A Mosque in Munich : Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West

In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today Annotation. In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munichradical Islams first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the Wests first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today CONTENTS 9 CAST OF CHARACTERS 11 PROLOGUE 13 On the Edge of Town 13 HOT WARS 17 THE EASTERN FRONT 19 THE TURKOLOGIST 29 THE NAZI PROTOTYPE 38 COLD WARS 49 REVIVING THE OSTMINISTERIUM 51 THE KEY TO THE THIRD WORLD 81 LEARNING THEIR LESSON 92 "A POLITICALLY SMART ACT": THE MOSQUE IS CONCEIVED 107 DR. RAMADAN ARRIVES 120 MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE 141 THE NOVELIST'S TALE 155 WINNING THE MOSQUE 171 LOSING CONTROL 185 THE BROTHERHOOD TRIUMPHANT 197 BEYOND MUNICH 208 DEFINING THE DEBATE 218 I950S REDUX 233 EPILOGUE: Inside the Mosque 252 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 261 SOURCES 268 NDTES 278 INDEX 314 Explores the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, tracing its beginnings back to Nazi Germany's recruitment of Soviet Muslim POWs into anti-Soviet organizations and post-war use of Muslims by the CIA during the Cold War; and describes how militant Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood became associated with many major terrorist attacks in the West