during the invasion of Gaul. According to Albert Speer, Hitler wished that the Caliphate had won the Battle of Tours against the Franks in 732: "The Mohammedan religion would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" "Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiersalready, you see, the world had fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing was Christianity!then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies heroism and which opens the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so." According to Speer, Hitler was convinced that had Islam taken root in central Europe at this time, the Germanic people would have become the "heirs of that religion" with Islam being "perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament". Hitler said that while the Arabs, on account of their "racial inferiority", would have been unable to handle the harsh climate and conditions of the region, and that instead the Islamized Germans would have "stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire". A "religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and in subjugating all nations to that faith". Notwithstanding Hitler's apparent admiration for Islam and Muhammad, and his willingness to work with Arab political leaders, he viewed Arab people as racial and social inferiors. Speer acknowledged that in private, Hitler regarded Arabs as an inferior race and that the relationship he had with various Muslim figures was more political than personal. Hitler was also quoted in the early war years stating, "We shall continue to make disturbances in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash." Nevertheless, Hitler simultaneously made positive references about Muslim culture and Muslims as potential collaborators, such as: "The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France". In spite of Hitler's conflicting opinions on Islam and Arabs, in a letter to President Roosevelt during the war, Winston Churchill pointed out that Muslim soldiers were providing "the main army elements on which we [the British] must rely for the immediate fighting." Many Muslims have sacrificed themselves to save Jews and fight the Nazis