Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia break off relations with Germany

On 5 September 1939, two days after Britain and France declared war on Germany, the government of the Kingdom of Iraq broke off diplomatic relations with the Third Reich. Within the following week two other independent Arab states did the same: Egypt, on 6 September according to some chronologies, and Saudi Arabia, on 11 September. All three were bound to Britain by treaties or by strong interests, all three removed the German diplomats, and Iraq and Egypt interned Reich citizens and seized their property. None of them, however, declared war on Germany. Baghdad, Cairo and Riyadh stopped halfway between ally and neutral onlooker, and that is where they remained almost until the end of the war.

The treaties with London

The stance of Iraq and Egypt was determined by the treaties of alliance with which Britain had replaced its direct rule in the 1930s. Iraq, a British mandated territory since 1920, concluded such a treaty on 30 June 1930, in the course of negotiations that had begun with the treaty of December 1927; it was signed for Iraq by the prime minister, Nuri al-Said. Two years later Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations as an independent state. Article 4 of the treaty laid down that if either party found itself at war, the other would “immediately come to his aid in the capacity of an ally”, but at the same time it specified what that aid was to consist of on Iraq’s part: providing the British with all facilities on Iraqi territory, including railways, rivers, ports, airfields and means of communication. Britain retained two air bases, at Shaibah near Basra and at Habbaniyah on the Euphrates, together with the right to move troops through the country.

Egypt, formally independent since 1922, signed a similar treaty in London on 26 August 1936, in the shadow of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. The leader of the Wafd party, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Nahhas, and the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, concluded an alliance for twenty years. The British were to withdraw their troops from Cairo and Alexandria to the zone of the Suez Canal, where up to 10,000 soldiers and 400 pilots could be stationed in peacetime. Article 7 obliged both parties to mutual assistance in the event of war, and Egypt’s assistance was to consist of placing its ports, airfields and means of communication at Britain’s disposal. In that event the Egyptian government was to introduce martial law and effective censorship. Neither the Iraqi nor the Egyptian treaty stated explicitly that the ally must declare war, and both governments made use of this loophole in September 1939.

Saudi Arabia had no such alliance. Its king, Abdulaziz ibn Saud, had obtained London’s recognition of his full independence in the Treaty of Jeddah of 1927, but his state, surrounded by British protectorates and mandates on the Persian Gulf, on the Red Sea and in Transjordan, could not afford Britain’s hostility.

German overtures

In the late 1930s Germany won a good deal of sympathy in the Arab world, though little real influence. Resentment of the British and French, who after the First World War had divided the Arab lands into mandates, and anger at British policy in Palestine, where the Arab revolt raged in 1936–1939, led many young officers and nationalists to look hopefully towards Berlin. The most active German diplomat in the region was the minister in Baghdad, Fritz Grobba, an Arabist who funded newspapers and cultivated contacts with Iraqi officers. From the beginning of 1939 he was also the first German minister accredited to Ibn Saud, although he resided in Baghdad. In June 1939 Hitler received a Saudi envoy, with whom supplies of arms on credit were discussed.

In Iraq pro-German sympathies were strongest in the army. A group of colonels, the most influential of whom was Salah al-Din al-Sabbagh, had helped Nuri al-Said return to the premiership in December 1938 and from then on regarded itself as the guardian of state policy. King Ghazi I, son of Faisal I and popular among the nationalists, who attacked the British over his private radio station, was killed in a car accident on 4 April 1939. In Baghdad it was suspected that this was no accident, and Nuri and the British were accused; no evidence was ever produced. The throne passed to the four-year-old Faisal II, and his uncle Abd al-Ilah, compliant towards Nuri and well disposed to the British, became regent.

Iraq: 5 September

Nuri al-Said, the most pro-British of Iraqi politicians, reacted quickly. After Britain’s declaration of war, the government in Baghdad broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on 5 September. Grobba was recalled to Berlin, German officials were expelled and Reich citizens were interned. Nuri did not, however, bring himself to declare war. He announced that Iraq would give Britain the assistance provided for in the treaty, but that the Iraqi armed forces would not be used outside the country’s borders. This position was a compromise: the prime minister knew that war at Britain’s side would be unacceptable to the army and to a large part of public opinion, while at the same time he did not want to give London a pretext to accuse Iraq of breaking the treaty.

Egypt: diplomats sent home, war undeclared

Egypt, under the young King Farouk I, had since August 1939 been governed by Ali Maher, a conservative politician from the king’s circle and an opponent of the Wafd. At the beginning of September the government introduced martial law and censorship in Egypt, as the treaty required, and then broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. Some chronologies give the date as 6 September. Others move it to 3 or 4 September, that is, to the day of Britain’s declaration of war or the day after; what is certain is that Egypt did so in the first days of the war. German citizens were interned, and their property and businesses were placed under the administration of the custodian of enemy property. Berlin responded in kind. In the autumn of 1939, on Ribbentrop’s orders, Egyptians in Germany were interned so that there would be someone to exchange for the Germans held in Egypt.

There was, however, no declaration of war. Neither the king nor the prime minister believed that Egypt had to fight in a European war, and in a country that had only just rid the streets of Cairo of British garrisons, the return of foreign soldiers was resented. Ali Maher later explained to the British ambassador, Miles Lampson, that a declaration of war with a few thousand soldiers on the frontier would be merely a showy gesture that might bring disaster upon sixteen million inhabitants. Egypt placed its ports, airfields, railways and the Suez Canal at Britain’s disposal and became the Empire’s main base in the Middle East, but formally it remained outside the war. The western frontier caused particular anxiety. Beyond it lay Italian Libya, and on 1 September Benito Mussolini’s Italy had announced that it was not yet entering the war.

Saudi Arabia: 11 September

Ibn Saud broke off relations with Germany on 11 September. The step was of political rather than practical significance: Grobba was accredited to the king but had his office in Baghdad, from which he had just been recalled. The king, who in recent years had permitted himself talks with Berlin and Rome in order to bargain for better terms from London, showed which side he was taking. The kingdom remained neutral. Ibn Saud valued his independence and did not want to become entangled in a war that might endanger the pilgrimages to Mecca, his state’s main source of income, and at the same time he did not break with Italy.

The outcome

Breaking off relations was a convenient minimum for London. The British obtained what mattered most: access to the Suez Canal and to the airfields and bases on the route to India, and the certainty that German diplomatic missions would not be operating in Cairo and Baghdad. They did not obtain allies fighting under arms, and they soon discovered how fragile this arrangement was.

In Iraq Nuri was replaced as prime minister in March 1940 by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, Baghdad did not break off relations with it, and the Italian legation became a centre of Axis propaganda. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, had also been living in Baghdad since October 1939. On 1 April 1941 four colonels, al-Sabbagh among them, installed al-Gaylani in power, and the regent fled the country. The British invoked the treaty of 1930 and landed troops at Basra, and in May 1941 the Anglo-Iraqi War broke out, in which Germany, too late and with too few forces, supported the Iraqis with Luftwaffe aircraft. The revolt collapsed at the end of May, and in Baghdad there was a pogrom of the Jews known as the Farhud. Nuri al-Said returned to power, and in January 1943 Iraq declared war on the Axis powers.

Egypt broke off relations with Italy in June 1940, but did not declare war on it even when, in September 1940, the Italian army entered its territory. As early as June 1940 the British forced Ali Maher’s resignation, and in February 1942 Ambassador Lampson surrounded the royal palace with tanks and compelled Farouk to entrust the government to the leader of the Wafd, Nahhas. The most important battles in North Africa were fought on Egyptian soil, including the Second Battle of El Alamein in the autumn of 1942. Egypt declared war on Germany and Japan only in February 1945, in order to be among the founders of the United Nations; the prime minister, Ahmad Maher, Ali’s brother, was shot dead in parliament immediately after announcing this decision. For the same reason Saudi Arabia declared war on 1 March 1945.

September 1939 thus showed that the Middle East would become the rear base of Britain’s war rather than a willing participant in it. The Arab states fulfilled their formal obligations, but their elites were waiting to see who would win. Germany and Italy tried to exploit this uncertainty, and throughout the war Britain had to maintain considerable forces in the region, not only against the Axis armies but also to keep watch over its own allies.