ABSTRACT
T h e Germans had been preparing themselves to deal with Near and Mid-Eastern affairs for some time before Haddad arrived in Berlin. Furthermore, the Abwehr had been active in that
part of the world at least since August 1940 by agreement with the Auswärtiges Amt.1 This activity developed most freely in Syria, where conditions had been very favourable since the collapse of France. Alfred Roser of the Auswärtiges Amt went to this country on behalf of the Abwehr in the early autumn of 1940. From there he forwarded to Berlin his evaluation of the situation and of the opportunities for activity in the ‘Arab areas’ and in Syria in particular.* But this was not enough to deal with the new situation that had arisen by the end of 1940 and the Auswärtiges Amt began to work out German policy towards the Arab countries. By that time certain changes could be observed in the standpoint of German officials as compared with that of September-October 1940, when the GermanItalian Declaration of October 23rd of that year was prepared. In his notes for the December 9th, 1940, conference at the office of the Secretary of State, Wilhelm Melchers-chief of the Report Section Pol YII and present (1962) Ambassador of the German Federal Republic to New Delhi-analysed the situation in the Arab countries. He pointed to the tension in Syria and Iraq, to the Arab peoples’ clear antipathy to the Italians and to the growing activity of the British and Gaullists. Melchers expressed fear that the Arabs’ disillusionment with German passivity might cause them to incline
towards the British, and that this might have a decisive effect on the outcome of the war in the Eastern Mediterranean, which might in turn create a catastrophic situation in North Africa. He proposed that Italy’s basic hegemony over the Arab countries should not be questioned and that the Germans should again undertake the preparation of a written declaration which would recognise the rights of the Arabs and Egyptians to political freedom and self-determination. The declaration was to contain a promise for the solution of the Jewish question and a suggestion for the creation of an independent Great Syria. In Melchers’s opinion, a delegation of the German truce commission should proceed to Syria. Despite his reservation that ‘the Arabs’ national, military, cultural and state building powers should not be overestimated’, Melchers hoped that even a partial realisation of some Arab demands would rouse the whole Arab world and perhaps even North Africa.2
