers to the Lord on high:
“Grant the Germans the victory!”
Britain will fall with its American friend,
And with them Russia, the land of the Reds.
On April 1, 1941, Rashid Ali al-Kilani (1892–1965), an anti-British politician eager to align with Germany, joined with a group of pro-Nazi Iraqi officers known as the Golden Square to overthrow the regent, Amir Abdullah, guardian of the young King Faisal II. The coup’s early success electrified Baghdad’s streets and drew Arab revolutionaries from across the Levant. But the triumph was short-lived. The British, calling in troops from India, restored the old regime and crushed the movement. Kilani fled first to Iran, then to Berlin, where he joined other Arab exiles in German service.
Published originally on October 19, 2025 under the title “The Hour of Liberation.”
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