Nazis had plans for Palestinian Holocaust

STUTTGART, Germany, April 14 (UPI) -- When the Desert Rats defeated the Desert Fox at El Alamein, they thwarted Nazi plans for the extermination of Palestinian Jews, German researchers report.

In a new book -- "Germans, Jews, Genocide: The Holocaust as History and the Present" -- scholars at the University of Stuttgart say an SS unit stationed in Athens was under orders to enter Palestine immediately behind frontline troops, The Independent reports. The SS troops were supposed to function like the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units that carried out the first mass killings of Jews in Eastern Europe.

Germany also made overtures to Arab leaders, notably the anti-Semitic mufti of Jerusalem.

At the time, Palestine was under British control. About 500,000 Jews, many of them refugees from Europe aided by the Zionist movement, were living there.

In 1942, Britain's Eighth Army -- the Desert Rats, commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery -- defeated the Afrika Corps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, nicknamed the Desert Fox. El Alamein ended Germany's advance in North Africa.