David Motadel uses various collections of primary sources from fourteen different countries to illustrate how Nazi Germany used the Islamic world to its own political advantage in 1941 and 1942. The author argues that although scholars have tended to focus on the role of Germany's alliance with the Islamic world during World War I, such alliances also were an important part of Berlin's strategy during World War II. In the first part of the book, Motadel contends that Nazi Germany viewed Muslims as instrumental political forces that could help defeat the Allied powers by causing turmoil in the Allied colonies in the Middle East. In the second part of the book, he discusses the ways in which Nazis disregarded their racial philosophy's imperative to create an Aryan master race in order to adopt a “strategic pragmatism” that could recruit Muslim volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa, Crimea, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Eastern Front. Finally, in part three, Motadel describes how the SS and the Wehrmacht recruited Muslim soldiers by using propaganda to manipulate their views about Germany's enemies and using Islamic scripture to justify violence.