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CHAPTER 3 Memoirs Do Not Deceive: Syrians Confront Fascism and Nazism— as Reflected in the Memoirs of Syrian Political Leaders and Intellectuals Eyal zissEr Nassuh Babil (1905–1986) was one of Syria’s leading journalists during the first years of the country’s independence. He was the owner and editor of Damascus’s leading daily newspaper in those days, al-Ayyam, which he purchased in 1932. He also served as chairman of the Association of Syrian Journalists from 1943 until 1963, when the Ba‘th Party carried out its coup d’état. Babil also tried his hand at politics. He linked up at first with ‘Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, leader of the People’s Party, and after Shahbandar was assassinated in 1940, he drew close to Shukri al-Quwatli, one of the prominent leaders of the National Bloc (al-Kutla al-Wataniyya).1 In 1987, after Babil’s death, his memoirs were published under the title Sihafa wa Siyasa: Suriyya fi al-Qarn al-‘Ishrin (Journalism and politics: Syria in the twentieth century). In this book, written from the distance of a generation, Babil surveyed the path he had taken in his public and political activity from the 1920s to the 1960s, casting light on what was happening in Syria during one of the most gripping periods in the country ’s history. Light is also cast on the issue at the center of this study, the response of Syrian public opinion to the challenge of Nazism and Fascism during the 1930s and 1940s as reflected in the backward-looking memoirs of Syrian leaders, intellectuals, and journalists. Or perhaps the question should be phrased somewhat differently: what was the image of those years that the Syrian writers of memoirs seek to reconstruct, and how did they want people to remember the way in which the Syrian public responded to Nazism and Fascism? In this regard, the chapter in Babil’s memoirs dealing with the outbreak of World War II is of particular interest.There he notes that the outbreak of the war and its course aroused great interest among the Syrian public. 74 Syria and Lebanon The victories reaped by Hitler became the talk of the day, and it seems as if many Syrians welcomed them. This happened as a way of expressing their anger against France and England, and even as a way of showing their desire to take revenge against those empires for the policies they adopted after World War I that alienated them from the Arabs. Nevertheless, the educated stratum of Syrian society viewed with worry what might happen if the Axis powers—Germany and Italy—actually won the war. Among this class the concern was clearly evident that Syria and Lebanon might be handed over to Italy, in accord with a secret agreement between the two Axis powers on how to divide up the spheres of influence between them.2 Babil thus testifies to the existence on the Syrian street of a mood of satisfaction over the victories Nazi Germany achieved at the beginning of World War II. At the same time, however, he shows that there was a sense of reservation, and even concern, especially among the Syrian elite of those days, over the possible implications of a German victory for the future of Syria and Lebanon. Evidence of these attitudes is also to be found in the memoirs of the Syrian politician and longtime minister of defense during the Hafiz alAsad era, Mustafa Talas (b. 1932). Talas was just a young boy in the days of World War II, a pupil in the school in his village of al-Rustan near the town of Hims. Talas’s book of memoirs, Mir‘at Hayati (The story of my life), published in Damascus in 1992, is clearly marked by a tone of selfjustification after the event. This is what he has to say there: I shall not hide from the reader that people’s hearts and feelings were inclined toward the Nazis at that time. We all hoped that Germany would be victorious, and we also hoped that with this victory it would free us from the scourge of French imperialism. The military victories achieved by the German army on the various battle fronts aroused in us a feeling of identification and pride as well. After all, the significance of the class struggle had not yet become sufficiently clear in Syria of those days. At the same time, the reality on the ground taught that the wealthy...

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