The Muslim Nazis: Handschar

After nearly five years, we have finally arrived at the point where we began this series about the so-called “Muslim Nazis.” We still have a little ways to go before we can call this story complete, but the image that inspired this half-decade deep dive into one of the darkest and strangest corners of the Second World War can finally be fully developed.

It took a journey across two continents and multiple countries, and context that spans two of the most—if not the most—controversial historical developments of the twentieth century, that is, the nascent Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the birth, death, and civil war of the old Yugoslavian kingdom. Only such a bizarre creation as the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the Third Reich’s SS could result from such a complex web of geopolitics, nefarious figures, and chaotic and unbelievably violent forces and events. And yet, there was always a human side to this story.

The human side came not from the great figures of the story—the Grand Mufti’s or the Heinrich Himmler’s—but rather the men themselves and their own accounts of just what happened to bring them, the sons of Bosnia, into the arms of the Nazis, to say nothing of the ghastly crimes many of them committed. Their human qualities do not diminish the horror to which they contributed by a long shot, but they do help us understand the position they and so many like them were in. This is, in that sense, their story.

But it is the story of so much more. There are never-before suggested revelations about the Handschar that can be pieced together from the information we cover here, including the likely final ambition the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini had for the Division. This and more are covered in the greatest depth in this penultimate installment of History Impossible’s “Muslim Nazis” series.

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