Hey everybody, hope you’re all well. I bet you’re wondering why this post is popping up; after all, “The Muslim Nazis” isn’t over yet, is it? Worry not, I’m not calling it a day on this project so close to the finish line. However, I recently realized that there was a problem when someone asked me what episodes served as best advertisements for History Impossible. Naturally, I mentioned “The Muslim Nazis” since it’s been the focus of my research and writing and podcasting for so damn long, but then I realized something: the series can’t really be found in a singular, central place. After all, its first season aired in 2021, its second in 2023, and its third in 2025-2026 (and into 2027 with the finale of course).
So for anyone who is only now getting acquainted with my work on History Impossible and wants to know where the best place to start is, look no further than the ongoing-yet-soon-to-conclude “The Muslim Nazis” series. Links to all of the episodes, with summaries of the seasons in question, can be found here and will always be found here, with the final episode getting its own link whenever it finally goes up in 2027. I know it’s a lot of material to go through—it was a lot for me too!—but having it all in one place will likely make getting caught up and introducing newcomers to History Impossible a lot easier for everyone. And to these newcomers: welcome! It’s good to have you here.
Season 1 (2021)
The first season of “The Muslim Nazis” introduces the core image of the entire series: men dressed in the uniforms of the SS praying to Mecca. From there, we look at Imperial Germany’s strange relationship with Islam and the Islamic world as part of its efforts to play catch-up in the Great Game of empire in the early 20th century. From there, we move to the Palestinian Mandate in the wake of the First World War, where Zionists and Arab nationalists are fighting for control of the Holy Land and where the British Empire is fighting, without much success, to keep a lid on the whole thing. It’s in this conflict we’re introduced to the “protagonist” of sorts to this series, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. We follow him through the 1920s to the early 1940s, watching him transform from a perhaps narcissistic idealist to a power hungry cynic to an outright nihilist fueled only by a seething hatred of Jews. The season closes with how it began, with Hajj Amin grasping the hand of the man whose own hatred for Jews matched Hajj Amin’s own: Adolf Hitler. The nascent alliance between Nazism and radical Islamism could now begin.
Episode 1: Early Adventures with German Islamophilia
Episode 2: The Mufti
Episode 3: Nineteen Twenty Nine
Episode 4: Farhud
Episode 5: Taking Hitler By the Hand
Season 2 (2023)
The second season, more appropriately titled “The Balkan Inferno,” might initially feel like a detour, and in a way, it is. However, to understand the titular “Muslim Nazis” one must understand perhaps the one part of the Western world more complex than the Palestinian Mandate in the early 20th century: the lands that would come to be known as Yugoslavia. This is where it all goes down. At the onset of this trilogy, we look at the violence that forged the peoples of these lands, the history of the Yugoslav concept, and its (first) destruction at the beginning of World War II. We then move into the truly horrifying nightmare that was the Yugoslav region after the Nazi partition and installation of the Croatian ultranationalist puppet state of the Ustashe, and the multi-sided civil war that pitted families against one another, with loyalties being reduced solely to religious and supposed ethnic differences. And finally, we look at the people of the region who were forced into the background, and who all along had the most poignant dream of self-determination of all South Slav peoples: the Bosnian Muslims. With no ideal options in front of them, many Bosniaks felt they only had one place to turn: the Nazis, whose curious ally from the Palestinian Mandate, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, might be the key to securing that dream.
Episode 1: The Yugoslav Vortex
Episode 2: A Heritage of Horror
Episode 3: The Bosnian Dream
Season 3 (2025-2027)
The third season of “The Muslim Nazis” brings the threads of the early Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the chaos of wartime Yugoslavia, and the Third Reich into focus, revealing the depraved depths of the Grand Mufti’s schemes and the lengths to which he would go to secure a truly Judenfrei future. The first episode looks directly at his work within the Third Reich, including his role in creating some of the Nazis’ largest foreign language propaganda operations, and even his effort to play a part in their Final Solution. The second episode brings the story back to the fractured Yugoslavia, and examines the budding relationship-of-necessity forged between many Muslim notables in Bosnia and the Third Reich, culminating in the formation of the Handschar Division, the titular “Muslim Nazis,” who we follow throughout their dramatic time fighting in the war until their final defeat.
The third and final episode will then cover…well, you’ll just have to wait and see.
Episode 1: The German Voice of Islam
Episode 2: Handschar
Episode 3: ???
Thanks again everyone.
