The Forgotten Green Brown Alliance

About this episode

This episode explores the ideological alliances between the Western far right and Islamist groups, focusing on the historical context and implications of the Green-Brown Alliance.

As covered in the most recent episode of History Impossible, the Nazis could be pretty keen on developing supposedly strange bedfellows, especially as the Second World War continued. This could be seen most pointedly in the SS’s attempted merging of Islamic aesthetics and religious practices with National Socialist values with the creation of the Handschar division in Bosnia. While that division did not last long and was plagued by problems from its very inception, the idea that such an ideological and theological merge could be accomplished did not end with the division. In fact, it was only the beginning. In this adaptation of a recent History Impossible essay, we contrast the well-known “Red-Green Alliance” that has been discussed here and elsewhere with the lesser-known, but no less significant and fascinating “Green-Brown Alliance,” that is, the ideological alliances made between individuals and groups on the Western far right and Islamist individuals and organizations around the world. Both new and familiar faces will make appearances in this story, which takes us from the postwar decades of the 20th century up until the present day, and attempts to address the fundamental…

People in this episode

Host: Alexander von Sternberg

Topics covered

• Nazi ideology
• Islamic aesthetics
• Green-Brown Alliance
• far-right movements
• theocratic alliances
• historical analysis

Keywords

• Nazis
• Islam
• Handschar division
• far right
• theocracy
• ideological merge
• history
• World War II

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Nazi, SS, Handschar division, Islamist, Western far right

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• Understanding the Abyss: Holocaust Scholarship into the 21st Century · May 21, 2026 · 1h 7m
• The Flight from Hitler's Shadow: Making Martyrs of Evil · April 16, 2026 · 1h 46m
• Martyrs, Militants, Monetizers, and Madmen (w/ Crackpot History) · February 25, 2026 · 2h 8m
• Color Coded Alliances and Islamism's Useful Suckers (w/ Eli Lake) · February 13, 2026 · 1h 17m
• The Muslim Nazis: Handschar · January 1, 2026 · 6h 13m
• War for the Frontiers of History and America (w/ Jack Henneman of The History of the Americans) · December 1, 2025 · 2h 22m