This was discussed briefly in another thread recently, and I was thinking more about it so I decided to make a question dedicated to it to see if someone has any serious knowledge on the issue.
The premise is that after the dissolution of the third reich, numbers of higher ranking Nazis fled to various places (primarily S. America, Spain, and middle eastern countries like Egypt). Similarly, before and during WW2, lots of German artists and architects who would have been described as degenerate fled as well. Many went to America, but there was a group who ended up in Tel Aviv and developed The White City to Bauhaus principles.
So my curiosity is whether or not this divide of Nazis and German ex-pats had any impact later on to the tensions in this large, complex region. Alternatively, ignoring the bauhaus, did the influx of Nazis alone create the groundwork for future tension? Or is all this superfluous and tensions developed for their own reasons outside of this footnote?
Thanks for any thoughts you have!
Between 1945 and the mid-1960's, several hundred Nazis (in this case, Nazis signify men who once belonged to the SS, had committed war crimes or had an influential contacts with the high ranking members of the Third Reich, such as through industry) fled to the Middle East. Some of them fled directly there after the war, some of them fled to South America first and then to the Middle East and many fled during the 1950's and 1960's when they were being revealed and hunted down by West German authorities and saw no other way than to escape justice in the Middle East.
Throughout the 1950's and into the 60's, the western media was filled with rather imaginative reports of how it was Nazis who dictated the policies behind dictatorial regimes in Egypt and Syria, and that they had a major influence there in their continuous war on Jews (Israel). Quite often are men like Otto Skorzeny mentioned in this and lists of alleged Nazis have been shared and spread by men like Simon Wiesenthal that shows names of Nazis who were alleged to be working for these regimes. The truth is that the few Nazis that did end up having contact with the local government (because most simply chose to remain anonymous and pick up a local trade) had barely any impact at all and were more often than none barely allowed to meet the men in charge. For example, the Egyptian Secret Police recruited plenty of former Nazis as advisors but there is very little proof that these Nazis had any impact at all. From what we know about these advisors from the Egyptians that worked with them, they were kept at an arms length and essentially told to write down their experiences rather than to teach "in the field". Other Nazis were recruited in the late 1950's to create missiles (along the lines of the V-2) in a Egyptian program that failed spectacularly but whose involvement of former Third Reich personnel was used by Israel to gain propaganda for their cause.
There are two examples of when a former Nazi actually did have an impact on the political climate of the Middle East. Walter Rauff was a murderer on the run. Responsible for the deaths of at least 100 000 people, he had been a member of the SS since the late 1930's and had a personal involvement in the Holocaust. In 1948, Walter Rauff appears in Syria after escaping from an American POW camp in Italy. Rauff found himself involved with the organization of the nascent Syrian military intelligence agency during a time of a weak democracy which would fall just a year later. This is where Rauff plays a role. Thanks to recently revealed CIA documents, we can be more certain that he might have played a role in the overthrow of the Syrian government and the installation of Colonel Husni al-Zaim as its dictator. While we can't unfortunately be 100 % certain (even though many of the CIA sources are deemed reliable regarding this point), we do know that Rauff became one of al-Zaim's closest aides in the aftermath of the coup. Neither al-Zaim nor Rauff would last more than a couple of months after this however. al-Zaim was overthrown and killed by Sami al-Hinnawi and Adib al-Shishakli. Rauff was arrested and thrown into prison for his connections with al-Zaim but he was released days later and escaped through Lebanon to Italy where he ultimately ended up in Chile. I am currently researching Walter Rauff (and other Nazis) possible involvement in the Chilean secret police, DINA, during the Pinochet regime.
Another man was Johann von Leers. von Leers had been a member of the NSDAP since 1929. A rabid anti-Semite, he made himself a name as a Nazi propagandist and wrote several books and essays where he spread hate towards the Jews in Europe. After the war, von Leers escaped to Argentina where he kept his anti-semitic hate going with continuous contribution to the neo-nazi newspaper Der Weg. In 1956, Cairo invited von Leers to work with them as their own anti-Israeli (and in the process, anti-semitic) propaganda began to pick up pace. von Leers accepted the offer and took his place in the Egyptian government's Institute for the Study of Zionism, a propaganda bureau which was filled with both Egyptians and former Nazis (and right-wing extremists) who all collaborated on spreading the message of antisemitism, Holocaust denial (von Leers, however, was proud over the Holocaust and never denied it) and attacks on Israel's right to exist. What made von Leers role so important was the fact that he was the most high ranking and well-known Nazi propagandist in the Middle East and his grasp of language made it easy for him to translate and spread Nazi (and older) anti-semitic propaganda throughout the Middle East. It was propaganda such as this coming from Egypt that escalated the Israeli-Arab conflict even further. I am certain that /u/tayaravaknin can speak more on how Arab propaganda affected the Israeli stance towards Egypt in the time leading up to the Six-Day War.
Beyond this however, we do not have enough evidence to prove any further, important involvement. The Nazis and other Germans that once belonged to the armed forces of Nazi Germany had a relatively short period of activity in the Middle East. By the mid-1960's, there almost no former Nazis or former Wehrmacht (etc.) members active as advisors, being effectively replaced by Soviet advisors. It seems that despite almost 15 years of helping to create both secret police organizations and to modernize and re-organize the armed forces of both Egypt and Syria, very little came out of it - even though these advisors did lay the groundwork which the Soviet advisors then continued to build up on.
Other persistent rumors, such as Otto Skorzeny training para-military groups in Gaza and essentially 'creating' Palestinian terrorism, have no basis in reality.
Sources:
Hakkorset och halvmånen: Nazister i Mellanöstern by Niclas Sennerteg (Natur & Kultur, 2014).
CIA's files on Walter Rauff, available through CIA's Historical Collections on this link. Simply search for 'Walter Rauff'.
The Canadian correspondent William Stevenson, working for the Toronto Star, was the man who revealed to the world that Johann von Leers was working for the Egyptian government in 1956 when he simply walked into his office and requested to speak with him. von Leers, surprisingly, agreed and was unusually candid. I can't seem to find a copy of the interview online, but it should be enlightening to anyone who is more interested in the man and the role he played in Egypt (in his own words).