The Arab Ba'ath Party established by Zaki al-Arsuzi was according to Sami al-Jundi, one of the co-founders of the party, heavily influenced by fascist and Nazi ideals. The party's emblem was the tiger because it would "excite the imagination of the youth, in the tradition of Nazism and Fascism, but taking into consideration that the Arab is in his nature is distant from pagan symbols [like the swastika]".[59] Arsuzi's Ba'ath Party believed in the virtues of the "one leader", and Arsuzi himself believed personally in the racial superiority of the Arabs. The party members read a lot of Nazi literature, such as The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century for instance, became one of the first to plan the translation of Mein Kampf into Arabic and they were actively looking for a copy of The Myth of the Twentieth Century – the only copy in Damascus was, according to Moshe Maʻoz, owned by Aflaq.[59] Despite his pro-fascist views, Arsuzi did not support the Axis Powers, and refused Italy's advances for party-to-party relations.[60] Arsuzi was also influenced by the racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Nazism.[61] Arsuzi claimed that historically Islam and the Prophet Muhammad had reinforced the nobility and purity of Arabs, which degenerated in purity because of the adoption of Islam by other people.[61] He had been associated with the League of Nationalist Action, a political party strongly influenced by fascism and Nazism with its paramilitary "Ironshirts", that existed in Syria from 1932 to 1939.[62]
Saddam drew inspiration on how to rule Iraq from both Joseph Stalin, a communist, and Adolf Hitler, a Nazi. According to a British journalist who interviewed Barzan al-Tikriti, the head of the Iraqi intelligence services, Saddam had asked Barzan to procure these books not for racist or anti-Semitic purposes, but instead "as an example of the successful organisation of an entire society by the state for the achievement of national goals."[63]