By the end of the Second World War there were soldiers of more than
thirty different nationalities in the Waffen-SS, and Reich Germans themselves
were in the minority. How did a regime that believed so completely in the racial
superiority of its population come to welcome hundreds of thousands of
foreigners into its military elite? Who were these foreign SS men, and why did
they fight so long and so hard for such a murderous regime?
Hitler’s Jihadis provides an analysis of some of the most intriguing
and controversial of these foreign volunteers – the thousands of Muslims, from
as far away as India who wore
the SS double lightning flashes alongside their erstwhile conquerors. Jonathan
Trigg gives an insight into the pre-war politics that inspired these Islamic
volunteers, who for the most part would not survive. Those who did survive the
war and the bloody retribution that followed saw the reputation of the units in
which they had served berated as militarily inept and castigated for atrocities
against unarmed civilians. Using first-hand accounts and official records,
Hitler’s Jihadis peels away the propaganda to reveal the complexity that lies at
the heart of the story of Hitler’s most unlikely
‘Aryans’.
