ON JULY 25, 1940, JUST AFTER THE FALL OF FRANCE and at the outset of the Battle of Britain, retired German diplomat Max von Oppenheim sent Berlin's Foreign Office a seven-page memorandum. It was time, he argued, for a comprehensive strategy to mobilize the Islamic world against the British Empire.

Oppenheim knew the concept well; few had shaped Germany's policy towards Islam in late imperial period and during the First World War as much as he had. Yet, the memo created few ripples at the Foreign Office. German officials showed little interest in the Middle East, and even less in the wider Muslim world. Hitler's plans were focused on eastern Europe. In the non-European world, Berlin acknowledged the imperial interests of Italy and Spain, which Hitler sought as allies. A policy of Muslim mobilization was deemed unnecessary.

As Germany's war expanded into Muslim-populated lands, that outlook changed.

In 1941, with German troops fighting in North Africa and advancing toward the Middle East, policymakers in Berlin began considering the strategic role of Islam more systematically. In November, German diplomat Eberhard von Stohrer wrote a memo asserting that the Muslim world would soon become important to the overall war. After the defeat of France, he wrote, Germany had gained an "outstanding position" and won sympathy "in the eyes of the Muslims" by fighting Britain, "the suppressor of wide-reaching Islamic areas." Convinced that Nazi ideology was aligned with "many Islamic principles," Stohrer claimed that in the Muslim world, Hitler already held a "a pre-eminent position because of his fight against Judaism." He suggested that there should be "an extensive Islam program," including a statement about the "general attitude of the Third Reich toward Islam."

In the following months, as more and more officials in Berlin became convinced of such a scheme, Nazi Germany made significant attempts to promote an alliance with the 'Muslim world' against their alleged common enemies: the British Empire, the Soviet Union, America, and the Jews. This policy was first targeted at the populations in North Africa and the Middle East, but was soon expanded toward Muslims in the Balkans and the Soviet Union. In the end, almost all parts of the regime, from the Foreign Office and the Propaganda Ministry to the Wehrmacht and the SS, became involved in the efforts to promote Germany's as a patron and liberator of Islam.

THE ATTEMPTS TO COURT MUSLIMS AROUND THE WORLD were first and foremost motivated by material interests and strategic concerns, not ideology. The willingness to deal pragmatically with questions of race, as well as the lack of anti-Islamic attitudes among the Nazi leadership, made the promotion of such an alliance possible.

Indeed, the most obvious obstacle to an inclusive policy towards Muslims was, of course, Nazi racism. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had postulated the racial inferiority of non-European peoples. Praising the idea of European imperial hegemony, he had ridiculed anti-imperial movements as a "coalition of cripples," which because of "racial inferiority" could never be an ally of the German...