Einsatzkommando Egypt

Einsatzkommando Egypt (German: Einsatzkommando Ägypten) was the name assigned to an SS unit led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Walther Rauff, which was formed in occupied Greece during World War II awaiting deployment to North Africa, once the Afrika Korps had conquered Egypt and moved into Mandatory Palestine.

[1] Einsatzkommandos ("deployment commandos") were paramilitary death squads that operated within German occupied territories.

Historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers [de], based on archival research, state that the unit's purpose was to carry out a mass killing of the Jewish populations in Mandatory Palestine and Egypt.

[3] Given its small staff of only 24 men, Mallmann and Cüppers theorize the unit would have needed help from local residents and from the Afrika Korps to complete their assignment.

[6] According to Mallmann and Cüppers, the history of the Middle East would have been completely different and a Jewish state could never have been established if the Germans and Arabs had joined forces.

Walther Rauff, 1945