Top Secret World War 2: Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and their Submarine Trade Missions

As allies, Japan and Nazi Germany collaborated together at times during World War 2. One such time was with the Yanagi missions, a series of fascinating submarine voyages undertaken by Imperial Japan to exchange technology, valuable materials and skills with Nazi Germany. These missions make us think – what might have been accomplished had this seemingly hollow ‘marriage of convenience’ placed greater strategic emphasis on collaboration?

Felix Debieux considers this question.

The Japanese I-8 submarine in 1939. It was to take part in the Yanagi missions in 1943.

What if – an alliance of missed opportunity?

When we talk about history, it is hard not to think about the what-ifs, the what-might-have-beens and the what-could-have-beens. Such counterfactual thinking can be traced back to the very beginning of Western historiography, when Thucydides and Livy wondered how differently their own societies might have turned out, “if the Persians had defeated the Greeks or if Alexander the Great had waged war against Rome”. More recently, an anthology published in 1931 included an essay by Winston Churchill titled, ‘If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg’. It imagined an alternative outcome to the American Civil War in which the Confederacy triumphed over the Union. Having read history to a postgraduate level, my impression of the counterfactual approach was pretty much the same as most professional historians. At best it was a harmless bit of fun, at worst it was dodgy, unacademic terrain completely unworthy of serious scholarship. In the somewhat less diplomatic words of Marxist Historian E. P. Thompson: “Geschichtswissenschlopff, unhistorical shit”.

Shit it may be, but that has not halted the imagination of authors who have spawned an entire genre of speculative fiction. One example which succeeded in grabbing my attention is Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan overcame the Allies to win the Second World War. Having at last finished watching Amazon’s onscreen adaptation of the story, I was left wondering how the alliance between the two Axis powers functioned in reality. Was it always the antagonistic and frosty partnership portrayed in The Man in the High Castle? You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that despite the vast geographical distances, there are in fact examples of cooperation between the two powers which do not feature prominently in our conventional retelling of the war. One such case is the Yanagi missions, a series of fascinating submarine voyages undertaken by Imperial Japan to exchange technology, valuable materials and skills with Nazi Germany. These missions make us think – what might have been accomplished had this seemingly hollow ‘marriage of convenience’ placed greater strategic emphasis on collaboration? Let’s start by taking a look at the early days of the missions.

Early strategic compatibility

Following Japan’s surprise offensive on Pearl Harbour and Germany’s declaration of war on the United States, the Axis Tripartite Agreement of September 1940 was amended to provide for an exchange of strategic materials and manufactured goods between Germany, Italy and Japan. At the outset, these voyages were made by surface ships and were dubbed Yanagi (Willow) missions by Japan. As the Axis began to lose its foothold in the naval war, submarines naturally came to be seen as a safer transport option.

As early as March 1942, German naval high command – hoping to alleviate pressure on its Kriegsmarine – requested that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) launch offensive operations against Allied ships in the Indian Ocean. In April that year, the Japanese agreed to send forces to the east coast of Africa to reinforce their German allies. Shortly afterward, the IJN’s 8th Submarine Squadron was withdrawn from its mission in the Marshall Islands and dispatched to Penang, Malaya.

Commander Shinobu Endo’s I-30 was among the first submarines assigned to the 8th Squadron. On 22nd April, I-30 departed Penang and just a week later assisted in the detachment’s successful attack on British shipping in Diego Suarez, Madagascar. In addition to losing a tanker, the British HMS Ramillies was heavily damaged. Following the skirmish, I-30 set off from Madagascar and was ordered on the very first submarine Yanagi mission.

The first submarine Yanagi mission

On 2nd August, four months after it had departed Penang, Endo’s I-30 entered the Bay of Biscay. Off the coast of Cape Ortegal, Spain, he was met by eight Luftwaffe bombers that provided air cover. Three days later, he was joined by a flotilla of minesweepers and escorted to Lorient — then the largest of five German U-boat bases on the French coast.

This was a historic achievement. Indeed, I-30 was the very first Japanese submarine to arrive in Europe. To mark the occasion, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine; Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the U-boat force; and Captain Tadao Yokoi, Japanese naval attaché to Berlin, waited to greet Endo and the crew of I-30. Music greeted them at the Lorient station and Endo was presented with a bouquet of flowers. Meanwhile, the Japanese cargo was unloaded:

• 3,300 pounds of mica.

• 1,452 pounds of shellac.

• Engineering drawings of the Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo.

The Germans were also keen to offer the Japanese their technological expertise. For example, the Kriegsmarine examined I-30 and concluded that its noise levels were unreasonably high - high enough to be detected by enemy ships or aircraft. The Germans generously fitted I-30 with some improvements, notably a Metox Biscay Cross passive radar detector and new anti-aircraft guns. Footage was also shot during I-30’s floatplane test flights, and stories were released detailing a Japanese naval air corps operating from French bases.

While all of this was going on, Endo travelled to Berlin where Hitler presented him with the Iron Cross. The visit came to an end on 22nd August, when I-30 slipped out of the sub pen and began its journey home. Its cargo included a complete Würzburg air defence ground radar with blueprints and examples of German torpedoes, bombs and fire control systems. Most valuable of all to the mission, the submarine also carried industrial diamonds valued at one million yen and fifty top-secret Enigma coding machines.

A month later, I-30 rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean. Early on the morning of 8th October, the sub arrived back at Penang. Rear Admiral Zenshiro Hoshina, chief of the IJN’s logistics section, waited patiently to receive ten of Endo’s Enigmas. Two days later, I-30 slipped its moorings yet again and headed south for Singapore.

The following morning, I-30 made its way into the port. Indicative of the importance of the mission was the presence of Vice Admiral Denshichi Okawachi of the First Southern Expeditionary Fleet, who was on hand to greet Endo and his senior officers. Understandably desperate to return home after thousands of miles of submarine travel, that very afternoon Endo set sail for Japan. It was perhaps the height of bad luck when, just an agonising three miles from its final destination, that I-30 struck a mine. While the submarine was lost, miraculously Endo and the majority of his crew were rescued. Divers were immediately dispatched to recover I-30‘s cargo, but they found that the Würzburg radar had been destroyed in the explosion and its technical drawings rendered useless by saltwater. In addition, the remaining Enigma machines were lost, an embarrassment that was hidden from the Germans for four months.

Despite the somewhat ignominious conclusion of the mission, officials on both sides of the alliance were clearly excited by what had been learned and the potential of future exchanges. But with so many surface ships sunk by the Allies, how could the mission be scaled up? The Germans had the answer. On 31st March 1943, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, Hiroshi Oshima, cabled Tokyo a recommendation from their allies that large, older U-boats should be converted to carry war materials between Europe and the Far East. Unfortunately for Japan, Oshima’s cable was decoded by the Allies.

The missions continue

On 1st June 1943, I-8 departed Kure, Japan, with I-10 and submarine tender Hie Maru. Commander Shinji Uchino had just been given his orders to proceed to Lorient. Their cargo:

• Two Type 95 oxygen-propelled torpedoes.

• Technical drawings of an automatic trim system.

• A new naval reconnaissance plane.

Nine days later, the mission arrived in Singapore and added to their cargo quinine, tin and raw rubber. On 21st July, nearly two months after departing Japan, I-8 crossed into the Atlantic. The only greeting to welcome the crew this time were terrible storms that pounded the submarine for ten days.

Eventually, the by now very weary Japanese crew received their first contact from the Germans. A sign of the Axis’s changing naval fortunes, a German radio signal alerted I-8 to air patrols searching from the skies above. These patrols forced a change of plan, and - after waiting for five days - I-8 received a second message from their allies: forget Lorient, make for Brest.

Once they crossed the equator, it was not until 20th August that the Japanese rendezvoused with Captain Albrecht Achilles and his U-161 submarine. The next day, I-8 took aboard a German Lieutenant and two radiomen. As with the previous submarine mission, the Germans were keen to make improvements and wasted no time installing a more sophisticated radar detector on I-8’s bridge. Eleven days later, the Japanese finally arrived at Brest – a whole three months after their initial departure from Kure. A German news agency announced that even the Japanese were now operating in the Atlantic!

More bountiful than I-8’s outbound shipment was the cargo it departed from Brest with on 5th October 1943. Indeed, the submarine set sail with:

• Machine guns.

• Bombsights.

• A Daimler-Benz torpedo boat engine.

• Naval chronometers.

• Radars.

• Sonar equipment.

• Electric torpedoes.

• Penicillin.

This time, the Yanagi mission included not just technological but also human resources. Welcomed aboard I-8 were Rear Admiral Yokoi and Captain Sukeyoshi Hosoya, naval attaché to Berlin and to France respectively. Also aboard were three German naval officers, an army officer and four radar and hydrophone technicians. We can only wonder how the dynamics of the Japanese crew were affected by the arrival of their German comrades.

It did not take too long for I-8 to run into trouble. After crossing back over the equator, a position report was transmitted to the Germans but – unfortunately for the mission – the report was intercepted by the Allies. The very next day I-8 was targeted by antisubmarine aircraft, but it succeeded in pulling off a crash-dive escape.

By 13th November 1943, I-8 passed Cape Town. That same day, I-34 – which was travelling to France on a Yanagi mission of its own – earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first IJN submarine sunk by the British. This served as a powerful reminder of the danger posed to the Yanagi missions, and so I-8 was ordered to head straight for Singapore where it arrived on 5th December.

At Singapore, I-8 anchored near to Commander Takakazu Kinashi’s I-29. I-29 had just arrived from Japan and was about to embark on its own long journey. During an encounter between the two submarine commanders, Uchino warned Kinashi of the Allied air patrols and praised the German Metox radar detector that he had received from U-161 back in August. The technological benefits of the Yanagi missions had already started to prove themselves. On 21st December 1943, I-8 arrived back in Japan having finally completed its 30,000 mile, seven-month long journey. Uchino travelled to Tokyo and presented his report to Admiral Osami Nagano, chief of the naval general staff, and navy minister Admiral Shigetaro Shimada.

Experienced hands

Although Commander Takakazu Kinashi was a distinguished submarine captain, he had not yet had the opportunity to participate in any previous Yanagi missions. Earlier in the war he had become Japan’s submarine hero, credited with the sinking of U.S. Navy carrier Wasp in September 1942, and with damaging the battleship North Carolina and the destroyer O’Brien, which eventually sank. His assignment to the Yanagi missions again underscores their strategic importance (at least to the Japanese).

On 5th April 1943, I-29 left Penang carrying an eleven-ton cargo. This consisted of:

• One Type 89 torpedo.

• Two Type 2 aerial torpedoes.

• Two tons of gold bars for the Japanese embassy in Berlin.

• Schematics of a Type A midget submarine and of carrier Akagi, which the Germans wanted to study as they constructed their own carrier Graf Zeppelin.

Twenty days later, I-29 arrived at a predesignated point 450 miles off the coast of Madagascar where it met Captain Werner Musenberg and U-180. The German sub had left Kiel on 9th February carrying blueprints for a Type IXC/40 U-boat, a sample of a German hollow charge, a quinine sample for future Japanese shipments, gun barrels and ammunition, three cases of sonar decoys, and documents and mail for the German embassy in Tokyo. Of strategic significance to the war in Asia, the U-boat also carried an important passenger: former Oxford University student Subhas Chandra Bose, the head of the anti-British Indian National Army of Liberation. The two submarines met on 26th April.

The next day, Bose and his group transferred from U-180 to I-29 and two Japanese officers switched in the other direction. The eleven tons of cargo followed shortly after. Once the exchanges were completed, I-29 turned eastward and U-180 turned back towards France. This experience was valuable to Kinashi when he, himself, finally set off for France in December 1943. In addition to his crew, he carried rubber, tungsten, tin, zinc, quinine, opium and coffee. He also had sixteen IJN officers, specialists and engineers on board. By 8th January 1944, the submarine had left Madagascar.

In early February, Kinashi received a signal from Germany to rendezvous with a U-boat that would upgrade I-29 with superior radar technology. On the 12th, he met U-518 southwest of the Azores. The Japanese submarine took aboard three technicians who installed a new FuMB 7 Naxos detector. Kinashi did not have to wait long to put his new equipment into action. While running along the surface off Cape Finisterre, Spain an RAF patrol plane equipped with a searchlight suddenly illuminated the water around I-29. Reacting with the decisiveness and speed gained through long experience, Kinashi crash-dived the submarine and escaped unscathed. Five days later, I-29 entered the Bay of Biscay, but Kinashi had arrived ahead of his escort and had to spend the night at the bottom of the sea. The next day, German forces escorted the Japanese submarine toward Lorient. Unbeknownst to Kinashi, however, he and his crew were not safe yet.

I-29’s schedule had been earlier decoded by the Allies. British aircraft were dispatched with the aim of sinking the submarine and its German escorts. They found the Yanagi mission off Cape Peas, Spain, but did not succeed in damaging I-29. Later that same day, the submarine and its escorts were attacked by more than ten Allied aircraft but, fortunately for Kinashi and his crew, all the bombs missed.

Cross-cultural encounters and Axis potential

After the two near misses, I-29 arrived at Lorient on 11th March and anchored safely next to Lieutenant Commander Max Wintermeyer’s U-190. Lorient was home to two U-boat flotillas, and the large number of veteran submariners set the scene for some lively cross-cultural encounters. On one occasion, German officers entertained the Japanese crew at a nearby bar. The bar’s rafters were inscribed with signatures of U-boat officers. Eager to get in on the act, I-29‘s Lieutenant Hiroshi Taguchi, Lieutenant Hideo Otani and several other officers added their own signatures to the rafters. After a 30,000 mile trip it must have felt good to make it to dry land and leave a mark of success!

The Japanese were treated to further German hospitality. Indeed, the entire crew were hosted at Château de Trévarez before a special train carried them onto Paris. While his crew enjoyed the sights, Kinashi travelled to Berlin and was decorated with the Iron Cross by the Führer himself. Ever the diligent workers, their German hosts busied themselves with the upgrades to I-29’s outdated anti-aircraft guns. They also loaded aboard:

• A HWK 509A-1 rocket motor.

• A Jumo 004B axial-flow turbojet.

• Drawings of the Isotta-Fraschini torpedo boat engine.

• Blueprints for jetfighters and rocket launch accelerators.

• Plans for glider bomb and radar equipment.

• A V-1 buzz bomb fuselage.

• Acoustic mines.

• Bauxite ore.

• Mercury-radium amalgam.

• Twenty more Enigma coding machines.

Hinting at the more frightening potential of greater Axis strategic collaboration, there is some evidence suggesting that I-29 carried a quantity of U-235 uranium oxide, one of the components needed to assemble an atomic bomb. Loaded with its vital military cargo, I-29 departed Lorient on 16th April.

On 14th July, I-29 passed through the Straits of Malacca and arrived at Singapore. Its passengers disembarked with their sensitive documents and proceeded by air to Japan. Most of the military cargo, however, remained aboard. Initially worried about the sub’s location, Allied code-breakers breathed a collective sigh of relief when they learned of I-29’s arrival in Singapore. Relief, however, quickly turned to alarm when an intercepted message between Berlin and Tokyo revealed the true value of the submarine’s cargo. Now alert to the terrifying potential of I-29’s mission, the Allies worked tirelessly to stop the submarine from reaching Japan.

The Allies were lucky when, on 20th July, Kinashi transmitted his proposed route for the last leg of the trip. The U.S. Navy deciphered the message, and the sub was sunk by torpedoes launched from the USS Sawfish. While the loss of the aircraft engines slowed the Japanese jet program, their blueprints, flown to Tokyo, arrived safely. They were used immediately to develop the Nakajima Kikka (orange blossom) and the Mitsubishi J8MI Shusui (sword stroke) – both based on German designs.

The sinking of I-52

Japan’s hope for further technological marvels now rested on Commander Kameo Uno and I-52, which had left Kure on 10th March 1944 (while I-29 was busy dodging Allied attacks near Brest). In its hold, Uno’s submarine carried strategic metals including molybdenum, tungsten, 146 bars of gold, as well as opium and caffeine. I-52 also carried fourteen passengers including engineers and technicians with ambitions of studying German weaponry. To avoid Allied spotter planes, Uno travelled submerged during the day and only surfaced at night.

After passing the Cape of Good Hope and entering the South Atlantic, on 15th May Uno sent his first message to Germany. By this time the British and Americans had broken the military codes of both Axis powers. Allied intelligence intercepted and deciphered Uno’s reports to Tokyo and Berlin, including his daily noon position reports. When I-52 entered the South Atlantic, the code-breakers quickly relayed its predicted route to a U.S. antisubmarine task force.

On 16th June, I-52 sent a coded transmission, giving its position away off the West African coast. The U.S carrier Bogue, equipped with fourteen aircraft, was ordered to track and destroy the sub. After arriving in the area where the Japanese were supposed to meet a German U-boat, the Americans began around-the-clock efforts to search for the Axis submarines. Although the skies were filled with American aircraft, Uno somehow managed to rendezvoused with Kurt Lange’s U-530 about 850 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands.

The Japanese commander welcomed a Lieutenant Schäfer on board to help navigate the last leg of his journey. Schäfer was accompanied by two petty officers who carried with them an improved radar. Bizarrely, the equipment fell into the sea during the exchange, but a dutiful Japanese crewman jumped in and managed to retrieve it. About two hours after meeting I-52, U-530 submerged and headed for Trinidad, leaving the three German officers aboard the Japanese sub. Again, we can only wonder how the two crews interacted with one another.

The day after his rendezvous with U-530, Uno, confident that he could take advantage of a stormy and moonless night to cloak his location, travelled along the surface in order to reach sooner the sanctuary of a German-occupied port. That evening, Allied forces picked up I-52 on their radar. Flares illuminated the area around the submarine and two 354-pound bombs were dropped, just missing I-52’s starboard side. Although Uno crash-dived and avoided the attack, his location was now compromised.

This game of submarine whack-a-mole could not go on forever. Sonobuoys, which detect underwater sounds, were deployed across a square mile of ocean. These were followed up with homing torpedoes which locked onto I-52’s propeller noises. After a long wait, the Allies heard a loud explosion. Another sonobuoy-torpedo combination later and the Allies got their desired outcome; a large oil slick at the site of the attack was spotted. Nearby, a ton of raw rubber bales bobbed along the surface of the water.

Meanwhile at Lorient, a German ship stood by ready to escort I-52, and diplomats scheduled to return to Japan waited anxiously for their ride home. With them at the dock were tons of secret documents, drawings and strategic cargo, which included acoustic torpedoes, fighter plane engines, radars, vacuum tubes, ball bearings, bombsights, chemicals, alloy steel, optical glass and one-thousand pounds of uranium oxide. The Germans also intended to improve I-52 with a snorkel. By 30th August, the Kriegsmarine finally presumed I-52 sunk.

The end of the Yanagi missions – a strategic oversight?

The question must be asked, why did the Yanagi missions stop? What happening to the initial excitement for military, scientific and strategic cooperation? The answer is a fairly simple one.

With the Americans closing in on the Home Islands and the final showdown of the Pacific war rapidly approaching, the IJN was compelled to devote every available resource to the defence of the Japanese mainland. After the failure of I-52‘s mission, it was no longer practical to send limited submarines on long, perilous journeys to Europe.

Reflecting back, what should we take away from the Yanagi missions? Although the missions are not remembered as much more than peculiar footnotes in the larger story of the Second World War, the threat of an exchange of nuclear materials and state-of-the-art technology was no doubt deemed important by the Allies – important enough for them to invest precious resources in locating, tracking and sinking the submarines before they could make their deliveries. The missions are scarcely known today, but at the time the threat they posed was clear.

The true importance of the Yanagi missions, however, lies in what I believe they represent. While we tend to think of their partnership as an uneasy ‘alliance of convenience’, the missions help us to imagine what Japan and Germany might have been able to achieve had they placed greater emphasis on joined-up, strategic coordination. Indeed, they represent a failure by the two Axis powers to think of the war beyond their own local, expansionist ambitions. Given the nuclear potential of the missions, we are perhaps fortunate that the Axis did not develop their partnership much beyond these largely overlooked submarine convoys.

What do you think of the Yanagi missions? Let us know below.

Now read Felix’s article on how Henry Ford tried to end World War One through diplomacy here.

Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanagi_missions#:~:text=The%20Yanagi%20missions%20were%20a%20series%20of%20submarine,with%20Japan%20%27s%20Axis%20partners%2C%20principally%20Nazi%20Germany.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/japanese-and-germans.html

https://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-yanagi-missions-japans-underwater-convoys.htm

https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-033/h-033-1.html

https://www.booktopia.com.au/nazi-germany-and-imperial-japan-johanna-menzel-meskill/book/9781412846196.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_4yaH6Y_hQ

Read more – on counterfactual history

https://camdenhistorynotes.com/2020/02/02/what-if-counterfactual-history/

Gavriel, R., 2002, ‘Why Do We Ask ‘What If?’ Reflections on the Function of Alternate History’, History and Theory, vol. 41, no. 4

Sustein, CR., ‘What If Counterfactuals Never Existed?’, The New Republic, 21 September 2014, accessed 27 February 2019, <https://newrepublic.com/article/119357/altered-pasts-reviewed-cass-r-sunstein&gt;

Islam and the Axis Powers in World War II: Germany and Japan’s treatment of the Muslim World from 1931 to 1945

The policies of Nazi Germany and Showa Japan towards Muslim-majority warzones differed greatly. This became increasingly evident throughout the period 1931-45, and notably as World War Two became tougher for the Axis Powers from 1942-45. Here, Guan Kiong Teh considers how Nazi Germany used a ‘confidence-and-supply’ approach in Palestine, and Iraq and Japan a ‘coalition’ approach in Malaya and Singapore.

Adolf Hitler meeting with influential war-time Palestinian Amin al-Husseini. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-004-09A / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0. Available here

This article defines policy as ‘a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organization or individual’[1], and ‘warzone’ as ‘a region where occurred physical conflict’. Whereas the Japanese were interested in a ‘coalition’ with Muslims, trying to incorporate Malay, Indian, Muslim identities as subjugate to a Japanese seishin (‘national spirit’), the Germans preferred a ‘confidence-and-supply’ arrangement, working to lobby and influence Muslims to solicit cooperation in specific aspects, but almost entirely disinterested in other aspects of Islamic life. This policy comparison could take one of several focuses: Islamic importance to each regime’s military strategy or the role of Japanese and German policy in postwar Muslim conflict, to give examples. However, both regimes had, by the eve of campaigns in Muslim-majority regions during the Second World War (1939-45), come to recognise Islam’s capital as a global religion. Both identified that Muslim-majority regions were rich in physical resources. As the dominant religion and identity in many Allied colonies, Protectorates and Mandates, Islamic political interests could be shaped to solicit cooperation to hasten the decline in Allied international influence. Both regimes shared interest in expansionist policy, even if the role of Muslims within these interests differed.

From these commonalities in outlook, four warzones stand out as clear candidates to assess Muslim policy: Malaya & Singapore during the 1941-5 Pacific War for the Japanese, and Palestine & Iraq for the Germans. All four had common experiences as British colonies or mandates. All four were plural societies, accommodating at least one significant minority: the Jews in the Middle East; the Chinese in Southeast Asia. This essay shall first compare the reasons for different interpretations of this resource, assessing how and why German and Japanese regimes altered their approaches to Muslims in these regions during the Second World War. The Japanese and Germans produced two very different strains of philosophies, plans and policies, often only united by Muslim response and interpretation of these policies. Nonetheless, the identification of Muslims as a resource was a common theme, and shall be this essay’s focus.

Japan and Germany: Different Approaches

Differences in contributions to Japanese and German ‘racial’ and ‘ethnic’ intellectual theory throughout the 1930s produced two vastly different approaches towards defining relationships with Islam. The scholarly contribution to Japanese Muslim policy during the 1930s was more complex than that in Germany. This, along with far greater resource scarcity than experienced by the Germans, later translated into a set of policies that demonstrated interest in the indoctrination and long-term domination of society so that Malays and Indian Muslims would view their Muslim identity as subordinate, to their identity as part of the Japanese Minzoku (ethnic nation). By the 1930s, the biological concept of ‘race’ and its mathematical formulae as a means of justifying Japanese superiority and expansionism was outdated amongst Japanese scholars. Takata Yasuma, in particular, rejected ‘the Germanic emphasis on "blood and soil’ as it was insufficiently sensitive to the importance of culture and too dependent on nature for its definitions of the nation’[2]. Most contemporary scholars agreed that the Yamato people were composed of waves of migrants from Southeast Asia, China and Siberia. The study of ethnology was dominated by two competing strains: the theories of Takata Yasuma, and the Society of Ethnology, established in 1934. Doak’s analysis of the Minzoku (ethnic nation) concept claims that the competition in the field of ethnology ‘fanning the flames of wartime aggression’ more so than would a doctrine that believed in racial purity[3]. Takata envisioned a Minzoku that permitted other religions and ethnicities, but ultimately loyal to Japan in language, and, more importantly, political allegiance.

Resource Scarcity in Japan

Contemporary sources demonstrate many practical, pressing concerns in ensuring that the conversion of Muslim opinion occurred rapidly. Writing in 1938, the sociologist Jesse Steiner notes currents of panic amongst the Japanese at the scarcity of resources; horror at the effects of the 1929 Great Depression in destabilising the nation after the Meiji economic boom proved unsustainable[4]. These fears were further compounded by long-standing concerns of overpopulation, which was in turn compounded by widespread opposition to the government’s offer of emigration to Manchuria. By 1938, Japan was unable to feed herself. There was, between 1930-38, a 12-fold increase in whale consumption and reliance on international waters around Japan’s physical boundaries[5]. In Southeast Asia, this was the story. The 1000-strong Japanese fishermen community in Singapore enjoyed plentiful supply of tropical fish. Malaya had plentiful seafood and arable land. Given the lack of evidence of prewar Japanese community ‘befriending’ ordinary Malays, we can assume that resource scarcity took precedence over theory for most Japanese. The mining community in Kuantan and Terengganu (with disproportionately small Chinese communities) showed little evidence of Muslim employment. The most prolific Japanese, ironically, were those who operated businesses in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor - areas with high Chinese concentrations[6]. While the greater academic input contributed towards greater interest in befriending Muslim communities and co-opting their political agendas than amongst the Nazis, there is neither much evidence of transparency nor trust, or even of en-masse interest in socialising with the Muslims in Southeast Asia.

Nazi Germany: Geopolitical Priorities

There were far less spontaneous calls amongst the Germans to work with the Muslims during the 1930s[7]. To some extent, this was simply down to a different approach: while the Institut fur Geopolitik (Geopolitics Institute) fulfilled a similar role to the Society of Ethnology in international research, its research interests were naturally more concerned with geopolitical strategy. Motadel’s quotations suggests that - far more than any academic discussed by Doak or Esenbel - some German academics understood that the stakes of trying to dominate Islam were very high. In 1936, Heinrich Eck discussed Moscow’s abject failure to ‘control’ Muslims. Two years later, Schmitz’s All Islam! Weltmacht von Morgen, asserted that Islam, despite Stalin’s best efforts, remained the ‘life fundament’ of opposition in Russia[8]. Amidst the propagandistic overtones (particularly that of Islamic ‘strong opposition’), the implications of these texts collectively are clear: Islam and Nazism were ideologies that wanted to see similar types of change, and thus, could collaborate over certain matters. Yet its domination was a risky and unnecessary experiment. The contributions of figures such as Oppenheim and Rosenberg during the 1930s were more clearly related to government policy in the 1940s than were those of Takata, Okawa, and others. Yet, as portrayed by Nicosia in Nazi Germany and the Arab World, they were rarely theoretical; more ‘troubleshooting’. Within this ‘troubleshooting’, there was slightly more evidence of planning the ‘confidence-and-supply’ relationship. Rosenberg’s brand of ‘troubleshooting’ is a good example. As director of the Ausschenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP, Rosenberg demonstrated ingenuity in balancing engagement with the Middle East with the more prominent aim of an Aryan sanctuary in Europe. He agreed with Hitler that any claims staked upon former colonies had to be made on grounds of materials. Indeed, the dramatic increase in military spending in the late 1930s strained Germany’s budget and highlighted its shortage of raw materials. Yet the extent of shortages that Germany faced was a far cry from the desperation described in Japan. In addition to an aggressive autarky programme that was demonstrating competency in feeding the nation by 1939, Germany also had the option of annexation for resources, which Japan naturally did not.

The most prominent resource in Palestine to catch Nazi attention was opposition to the Jewish National Home. Having identified this, Rosenberg set out to manipulate it. A June 1936 article in the Volkischer Beobachter details Rosenberg’s caution that the British supported Jewish emigration to Palestine. For at least two years after the publication of this article, however, Rosenberg continued to promote directing Jewish immigration ‘first and foremost to Palestine’[9]. Nicosia’s point that the annexation of Austria and its 200,000 Jews simply meant 200,000 more potential migrants to Palestine is further proof of Rosenberg’s brilliance of ‘troubleshooting’. These actions were characteristic of Germany’s ‘confidence-and-supply’ view of Muslims. Rosenberg understood that there were factions of Arabic society prone to anti-Jewish sentiment, and understood the importance of maintaining a courteous relationship with leaders, as evidenced in German Foreign Office records of arms sales to Palestine in 1936-37. This was to be expected considering general Nazi trade interests in the region in the mid-1930s, and should not be interpreted as interest in political cooperation[10].

The Japanese in Malaysia

Early Japanese attempts to establish ‘coalition-style’ policies often did not demonstrate much evidence in planning, other than a desire to dominate. This is evidenced in their relationship with Ibrahim Yacob: a series of rewards as a direct consequence of damages to his objectives. The Japanese quickly demonstrated interest in working closely with Ibrahim Yacob, going to great lengths to ensure that they presented an illusion of supporting his interests when they detected suspicion and disillusionment. In April 1941, Ibrahim purchased (with Japanese funding) the Warta Malaya newspaper, using it to promulgate anti-British propaganda[11]. The newspaper was distinguished: by the end of the 1930s, it had the highest circulation amongst all Malay-language periodicals. The Japanese were also indulgent. Sensing Ibrahim’s disillusionment at the disbandment of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (Young Malays Union), Ogawa and Watanabe hosted Ibrahim, appointing him as an advisor by the first week of August 1942. That this appointment occurred just two months after the Japanese outlawed the KMM suggests indulgence. The following October, Japan transferred Perlis, Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan to Thai administration. Again, sensing Ibrahim’s disillusionment, Ibrahim was tasked with establishing the Giyu-gun and Giyu-tai. It is likely that the decision to instruct Ibrahim to disband the KMM was reached very quickly: Cheah notes that it occurred shortly after the KMM rapidly gained popularity, growing their membership to approx. 10,000 urban and rural Malays[12]. The Japanese could not risk Malay nationalism dominate their young efforts to enforce Japanese seishin. To be sure, the net effects of Ibrahim’s efforts are debatable: Warta Malaya was a well-read paper, but merely an urban, well-read paper[13]. Nonetheless, these efforts were symbolic of Japanese efforts to reach out to influential Muslims in Malaya.

Nazi Confidence-and-Supply

Few events discussed in this essay were more humiliating than al-Gaylani’s requests for assistance to resist the British, following his coup. Hitler responded by providing two Luftwaffe squadrons. Kehoe and Greenhalgh are right to note that Hellmuth’s appointment, and the two Luftwaffe squadrons undermine arguments of German enthusiasm or naivety about strengths needed to resist the British[14]. In addition to his incompetence, Hellmuth’s highest attainment was merely a three-star badge as Lieutenant-General. In addition to incompetence, Hellmuth was also distracted to seek out figures like al-Gaylani in Syria and Lebanon - not indicative of a dedicated, focused deployment[15]. This essay, however, questions the judgement that insufficient resources ‘doomed the German mission to inevitable failure’. Shortages were a vital factor. The urgency of preparations for Operation Barbarossa can be felt through these figures: between late February and late May 1941, over 2.3 million German troops were amassed. However, there is scant evidence of genuine concern for Gaylani’s demands. Scholarship that attribute Gaylani’s defeat to the ruthless efficiency of the British campaign only reinforces this essay’s argument: Gaylani had mooted specific requests since December 1940, asking for captured British weapons for ease of use against the British[16]. If the Nazi administration had truly been enthusiastic about weakening British influence in the region, if, more damningly, the administration could accommodate al-Husseini and al-Gaylani in luxury[17], their failure to make any progress on Gaylani’s coup strongly suggests a lack of interest in achieving aims that did not conform to Nazi interests.

Hitler’s lacklustre response to Gaylani’s coup forms one part of the litmus test that validates the nature of the confidence-and-supply relationship. The other is in Axis involvement in the Baghdadi Farhud of June 1-2, 1941. This time, the Nazis wanted Iraqis to supply violence against Baghdad’s Jewish community. The increasing focus of recent scholarship upon lesser Iraqi and Palestinian nationalist figures and ordinary Iraqis reveals a rapid evolution of discourse in the two months between Gaylani’s coup and the Farhud. While the Nazis were unwilling to make a meaningful contribution to Gaylani’s coup, they injected his short-lived regime with a cocktail of concentrated doses of nationalistic and anti-Semitic propaganda. This, with the rapidity of the British invasion and Grobba, Husseini and Gaylani’s desertion caused doubts over German credibility. There was some evidence of anti-Semitic sentiment before the war: Iraqi volunteers participated in the 1936-39 Arab Revolts. What was new was the inclination towards spontaneous violence in Baghdad. As the British arrived in Iraq in early May, the Nazis began broadcasting propaganda programmes stressing the strengths of the ‘Arab race’ throughout history, and the merits of contemporary Arab nationalism. The motive in doing so - to ‘strengthen their self-assurance’ - is somewhat extraneous given concurrent propaganda efforts on the same subject matter by Arabs.

Restlessness and paranoia grew as the British approached: in the week before the attack, Ida Staudt’s memoirs describes a break-in performed by a mob hunting for British materials over claims that a Union Jack had been spotted, only satisfied when they found a book with a depiction of Churchill[18]. Reeva Simon further notes the paranoia on the streets regarding British spies: a woman was treated as suspect by merit of her reflective gold button, allegedly used to signal the British. Indeed, the emotionally-charged nature of Staudt’s memoirs subject her record of fact to questions over objectivity[19]. However, her portrayal of increasing paranoia agrees with Simon’s characterisation[20]. Moderation is important: Grobba did not convert the average Baghdadi into a Nazi. However, extant evidence suggests that the rapid turn of events in the two months left an indelible imprint in the minds of many. Many reacted in what they perceived as the only way possible: to take it out on foreigners they saw. Ironically, the Nazis’ haphazard accumulation of propaganda succeeded in achieving Jewish persecution at the cost of severe damage of Muslim perceptions.

Japan from 1942-45

The aforementioned differences between German and Japanese policies to Muslims only became more prominent in the 1942-45 period. The ‘coalition’ versus ‘confidence-and-supply’ approaches towards Muslims grew increasingly disparate as pressures from global strategy mounted. The ‘coalition’ assessment of Japanese policy is reinforced in its deteriorating treatment of ‘ordinary’ Muslims and lesser aristocrats in Malaya and Singapore. Japanese administrative and religious interferences sought to solicit an increasing willingness to adopt the Japanese seishin. Overall, policies were designed to enforce, even more stringently than before, loyalty to Japan. Kratoska illustrates that the Malays demonstrated a consensus of dissatisfaction with the ‘benign neglect’ of British rule on the eve of the invasion. The civil service, in particular, was infamous for excessive bureaucracy. Strangely, despite Kratowska’s assessment that ‘many elements of the pre-war administration survived the occupation nearly unchanged’, he cites much evidence that suggests otherwise. The Japanese appointed lesser aristocratic Malays to replace the British as District Officers (D.O) in 1942[21]. This policy initially seemed to support improving Muslim political agency. Yet other policies from 1943-45 demonstrate the DO’s vulnerability. The Southern Army’s headquarters were relocated to Singapore in April 1943, improving the efficiency of the Military Administration. Between 1943 and 45, D.O’s noted increasing Japanese involvement in daily tasks, including de facto surveillance through accompanying field visits. This allowed more efficient administration of the D.O’s. The position of the Gun Shidokanho, created near the end of the Occupation is symbolic of this ‘coalition’ arrangement: the formalisation of a Japanese ‘super District Officer’ above the Muslim District Officer; Japanese identity over Muslim identity. That the official policy declaration for the Gun Shidokanho position defined its purpose as ‘guiding the District Officer in order to adjust and (make) adequate the executions of the latter’s duties’ suggests Japanese expectation that these minor aristocrats would cooperate with the ‘need’ for surveillance[22]. Village chiefs were forced to recruit forced labour. Indeed, the ordinary Muslim had reason to fear, and be suspicious of the Japanese. In general, the Japanese saw no need to indulge ordinary Muslims, whose influence in disseminating anti-British thought was far less.

Nazi Germany and the Middle East from 1942-45

The Japanese and Germans entered and engaged with Islamic consciousness with such different aims and planning styles. It is relatively easy to assess the effectiveness of either according to their own aims, but comparing the effectiveness of both can be problematic, without diverging into speculation (what if al-Gaylani defeated the British on his own merit?). The most telling indicator is in an evaluation of Japanese and German policy towards Muslim interaction with non-Muslims. The intensification of anti-Semitic rhetoric throughout the Second World War, but particularly following the May 1943 defeat in North Africa experienced mere pockets of effectiveness, despite its exception as an exemplar of the ‘confidence-and-supply’ relationship; as one of the few aspects of life in the Middle East which the Nazis hoped to significantly influence through the use of such figures as al-Husseini and Yunus Bahri. Motadel traces the growing virulence of this rhetoric. Propaganda directed towards the Middle East in the summer of 1942 attempted to justify anti-Semitism, prescribing annihilation because ‘The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill your children and to destroy you.’[23]. By 1944, the need for such justification had dissipated: on March 1, al-Husseini broadcast the far more emotive and direct: ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them; this pleases Allah, history, and religion. This saves your honour. Allah is with you.’[24]. Despite extensive Nazi efforts in this respect for nearly five years, there was scant evidence of spontaneous uprising against Jewish populations in the Middle East and North Africa, bar the aforementioned Farhud. This is a particularly damning verdict, considering the concurrent anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy government. Motadel, to his credit, recognises that his research illustrates but ‘snapshots’[25]. Nonetheless, his argument is made even more convincing, given the fallacies of the opposition: Herf asserts that propaganda could reasonably be judged to have encountered ‘positive reception’ based on a Voice of America’s report on discussing Judaism with the Palestinian population (it is unclear what these observations are based on)[26]. Herf strongly implies that the messages were quite popular in Palestine and Iraq by his need to make frequent, obvious assertions (such as ‘The purpose of (propaganda) was to inflame and incite, not inform’ and ‘Not only did these assertions… wildly exaggerate the powers of the Jews’)[27].

Japanese ‘Indirect’ Discrimination

Almost the exact opposite is true for the Japanese. Cheah is right to insist that there is little evidence ‘to show that the Japanese deliberately promoted racial animosity’ in Japanese policy, at least until the very final two months of Occupation. However, the motivations and objectives of many Japanese economic and social policies facilitated justification of anti-Chinese sentiment, even violence. The sheer violence of Sook Ching in February 1942 created a great impression among many ordinary Malays. Although Chinese schools, for instance, were allowed to re-open in October 1942, the Japanese forbid the use of Mandarin as the language of instruction[28].

To meet the war’s increasing demand upon resources, the Japanese rescinded Malay Land Reservation Enactments, transferring hitherto protected land in rural Johor and Negri Sembilan to Chinese farmers. Whereas land was also allocated to Malay farmers, suggesting that the need to maintain Malayan food supplies did take precedence over racial policy, only land in the smaller more urban state of Syonan-To (Singapore) was granted[29]. The resultant ethnic conflict that lasted from May 10th to September 1st, 1945 in Batu Pahat and surrounding regions in the Northwest of Johor, had a far wider-ranging and deeper impact than did the Baghdadi Farhud of 1941, and comparisons are inappropriate. Much as some Baghdadis justified their persecution of the Jews by claiming that the latter committed espionage for the British, some Malays justified their massacres by claiming that their Chinese victims were communists[30]. The only main difference: the Japanese role, unlike that of Grobba and Gaylani, was implicit.

A small criticism of Cheah: he cites an anecdote from Chin Peng of a July incident wherein the Japanese ‘went to a mosque… and slaughtered a pig’[31], thereby inciting more conflict. There are issues with Chin’s objectivity as a liaison officer between the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army and the British military. Cheah, to his credit, also notes that the logistical considerations of the war - preparations for significant, widely-reported concurrent battles with the British in the North of Malaya that would absorb much Japanese attention[32] - would overwhelmingly suggest that this anecdote is likely untrue, and, if true, was unlikely to have significant impact. Certainly, the region of Batu Pahat, Endau and Muar constitutes but a small region in Malaya, and was also the only notable spontaneous act of anti-Chinese resistance. However, its severe destabilisation upon the Chinese community - 14,000 displaced refugees who had to flee town centres by early September - leads to the unfortunate suggestion that Japanese ‘indirect’ discrimination was more impactful than was the German bombardment of propaganda[33]. This is not a conclusion of greater efficiency from the Japanese. Nonetheless, the suggestive evidence is notable.

Conclusion

The policies of Showa Japan and Nazi Germany towards Muslims differed significantly throughout the global wars of 1931-45, particularly if one specifically considers their treatment of Muslims in the British colonies of Malaya and Singapore, and British mandates of Palestine and Iraq. Indeed, although the development of currents of ethnic and racial theories differed greatly, practical and strategic considerations during both campaigns could have engineered more congruence between the two. Instead, the pressures of failures in strategy during the 1942-45 years made these differences even more pronounced. Overall, neither Japan nor Germany truly convinced Muslims that their values were compatible with Islamic religious and political identities. A final consideration: the detail in policies discussed in this essay do not facilitate awareness that Japan and Germany’s approaches towards Muslim engagement were, from an Islamic perspective, different parts of the narrative of their engagement with the non-Islamic world during the first half of the twentieth century. It would, as such, be useful to conduct a further study into the differences of the roles of Japan and Germany into postwar Islamic revolutionaries and nationalism, in Malaya and Singapore and Palestine and Iraq, but also in the total extent of Nazi Germany and Showa Japan’s spheres of influence.

What do you think about the author’s arguments? Let us know below.

Bibliography

Barber, Andrew, Kuala Lumpur at War, 1939-45, Kuala Lumpur, Karamoja Press, 2012

Cheah, Boon Kheng, Red Star over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During and After the Japanese Occupation, 1941-46, 2nd ed., Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1983

Cheah, Boon Kheng, ‘The Japanese Occupation of Malaya, 1941-45: Ibrahim Yacob and the Struggle for Indonesian Raya’, Indonesia, No. 28 (Oct., 1979), pp. 84-120

Doak, Kevin M., ’Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in Wartime Japan and After’ in The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 1-39

Esenbel, Selcuk, ‘Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900-1945’ in The American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (October 2004), pp. 1140-1170

Goda, Norman J. W., Tales from Spandau: Nazi Criminals and the Cold War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006

Herf, Jeffrey, ‘Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims During World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings’, in Central European History, Vol. 42, No. 4, (December 2009), pp. 709-736

Kehoe, Thomas J., and Greenhalgh, Elizabeth M., ‘Living Propaganda and Self-Serving Recruitment: The Nazi Rationale for the German-Arab Training Unit, May 1941 to May 1943’ in War in History (2017), Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 520-543

Kratoska, Paul H., The Japanese Occupation of Malaya, London, Hurst & Co., 1998

Mallmann, Klaus-Michael, and Cuppers, Martin, Nazi Palestine, The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, trans. Krista Smith, New York, Enigma Books, 2010

Morse, Chuck, The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, Lincoln, iUniverse, Inc., 2003

Motadel, David, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2014

Nicosia, Francis, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015

‘Policy - Definition’, Oxford Living Dictionaries, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/policy, (accessed 24 Dec 2017)

Spector-Simon, Reeva, Iraq between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny, Updated ed., New York, 2004

Staudt, Ida, ‘A Nazi-Inspired Revolt, 1941’ in Living in Romantic Baghdad: An American Memoir of Teaching and Travel in Iraq, 1924-1947, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2012

Steiner, Jesse, ‘Japanese Population Policies’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 5 (Mar., 1938), pp. 717-733

Tajuddin, Azlan, Malaysia in the World Economy (1824-2011): Capitalism , Ethnic Divisions and ‘managed Democracy’, London, Lexington Books, 2012

Tsutsui, William M., ‘Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan’, Environmental History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 294-311

[1] ‘Policy - Definition’, Oxford Living Dictionaries, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/policy, (accessed 24 Dec 2017)

[2] Kevin M. Doak, ’Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in Wartime Japan and After’ in The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 14-15

[3] Ibid, p. 2

[4] Jesse Steiner, ‘Japanese Population Policies’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 5 (Mar., 1938), pp. 718-720

[5] William M. Tsutsui, ‘Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan’, Environmental History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), p. 298

[6] Ayabe Kuichiro ran a ‘(dentistry)... that doubled as a barber’s shop’. The multiplicity of services probably made Kuichiro a well-known figure in the local area. See Andrew Barber, Kuala Lumpur at War, 1939-45, Kuala Lumpur, Karamoja Press, 2012, pp. 22-24 for similar anecdotes.

[7] David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 27-31

[8] Ibid, p. 30

[9] Francis Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 99

[10] Ibid, pp. 87-88

[11] Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘The Japanese Occupation of Malaya, 1941-45: Ibrahim Yacob and the Struggle for Indonesian Raya’, Indonesia, No. 28 (Oct., 1979), p. 94

[12] Ibid, p. 103

[13] Azlan Tajuddin, Malaysia in the World Economy (1824-2011): Capitalism , Ethnic Divisions and ‘managed Democracy’, London, Lexington Books, 2012, p. 94

[14] Thomas J. Kehoe, and Elizabeth M. Greenhalgh, ‘Living Propaganda and Self-Serving Recruitment: The Nazi Rationale for the German-Arab Training Unit, May 1941 to May 1943’ in War in History (2017), Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 526

[15] Ibid, p. 526

[16] Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, p. 163

[17] Chuck Morse, The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, Lincoln, iUniverse, Inc., 2003, pp. 53-56

[18] Ida Staudt, ‘A Nazi-Inspired Revolt, 1941’ in Living in Romantic Baghdad: An American Memoir of Teaching and Travel in Iraq, 1924-1947, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2012, p. 223

[19] Ibid, pp. 218-221

[20] Reeva Spector-Simon, Iraq between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny, Updated ed., New York, 2004, p. 131

[21] Kratoska, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya, p. 64

[22] Ibid, p. 65

[23] Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, p. 96

[24] Ibid, p. 97

[25] Ibid, p. 114

[26] Jeffrey Herf, ‘Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims During World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings’, in Central European History, Vol. 42, No. 4, (December 2009), p. 728

[27] Ibid, p. 731

[28] Cheah, Red Star over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During and After the Japanese Occupation, 1941-46, 2nd ed., Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1983, p. 38

[29] Ibid, p. 39

[30] Ibid, p. 219

[31] Ibid, p. 217

[32] Ibid, p. 235

[33] Ibid, p. 230

Was Switzerland neutral or a Nazi ally in World War Two?

Switzerland had a curious position during World War Two. It was officially a neutral country, but that neutrality was not always strictly maintained. Here, Laura Kerr considers how neutral Switzerland really was and how helpful it may have been to Nazi Germany…

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler together in Munich in 1940. The pair discussed an invasion of Switzerland during World War Two.

Switzerland. Three things come to mind: watches, chocolate and neutrality. And for good reason. Firstly, Switzerland is home to both Rolex and Omega which can boast the titles of ‘first watch on the moon’, ‘James Bond’s official watch since 1995’, and the watch of choice for both the American and British armies during World War One. However despite its truly fascinating watch history, that is not the aspect of Switzerland that I am focusing on today.

Switzerland is the longest standing neutral nation in the world and has not taken part in a war since 1505. Its official stance of non-involvement had been decided during The Congress of Vienna in 1815, in which major European leaders met to discuss the nature of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon.

Up until World War Two, Switzerland upheld her stance of neutrality rather admirably. But despite not engaging in combat during the war, Switzerland’s so called ‘neutrality’ has been heavily scrutinized in recent years, with particular emphasis on border controls, banking and trade with Nazi Germany.

Hitler’s decision not to invade

The first question that needs to be answered to fully understand Switzerland’s position during WWII, is why Hitler did not invade the country while trying to establish the Third Reich. Hitler described Switzerland as a “pimple on the face of Europe” and both its geographical location and culture would seem like a clear target for the Nazis.

A good way to summaries Hitler’s reasoning not to invade Switzerland is simply ‘risk versus reward’. At the prospect of a German invasion, the Swiss improved and invested heavily in their ‘National Redoubt’ (The Swiss National Defense Plan). Along with the tough terrain and modern machinery, this didn’t make the Swiss a particularly easy target.  Not only was the risk high, the reward wasn’t tremendously great for Hitler either. Switzerland and Germany already had a beneficial trading partnership which helped Germany’s war effort. Additionally, the neutral but infamous Swiss banks made Switzerland useful to the Nazis.

There’s little doubt that once the Allies had been defeated, Hitler would have mobilized an attack on Switzerland (a planned invasion was named known Operation Tannenbaum). But as it was, his attention and resources were preoccupied on bigger enemies so any attacks on Switzerland had to wait.

Nevertheless, by 1940 Switzerland was completely surrounded by Axis powers and the Nazis occupied France, making it increasingly difficult to stay clear of the Second World War. It is the ways in which Switzerland allowed and in some ways, assisted, Nazi Germany which makes her “neutrality” so questionable.

Border control

After the Nazis gained power in Germany, many racial minorities attempted to flee to avoid persecution. Switzerland, a neighboring but impartial nation seemed a clear destination choice. As well as an agreement of neutrality, Switzerland had also pledged to be an asylum for any discriminated groups in Europe. They had taken in Huguenots that had fled from France in the 16th century and was an asylum for many liberals, socialists and anarchists from all over Europe in the 19th century. However, this wasn’t exactly upheld during WWII.

In fear of angering Hitler and prompting an invasion, Swiss border regulations were tightened. They did establish internment camps which housed 200,000 refugees, of which 20,000 were Jewish. Importantly though, the Swiss government taxed the Swiss Jewish community for any Jewish refugees they allowed to enter the country.

In 1942 alone, over 30,000 Jews were denied entrance into Switzerland, leaving them under the control of the Nazis. In an infamous speech, a Swiss government official stated “our little life boat is full.” Although the prospect of leaving Jewish civilians to certain death under the Nazis is unthinkable, there are arguments in Switzerland’s defense. Switzerland was a small country (with a population of roughly 4 million) which was completely surrounded by Nazi troops and nations under Hitler’s control. In comparison, the USA (arguably the safest nation for fleeing Jews) repeatedly rejected Jewish refugees and only accommodated approximately 250,000 people between the years from 1939 to 1945; tiny compared to its size. Historians today estimate that the USA could have easily accommodated over 6 million refugees.

But that is not the only controversy when it comes to Swiss border control. It was the Chief of the Swiss Federal Police, Dr Heinrich Rothmund, who proposed the idea of marking Jewish passports with a red ‘J’, and which became an important method of discrimination adopted by the Nazis. The Swiss government wanted to know and control the amount of Jews entering Switzerland but it led to a measure that made fleeing from the Nazis even harder for Jews.

Interestingly, on the March 8, 1995, the Swiss government made an official apology for their involvement with the Nazi Party, in particular their role in developing the ‘J’ stamp.

Banking

To this day, Swiss banks are known for their secretive but successful policies that created one of the strongest economies in the world. They were massively important during WWII, especially to high-ranking Nazis, and became another way in which Swiss neutrality was questioned.

But why were they so important?

Until 1936, the Swiss Franc was the only remaining freely convertible currency in the world. Therefore both the Allies and Axis Powers sold large amounts of gold to the Swiss National Bank and relied heavily on its economic stability. The German national currency was no longer a means of payment in international markets which meant the Nazis relied on Swiss banks in order to buy war machinery and commodities from other countries.

But if the banks accepted gold from both sides, then surely they are still technically neutral? Although that may be the case, it is the type of gold and the secretive way in which it was handled which has caused massive controversy in recent years. For over 581,000 Francs worth of ‘melmer’ gold taken from Holocaust victims was sold and kept by Swiss banks. Following the defeat of the Nazis, Swiss banks struggled with what to do with the gold, whose rightful owners had been killed in the awful genocide.

Trade

Prior to WWII, Switzerland had relied heavily on trade with Germany to build a strong and economically powerful nation. It was an industrialized country with virtually no raw materials, experiencing the same economic depression that was felt throughout both Europe and America. When World War Two commenced, Switzerland worried that any non-cooperation would lead to a cease in vital trade and even more significantly, an invasion. As it was completely surrounded by Nazi controlled countries, the Swiss had two choices: cooperate with Nazi trade policies or fight against them.

Between the years of 1939 and 1945, roughly 10,276,000 tons of coal was transported from Germany to Switzerland and provided 41% of Switzerland’s energy requirement. This demonstrates how the Swiss were keen to stay on good terms with Germany to continue their vital trade.

One thing Switzerland provided to the Nazis in return for important materials was access to the railway that ran through Switzerland and connected Italy and Germany. In the event of an invasion, the Swiss army planned to destroy vital tunnels and bridges, immobilizing the railway for years and making transportation between Italy and Germany nearly impossible. To uphold their neutral stand, Switzerland’s governments laid down restrictions on what could be transported over their railway. The Swiss would only allow sealed boxes to pass through without checking their contents, in exchange for raw materials and trade. Officially, the Swiss banned any transportation of people (troops) or war goods over their railway, but the extent to which this was upheld is very questionable.  

So, despite its attempts, Switzerland struggled to remain truly neutral during the Second World War. In fairness, World War Two was a ‘Total War’ which made it hard to remain impartial for almost every nation. It is the type of involvement, however, that is interesting and less well known to people studying history.

The extent to which a country remains neutral during times of armed conflict goes beyond their lack of involvement in armed combat. A country can only be considered neutral if they demonstrate no bias in business, social and economic activity.

Was Switzerland neutral? Arguably not.

But the extent to which they ‘helped’ the Nazis is a much more complex matter.

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