“Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World”: Jeffrey Herf’s Book Returns to Print
The German academic publisher ibidem Press will release a new edition of Jeffrey Herf’s monograph Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World in the spring of 2027. This follows Yale University Press’s decision not to reprint the title and to return the publishing rights to the author. Columbia University Press will handle distribution across North America.
Physical copies of the original 2009 edition have been unavailable for years. Second-hand prices recently rose above $400, even though the digital version remains accessible on Yale’s website. Yale University Press cited commercial reasons for declining to reprint older catalog titles.
Herf, a 79-year-old emeritus professor at the University of Maryland, expressed disappointment with the decision. The upcoming paperback edition will feature a substantial new preface by the author, in which he draws direct parallels between 1940s archival materials and contemporary geopolitical events.
The research is based on thousands of declassified documents and Arabic radio broadcast transcripts. Herf shows how Berlin specifically adapted racial antisemitism to local conditions and forged a key alliance with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He concludes that these ideological concepts outlasted the Third Reich and deeply influenced modern Islamist radicalism.
