‘Jihad for the Kaiser’: The German-Ottoman alliance to arm Muslims against Britain

Ali Abdel-Aal

During the First World War, Germany directed the religious passion of Muslims for its interests in the war. After its alliance with the Ottoman Empire, Germany set up training camps for jihadists on its soil.

By 1914, the Western colonial powers realized that Islam had demonstrated anti-colonial power in Muslim countries, and some of these forces wanted to employ or neutralize Islam as much as they could.

Halbmondlager camp

In the midst of the fierce battle with the Allied nations, Germany sought to mobilize the religious passion of Muslims and their revival for jihad against the British and French forces, in a country with more than 300 million Muslims.

As part of its jihad project, Germany set up the Halbmondlager (Half Moon Camp) in 1915 to train jihadists near Berlin, specifically in Zossen Wünsdorf area of eastern Germany, in clear indication of the “crescent” as a sign for Muslims.

The aim of the camp started with gathering Muslim prisoners who were fighting for Britain and France and were captured by the Germans. The German forces had detained Muslim soldiers of Moroccan, Algerian, Indian, Siberian, Senegalese and Tatar origin, among others.

About 15,000 of these prisoners were placed in the Halbmondlager camp, mainly Arab and African prisoners who were working with the British army, while Muslim prisoners working with the Russian army were placed in another nearby camp.

German agreement with the Ottomans

With the German desire to win the hearts of these people and persuade them to change their loyalties, the Germans invited them to wage jihad as a duty urged by Islam and to liberate the Muslim lands that had been occupied.

During this period, and before it, several agreements were concluded between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Germany played the role of an ally of the Islamic caliphate that respects the feelings of Muslims, and this point in particular was the most influential factor in determining the shape of life within the Halbmondlager.

The Germans built a mosque in the Halbmondlager for the prisoners to pray at, seeking to gain their sympathy. This was the first mosque in Germany, established July 13, 1915. An imam was designated, and Muslim scholars and thinkers were invited to the camp in order to address the detainees about jihad and give enthusiastic sermons urging the fighters to join the war against the English and French infidels.

The mosque was reportedly built with funding from Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II for the Muslims, who were treated with great benevolence and interest.

The camp, which held about 5,000 mostly Muslim detainees, also included a library that contained copies the Noble Quran. The Muslims were given absolute freedom to read and worship.

Propaganda for Germany, jihad for the Kaiser

The Halbmondlager camp was widely used as a propaganda medium to polish the image of Germany in the hearts of Muslims. When the Ottoman Sultan – in coordination with Germany – announced from a mosque in Istanbul that Britain, France and Russia were enemies of Islam, the German ambassador in the city followed with a similar announcement from the embassy balcony while surrounded by 14 of the Muslim prisoners from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

German orientalist Max Freiher von Oppenheim, the spiritual father of the German jihadist experiment, established an office to manage the camp and also to transmit what is going on in the world. One of the most prominent things he did was to produce a postage stamp bearing the image of the unique mosque inside the camp. Post cards were also printed showing prisoners participating in sports, religious activities and the slaughter of halal animals.

Oppenheim had described Islam at the time as “one of our most important weapons” in the struggle against England.

It was Oppenheim who promoted rumors that France was planning to demolish the Kaaba and transfer the Black Stone to the Louvre, urging Muslims to rise up to protect their sanctuaries. Therefore, in 1915, Germany attracted a good number of Muslims to Berlin to contribute to the campaign of declaring jihad, as there were about 60 journalists and Muslim scholars working at the “Jihad Center” in the German capital, according to the documentary “Dschihad für den Kaiser” (Jihad for the Kaiser), which aired on the German channel ZDF.

The Tunisian Sheikh Saleh Al Cherif assumed responsibility for the religious propagation activity in the camp. In cooperation with Oppenheim and Sheikh Muhammad Al-Khidr Hussein, he issued the newspaper Al-Jihad, which was distributed to the Muslims in the camp.

Recently published records from the First World War paint a picture of life inside the Halbmondlager camp. One of the prisoners, a Moroccan farmer named Ahmed bin Hussein, had said, “They provided us with the best food and meat of all kinds, bearing in mind that pork was never one of them. Each prisoner was given three blankets, new clothes and a pair of shoes. They cared about our health and hygiene, and our hair was shaved periodically. Ottoman sheikhs and military delegates used to visit the camp with the aim of getting us to volunteer and fight for the Ottoman and German armies motivated by jihad for the sake of Islam.”

German officials, with the help of Muslim and Arab citizens, exerted great efforts and allocated considerable funds to invest in jihad and to spread its ideas throughout the many regions of the Muslim world. But despite this material and moral support from both parties, the results achieved on the ground were weak.

The war ended in the fall of 1918 with the defeat of both Germany and the Ottoman Empire, although the reasons for the defeat were not due to these soldiers.

However, the arrival of the American forces in France in July 1917 constituted a significant shift in the course of the war, as they helped the Allied armies launch a counter-attack on the Germans, who retreated at the same time the Allies eliminated the Ottoman forces in Syria and Egypt.

In the Balkans, the Allies forced Bulgaria to surrender in September 1918, and the Ottoman Empire sought an armistice in October of the same year, followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the beginning of November. Germany did not want to surrender, but the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 after it failed to confront Allied trio on its own.