The British Western Desert Force and, later, the British
Eighth Army relied considerably on Iranian and Iraqi oil to fuel military
operations during the North African campaign. While major military clashes were
occurring during the North African campaign, other military operations in the
Middle East were beginning to undermine Britain’s primacy in the region. In the
spring of 1941, Axis intrigue in undermining Britain’s influence in Iraq
culminated in armed clashes during the Anglo-Iraqi War (May 2–31). During this
conflict, the German Luftwaffe flew from airfields in Syria and Lebanon to
attack British forces in Iraq. Under Vichy French control, Germany also used
Syria and Lebanon to resupply Axis-aligned Iraqi forces. In response, Britain
struck targets in both Syria and Lebanon during Operation Exporter (June 8–14,
1941).
Following the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the
First World War, the League of Nations designated Mesopotamia a “mandatory”
administrative political entity. As a result, the region was referred to in the
aftermath of the Great War as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. With the rise
of both Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism in the two centuries prior
to World War I, the population in Iraq was in no mood to move from Ottoman
domination to British control. Recognizing this reality, Britain transitioned
the Mandate (1920) into the Kingdom of Iraq, with nominal independence, in
1932.
However, given the strategic necessities brought on by
global war in 1939, London moved toward the re-creation of the joint “RAF Iraq
Command,” which served as the umbrella group for the RAF, Royal Navy, British
army, Commonwealth, and locally developed military units falling under the
command of an RAF officer who served at the air vice-marshal rank. While the
British Mandate of Mesopotamia officially came to an end in 1932, two years
prior, in 1930, the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty was created permitting Britain to
maintain a troop presence beyond the Mandate. As a result, RAF Iraq Command
transitioned to “British Forces in Iraq,” and their presence was kept to a
minimum in terms of troop strength and confined to two RAF bases, RAF Shaibah,
near the key Persian Gulf port of Basra, and RAF Habbaniya, about 50 miles west
of Baghdad. Besides having a general presence in the land between the two
rivers, Britain’s interests in Iraq as World War II approached were in
protecting its investments in the development of Iraq’s oil reserves (at the
time near Mosul and Kirkuk) and in maintaining a vital link in air communications
between India and Egypt.
By 1937, however, Britain removed all but a small force to
guard the air bases, as the nationalist sentiment grew in fervor. Following
1937, the government within Iraq assumed full responsibility for the internal
security of the country. Italian intelligence operations within Iraq soon
increased with the aim of undermining British influence. By March 31, 1941, as
the war raged in Europe and North Africa, the regent of Iraq, Prince Abd
al-Ilah, was made aware of a plot to overthrow the monarchy. The prince was
subsequently whisked away to RAF Habbaniya and then transferred to the British
warship HMS Cockchafter. Prime Minister Rashid Ali seized power April 3, 1941,
in a coup backed by the “Golden Square,” which became the collective name for
three top-level Royal Iraqi Army officers and one top-level Royal Iraqi Air
Force officer.
Ali’s government was immediately recognized by Italy and
Nazi Germany. Ali signed a secret agreement with the Italian ambassador that
was intended to unite Syria and Iraq and nationalize all oil resources as well
as provide the Axis powers three key fortified port facilities, with control
for a radius of 20 miles. Iraq then cut off the pipeline of the
British-controlled Iraq Petroleum Company in Haifa, Palestine, and redirected
oil to Tripoli in Lebanon, which was then under the control of the Vichy French
regime. In a side deal with the Germans, Ali promised the use of all military
facilities in Iraq, should the British be evicted successfully.
Ali then demanded that Britain remove all military personnel
from Iraq. While Ali was initially supported by Rome, on April 17, 1941, he
requested military assistance from Berlin, should Britain take any military
action against his “National Defence Government.” General Headquarters (GHQ)
India dispatched the “Sabine Force,” a brigade based in Karachi (present-day
Pakistan), with orders to secure Basra and lend support as best as possible to
the British forces at RAF Shaibah and RAF Habbaniya. However, upon landing in
Basra on April 18, the brigade was captured by Iraqi forces. Britain then
dispatched the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Indian Infantry Division, which arrived
at Basra on April 29, along with the carrier Hermes and two cruisers.
Once apprised of Britain’s decision to escalate rather than
acquiesce, Ali mobilized the Iraqi army and air forces and ordered them to
seize the RAF base at Habbaniya. By May 1, about 9,000 Iraqi troops and an
assortment of armored cars, guns, and artillery threatened the base that housed
fairly obsolete British aircraft, which was utilized primarily to serve as a
cadet flying school with older biplane, World War I-era aircraft. Present at
RAF Habbaniya were about 1,350 British personnel at the base (1,000 RAF and the
350-man 1st Battalion of the King’s Own Royal Regiment [KORR]), in addition to
approximately 1,200 Iraqi and Kurdish constabulary personnel. Nonetheless, Air
Vice Marshal Harry Smart had only 35 airmen at the base who knew how to fly an
airplane, with only three of those pilots having combat experience.
In the midst of the crisis, cables went back and forth with
London, as Smart attempted to ascertain what was expected and what course of
action the British high command was prepared to authorize. The contacts were
with the foreign ministry rather than British military leadership, which gave
rise to increased concerns within Iraq with the level of ambiguity in the
communications coming from the diplomatic corps as to what London actually
wanted. Smart sought something more definitive and if possible something
directly from the British military high command, because each time he asked for
guidance from his military superiors, he sensed no one wanted to take ownership
of any military action, even in defense, within Iraq. Nevertheless, his
determination finally required London to respond with concrete authorization to
take military action when Churchill finally cabled back personally: “If you
have to strike, strike hard.”
Smart subsequently had the British ambassador in Baghdad
issue a demand for the Iraqi troops to withdraw from the perimeter of the air
base by 8 a.m. on May 2. However, apparently seeking the advantages of darkness
and believing the Iraqis had no intention of withdrawing, Smart ordered his
available aircraft to start engines at 4:30 a.m. Thirty minutes later, the RAF
began attacking Iraqi positions that surrounded the air base. By day’s end,
each pilot had flown six bombing strikes against the entrenched forces. The 33
aircraft flying out of Habbaniya were soon joined with 8 Wellington bombers
flying out of RAF Shaibah.
The Committee of Imperial Defense, now at war in Iraq,
transferred command of land forces within the country to British Middle East
Command from India and called on General Wavell to provide a relief force for
the air base. The force established for entry into Iraq was called the
“Habforce” (short for Habbaniya Force) and consisted of a British joint force,
which immediately set out for the 535-mile journey from Haifa, Palestine,
through Transjordan to Habbaniya on May 11. Remarkably, particularly given the
primitive state of the equipment and paucity of trained airmen, the forces at
RAF Habbaniya were able to neutralize the threat to the base before Habforce
arrived.
At the beginning of May 1941, the Vichy French government
and Germany signed the Paris Protocols, whereby Germany was able to send troops
into French North Africa and Syria. This provided Berlin with the opportunity
for setting up bases for projecting military force into Iraq and Iran and, in
the case of Tunisia, for the purposes of challenging British control in Egypt.
On May 6, Germany concluded an agreement with the Vichy French to release war
materials, including aircraft, from sealed stockpiles in Syria and ship them to
the Iraqi forces then fighting Britain. These arrangements included making
available several airbases in northern Syria to Germany for transporting
Luftwaffe aircraft to Iraq. From May 9 to 31, about 100 German aircraft and 20
Italian aircraft landed on Syrian airfields. In Syria, German aircraft were
painted with Royal Iraqi Air Force markings. Between May 10 and 15, these
planes flew into Mosul, Iraq, and commenced aerial attacks on British forces
throughout Iraq.
On May 13, the first trainload of Axis and Vichy supplies
from Syria arrived in Mosul via Turkey, and the Iraqis took delivery of 15,500
rifles, 6 million rounds of ammunition, 200 machine guns, 900 belts of
ammunition, and four 75mm field guns with 10,000 shells. Two additional
deliveries were made on May 26 and 28, which included eight 155mm guns, 6,000
shells, 354 machine pistols, 30,000 grenades, and 32 trucks.
With the dissipation of the immediate threat to RAF
Habbaniya by late May, British leaders set their sights on Rashid Ali, who was
then ensconced in Baghdad. Elements of the Habforce were combined with select
units that had advanced on Habbaniya from Basra. The Habbaniya “Brigade”
consisted of the Kingcol, which was reinforced with the 2nd Battalion Gurkha
Rifles, Indian army, assorted light artillery, and a group of RAF Assyrian
Levies.
The brigade marched on Baghdad by way of Fallujah, which
contained a key bridge over the Euphrates River. However, on May 22, the Iraqi
6th Infantry Brigade (Iraqi 3rd Infantry Division) counterattacked in the vicinity
of Fallujah, with support from Italian light tanks (Fiat). British leaders
moved in reserve forces to counter the attack and pushed the Iraqi 6th back.
The following day, Luftwaffe aircraft attacked, and Allied and British
positions in and around Fallujah were strafed by the Fliegerfuhrer Irak. German
forces under such commanders as Rommel and Heinz Wilhelm Guderian had the
ability to coordinate their attacks, effectively combining air and ground
operations. However, beyond the German joint operations, when Germany attempted
to aid other militaries such as the Iraqi army at Fallujah, attacks were not as
efficiently coordinated, resulting in strikes that were not as effective as
they otherwise might have been. For instance, as the Iraqi 6th counterattacked
on May 22, and if the Fliegerfuhrer Irak had been directed to have flown in
support at that time, the effectiveness of the counterattack would have been
significantly amplified.
Instead, the 6th attacked without air support, and air
attacks only took place after the Iraqi 6th had been driven back and had lost
the initiative. While the Axis powers indeed had powerful militaries, their
power projection capability vis-à-vis the British lacked a similarly robust
forward presence and, in the British model, a forward presence aimed at
conducting integrated and combined operations at the coalition level. This
highlights a comparative advantage of the British Empire in relation to its
competitors and its opponents. This advantage in the modern era arose from the
ability of Britain to have trained with a variety of military forces around the
world, as contrasted with the limited training for joint operations by Axis
forces in the Middle East—outside of North Africa.
A strictly German battle against strictly British forces
between 1940 and 1942 provided a competitive advantage to the joint German
capability (panzers, infantry, artillery, air) of coordinating in a
lightning-fast engagement or series of engagements (campaign). However, British
military doctrine was not based on unilateral doctrine, that is, fighting
alone. It had built and relied upon its worldwide strategic, multilateral, and
competitive advantage in overcoming operational and tactical challenges. This
required working closely with Commonwealth and Allied forces in combined joint
operations. Thus, the Germans, try as they might, were unable to set the
conditions in which the fight was simply a German versus Briton war—a war
wherein London’s coalition advantages would be neutralized.
Nowhere was this better exemplified than operations in the
Middle East during World War II, as Germany simply did not possess the
wherewithal to coordinate, generate resources, and fight jointly as effectively
as Britain did with its allies in North Africa or in the Middle East. This can
be attributed to the inability of German armor to transit the English Channel,
its inability to overcome the vastness of the Soviet Union, and the inability
of the Luftwaffe to strike at the arsenal of democracy (America), which
provided both British and Soviet forces the materials needed to stay in the
fight much longer perhaps than otherwise would have been the case.
As the Habbaniya Brigade continued toward Baghdad, British
Commonwealth (Indian army) forces in Basra began advancing northward toward the
Iraqi capital. In two complementary operations launched on May 27, 1941, the
“Euphrates Brigade” (20th Indian Infantry Brigade) in Operation Regatta moved
north by road and riverboat up the Euphrates River, while the “Tigris Brigade”
(21st Indian Infantry Brigade) transited by boat up the Tigris River during
Operation Regatta. Seventy-two hours later, the 25th Indian Infantry Brigade
(3rd Brigade, 10th Indian Infantry Division) landed in Basra and immediately
proceeded north toward Baghdad. On May 29, Ali’s National Defence Government
collapsed, and Ali departed first to Iran and then proceeded to Berlin where he
was greeted by Hitler as the head of the Iraqi government.
In order to neutralize Germany’s efforts in establishing a
military presence in Syria and Lebanon (which would give Berlin the ability to
project military power into both Egypt and Iraq), Britain conducted the
Syrian-Lebanon campaign (code-named Operation Exporter) from June 8 to July 14,
1941. Operation Exporter entailed a combined Allied force of British, Indian,
Australian, Arab, and Free French, attacking Vichy French forces aligned with
Germany in both Syria and Lebanon. Exporter called for four lines of advance by
Allied forces: one moving on Damascus (Syria); a second advancing on Beirut
(Lebanon) from forces originating in Palestine; a third against Ottoman forces
in northern Syria and on Palmyra (central Syria); and the fourth advancing on
Tripoli by Allied troops within Iraq.
By June 21, Allied forces occupied Damascus, and on the
following day Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet
Union. Any additional support, materiel, or manpower Axis forces fighting in
Syria and Lebanon had originally planned for would, henceforth, be quite
limited, as Germany, locked in an existential struggle with the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, that is, the Soviet Union (USSR), simply would not be able
to properly supply its units fighting in North Africa and within the Middle
East. By the second week of July, the Vichy French position with Syria and
Lebanon had collapsed, and mass surrenders led to these forces being moved out
of the Middle East. Of the 38,000 Vichy French taken prisoners, only about
6,000 opted to join the Free French led by Charles de Gaulle who flew into the
region in late July 1941 to personally congratulate the victors. Shortly
thereafter, Free French General Georges Catroux was installed as the military
governor of Syria and Lebanon.
With the German push eastward during Operation Barbarossa, Britain
believed that Hitler’s aim, in addition to destroying the Stalin regime, was to
take control of the agricultural land of the Ukraine, the oil fields located in
Romania, and the Caspian (Baku, Azerbaijan) and once ensconced in the Caucasus,
move south to control Iraqi and Iranian petroleum reserves. In the summer of
1941, while the Axis threat to Iraq and Syria had been significantly reduced,
Rommel’s forces in North Africa continued to threaten Alexandria, Cairo, and
the Suez Canal. As the Third Reich attacked with massive force in Barbarossa
and drove toward the Caucasus, London believed German forces had planned on
utilizing the Turkish rail network to advance from both the Balkans as well as
the Caucasus.
It soon became apparent that German forces under Generalfeldmarshal
Eward Kleist on the Russian front, driving toward the Caucasus, desired to link
up with German forces under Rommel, should he be successful in overrunning the
British in Egypt and marching into the broader Middle East. The overall
strategic hope was to then move toward India and link up with a Japanese empire
that was pressing westward across Asia. In the summer of 1941, after the fall
of France and after Britain took a savage aerial pounding by the Luftwaffe, the
attack against the Soviets brought back memories of the Russians being knocked
out of World War I and the full might of the Kaiser being turned westward on
Britain and France.
During the Second World War, London began referring to the
“Northern Front,” which referred to a line of defense that Allied forces would
take given a Soviet defeat at the hands of Germany. Such a defeat would lead to
an expected surge of German troops descending into the Caucasus and threatening
neutral Turkey and Iran. German leaders once again viewed the use of railways
as an opportunity in circumventing British and Allied sea supremacy and
allowing Berlin to rapidly project military power inland.
Thus, it became critical that the Soviet Union should be
supplied sufficiently to avoid a repeat of the collapse of the Russian Empire,
similar to what took place during World War I, which then allowed the Kaiser to
turn his resources and attention toward the western front, in general, and
toward Britain and France, in particular. In that campaign and following the
Russian collapse, Germany was slowly making headway against Allied forces. The
collapse of Russia immediately mobilized the United States. The presence of 1.5
million U.S. soldiers coupled with the massive influx of supplies countered the
ability of Germany to place its entire focus and resources in the West. If the
Soviet Union was knocked out in the current campaign, Britain feared that
Germany’s ability to project force across the Eurasian continent via rail would
neutralize its traditional sea advantage. The acquisition of Middle East oil
and cutting Britain’s lifeline to India would be possible if the Soviets were
unable to stand against the Wehrmacht. Accordingly, the Allied strategic
imperative became: provide the Soviet army with sufficient resources for it to
stand against Nazi Germany and open a second front in the West as soon as
possible.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Britain
and the USSR became formal allies. These developments led to a joint
British-Soviet strategy toward the Caucasus and toward developing lines of
supplies from the Middle East to Soviet-held territory in and around the city
of Stalingrad. As a result, Iran became a focus for both of these policy
imperatives. Reza Shah, ruler of Persia, changed the name to the Imperial State
of Iran in 1935, in part to emphasize the Aryan heritage of the country. He did
so with the undisguised desire to align Iran closer with Hitler’s Germany and
its own predilection for Aryan supremacy. Iran, significantly underdeveloped as
the country entered the modern era, made major strides under Reza Shah who
sought to improve and modernize infrastructure and transportation networks as
well as establish modern schools and colleges. In these efforts, he needed
Western assistance to access technology and the learning model that made such
technology possible.
However, tensions had been strained with Britain since 1931
when the Shah cancelled a key oil concession (D’Arcy), which provided the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company exclusive rights to sell Iranian oil. Understandably,
since it was British capital, technology, and oil expertise that extracted and
marketed the oil, Britain believed it deserved the majority share of the
profits. However, the 90 percent of the profits that London kept after
petroleum sales and after the transactions moved through the British banking
system served as an irritant between Tehran and London. By mid-1935, the Shah
was increasingly leaning toward Germany for technology and modernization.
As World War II broke out, the Shah declared neutrality but
practiced intrigue with the Axis powers. On July 19, 1941, and again on August
17, London sent diplomatic notes ordering the Iranian government to expel
German nationals then in Iran, numbering about 700. Unable to convince the Shah
through diplomacy to distance himself from the Third Reich, British and Soviet
Forces invaded the Imperial State of Iran beginning on August 25, 1941. Final
diplomatic notes declaring the commencement of military operations were
delivered to the Shah’s government on the night of the invasion by British and
Soviet ambassadors. Those military operations (Operation Countenance) would
continue until the fall of the Shah on September 1941.
On the night of the invasion, the Shah summoned both of the
ambassadors from Britain and the Soviet Union and asked that if he sent the
Germans home would the invasion be called off. Neither ambassador gave the Shah
the clear-cut answer he sought. Frustrated and concerned, he wrote a letter to
U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt:
… on the basis of the declarations which Your Excellency
had made several times regarding the necessity of defending principles of
international justice and the right of peoples to liberty, I beg your
Excellency to take efficacious and urgent humanitarian steps to put an end to
these acts of aggression. This incident brings into war a neutral and pacific
country which has had no other care than the safeguarding of tranquility and
the reform of the country.
Roosevelt responded in a note diplomatically alluding to the
dangers posed by Hitler’s ambition to all regions of the globe, including North
America, and the United States being actively involved in supporting those
people and nations then resisting Hitler’s military conquests.
As Germany invaded the Soviet Union in late June 1941, the
apparent drive toward the oil fields in the Caucasus (Baku, Azerbaijan, in
particular) and the Caspian Sea became a significant concern. Moreover, the
Shah’s Imperial State of Iran completed an 800-mile railway from the Persian
Gulf port of Bandar-e Shapur (now Bandar Khomeini) to the Caspian Sea port of
Bandar-e Shah in 1938, toward which the Germans had provided significant
assistance in terms of engineering and rolling stock. For the Allies, these
harkened back memories of the drive to create a Berlin-to-Baghdad railway aimed
at offsetting traditional British sea power supremacy and the creation of
interior lines for the projection of land power into the Middle East.
During the joint Allied action taken against the Shah beginning
on August 25, 1941, 40,000 Soviet troops descended into Iran from the North and
marched on Tehran. On the same day, 19,000 British Commonwealth troops, mostly
Indian brigades, and as part of Operation Countenance, entered Iran from
various directions, with half moving straight for the oil fields in the
vicinity of Ahwaz and airborne units moving into Abadan to protect the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s refinery, then the largest in the world. A
subsidiary goal of the combined action was to open a supply line utilizing the
Trans-Iranian Railway in which to resupply the Soviet army, as it defended
against Operation Barbarossa.
Within four days, and as Soviet and British troops backed by
airpower rolled up Iranian defenses, the Shah issued an order to his armed
forces to stand down and cease military operations against the invaders. On
September 17, 1941, the Shah abdicated and was eventually transported to South
Africa where he passed away in Johannesburg in 1944. The Shah’s son, the Crown
Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, took the oath after the abdication and became the
new Shah of Iran. Under a separate agreement, the Soviet Union controlled
northern Iran, Caspian ports, and the Iranian-Turkish border, while Britain’s
control included southern Iran, Persian Gulf ports, and the oilfields.
The United States began moving supplies to Stalin’s army
under the Lend-Lease Act of 1941. In 1942, Roosevelt proposed to Churchill that
the U.S. Army become involved in the supervision of the 800-mile Trans-Iranian
Railway. On August 22, 1942, Churchill responded in a cable to Roosevelt:
I would recommend that the railway should be taken over,
developed and operated by the United States Army; with the railroad should be
included the ports of Khorramshahr and Bandar Shahpur. Your people will thus
undertake the great task of opening up the Persian Gulf Corridor, which will
carry primarily your supplies to Russia … We should be unable to find the
resources without your help and our burden in the Middle East would be eased by
the release for use elsewhere of the British units now operating the railway.
The railway and ports would be managed entirely by your people.
In the fall of 1941, the Trans-Iranian Railway was only
capable of transporting about 6,000 tons per month. By the fall of 1943, U.S.
Army engineers and contractors had expanded the railway’s capacity to more than
175,000 tons of cargo per month. Under the direction of the U.S. Army, Iranian
camel paths were expanded into highways for trucks, and the railway, which had
more than 200 tunnels, was reinforced and expanded in order to haul tanks and
other heavy equipment over the mountains.
Between 1942 and 1945, more than 5 million tons of
desperately needed supplies, including 192,000 trucks, and thousands of
aircraft, combat vehicles, tanks, weapons, ammunition, and petroleum products
were delivered to the Soviet army through the Persian Corridor.
