Nazism in Syria and Lebanon

The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933–1945

Götz Nordbruch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134105595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The increasingly vibrant political culture emerging in Lebanon and Syria in the 1930s and early 1940s is key to the understanding of local approaches towards the Nazi German regime. For many contemporary observers in Beirut and Damascus, Nazism not only posed a risk to Europe, but threatened to take root in Arab societies as well.

In the first publication to reconstruct Lebanese and Syrian encounters with Nazism in the context of an evolving local political culture and to base its analysis on a comprehensive review of Arab, French and German sources, Götz Nordbruch examines the reactions to the rise of Nazism in the countries under French mandate, spanning from fascination and endorsement to the creation of antifascist networks.

Against a background of public discourses, local politics and the shifting regional and international settings, this book interprets public assessments of and contact with the Nazi regime as part of an intellectual quest for orientation in the years between the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and national independence.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Note on transcription
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Struggles for a new order: the rise of the Nazi regime and the Levantine mandates (1933–1936)
• 3 Nazism and the Levant—Nazism in the Levant: between treaty negotiations and the Second World War (1936–1939)
• 4 Repercussions of the Second World War: facing the Axis in the Levant (1939–1941)
• 5 Nazism in retreat: the fading of an option and the battle for independence (1941–1945)
• 6 The Levant in May 1945: the defeat of Nazism and hopes for independence
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography