Talk:Leopold Gleim

Leopold Gleim is a man of mystery. No one seems to have a sure fix on his identity before he went to Egypt in 1955 and, shortly thereafter with his conversion to Islam, became one "Colonel Al-Nasher". There is, on the other hand, much speculation on his putative WWII identity and deeds, which has been regurgitated uncritically in the secondary sources. These references amount to the suggestion, which is nowhere supported by any original evidence so far, that Gleim was an SS officer employed by the RSHA, or Reich security service, and that, in some as yet unspecified way, he was involved in implementing the Final Solution in Poland during the early 1940s. The various (unsupported) conjectures about his role in Poland include being a Grossaktionslieder and member of something called the SD-Geheimegarde. It is likely, but unproven, that he was a middle-ranking Gestapo officer. After the war he was apparently on a wanted listed in Poland for unspecified crimes against the (Polish) Jewish population. This last biographical detail is, again, unsupported by any known evidence.

The earliest secondary source I have been able to unearth about what I call the "myth" of Leopold Gleim is contained in the following Hansard extract from the House of Commons on February 25, 1957:

Mr. Janner asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that many Nazi propagandists, whose activities in the Hitler régime were directed towards millions of Jewish victims, are at present in the public service of Egypt as propagandists of racial attack and that amongst these are such persons as Johannes Von Leers, Otto Ernst Remer, S.S. General Moser, now known as Nalisman, Leopold Gleim, now known as Colonel Alnacher; and whether he will ask the United Nations organisation to inquire into this propaganda so that it may have information of the violation of the United Nations organisation Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights by Egypt before coming to a decision in respect of what guarantees will be available to Israel for her security against fedayeen and others who are trained and indoctrinated by Egypt.

The Mr Janner in question was Barnett Janner, father of Greville, who at the time was MP for Leicester North West.

Some of the Nazi refugees/fugitives from justice mentioned above can be verified as real people with a real (albeit disagreeable) track record. They include Johannes von Leers and Otto Ernst Remer. Gleim, though he seems to have existed and was employed by the Egyptian security service of the time, is not among them.

The source of Mr Janner's information may possibly be extracted from his archive (to which I do not have access). What can be said with some certainty is that it was the grandfather of all the speculation about Gleim that has bedevilled the secondary sources over the years. Less certain, but quite possible, is that the immediate source was either Simon Wiesenthal or Tuviah Friedman. If so, they may, or may not, have been acting on information/disinformation received via sources in the Eastern Bloc. Eyecyclops (talk) 12:18, 1 November 2021 (UTC)