Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

During World War II, Nazi Germany waged an extensive propaganda campaign in the Middle East and North Africa in an attempt to spread Nazi ideology to the Arab world. University of Maryland, College Park Professor Jeffrey Herf and American University Professor Richard Breitman will discuss this protracted campaign and its after-effects.

Jeffrey Herf is professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland, College Park. His most recent book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World examines the Nazi regime's efforts to spread its ideas to North Africa and the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust. This work is a sequel to his book, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, which won the National Jewish Book Award for work on the Holocaust. Herf has lectured widely at major universities and research centers in the United States, Europe and Israel, and has also brought a historian's perspective to bear on issues of contemporary policy and politics in his contributions to The New Republic online and in essays in The American Interest, The International Herald Tribune, The National Interest, Partisan Review, The Washington Post and major German newspapers including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, and Die Zeit.

Richard Breitman is professor of history at American University, where he teaches courses on modern European and German history. He is the author or co-author of nine books and many articles on German history, U.S. history, and the Holocaust. His most recent books are editions of the diaries of James G. McDonald (League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1933-35, and chairman of President Roosevelt's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, 1938-1945) in a series published by Indiana University Press. The first volume, Advocate for the Doomed, appeared in 2007, and the second volume, Refugees and Rescue, was published this past June. Breitman is editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, which is owned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and he also served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under a 1998 law.

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