On 20 November, al-Husseini met the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on 28 November. As war loomed the Germans had changed his earlier view that Arabs were 'half-apes', and Hitler, recalling Husseini, remarked that he 'has more than one Aryan among his ancestors and one who may be descended from the best Roman stock.' He asked Adolf Hitler for a public declaration that 'recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland'. Hitler refused to make such a public announcement, saying that it would strengthen the Gaullists against the Vichy France,