Review of the Monograph by D. Motadel “Islam in the Politics of Nazi Germany (1939-1945)”
The reviewer analyzes the monograph by David Motadel “Islam in the Politics of Nazi Germany (1939-1945)” published in German in 2014 and subsequently, on the wave of popularity, reprinted in Turkish (2015), German (2017, 2018), French, Persian (2019), Spanish and Italian (2020) and in Russian in 2020. The review focuses specifically on the fourth chapter, “Islam and the War on the Eastern Front”, since it is in this part of the book that the policy of the Nazis towards Soviet Muslims is described to the fullest. The reviewer questions the correctness of some of the conclusions in this monograph and points to the absence of references to historical documents mentioned in the book and allegedly used by the author when writing the work in the archives of Moscow and Simferopol. Meanwhile, such archives as the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), the Central State Archive of Moscow (TsGA of Moscow), hold the documents whose analysis would provide objective answers to the questions posed by Motadel. The reviewer also notes some factual errors and believes that, taken together, all this gives the study a tendentious character, and David Motadel himself, in accordance with the tradition of anti-Sovietism, seems to be unwilling to show to the Western reader the heroism of Soviet Muslims and the valiant pages of the history of the USSR.