Largely thanks to the extraordinarily retentive memory of Rasul, CICI was
able to construct a highly detailed historical narrative of the operation and
its participants, which is contained in Tel Afar Parachute Expedition Report
No. 3, 12 February 1945, AIR 29/2513, TNA (also at WO208/3095,
TNA). The 845th replaced the Luftwaffe’s Deutsch-Arabische
Lehrabteilung (German-Arab Training Detachment [DAL]) on 5 June
1943 in Döllersheim, Austria; they were then transferred to Greece in
August 1943 and to Yugoslavia in October 1944. For an overview of
Muslim formations in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, see David
Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 219–44.
This Italian version of the Arab Legion was spun off from the DAL in the
spring of 1942, mainly to appease the Italians, who claimed precedence in
Arab affairs. Never numbering more than about 100 Arabs, mostly
Palestinians, it was also supposed to form the nucleus of the ex-Mufti’s
huge fantasy army in North Africa. The unit (originally Centro Militare
‘A’) served no useful purpose and was constantly restationed around Italy,
going by various names until the Italian surrender in 1943. P. Crociani and
Pier Paolo Battistelli, Italian Army Elite Units and Special Forces 1940–43
(Oxford: Osprey, 2011), 53–4; R. Dieterich, ‘Rasid Ali al-Kaylani in Berlin:
Ein irakischer Nationalist in NS-Deutschland,’ Al-Rafidayn: Jahrbuch zur
Geschichte und Kultur des Modernen Iraq 3 (1995): 63; Klaus Gensicke,
The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis: The Berlin Years (London: Vallentine
Mitchell, 2011), 225; Hirszowicz, Third Reich, 250–9; Fritz Grobba,
Männer und Mächte im Orient: 25 Jahre diplomatischer Tätigkeit im Orient
(Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1967), 294–303.
The ex-Mufti encountered as many as 60 Arabs in training on a visit to the
sabotage school in The Hague in August 1943. Barry Rubin and Wolfgang
G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 153.
Charlottenburg was their favourite haunt—the famous Café Kranzler on
the Kurfürstendamm, as well as the Astor-Filmtheater and Kurfürsten-
Theater cinemas. They also visited the Berlin Zoo and occasionally trav-
elled out to the lakes at Wannsee. Tel Afar Parachute Expedition Report
No. 3, 12 February 1945, AIR 29/2513, TNA.
For al-Qawuqji, who spent most of the war in Germany and ultimately
served on the staff of Sonderstab FELMY, see Gerhard Höpp, ‘Ruhmloses
Zwischenspiel: Fawzi al-Qawuqji in Deutschland, 1941–1947,’
Al-Rafidayn: Jahrbuch zur Geschichte und Kultur des Modernen Iraq 3
(1995): 19–46; Laila Parsons, The Commander: Fawzi Al-Qawuqji and the
Fight for Arab Independence 1914–1948 (London: Saqi, 2017), with the
