The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [76]
In April 1941 a military coup in Iraq brought to power the Anglophobic General Rashid Ali, whose ‘government of national defence’ declared independence and besieged the British garrison in the Habbaniya air base on the Euphrates on 2 May. The commander of the flying school there, Air Vice-Marshal Harry Smart, fought off the attack after three days, and a column from Transjordan captured Baghdad at the end of the month. Rashid Ali escaped to Iran and was replaced by a pro-British regent. Next it was Vichy-controlled Syria’s turn, which had agreed to supply Rashid Ali with German arms during the uprising. Along with the Free French, British forces attacked on 8 June, and by an armistice agreed only weeks later on 5 July established the right to occupy Syria for the rest of the war. The balance of power in the region had shifted dramatically on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia and Churchill automatically declared Britain to be in alliance with the USSR. After the Iranian Government had refused an Anglo-Soviet demand to expel German agents from the country, the two powers invaded on 25 August, after which nationalist resistance collapsed in less than a week. The Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, and British and Russian troops occupied Teheran on 17 September. Although Iraq, Syria and Iran thenceforth stayed firmly in the Allied camp for the rest of the war, with all that that implied for British oil supplies, there is no doubt that had Egypt fallen to Rommel there was very little that Britain could have done to protect her gains there.
With Tobruk still holding out behind him, and being resupplied by sea and air, Rommel could not push on further east until it fell, so the Afrika Korps sat out a long hot summer besieging it, until campaigning could be resumed when the weather cooled in November 1941. Meanwhile Churchill directed on to Auchinleck the ceaseless telegrams calling for the relief of Tobruk that Wavell had so long endured. The Prime Minister also wanted airfields established that could protect the air route between Alexandria and Malta. Auchinleck, by contrast, was more interested in protecting the Nile Valley and securing the vital oil sources of the Persian Gulf. Only once the Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian operations were finished successfully would he contemplate action, telegraphing Churchill on 4 July: ‘No further offensive [in the] Western Desert should be contemplated until base is secure.’31 It was not what Churchill wanted to hear.
Campaigning did not therefore start again until the night of Monday, 17 November, with the opening of Operation Crusader, the largest armoured offensive the British had launched to date. There was a serious risk involved; Michael Carver recalled that some of Auchinleck’s tanks were so infirm that they had to be carried to the battle on transporters.32 Nonetheless, in the intervening four months the Commonwealth’s Eighth Army, which had been constituted in September 1941 from the Western Desert Force and reinforcements, had been enlarged to two corps and the attack took Rommel by surprise. Debouching from Mersa Matruh, the British were checked in the desert tank battle of Sidi-Rezegh from 19 to 22 November, and a sortie from Tobruk was also repulsed. German tanks were simply better than British ones at that stage of the war, something the Chiefs of Staff privately and reluctantly accepted. The man who took over