Did Zionism Cause the Holocaust? A New Biography Says Yes.

Back in graduate school we used to snort derisively at the Great Man Theory of History, and not just because of that unfashionably sexist “Man.” Only a simpleton, we thought, would neglect world-historical forces like the rising middle class or the struggling proletariat in favor of the force of personality. But just try imagining modern history without Mao, Lenin, or Hitler. The really great and really terrible ones really did change the world.

Now, in Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East , Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz advance a dark-horse candidate for the Great Man theory: Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Palestine, close pal of Hitler and champion of Islamist radicalism, and the unchallenged leader of the Palestinians until he anointed Yasser Arafat as his successor in 1968. If the Germans hadn’t sent Lenin to St. Petersburg in that sealed railway car, no Bolshevik Revolution; if Hindenburg hadn’t named Hitler Chancellor, no Nazi regime. If the British hadn’t made al-Husaini Grand Mufti in 1921 in reward for his espionage work for them, no Final Solution… .

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From Tablet Magazine