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00:00:05They are two of the darkest figures in world history.
00:00:10Their names conjure images of hatred and terror on an unprecedented scale.
00:00:18Hitler and Hussein, their legacies are well known,
00:00:22yet few know the real story of how these two tyrants are actually linked in history.
00:00:28It is how Saddam's infamous Ba'ath party was modeled directly on the Nazis,
00:00:37how key an alliance with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany during World War II,
00:00:44and how a leading Arab would even become the founder of SS units
00:00:49charged with inflicting a reign of terror and bloodshed on the History Channel.
00:01:08March 2003. American and allied forces storm into Iraq.
00:01:15Their mission? Topple the government of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
00:01:25It takes just three weeks before the Iraqi armed forces are routed.
00:01:30American forces seize Baghdad.
00:01:32And scenes of U.S. troops inside Saddam Hussein's once magnificent palaces are broadcast around the world.
00:01:40His long beard and disheveled hair.
00:01:43It's hard to believe that this is a man who is charged with the sadistic murder of tens of thousands
00:01:49of his own people.
00:01:51A tyrant who personally tortured many of his victims.
00:01:56How did Saddam Hussein rise to the pinnacle of power in Iraq?
00:02:01Who really were the Ba'athists? The party that Saddam controlled?
00:02:06What did they try to achieve?
00:02:10A little known by the German Nazi party.
00:02:21The story of Saddam Hussein, the Nazi party, and the...
00:02:24It starts in the 1930s, in the French capital, Paris.
00:02:30Aflouk will later go on to found and lead the Ba'ath party,
00:02:34and become one of the most important influences in the life of Saddam Hussein.
00:02:43Michel Aflouk is the son of a prosperous Syrian-Lebanese merchant family.
00:02:48Syria is a French colony.
00:02:50And it is the custom for the rich to send their sons to be educated in France.
00:02:57The experience will lead many young Syrians to admire French democracy.
00:03:04But not Michel Aflouk.
00:03:11The kind of parliamentary democracy that the French had brought to Syria and Lebanon was largely a sham.
00:03:18So there were a lot of young people in Lebanon and Syria who saw parliamentary democracy,
00:03:23as it was practiced there, as completely bogus.
00:03:27Europe in the 1930s is a hotbed of revolutionary politics.
00:03:32The continent is ravaged by mass unemployment and is fertile ground for extremist ideologies.
00:03:40In Germany, the Nazi party has come to power.
00:03:49With their parades and uniforms and dangerous ideas, the fascists give the illusion of hope to those who have lost
00:03:58everything.
00:03:59The Nazis blame Jews and communists for all of Europe's ills.
00:04:09But for Michel Aflouk, the Nazi party has an instant appeal.
00:04:15Hitler promises that Germany will correct the unjust legacy of the First World War.
00:04:22His words resonate powerfully with us.
00:04:25During World War I, the Arab lands had formed part of the ancient Ottoman Turkish Empire.
00:04:32In 1914, the empire declared war on Russia, an ally of the British and French, and joined forces with Germany.
00:04:41In response, the allies declared war on Turkey.
00:04:44The British, through their agent, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, promised the Arab tribes that by fighting the Turks and
00:04:51Germans,
00:04:52they would get a massive independent Arab state after the war, stretching all the way from Syria to Yemen.
00:05:01The war ended in defeat for the Germans and the Ottoman Empire.
00:05:05But in 1919, in the post-war carve-up of their territory, the Arab tribes had learned a harsh lesson
00:05:13in the politics of war.
00:05:20As the defeated Turkish Empire is broken up, the British will control the world's oil.
00:05:28To add insult to injury, the British go on to promise a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.
00:05:34Without concern, in their attempts to undermine the Ottoman Empire simultaneously, they were also promoting a Zionist cause as well.
00:05:43And we would later see that the side-by-side would have for the British and then indeed the Middle
00:05:48East.
00:05:48The carve-up of the Arab world by the colonial powers was a bitter betrayal.
00:05:54Now, almost two decades later, Afluk believes that the Arab peoples can still achieve independence, but only if they unite.
00:06:02As his political model, Afluk looks to one man, Adolf Hitler.
00:06:08Afluk returns to Syria and with like-minded companions begins what he calls study circles, holding countless meetings all over
00:06:17the country.
00:06:18Afluk and his associates slowly begin to build what they call the Ba'ath movement.
00:06:24Ba'ath is the Arabic word for resurrection.
00:06:28Michel Afluk was a schoolteacher from Lebanon who was an Arab nationalist at heart.
00:06:33And in the 1940s began to organize a party, the Ba'ath party, the Arab Renaissance party, which gathered together
00:06:40like-minded Arab nationalists in Lebanon and in Syria.
00:06:47Like the Nazi party, as the Ba'ath party grows, it sees the established great powers, especially Britain, France and
00:06:55the United States, as the greatest obstacle to its vision.
00:07:00Under Hitler's enemies, intimidate others, and create its own destiny.
00:07:05The Ba'ath party means to follow Hitler's example in the Arab world.
00:07:14To Michel Afluk, the overriding aim of the Ba'ath party is to unite all the Arab peoples, from Morocco
00:07:22and across the entire country.
00:07:23The Ba'ath party will rule over the whole vast territory, creating a single powerful fatherland.
00:07:31The Ba'ath party was focused mainly on nationalistic issues, to unify or create the Arab nation.
00:07:38They believed that the Arab world should form one nation state, and therefore all the boundaries set up by the
00:07:44British and the French in the 1920s should be dismantled, and there should be one large Arab state.
00:07:54By the mid-1930s, the Nazi party inspires Arab nationalist groups all over the Middle East.
00:08:03In Egypt, the Young Egypt movement holds mass rallies and torchlight processions, imitating the Nazis.
00:08:12And in Syria, a movement that will later merge with the Ba'ath party even adopts the Nazi swastika as
00:08:19its emblem.
00:08:22A uniting theme between the Nazi party and many radical Arab nationalists is a vehement hatred of Jews.
00:08:31So there was a transport of ideas and structures, of authoritarian, totalitarian structures and ideas from Germany to the Middle
00:08:43East, especially to Syria and Iraq.
00:08:46The Ba'ath party was a fascist party. It was an Arab fascist party, one of many Arab fascist parties.
00:08:54All over the Middle East, Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, is translated into Arabic and sold in markets.
00:09:03This is all done with assistance from the Germans. Already for Nazi ideas is spreading.
00:09:10One thing you notice in the 1930s is increasingly…
00:09:18By the late 1930s, the Ba'ath movement is still in its infancy and its founder, Michel Aflouk, is barely
00:09:25known to the wider Arab public.
00:09:27But in the years to come, the party will grow into an organized, ruthless machine.
00:09:32One that will give Saddam Hussein an iron grip on Iraq.
00:09:36It will also form a savage, secret police whose massive military power will enable Saddam to threaten the stability of
00:09:44the whole Middle East, while brutally putting down all dissent.
00:09:51Why was the Ba'ath so terrifyingly affected?
00:09:57Because deep in the historical roots of the Ba'ath party was the hidden hand of Nazi Germany.
00:10:141936, Germany.
00:10:17Nazi persecution of German Jews is systematic and brutal.
00:10:26In charge of the campaign of racial purification is the chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
00:10:35But few now know that Himmler is also paying close attention to events in the Middle East.
00:10:41Already since Hitler's rise to power in 1933, 174,000 Jews have fled Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe for the
00:10:51safety of British-controlled Palestine.
00:10:54Now Himmler begins to toy with the idea of forcing the rest of Germany's Jews to follow.
00:11:00A massed, forced exodus.
00:11:03The first policy was Palestine.
00:11:06He intended later to surround Palestine and destroy them there in one convenient container.
00:11:12But for Himmler and his boss, Adolf Hitler, there is another reason for expanding their influence in the Middle East,
00:11:19especially Palestine.
00:11:21There, Arab nationalists bitterly opposed to the influx of Jews.
00:11:26By the Arab Palestinians against what they saw as Jewish incursions.
00:11:31This kind of expansion is in the hearts of Arab nationalists and the public at large.
00:11:39To many Palestinian Arabs, the arrival of European Jews from Germany, Russia and elsewhere, tolerated by the British administration, is
00:11:48deeply threatening.
00:11:51Once a small minority, Jews now number a third of the population.
00:11:55In Palestine and of Jewish settlement, a very discontented Palestine emerges and you have riots at the end of the
00:12:031920s and a revolt in the mid-1930s.
00:12:10Militant Arabs declare a general strike.
00:12:15And to pile on the pressure, organize a vicious campaign of violence against Jews and the British.
00:12:22It is carried out on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which the British fear to attack in case they inflame Muslim opinion
00:12:29around the world.
00:12:32Amin is a man with immense authority.
00:12:36He claims he is a descendant of the prophet Muhammad.
00:12:39And for years he has orchestrated opposition to the Jews and the British.
00:12:47Now, as president of a committee representing Arab parties, he calls for an immediate end to Jewish immigration and national
00:12:55independence for an Arab Palestine.
00:13:00Palestine and all Arab and Islamic land was held by Christians and Jews.
00:13:07As the revolt grows into a full-scale uprising, the British declare martial law.
00:13:12The entire country is put in lockdown.
00:13:15They rush 20,000 troops to Palestine to put down the rebels.
00:13:19But the Grand Mufti has secretly met with German and Italian intelligence agents.
00:13:25And the British suspect his forces are getting German arms.
00:13:30Desperately seeking a solution, the British offer to partition Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs.
00:13:39Jewish-Palestinians accept the proposal, but the Arabs led by the Grand Mufti refuse.
00:13:48What becomes known to Arabs as the Great Uprising will continue.
00:13:54It will cost the lives of more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews and 200 British before it's all over.
00:14:0215,000 people are wounded.
00:14:09In Germany, Adolf Hitler and his SS chief Heinrich Himmler see the situation in Palestine as an opportunity.
00:14:18If the British create a new Jewish state, could that be Germany's chance to expel its remaining Jews?
00:14:26Could the Arab nationalists prove useful allies of Germany?
00:14:31To find out, Heinrich Himmler sends a trusted emissary on a secret mission to the Middle East.
00:14:39Adolf Eichmann was one of the leading organizers of the extermination of Jews.
00:14:47He was the head of a related department and the security service.
00:14:52He visited himself Palestine and Egypt in 1937, looking for allies and partners and establishing networks.
00:15:04In Cairo, Eichmann meets a journalist, a member of the Grand Mufti's inner circle.
00:15:13One day the world will know Eichmann as a mass murderer.
00:15:16But now, in November 1937, he is sounding out anti-British Arabs.
00:15:26The Mufti is in hiding.
00:15:28But on his behalf, the journalists ask Eichmann for German money and arms with which to fight the British.
00:15:37He also makes it clear that Amin wants the Germans to stop Jewish immigration from Germany into Palestine.
00:15:47Four years earlier, the Grand Mufti had contacted the Germans, offering his help in supporting the Nazi cause in exchange
00:15:56for help against the British and the Jews.
00:15:58That time, he got a cool reception.
00:16:02Now, with World War II on the horizon, he hopes it will be different.
00:16:06But as his envoy reports back on his meeting with Eichmann, it is clear that although the Nazis support the
00:16:13Palestinian-Arab cause, they are cautious.
00:16:16They have no intention of giving aid on the massive scale the Mufti wants.
00:16:24In the summer of 1938, the Arab insurrection in Palestine against the British and Jews reaches a bloody climax.
00:16:3310,000 Arab fighters battle across the country.
00:16:36British authorities introduce draconian measures, imprisonment without trial, and demolishing the houses of suspected rebels.
00:16:48As for the leaders of the rebellion, the British arrest five members of the Mufti's Arab committee and ship them
00:16:54to a remote island in the Indian Ocean.
00:16:57However, the Grand Mufti, Amin al-Husseini, is not among them.
00:17:02As the battle in Palestine rages, the most important rebel of them all escapes to Lebanon.
00:17:09To stamp it out. They did eventually defeat it militarily.
00:17:12And, of course, they dismissed the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, from his post and he fled into
00:17:19exile.
00:17:22For more than two years in 1939, the British Arabs, they agreed to one of the Grand Mufti's demands.
00:17:29For the time...
00:17:36...the uprising is coming to an end. Events in Europe take a dramatic turn.
00:17:44In September 1939, German armies smash their way into Poland.
00:17:49As the cataclysm of World War II engulfs the great European powers, the waves will sweep through the Middle East.
00:17:56There they will spark an extraordinary chain of events that leads directly to the rise of Saddam Hussein.
00:18:08...sweep into France.
00:18:16France, a great European power, with the largest military machine in Europe, is laid low in weeks.
00:18:27And the Middle East, are left in political limbo.
00:18:33What will happen now? Will France keep its colonies? Or will Germany take over?
00:18:41France, of course, has surrendered to Germany.
00:18:44It's set up Vichy France, which is effectively a collaborationist regime with Nazi Germany.
00:18:50And the colonies of much of the French Empire, including the mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon, fall under Vichy
00:18:57France.
00:18:58So they become effectively part of the Axis orbit.
00:19:03In the French territory, Arab Syria may soon be a reality.
00:19:12...men who share its vision.
00:19:14It is the beginning of a whole new phase in Aflouk's campaign to unite the Arab world.
00:19:26While Aflouk plans revolution in Syria, his contemporary, the Grand Mufti, Amin al-Husseini, arrives in Iraq.
00:19:34Out of three separate and warring provinces of the old Turkish Empire.
00:19:39Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.
00:19:45Iraq's borders were drawn by the British civil servant, archaeologist and Arabic scholar, Gertrude Bell, working closely with Lawrence of
00:19:54Arabia.
00:19:56In 1921, at a conference in Cairo attended by Winston Churchill, Iraq was given limited independence.
00:20:05To mark the occasion, Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and Winston Churchill posed for a photograph mounted on camels.
00:20:13A treaty was entered into with the new government of Iraq to ensure that major air bases were retained in
00:20:20the country, together with the right to move troops through, should the need occur, to reinforce, effectively, other parts of
00:20:28the British Empire at that time.
00:20:32Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the British military protected Iraq's oil, which was exploited by a British oil company.
00:20:40As for the Iraqi royal family, with its boy, the British, they feel their country's independence is bogus, and bitterly
00:20:51resent the British presence.
00:20:56It is fertile ground for the anti-British agitation of the Grand Mufti.
00:21:05All British weakness, now that they are at war with Germany, his secret plan is to mount a coup that
00:21:12will throw out the Iraqi government and the British military.
00:21:19The Mufti of Jerusalem found a very warm welcome in Iraq, and it's often said that he became part of
00:21:27the backbone of the Iraqi Arab nationalist resistance against the British.
00:21:32The British felt very uneasy about his presence there, but couldn't do much about it.
00:21:39Amin already has the secret backing of powerful figures in the Iraqi government and army.
00:21:45He also has massive funds gathered in Iraq and all over the Middle East.
00:21:52What he needs now is Hitler's support for his ambition of uniting the Arab world.
00:22:05In the fall of 1940, the Mufti sends his German-speaking private secretary on a secret mission to Berlin.
00:22:15There, the secretary meets the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
00:22:24The Grand Mufti wants von Ribbentrop to give German backing to his ultimate goal of a united Arab nation.
00:22:31He also demands a free hand in dealing with the Jewish populations of Palestine and the other Arab states.
00:22:40In return, the Mufti promises that Germany and Italy will have full access to Iraqi oil once the British are
00:22:48thrown out.
00:22:52Although von Ribbentrop is eager to work the Arabs against the British, Hitler is uncertain.
00:23:00He has long since agreed with his ally Mussolini that the Middle East is Italy's sphere of interest,
00:23:06and Italy is already fighting the British in North Africa.
00:23:13In Hitler's eyes, the Arabs are Mussolini's business.
00:23:19The Grand Mufti is bitterly of German arms and money, and even then, only if the Italians agree.
00:23:27In fact, Mussolini has no intention of backing anyone.
00:23:31What Mussolini really wants is German help for his armies in North Africa, struggling to avoid complete annihilation by the
00:23:38British.
00:23:41In February 1941, Hitler sends his star commander, General Erwin Rommel, to North Africa with tanks and infantry.
00:23:51Immediately, Rommel's Afrika Korps, backed by the Italians, goes on the offensive.
00:24:00In battle after battle, Rommel pummels British forces.
00:24:05Rommel's victories are the chance they have been waiting for.
00:24:10Fronted by an Iraqi army officer named Rashid Ali, nationalists begin to organize an Iraqi pro-German revolt.
00:24:21If they can inflict a defeat on the British in Iraq, they might tip the balance in favor of a
00:24:26major German victory in the Middle East.
00:24:30The pro-Axis coup of 1941 was an effort to oust British influence from Iraq, which of course was allied
00:24:39influence,
00:24:40destroyed the British military bases in Iraq, and turned the oil over to the Nazis.
00:24:45Had Rashid Ali's government succeeded in moving the British out of Iraq in 1941, the situation would have completely destabilized
00:24:57the British position in the Middle East.
00:25:00It would have allowed Axis troops to be moved into Iraq in the rear of the British forces who were
00:25:07seeking to reestablish the position in the Western Desert.
00:25:11Most of all to the future dictator of Iraq.
00:25:17Stories about how the British were challenged in Iraq, and almost defeated, will inspire Saddam Hussein all through history.
00:25:33In early April 1941, the British in the Middle East face annihilation.
00:25:38Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, had leveled British forces, and now threatened Libya on February 12, 1941.
00:25:47Beginning in Tripoli, the panzers pursue the retreating British, and on April 15, reach the Egyptian border.
00:26:00Rommel now threatens the Suez Canal, Britain's link with its empire, and might even smash right through Palestine and Jordan,
00:26:08all the way to the oil fields of Iraq.
00:26:13The German advance means the British now face the horrifying possibility that they might lose control of the whole Middle
00:26:21East, and with it, Britain's main oil supply.
00:26:24If that happens, they could lose the war.
00:26:27For many Arabs, Rommel appears not as a foreign invader, but as a liberator, who will drive the colonialist British
00:26:35out of Arab lands for good.
00:26:39When the newsreels would run in the Baghdad cinema was booed, and Hitler was cheered, the placards all over the
00:26:48markets said,
00:26:49In heaven, your master is Allah. On earth, it is Adolf Hitler.
00:27:00As Rommel's panzers threaten the whole British position in the Middle East, in Iraq, the British suddenly face a totally
00:27:07unexpected attack.
00:27:12They were nationalists, and they believed that the Germans, the Axis powers, were going to win the war.
00:27:20Among the army officers involved in the coup is Kairala Tulfa, a fervent admirer of the Nazis.
00:27:29For Tulfa, this is the most important moment of his life.
00:27:34In the years to come, Tulfa will recount his experiences again and again to his favorite nephew, the future dictator
00:27:42of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.
00:27:52In the early stages of the Iraqi coup, Amin al-Hussein rise up and fight the British in Iraq.
00:27:58He declares a jihad, a holy war.
00:28:02The news rocks London.
00:28:04So great is the threat to the British from the Grand Mufti, that he goes to the top of the
00:28:09list of Britain's most wanted in the Arab world.
00:28:15British Prime Minister Winston Churchill even approves a plan to kill or capture Britain's number one enemy in the Middle
00:28:21East.
00:28:24Churchill also orders sabotage missions to blow up Iraqi oil wells, aiming to stop them from falling into German hands.
00:28:32In fact, in the chaos of the Iraqi battle, neither plan reaches fruition.
00:28:46The Grand Mufti has long ago promised the Germans that Iraqi oil will be theirs.
00:28:54With Rommel's offensive in full swing, it looks like the Mufti might soon deliver that prize that Germany needs the
00:29:01most.
00:29:04For the Grand Mufti, the rewards could be immense.
00:29:08If the Nazis had won the war, and if the Nazis had taken control over the Middle East, the Mufti
00:29:15would have been the governor general, or the titular king of the Middle East.
00:29:21And their tribal allies are hopelessly outnumbered by the well-equipped Iraqi army.
00:29:31After days of rising tension, British families are evacuated to Habanaya Airfield, 60 miles.
00:29:38The only aircraft they have are obsolete training planes, with student pilots.
00:29:46Around the base are massed 5,000 Iraqi troops with heavy artillery.
00:29:51The Iraqis refused to let anyone in or out.
00:29:57Well, initially, the British capability...
00:30:01The British know they need to take decisive action to save the base at Habanaya, and the British presence in
00:30:07Iraq.
00:30:08Made all over for the British in Iraq.
00:30:25April 1941.
00:30:27News of the pro-German coup in Iraq quickly reaches Berlin.
00:30:31But Adolf Hitler pays no attention.
00:30:34He is preoccupied with his plan to invade the Soviet Union, the greatest recent by air.
00:30:41Eventually, von Ribbentrop gets Hitler's permission to supply the Iraqis with money and arms.
00:30:48But what Amin al-Husseini and the Iraqis want most from the Germans at this crucial point is not weaponry
00:30:56or even money, but air support from the Luftwaffe.
00:30:59The British are about to go on the offensive at the Habanaya Airbase, 60 miles outside of Baghdad.
00:31:07Time is everything.
00:31:08With the instructors, and the most promising of the pupil pilots, into an air striking force.
00:31:16Although few of the pilots have ever flown a combat mission, they are thrown into action regardless of the risks.
00:31:24In May 1941, the British aircraft launched ferocious bombing and machine gun attacks on the Iraqis by heavy bombers based
00:31:32nearby.
00:31:33In a two-pronged attack, infantry raids keep the Iraqis off balance, while the RAF widens its operations, attacking Iraqi
00:31:43air bases and wiping out the Iraqi air force.
00:31:46At the same time, in one of the boldest transport operations of the whole war, British civilian aircraft fly 400
00:31:54troops from India to the Iraqi city of Basra, a distance of 1,500 miles.
00:32:00Their mission is to reinforce a march on the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
00:32:09The British air force is on Baghdad in some confusion.
00:32:17After six days of fighting, the British drive the Iraqis away from the Habanaya Airbase and break the siege.
00:32:27Captured artillery. The British march on the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
00:32:33But by now, the Grand Mufti and the Iraqi leaders are at last getting help from the Germans.
00:32:39They sent in a small air contingent, which affects Hanson transport aircraft, and their support crews, and a single unit
00:32:50of Italian biplane fighters.
00:32:53And that was the extent of the Axis support when it actually came to it.
00:32:59Although the Germans fly a large number of missions, bombing and machine-gunning British columns, and the Habanaya airfield,
00:33:13In spite of German air strikes, the British fly in reinforcements to the base, and prepare to launch an attack
00:33:20on Baghdad.
00:33:20British aircraft attack the German bases at Mosul, Kirkuk, and Rashid, destroying 20 aircraft.
00:33:31After capturing Fallujah, the British launch a determined attack on the Iraqi capital.
00:33:36It's over before it starts.
00:33:38On May 31, 1941, the Iraqis sue for peace.
00:33:46The defeat of the uprising by the British world, the news is greeted with dismay.
00:33:52The British will keep Iraqi oil and their strategic bases.
00:33:56But they have inflicted a humiliation on the Iraqis and the Arab world.
00:34:00The British re-invaded and reoccupied Iraq, overthrew the government of Rashid Ali al-Ghelani, chased out and hunted down
00:34:09many of the conspiratorial young army officers,
00:34:13and then instigated a major purge of the Iraqi army officer corps.
00:34:18And Saddam Hussein's uncle, Kerala Tulfaq, was one of the victims of that purge, in the sense that he was
00:34:22dismissed from the armed forces,
00:34:24and thereafter lived a rather embittered life.
00:34:28In later years, Saddam Hussein will hear again and again the story of his uncle's imprisonment,
00:34:35his harsh treatment, and the disastrous failure of Iraq's uprising against the imperialist British enemy.
00:34:44Although the British defeat the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq,
00:34:47and Rommel's campaign to capture the Middle East ends in disaster at the Battle of El Alamein,
00:34:52the Grand Mufti means to ensure they are defeated in Europe.
00:34:58When the coup d'etat failed in 1941, the Mufti could not stay in Baghdad.
00:35:05Had he stayed, he would have been arrested.
00:35:07So he went to Berlin.
00:35:09He was there like a statesman.
00:35:12In Berlin, the Mufti will soon prove his value, launching a reign of terror, my word, for cruelty and barbarism.
00:35:23And divisions are racing through the Soviet Union, smashing the Soviet Red Army in their path.
00:35:32In the wake of their advance, SS-Einstatsgruppen, or Special Operations Units, ruthlessly round up and kill Communists and Jews.
00:35:47On November 20th, just three months after Hitler invades the Soviet Union,
00:35:52the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini is in Berlin, safe from British pursuit.
00:35:58He is welcomed to the Nazi capital by the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop.
00:36:03The Mufti failed in Iraq, but he is convinced that a Nazi victory in the war will, in the end,
00:36:10give him everything he wants.
00:36:12Once again, he asks von Ribbentrop for German promises to support Arab independence.
00:36:20He insists that the Jews of the Middle East are part of a world conspiracy,
00:36:25and makes it clear that he fully supports their complete annihilation.
00:36:29He asks von Ribbentrop for FaceTime with Adolf Hitler.
00:36:38Von Ribbentrop is impressed.
00:36:41He agrees that the Mufti should meet Hitler in person.
00:36:46The Grand Mufti wanted Hitler to promise an Arab national state in the Middle East,
00:36:53in the ancient lands of Islam.
00:36:56And that's exactly what Hitler was willing to offer them, either quietly or...
00:37:01And it was clear what he meant.
00:37:03He meant to organize in the Middle East.
00:37:09With Hitler's blessing, the Grand Mufti is introduced to the Chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
00:37:17Himmler, his subordinate Adolf Eichmann, and Al Husseini become close friends.
00:37:25Himmler gives the Mufti the rank of Gruppenfuhrer in the SS,
00:37:29the equivalent of general,
00:37:31and gives Amin and his followers a generous monthly allowance to set up an Arab bureau in Berlin.
00:37:41The Mufti was everywhere in Germany during World War II.
00:37:45He was parading up and down the street.
00:37:47He was making official visits.
00:37:49He was making embassy visits.
00:37:51He was on Radio Berlin nightly.
00:37:57Himmler puts the Mufti in charge of all Arabic broadcasting from Berlin.
00:38:02Over the airwaves, Al Husseini repeatedly calls for another Arab uprising against the British.
00:38:09He also rails against the Jews,
00:38:12inciting Arabs to, quote,
00:38:14kill the Jews wherever you find them.
00:38:19In all of his speeches afterwards,
00:38:21he would always explain there are three big enemies.
00:38:27The British, the Americans, and the Jews.
00:38:30He would depict America as the big enemy of the Arabs.
00:38:36The Mufti hated Jews.
00:38:38He hated Zionism.
00:38:39His goal was to destroy the Jews,
00:38:42kill them before they were allowed to immigrate.
00:38:49In 1943, the Grand Mufti learns of plans by Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria,
00:38:55countries allied to Germany to let thousands of Jews leave for the safety of Palestine.
00:39:03Through his influence with Himmler and von Ribbentrop,
00:39:07the Mufti immediately has the programs cancelled.
00:39:11Among the planned emigrants are 4,000 children.
00:39:16Their fate in Nazi-controlled Europe is almost certain death.
00:39:21In the past four years of war, Germany has suffered enormous casualties on the battlefield.
00:39:26The Reich is desperate for fighting men.
00:39:32Heinrich Himmler began the Grand Mufti, Amin al-Husseini.
00:39:39Ironically, in Nazi racial theory, Arabs are seen as for SS membership.
00:39:45Himmler treats foreign SS units with contempt as second-class citizens.
00:39:50But after an extensive physical exam for the Mufti, he makes an exception.
00:39:55For this, he has Hitler's approval.
00:40:00The personal physician of the Grand Mufti evaluated the Grand Mufti,
00:40:06and he said he is not an Arab.
00:40:08He is a Caucasian, almost an Aryan.
00:40:11So we can expect that he will be a really reliable ally for us.
00:40:18He is deployed hunting down underground resistors in Yugoslavia,
00:40:22and acts as an internal security in Jews.
00:40:29In April 1945,
00:40:32as the cataclysmic battle for Berlin rages around Hitler's bunker,
00:40:37among the Nazi troops making their last suicidal stand
00:40:40are 100 men of the Mufti's Arab Legion.
00:40:52With the Allied victory, the war is over.
00:40:55But the influence of Nazi Germany on the Middle East is far from over.
00:41:01In Iraq, the Grand Mufti's legacy will fan the flames of a new and potent force.
00:41:07One that will mold a young Arab nationalist into a cunning and brutal dictator.
00:41:23After the war in Europe ends, in 1945, the Allies set up the Nuremberg war crimes trials
00:41:30to bring to justice the perpetrators of wartime atrocities.
00:41:37One by one, the surviving senior Nazis are convicted of crimes against humanity.
00:41:43The Grand Mufti, Amin al-Husseini, is denounced for war crimes committed by his Bosnian SS squads in Yugoslavia.
00:41:52But he will never sit in a Nuremberg dock. And the reason?
00:41:58Oil. The Allies needed to keep the confidence and to keep the support of the restive and fomenting Arab communities
00:42:10in the Middle East.
00:42:12The Grand Mufti escapes justice, finding refuge in Egypt.
00:42:17There he resumes his activities and goes on to become one of the most influential leaders in the Arab world
00:42:24for the next 20 years.
00:42:29The monarchy is restored and the young King Faisal has even been to school in England.
00:42:37So confident are the British that some of those who took part in the coup of 1941 are released from
00:42:44prison.
00:42:47Among them is Saddam Hussein's uncle, Kairala Tulfa.
00:42:54Like many of his fellow pro-German rebels, Tulfa faces a difficult future.
00:43:00Banned from rejoining the Iraqi army, he becomes a village schoolteacher in Tikrit.
00:43:05His admirers is his young nephew, Saddam Hussein.
00:43:10Saddam was basically orphaned at a very young age, probably when he was two or three.
00:43:15He was born into a very poor family.
00:43:18So he was basically sent off to live with his uncle Kairala, who lived in Tikrit.
00:43:25And it was through Kairala that eventually Saddam got some semblance of an education.
00:43:33Because Saddam didn't start school until he was 11, he was behind his classmates in reading
00:43:40By beating people up.
00:43:42The young Saddam Hussein worships his uncle, whom he sees as a freedom fighter for the Arab cause.
00:43:49In the coming years, Saddam will absorb from Kairala Tulfa a hatred of the British and the Jews,
00:43:56and a deep admiration for fascism.
00:44:00This was the kind of man that Saddam Hussein was intimately connected with in the 1940s and 50s.
00:44:06A man who had no love for the British, who hated the monarchy.
00:44:10It's not really surprising that Saddam Hussein gravitates towards the Ba'ath Party.
00:44:15Kairala Tulfa writes a pamphlet voicing his anger at being excluded from the army and from politics.
00:44:22It is entitled, Three Whom God Should Not Have Created, Persians, Jews and Flies.
00:44:32In it Tulfa vents his hatred of Jews, Iranians and Kurds, and dreams of uniting the Arab world.
00:44:46In the aftermath of the war, the situation in the Middle East is changing fast.
00:44:53Thousands of Jews who have survived the Nazi campaign of extermination flee to Palestine.
00:45:00The British try to prevent them from settling, but the Jewish underground fights back.
00:45:07The Jewish resistance group Irgun blows up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the main British headquarters.
00:45:15Ninety-one people are killed in the attack.
00:45:18As Palestine's Jewish population soars, tensions between Arabs and Jews reach fever pitch.
00:45:25Each side launches brutal attacks on the other.
00:45:31With Palestine spiraling into civil war, the British decide they can no longer remain.
00:45:37In November 1947, United Nations announces that Palestine is to be partitioned into two states.
00:45:45One Jewish, one Arab.
00:45:50While the Jewish population is jubilant at the news of independence,
00:45:54the Arabs refuse to accept end Arab militias.
00:46:04After a year of bloody battles, in which 10,000 people die,
00:46:09Israelis win a decisive victory.
00:46:13The outcome is a violent shock to Arab nationalists, especially the young.
00:46:19Soon they start looking for someone to blame for the defeat.
00:46:22The Middle East is ripe for revolution.
00:46:25At the center of that revolution is the Ba'ath movement, headed by Michel Aflouk.
00:46:31Over the past two decades, the Ba'ath party has exploded throughout the Middle East.
00:46:37Ba'ath is now a full-scale political force, based in the Syrian capital Damascus.
00:46:44Aflouk now helps to set up a new wing of the party in Iraq.
00:46:48Just when fascism is defeated in Europe, it returns to the Middle East in the guise of the Ba'ath
00:46:54party.
00:46:54For many young Iraqis, Ba'athism had quite an appeal, promising a greater future for the Arab world.
00:47:02It seemed to be a unification of the Arab world, getting rid of the boundaries imposed upon it by colonialism.
00:47:09And they liked it, they read it, and they joined the Ba'ath party.
00:47:13Two men strongly attracted to the party and its fascist ideology are Khairullah Tulfa and his nephew Saddam Hussein.
00:47:25In the 1950s, Saddam and his uncle moved to Baghdad to be closer to the political action.
00:47:33Tulfa makes contact with the Ba'ath party, and under his uncle's influence, Saddam joins too.
00:47:40A tradition among the young man in his home district of Tikrit.
00:47:45But his ambitions are thwarted.
00:47:51Saddam very much wanted to go to the prestigious Baghdad Military Academy.
00:47:57His problem was, because he was basically an impoverished peasant boy,
00:48:02with a very rudimentary education, he simply didn't have the qualifications to enroll.
00:48:08And this was yet another source of great resentment for Saddam.
00:48:14And it was really been in Iraq at that time.
00:48:22Less than five years after the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath party is founded,
00:48:26it makes its first grab for power.
00:48:29An alliance of army officers, Ba'athists and communists,
00:48:33plot to overthrow the pro-British monarchy of King Faisal.
00:48:43The leader of the plotters is a general in the Iraqi army named Abdul Karim Qasem.
00:48:49In just over a year, in an ironic twist, Qasem himself will be the target of a dramatic assassination attempt,
00:48:56by none other than the young Saddam Hussein.
00:49:01Later, as the dictator of Iraq, Saddam will admit that the...
00:49:07Baghdad, July 14th, 1958.
00:49:12The Ba'ath party's dream...
00:49:14There was a coup d'etat in Iraq, in the army, which, or elements of the army, overthrew the monarchy
00:49:22in Iraq,
00:49:23and brought to power, not Ba'athists, but brought to power Arab nationalists,
00:49:27although the Ba'athists supported the coup, and also Iraqi nationalists, and also...
00:49:31Army officers who took part in the ill-fated pro-German rebellion against the British back in 1941,
00:49:37are applauded as Iraqi patriots.
00:49:41Men who had been imprisoned or exiled are now rewarded,
00:49:45especially those who had joined the Ba'ath party.
00:49:49One of them is Saddam Hussein's uncle.
00:49:56The new Iraqi government.
00:49:58The regime is now dominated by the pro-Soviet Iraqi Communist Party,
00:50:03the largest in the Arab world.
00:50:07The Ba'ath-Communist alliance soon turns sour.
00:50:11One communist official succeeds in getting Saddam's uncle,
00:50:15Khairala Tulfa, fired from his job.
00:50:17It is the event that triggers Saddam Hussein's first confirmed murder.
00:50:23Saddam was commissioned, basically, by Khairala,
00:50:26to kill a local Communist Party official in Tikrit,
00:50:31who'd upset Khairala by basically saying he didn't have the necessary qualifications
00:50:36to do the job he was doing in Tikrit's educational establishment.
00:50:42Outraged, Tulfa sends his nephew to get revenge.
00:50:47He gives Saddam his own pistol for the job.
00:50:51Saddam coolly ambushes his target, killing him with a single shot to the head.
00:50:58It is his first step in a lifetime career of cold-blooded killing.
00:51:07I'm told, by the way, that his murder of the Communist Party official was very efficient.
00:51:12So, at a very early age, he had the hallmark of an executioner.
00:51:22The man who led the Clinton.
00:51:27The Cold War is dividing the world into two armed camps,
00:51:31one dominated by the Soviet Union and the other by the United States.
00:51:38Many, inside Iraq and outside, now see Khasem as a threat to the West.
00:51:46If one could say that there was one thing the Ba'athists,
00:51:48that that's organized conspiratorially inside the armed forces and elsewhere.
00:51:55To the Ba'athists, Khasem's ties with the Communists are bad enough.
00:51:59But he now also rejects their policy of uniting the Arab world.
00:52:05Saddam Hussein is selected to be part of a five-man squad assigned to carry out the hit.
00:52:14One of the reasons Saddam was recruited to the Ba'ath Party in the late 1950s
00:52:19is the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad was made up of middle-class intellectuals.
00:52:26The Ba'ath Party desperately needed muscle,
00:52:29and that is why Kyrola said that Saddam should join the Ba'ath Party,
00:52:34recommended him to join the Ba'ath Party,
00:52:37because he was good with his fists, he was a tiller,
00:52:40and he was somebody that they could get out on the streets of Baghdad
00:52:43and get their message across.
00:52:44And that is really the origins of Saddam's association with the Ba'ath Party.
00:52:49It was not ideological, it was physical.
00:52:55The attempt to assassinate General Khasem is launched on October 7th, 1959.
00:53:02Saddam's job is to provide covering fire for the other assassins,
00:53:06but the attack turns into a bloody fiasco.
00:53:09Saddam is caught in a crossfire and wounded in a leg by one of his fellow assassins.
00:53:17In the attack, General Khasem is badly hurt, but lives.
00:53:23His driver is killed, along with one of the would-be assassins.
00:53:28Saddam runs for his life and goes into hiding.
00:53:31Co-conspirators are captured, tried, and sentenced to death.
00:53:37Saddam is sentenced to death in his absence,
00:53:40but succeeds in getting out of Iraq, first to Syria, then to Egypt.
00:53:45It will be almost four years before Saddam can return to Baghdad.
00:53:50Years during which he makes some powerful and influential allies.
00:53:58Among them is none other than the legendary founder and leading light of the Ba'ath.
00:54:02He needs operatives of a tougher sort.
00:54:04He sees in the young and ruthless Saddam a potential strongman of immense promise,
00:54:10a thug to do the dirty work.
00:54:15From Syria, Afluk sends Saddam to Egypt,
00:54:18where he spends the next three and a half years.
00:54:23There, Saddam lives in an expensive district of Cairo
00:54:26and enrolls at Cairo University to study law.
00:54:31In Egypt, Saddam marries his uncle Kairala Tulfa's daughter, Sagida,
00:54:37firmly cementing his most important family tie.
00:54:41This is when there are allegations, although not altogether proven,
00:54:45that he established contact with the CIA
00:54:49and the American secret agencies in Cairo.
00:54:52And the reason put forward for that was that the Americans,
00:54:57just as other people, were very nervous about Abdel Karim Qasir,
00:55:01the leader of Iraq's connection with the Communist Party
00:55:04and through the Communist Party to the Soviet Union.
00:55:08In February 1963, Iraqi army officers, some aligned with the Ba'ath Party,
00:55:15planned to seize power in a coup backed by Western intelligence agencies.
00:55:24The coup will transform Saddam Hussein from low-level enforcer
00:55:28to rising star in the treacherous hierarchy of the Ba'ath Party.
00:55:47The coup will transform Saddam Hussein from low-level enforcer
00:55:49and is exiled in Cairo.
00:55:51Dramatic events are taking place in Iraq.
00:55:55On February 8th, 1963, army officers allied with the Ba'ath Party
00:56:01seize control in a shockingly violent and brutal coup.
00:56:08General Qasem, whom Saddam had failed to murder four years before,
00:56:13is arrested, tortured and then executed.
00:56:18In 1963, there's a coup d'etat.
00:56:23One of the leaders of the coup is a man named Ahmed Hassan al-Baqour,
00:56:28a senior army officer.
00:56:31Baqour...
00:56:31While the coup is underway, Saddam Hussein is still in Cairo,
00:56:36but he hurries back to Iraq.
00:56:41When Saddam gets back to Baghdad,
00:56:43his reputation as a loyal and unscrupulous party man,
00:56:46capable of extreme violence,
00:56:49immediately gets him a job as head of the secret party intelligence organization.
00:56:54His first job is to organize a round-up of the Iraqi Communist Party
00:56:59and anyone suspected of being a left-wing sympathizer.
00:57:04Hundreds, possibly thousands of people are seized, tortured and murdered.
00:57:09Saddam even personally kills some of the victims.
00:57:18But within a year of taking power in Iraq...
00:57:23So there were rifts within the military cliques of the Ba'ath Party,
00:57:27there were rifts within the party itself.
00:57:29And so bad was it that at one point they call in
00:57:33Michel Aflac and the National Command as it was called...
00:57:36...between the rival elements of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party.
00:57:41While in Baghdad, he uses his influence to get Saddam promoted to high rank in the movement.
00:57:47Saddam is made a member of the Ba'ath Regional Command,
00:57:50the committee that takes all the major executive and policy decisions for the Iraqi Party.
00:58:01Hassan al-Bakr, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, became the leader of the party and Saddam his deputy.
00:58:08This nomination, self-appointment if you like, was endorsed by Michel Aflac.
00:58:13And here comes the friendship between Michel Aflac and Saddam Hussein.
00:58:18And all those who opposed the appointment of Saddam Hussein, even those who stayed in the party with Saddam Hussein,
00:58:26were later either executed or, you know, killed one way or another.
00:58:29Saddam never forgave those who opposed his first appointment.
00:58:34He kept that deep down in his heart and exacted his own revenge.
00:58:40As attempts to restore unity in the Ba'ath Party fail, in November 1963, the military ejects the Ba'athists
00:58:47from the government.
00:58:49The climate is one of bitter resentment and suspicion.
00:58:53Many Ba'athist leaders are exiled or jailed.
00:58:57Control in Iraq starts to fall apart.
00:59:001963 was a very troubled year.
00:59:02It was a year of street fighting, murders, disappearances, of an underground warfare.
00:59:07The Ba'ath Party found itself out of power.
00:59:09Saddam Hussein, like many other young Ba'athists, found himself on the wrong side again of the new government that
00:59:16was coming to power in Iraq.
00:59:21After months in hiding, Saddam Hussein and his uncle, Kairala Tulfa, are smoked out, arrested and jailed.
00:59:30But the conditions in which they are held are not harsh, and security is relaxed.
00:59:35But they are furious at the treatment they are getting at the hands of their one-time allies.
00:59:41Saddam, for one, is determined to win back his freedom.
00:59:48Two years into his imprisonment, Saddam Hussein gets the chance he has been waiting for.
00:59:54The party has been secretly arranging his escape.
00:59:59While being transported to court, Saddam's guards allow him to stop at a restaurant.
01:00:05When the prearranged time comes, Saddam thanks his hosts for their hospitality and casually walks out.
01:00:16After his escape from prison, Saddam goes underground for a year.
01:00:20But the Ba'ath Party has a job for the tough young man from Tikrit.
01:00:25He'll be the muscle behind organizing the secret party's cells.
01:00:28Saddam Hussein had become past master of what might call street politics of the Ba'ath.
01:00:34And so he wasn't an army man. He was outside the army completely.
01:00:38But what he could organize in was in the streets, in the universities, bands of thugs and semi-militia groups
01:00:46wandering around.
01:00:48The secret apparatus of the Ba'ath Party.
01:00:53Saddam Hussein's chance for a grab at power arrives sooner than he ever imagined.
01:01:02In June 1967, bowed into war.
01:01:11In days, the Arabs are decisively beaten.
01:01:17The shock waves of the defeat spread across a humiliated Arab world.
01:01:22In Iraq, angry army officers mount yet another coup against the government.
01:01:28Hassan al-Baqour, Saddam's cousin from Tikrit, is made president.
01:01:34But the real power behind the throne in a new regime.
01:01:37Which does not indicate its real function.
01:01:40It was in charge of the security service, of the intelligence service, military service.
01:01:45And Saddam volunteered to take that position actually.
01:01:52Saddam is made deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council,
01:01:56and head of the regime's internal security service.
01:02:01Now, Hussein, one of the most thuggish and brutal members of the Ba'ath Party,
01:02:06is given the power of life and death.
01:02:11His first act is to order a round-up of leading members of other political parties.
01:02:17Saddam calls it the correction movement.
01:02:21Thousands are thrown into concentration camps, tortured and killed.
01:02:30In the three years after the Ba'ath Party takes control in Iraq,
01:02:34Saddam Hussein, the number two man,
01:02:36works round the clock to seize every ounce of power committee,
01:02:40and the workers' union.
01:02:42He also handles relations with the Kurdish minority,
01:02:45and the Arab states.
01:02:47Working 18-hour days, Saddam becomes the master of a well-oiled machine.
01:02:58Saddam has good reason to be grateful to Afluk, his mentor.
01:03:02In the Ba'ath Party,
01:03:04with its Nazi-like organization of strict discipline and hierarchy,
01:03:08secret police and informers,
01:03:11Afluk has created the perfect instrument for a leader
01:03:14whose only wish is to become the unchallenged tyrant of Iraq
01:03:18and the whole Arab world.
01:03:24Saddam Hussein, the future dictator, is Michel Afluk's creation.
01:03:30Of all Afluk's protégés,
01:03:33only Saddam possesses the ruthlessness to claw his way to power.
01:03:43Saddam, veteran of a string of coups against the government,
01:03:46is determined to stay in power, whatever the cost.
01:03:51The solution lies in a subtle mixture of favoritism and terror.
01:03:56First comes the terror.
01:03:58There is no problem.
01:04:00One by one,
01:04:02he picks off all his close political associates in the upper reaches,
01:04:09President Ba'ath.
01:04:10Saddam Hussein is no longer number two in the regime.
01:04:12He's actually the most powerful man of Iraq.
01:04:15And he's often talked about as the strong man of Iraq.
01:04:21In Saddam's Iraq, nobody is safe.
01:04:24The loyal are rewarded with jobs and position.
01:04:28The disloyal disappear into one of Saddam's hellish prisons
01:04:31and are never seen again.
01:04:33To underline the message to an offender's relatives,
01:04:37after executing a political opponent,
01:04:40Saddam actually bills the family for the cost of the bullets.
01:04:48After eleven years of playing junior partner to Hassan al-Baqour,
01:04:53Saddam decides it is time to take his rightful place as ruler of Iraq.
01:05:00Al-Baqour, his cousin, is quietly pushed aside.
01:05:05He will die mysteriously three months later.
01:05:09Saddam Hussein is sworn in as president of Iraq.
01:05:12Within days of taking power as president,
01:05:15Hussein means to follow the example of his uncle Kairala Tulfa's hero, Adolf Hitler.
01:05:20His first strike is to kill his opponents in the party's leadership in one fell swoop.
01:05:31But Saddam can send out his terrifying message in a way that Hitler could never do.
01:05:37He will videotape the whole thing that they were coming to Baghdad
01:05:41simply to proclaim the new leader of the Ba'ath party and the new president of Iraq.
01:05:45But once the meeting got underway,
01:05:48Saddam completely turned the tables and turned it into a sort of Stalinist.
01:05:54He also forces the surviving leaders to shoot some of the victims themselves.
01:06:04Immediately after the meeting,
01:06:06Saddam and the surviving leaders pose on the balcony for a crowd
01:06:09that has been organized to chant for Hussein
01:06:12and shout for revenge on traitors.
01:06:16Done to them.
01:06:18He surrounds himself with people he can trust,
01:06:22fellow Klan members from his own district of Tikkun.
01:06:26Not only does Saddam protect himself physically from attack,
01:06:30he guards himself in another way too,
01:06:33feelings of deep loyalty and ensuring total obedience.
01:06:42The propaganda machine is really cranked fully into action to perpetrate this myth of the great invincible Saddam Hussein,
01:06:52the lion of Iraq, the defender of Iraq, the new Saladin.
01:06:57It's a very, very clever operation.
01:07:03Already, Saddam Hussein is pitching to become the leader of a massive united Arab world.
01:07:09He espouses the Palestinian cause as his own
01:07:12and poses with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
01:07:17There is already a deep connection between Arafat and Saddam.
01:07:22Arafat's mentor and one-time boss is the late Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini,
01:07:28the architect of the pro-Nazi coup against the British in Iraq in 1941.
01:07:35Yasser Arafat even claims the Mufti is his uncle.
01:07:44But Saddam knows that purging his enemies in the party,
01:07:48Sain believes that the best way to preserve his power is to go to war.
01:07:54Anyone who opposes him is now an enemy of Iraq and a traitor,
01:07:59and must be annihilated.
01:08:03Iraqi forces invade Iran on September 22, 1980.
01:08:11Saddam calculates that if he wins,
01:08:13he will be hailed as the strong man and undisputed leader of the Arab world.
01:08:21In fact, the war will last eight years and cost a million lives.
01:08:28But for now, as war with Iran is just beginning,
01:08:32and war with the United States is a decade in the future,
01:08:36Saddam is at the peak of his power.
01:08:41After a lifetime clawing his way to the top,
01:08:44he is worshipped and feared by millions of Iraqis.
01:08:49It is a long way from his poverty-stricken boyhood in Tikrit.
01:08:58Three men paved Saddam's way,
01:09:01all of them wedded to the ideology of Nazi Germany.
01:09:07Michel Aflouk, the man who created the fascist Bafti,
01:09:11who fought the British in Palestine and Iraq,
01:09:14and became an SS general in Germany.
01:09:18and
01:09:19so ever more paranoid and unpredictable,
01:09:27blaming those around him for his own mistakes.
01:09:31And always, like Hitler,
01:09:35silence and murder.
01:09:37I think Saddam, at the end became a megalomaniac.
01:09:45He has killed hundreds of thousands,
01:09:49and if given the chance, he would kill millions.
01:09:52This man is a killer,
01:09:55so profound,
01:09:57that he will be remembered in the halls of the worst murderers of mankind.
01:10:02I think so are my kind.
01:10:04Thank you for the second time.
01:10:05I think so.
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