The funding was reportedly channeled through the Soros-founded Open Society Foundations, with a significant portion of the money, around $13.7 million, being provided through the left-wing advocacy group Tides Center.

Among the recipients of funding, the Adalah Justice Project in Illinois stands out. Tides Center donated to this group which, on the day of the reported massacre, shared a picture on social media depicting a bulldozer tearing through Israel’s Gaza security fence.

The caption accompanying the image read, “Israeli colonizers believed they could indefinitely trap two million people in an open-air prison… no cage goes unchallenged.” Additionally, members of the Adalah Justice Project occupied the office of California Representative Ro Khanna on October 20, demanding that he support a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explained the rationale behind the calls for a ceasefire, stating, “What a lot of people are calling for is just a stop to Israeli military action against terrorists, period. Just stop, no more, Israel cannot go after terrorists who conducted this largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. We have taken the position that Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorist attacks.”

The Arab American Association of New York, co-founded by Linda Sarsour, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and an individual widely accused of antisemitism, reportedly received $60,000 in 2018 from the Open Society Foundations.

This group organized a protest titled “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on October 21. The New York Post reported that during the protest, participants called for the eradication of Israel and displayed an Israeli flag placed in a trash basket with the words, “Please keep the world clean!”

Other groups allegedly receiving funding include fringe anti-Israel Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which reportedly received $650,000, and If Not Now, which purportedly received $400,000.

JVP organized a sit-in at Grand Central Station in Manhattan on Friday during rush hour, resulting in the arrest of two hundred people. Both JVP and If Not Now were said to have co-sponsored the Bryant Park rally and participated in a protest at the U.S. Capitol on October 18.

JVP released a statement on its website blaming Israel for the Hamas attack, asserting, “Israeli apartheid and occupation—and United States complicity in that oppression—are the source of all this violence.”

Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of “The Soros Agenda,” claimed in an interview with Jewish News Syndicate in August that former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman once stated that nobody has done more damage to Israel than Soros. Ehrenfeld pointed out Soros’s funding of the New Israel Fund, Palestinians, Birzeit University, and various anti-Israel organizations in Israel.

According to the New York Post, Dan Schneider, vice president of the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, co-signed a letter with MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell, urging Soros to halt his funding of groups promoting pro-Hamas rhetoric.

Schneider expressed his concerns to the Post, stating, “We’ve called on George Soros to withdraw this funding, but he seems very determined to continue supporting antisemitic organizations that want to upend western civilization.”

The New York Post reported that attempts to reach out to the Soros family, Open Society Foundations, Tides, the Adalah Justice Project, and other pro-Palestinian groups for comment were unsuccessful.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan spoke to Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid while emphasizing the need to respect the legal and historical status quo of Jerusalem, and highlighted the importance of recognizing Jordan’s guardianship of holy places under international law.

The call came amid clashes between Israelis and Palestinians at Islam’s third holiest site, which is also considered the most sacred place in Jewish faith. Al-Aqsa compound sits atop the Old City plateau of East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Muslims call it al-Haram al-Sharif, while Jews refer to it as Temple Mount.

Around 152 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli riot police inside the mosque compound on Friday, which stoked fears of escalating conflict.

The tensions this year escalated due to Ramadan coinciding with the Jewish celebration of Passover.

According to Israeli police, hundreds of Palestinians hurled firecrackers and stones at their forces, and also toward the nearby Jewish prayer area of the Western Wall in the old city after Ramadan dawn prayers. The instigation caused the police to enter the Al-Aqsa compound to disperse and push back the crowd, during which three police officers were injured.

On Tuesday, UAE summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest against the clashes at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque. However, Sheikh Abdullah also congratulated Israeli FM on the occasion of Passover, and said that he looks forward to enhancing joint cooperation with the State of Israel in all domains and to work together to boost peace and stability in the region.

A video along with an unverified Urdu voice-note, seemingly of a Pakistani dialect claimed that Saudi Arabia has permitted followers of Judaism to perform Umrah in the grand mosque of Mecca. The claimant also quoted Pakistan’s late radical preacher Israr Ahmed, who claimed that ‘Arabs will be doomed’, and ‘Jews are accursed nation’.

As a matter of fact, the pilgrims in the video are not Jews but Sufis, apparently from the Turkish or Uzbek background, who were making Sufi ‘dhikr’ or God’s remembrance while making strange sounds.

The Jewish Kabbalah and Sufi mysticism share a lot of commonalities in terms of mystic rituals—which has eventually confused South-Asian Muslims to conclude Sufis to be Jews.

Jewish law permits its followers to face east towards Jerusalem during prayers, while Muslims have to face west towards Mecca during five daily prayers. In fact, Mizrah in the Jewish synagogues face east, while Mihrab in the Muslim mosques face west.

Furthermore, disinformation campaigns possibly harm the peace prospects of the region, hence, people are requested to verify the social media content before promptly relaying it to others.

Judaism and Islam are forever bound together as sister religions.

The holiday of Rosh Hashana is a time for introspection. It is an important time to reflect on the achievements in Muslim-Jewish dialogue and the opportunities to further strengthen our bonds for the coming year.

There is much that unites us, including our shared values and traditions. Muslims and Jews working hand in hand is what will ultimately lead to the success of our region. As we usher in the Jewish new year on Monday evening, we must commit ourselves to furthering our relationship and dialogue.

The great Mahatma Gandhi once noted: “If we are to respect others’ religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world’s religions is a sacred duty.”

As religious leaders, our responsibility is to find a path toward peaceful coexistence between all religions and all people, especially the world’s three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Over the past year, we have seen many achievements in this area. In Dubai, a group of dynamic young Emiratis arranged a joint iftar-Lag B’Omer celebration and invited Muslims and Jews to celebrate the holidays together. Our organization has arranged Shabbat meals in both Bahrain and Dubai, bringing together diplomats, Emiratis and Bahrainis — both Muslim and Jewish — to break bread and talk about our commonalities. Friday is a special day for both religions and we celebrate together.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a bar mitzvah was held in Bahrain for the first time in 16 years. In attendance were Muslims and Jews.

A few months back, Muslim and Jewish ambassadors participated in a joint panel discussion about the role of interfaith relations and how they are propelling the region forward.

Abdulla Rashed Al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s ambassador to the US; Yousef Al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US; Houda Nonoo, former Bahraini ambassador to the US; and Marc Sievers, former US ambassador to Oman, all spoke about why interfaith dialogue is critical for the region.

For 1,400 years, Judaism and Islam were inextricably linked in the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and in medieval Spain. Each had a common ancestry, similar values and holy scriptures.

We are enjoined by our faiths to find a path toward peaceful coexistence between all religions and all people. Therefore, in order to establish a channel of communication and cooperation between Jews and Muslims, between Judaism and Islam, the following steps are necessary.

First, we must lead by example and communicate to our own congregations that peace is a basic human right. We must stand together should any of our communities suffer harassment or attacks.

And we must overcome some of the misrepresentation, demonization, stereotyping, prejudice and lack of awareness in the world through an ongoing educational process that teaches peace and respect for each religion.

Second, as each of us takes enormous pride in our own religion’s history, culture and tradition, so too must we pride ourselves on our level of understanding and tolerance of each other’s religion. Just as we encourage our own people’s pride in our own religions, we must castigate those who show intolerance and ignorance of other religions and cultures.

Third, it is our responsibility to guide our people toward looking for the inestimable value of peace, and not in the “importance” of religious conflict. Yes, the world is made up of different races, colors, ethnicities, religions, and political ideologies.

However, the seeds of peace begin to grow when people of all faiths and backgrounds are encouraged to communicate, tolerate, accept, respect, and ultimately trust one another.

As the Jewish new year approaches, let us reflect on the wise words included in the UN manifesto on the Culture of Peace, which states: “We must learn to use one another’s religious belief as ways to connect — not as reasons for conflict.” May these words serve as a guiding light for everybody in this region for the coming year.

Judaism and Islam are forever bound together as sister religions. We are intertwined in our faith, liturgy, history and culture. It behooves us to maintain an open dialogue and cherish our similarities and our differences with respect, acceptance, coexistence and love for each other. We owe it to our communities, to our people and to our common father Abraham.

Piece first published in Arab News.

Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie is the rabbi of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities and the senior rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates. He tweets under @RabbiElieAbadie.

Featured Image courtesy Lovin Dubai.

In a letter seen by Reuters, Rabbi Rasson Arousi, chair of the Commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel for Dialogue with the Holy See, said the comments appeared to suggest Jewish law was obsolete.

Vatican authorities said they were studying the letter and were considering a response.

Rabbi Arousi wrote a day after the pope spoke about the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, during a general audience on Aug. 11.

The Torah contains hundreds of commandments, or mitzvot, for Jews to follow in their everyday lives. The measure of adherence to the wide array of guidelines differs between Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews.

At the audience, the pope, who was reflecting on what St. Paul said about the Torah in the New Testament, said: “The law (Torah) however does not give life.

“It does not offer the fulfilment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfil it … Those who seek life need to look to the promise and to its fulfilment in Christ.”

Rabbi Arousi sent the letter on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate – the supreme rabbinic authority for Judaism in Israel – to Cardinal Kurt Koch, whose Vatican department includes a commission for religious relations with Jews.

“In his homily, the pope presents the Christian faith as not just superseding the Torah; but asserts that the latter no longer gives life, implying that Jewish religious practice in the present era is rendered obsolete,” Arousi said in the letter.

“This is in effect part and parcel of the ‘teaching of contempt’ towards Jews and Judaism that we had thought had been fully repudiated by the Church,” he said.

Improved Relations

Relations between Catholics and Jews were revolutionised in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus and began decades of inter-religious dialogue. Francis and his two predecessors visited synagogues.

Two leading Catholic scholars of religious relations with Jews agreed that the pope’s remarks could be seen as a troublesome setback and needed clarification.

“To say that this fundamental tenet of Judaism does not give life is to denigrate the basic religious outlook of Jews and Judaism. It could have been written before the Council,” said Father John Pawlikowski, former director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

“I think it’s a problem for Jewish ears, especially because the pope’s remarks were addressed to a Catholic audience,” said Professor Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

“It could be understood as devaluing Jewish observance of the Torah today,” Cunningham said.

Arousi and Pawlikowski said it was possible that a least part of the pope’s teaching homily, known as a catechesis, was written by aides and that the phrase was not properly vetted.

Koch’s office said on Wednesday he had received the letter, was “considering it seriously and reflecting on a response”.

Francis has had a very good relationship with Jews. While still archbishop in native Buenos Aires, he co-wrote a book with one of the city’s rabbis, Abraham Skorka, and has maintained a lasting friendship with him.

In his letter to Cardinal Koch, Arousi asked him to “convey our distress to Pope Francis” and asked for a clarification from the pope to “ensure that any derogatory conclusions drawn from this homily are clearly repudiated”.

Israel wants to gain broader Arab support for the new deals…

Working in close quarters, surrounded by maps of the Middle East, a small team based in Israel’s foreign ministry are focusing their sights on the Arab world.

Their mission: using social media to convince Arabs to embrace the Jewish state.

The team is spearheading an Arabic-language campaign via platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as part of a multi-pronged diplomatic effort to win over popular acceptance in the Middle East.

But overturning decades of hostility is no easy feat, despite Israel in recent months having secured landmark Washington-brokered deals with the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

The magnitude of the task was underscored by a recent online backlash after photographs of Egyptian actor and rapper Mohamed Ramadan partying with Israeli celebrities at a Dubai bar surfaced on social media in November, along with a video showing guests partying as the Jewish song “Hava Nagila” played.

The Israeli Arabic-language social media team re-posted the photos from its main Facebook and Twitter accounts, including one of Ramadan hanging an arm around the neck of Israeli pop star Omer Adam with the caption “art always brings us together.”

Israeli officials acknowledge the challenges of the task in a region where there is widespread support for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation or as refugees across the Middle East.

Yonatan Gonen, who heads the Arabic-language social media unit, said in an interview that they posted the photos of Ramadan with the Israeli celebrities to show “normalization” between Israelis and Arabs. He acknowledged that the furore was disappointing but said there were also positive responses and that “it takes time, people change their minds over generations.”

Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, said increasing numbers of Arabs view Israel as an ally and many publicly show their support on social media. “As regional peace expands further, talking to our neighbours in their own language becomes even more important,” said Gendelman, adding that Israel plans to expand its outreach in Arabic.

Ramadan didn’t respond to requests for comment. He said on social media at the time that he did not ask people taking photographs where they came from. “I salute the brotherly Palestinian people,” he added.

Dr Ala’a Shehabi, a London-based academic researcher with dual Bahraini and British nationality, said public sentiment in Arab countries remains pro-Palestinian. Of Israel’s social-media campaign, she added: “It is not a success if it hasn’t changed popular opinion.”

Digital Diplomacy

Israel wants to gain broader Arab support for the new deals than it has with formal peace treaties it signed with Egypt and Jordan, in 1979 and 1994, respectively. Those treaties are upheld by the countries’ leaders but are regarded with little enthusiasm by many Egyptians and Jordanians.

An October report by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs found that during August and September more than 90% of Arabic social media commentary regarding the “normalization” deals was negative.

“Israel must prepare to commence a protracted campaign online to win hearts and minds in favor of creating stronger ties with Israel,” according to a detailed summary of the report shared with Reuters by the ministry. A ministry official said that by January the level of negative commentary had fallen to 75%.

That foreign ministry’s ten-member Arabic-language team includes both Jews and Arabs.

With messages such as “Salam, Shalom” – the Arabic and Hebrew words for peace – the campaign heavily features what Gonen refers to as “soft content,” such as music, food and sport. The team also posts about Israel’s adversaries such as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Established in 2011, the Arabic-language unit has significantly ramped up activity since late summer when news of the first accord was made public. The team currently publishes up to 700 or so social media posts a month, about 15% to 20% more than before the deals, Gonen said.

During a recent visit to Dubai, team member Lorena Khateeb posted to Twitter a photo of herself outdoors with the Israeli flag draped over her back. “Never imagined that I would raise the Israeli flag in an Arab country,” she said in the Nov. 21 post in both Arabic and English. Days later, one Israel’s official accounts – called @IsraelintheGulf and which she operates – tweeted a similar flag-draped photo of her.

Khateeb told Reuters that responses to her posts are mostly positive but some are negative.

Gauging Success

Gonen says the aim is to create “engagement, interactions and dialogue” with Arab audiences. He said his team reaches 100 million people monthly via its social media accounts, which is double what it was a year ago.

It’s main Twitter account, which uses the handle @IsraelArabic and posted the Ramadan photos, has more than 425,000 followers.

Still, the Jewish state still faces widespread opposition to its reconciliation efforts across the region, which is home to more than 400 million Arabic speakers.

Michael Robbins of the Arab Barometer, a non-partisan research network that studies attitudes across the Arab world, said a post-normalisation survey by his group in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon suggested that the efforts of Israel and its regional allies “have had little if any effect on the views of ordinary citizens.”

He said they lacked data from Gulf countries, which did not permit them to ask questions that name Israel, but that attitudes in the countries they did conduct surveys had changed little from previous years.

“Overall, these results suggest that Israel’s strategy to win hearts and minds is failing. Few Arab citizens regardless of age or geography have positive views toward Israel,” Robbins said.

Finding a common ground on which the principles of the Republic and freedom of worship can coexist is something that must be arrived at without foreign interference.

Religious extremism is not exclusive to Muslims, as demonstrated by the actions of Buddhist zealots in Myanmar, Jewish fundamentalists in Israel, and Christian white supremacists in the US.

There are other examples but the focus in the past two decades has been on the various Islamist movements that have embraced a revisionist and violent dogma that is shunned by the majority of Muslims around the world. Neither Al-Qaeda nor Daesh is a true representation of what more than a billion Muslims believe and practice every day.

When French President Emanuel Macron last month said that “Islam is a religion which is experiencing a crisis today, all over the world,” he was in fact generalizing and creating a stereotype that is false, insulting and misleading. He is no authority on Islam as a religion and should draw a line between the faith that is embraced by billions of people, and what is now called “political Islam,” in its various manifestations.

What Macron should focus on instead is the state of France’s 5 million Muslim citizens, most of whom were born in the country. What he should investigate are the causes of radicalization among the nation’s Muslim youths.

His remarks angered Muslims all over the world and triggered calls for a boycott of French products. Sadly, on Oct, 16, not long after Macron’s speech, a young Chechen murdered a French teacher who had shown blasphemous cartoons to his students. On Oct. 29, a Tunisian immigrant attacked worshippers in a Catholic church in Nice, killing three of them.

These are revolting murders that are condemned by all, especially French Muslims. Nothing can justify the killing of innocent people in the name of religion — any religion.

Following the two incidents, Macron should have shown the moral leadership that is needed in a polarized society. Even before the terrible murders, he should have initiated dialogue with Muslim organizations in France with the aim of addressing the challenges a majority of French Muslims face, especially the state’s failure to integrate many of them into society. The mainstream organizations have embraced the principles of the Republic, including the separation of church and state, but those on the fringes feel left out and so are easy prey for extremists.

France has a Muslim problem and has had it for some time. There have been 36 terrorist attacks in the country attributed to Muslims in the past eight years. This week Macron said he understood the feelings of Muslims about the offensive cartoons.

“I understand and respect that we can be shocked by these caricatures,” he said. “I will never accept that we can justify physical violence for these caricatures and I will always defend in my country the freedom to say, to write, to think, to draw.”

Finding a common ground on which the principles of the Republic and freedom of worship can coexist is something that must be arrived at without foreign interference. It must be done through dialogue and cooperation, rather than incitement.

This week more than 20 European Muslim organizations called on the French president to end his “divisive rhetoric” and show moral leadership. In an open letter, they said that “maligning Islam and your own Muslim citizens, closing mainstream mosques, Muslim and humanitarian rights organizations, and using this as an opportunity to stir up further hatred, has given further encouragement to racists and violent extremists.”

The main issue for French Muslims is socioeconomic and has to do with schooling, social integration and economic opportunities. The state is right to curtail foreign intervention but it must also provide alternatives and give young French Muslims the opportunity to succeed. Even Macron, in his controversial speech, admitted that the country’s Muslim citizens have been let down by successive governments. He said that France has created its own “separatism” by dumping poorer people in suburban ghettos with poor-quality housing and few jobs.

Macron should be wary of unleashing waves of Islamophobia in France that would target millions of moderate and law-abiding Muslims. According to studies, only a minority of French Muslims embraces a radical, paranoid, anti-Western version of Islam.

For Macron and his ministers to talk about civil war, a fight to death and France under siege is not the right way to resolve the nation’s Islamist crisis.

Dark clouds are looming as the far right prepares to attempt to take over in coming elections, banking on rising hatred and distrust within French society.

On the other hand, one should not fall for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opportunistic rhetoric targeting Macron. His tussle with the French president transcends religion and is purely political. Erdogan’s incitement is both dangerous and reckless. His controversial approach to regional politics has undermined his credibility both at home and abroad. His use of religion to mobilize followers seeks to divide and serves no good purpose.

Last Friday the French Council of the Muslim Faith circulated a sermon to mosques that said this: “The law of the Republic permits these cartoons but obliges no one to like them. We can even detest them. But nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies murder.”

This is the kind of message French Muslims should embrace.

Article first published in Arab News.

Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. Twitter: @plato010

Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II were volunteers, conscripts and those otherwise induced to join who served in Nazi Germany’s armed forces during World War II.

In German war-time propaganda those who volunteered for service were referred to as Freiwillige (“volunteers”). At the same time, many non-Germans in the German armed forces were conscripts or recruited from prisoner-of-war camps.

The term Freiwillige was used in Nazi propaganda to describe non-German Europeans (neither Reichsdeutsche nor Volksdeutsche) who volunteered to fight for the Third Reich during World War II. Though largely recruited from occupied countries, they also came from co-belligerent, neutral, and even active enemy nations. From April 1940 forward, Himmler began recruiting men for the Waffen-SS from among the West and Northern European people of Norway and the Low Countries.

In 1941, the SS-Viking Division composed of Flemish, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian volunteers was formed and placed under German command. Shortly thereafter, Waffen-SS troops were added from Latvia, Estonia, and elsewhere.

When Red Army soldiers were captured by the invading German forces for instance, significant numbers of the POWs began immediately aiding the Wehrmacht. Along with the forces allied to the Nazis, the Russians comprised the “largest contingent of foreign auxiliary troops on the German side with upwards of one million men”.

Many of the foreign volunteers fought in either the Waffen-SS or the Wehrmacht. Generally the non-Germanic troops were permitted into the Wehrmacht whereas the Germanic volunteers were recruited into the service of the Waffen-SS as part of propaganda-driven “pan-Germanic army” of the future.

Besides helping the Germans fight foreign auxiliary units across occupied Europe enforced order in the occupied territories, oversaw forced labor, participated in Nazi security warfare, and assisted in the killing of the Jewish population during the Holocaust.

On the Eastern Front the volunteers and conscripts in the Ostlegionen comprised a fighting force equivalent of 30 German divisions by the end of 1943. By mid-1944 upwards of 600,000 troops of the Eastern Legions/Troops were assembled under the command of General Ernst-August Köstring, stemming mostly from the periphery of the Soviet empire; they consisted of non-Slavic Muslim minorities like the Turkestanis, the Volga Tatars, Northern Caucasians, and Azerbaijanis, as well as Georgians and Armenians.

The overall effectiveness of Nazi Germany’s military collaborators was described by one German commander as one-fifth good, one-fifth bad, and three-fifths inconsistent. Many of the foreign volunteers fought under the banner of the swastika from areas outside Europe and were motivated by a desire for the freedom of their nations against Soviet domination or British imperialism.

Placing the volunteers from Eastern Europe who fought alongside the Germans into context, German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller comments that people in countries from Finland to Romania, “suddenly found themselves caught between the ‘red’ hammer and the ‘brown’ anvil”, leaving them little in terms of options; their subsequent collective “shock over German ruthlessness was surpassed only by their dislike for and even hatred of the Soviet Union”.

The non-German troops thus comprised a wide range of ethnicities, ranging from the mainly Turkic peoples in the Ostlegionen to the Muslim Slavs in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar and the Indians of the Indische Legion (the Indian National Army fought against the British on the Japanese side). For the majority of volunteers from Muslim communities, their animosity against the Soviets stemmed from their anti-Russian feelings, religious impulses (their disdain for Soviet atheism for example), coupled by the negative experience of Stalin’s policies on nationality, and by the corresponding disruption to their way of life.

Ultimately, the European collaborators remained subordinated to German oversight and were “kept on a short leash.”

Rolf-Dieter Müller puts the figures for the European Wehrmacht allies and volunteers who fought in the eastern campaign at approximately one-million men in total, which he claims gives substantial reason to “re-evaluate” the “military dimensions” of the overall collaboration.

In Müller’s estimation, the Wehrmacht would not have been capable of making it to Moscow in 1941 were it not for the Finnish, Hungarian, and Romanian conscripts, operations in the Volga and Caucasus in 1942 would have ground to a halt without the additional forces; and following the disaster at Stalingrad, it was foreign conscripts and volunteers (60,000 troops) fighting partisans in the Balkans which enabled the Germans to stabilize the Eastern Front in Finland and the Ukraine.

Müller also carefully reminds readers that on top of the co-opted aide of collaborators, millions of foreign laborers were forced to help provide the Nazis with the needed material resources to carry on the war far longer than otherwise possible without their toils

Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He often writes about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.