At the end of the First World War, Britain’s mastery over the Middle East was unrivaled. Its troops occupied the Arab world from Egypt to Iraq, and its control over the Persian Gulf was unassailable. Although few in the Arab world had wanted the British to rule over them, most viewed their colonial overlord with respect, however grudging. The British were efficient, inscrutable, orderly, technologically advanced, and militarily strong. Britain was truly great, a colossus that towered over its colonial possessions. Two decades of colonial rule revealed the colossus to have clay feet. Across the region the British faced a gamut of opposition, from moderate nationalist politics to radical armed insurgency. In Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt, the British were forced to negotiate and renegotiate the terms of their unwelcome presence. Each British concession to Arab opposition, every reversal of policy, revealed the fallibility of the imperial power. It was the rising threat of fascism in Europe, however, that turned Britain’s Middle Eastern possessions into the vulnerable underbelly of the British Empire. At times, it looked as though the Arab colonies might slip from Britain’s control. British actions in Iraq and Egypt during the Second World War demonstrated the weakness of their position in a way that presaged the end of Britain’s dominion in the Middle East.

In Iraq, the British faced a pro-Axis coup d’йtat on April 1, 1941. Iraq was then ruled by an unpopular regent, Prince Abd al-Illah (r. 1939–1953), who ruled on behalf of the child King Faysal II (r. 1953–1958). When Abd al-Illah backed British calls for the resignation of the popular prime minister, Rashid Ali al-Kaylani, on grounds of his pro-Axis leanings, key Iraqi officers put their support behind the prime minister. The top military officers believed Germany and Italy would win the war and that Iraq’s interests lay in fostering good relations with the Axis. The regent, fearful of a military coup, fled Iraq for Transjordan, leaving Rashid Ali and the Iraqi military in control. Rashid Ali’s continued exercise of political authority in the regent’s absence was deemed by Britain to constitute a coup. In spite of Rashid Ali’s every effort to demonstrate to the British that no fundamental change had occurred, the nationalist tone of his new cabinet (which included Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the grand mufti exiled for his extreme nationalist views, who was a close advisor to Rashid Ali) served only to exacerbate Britain’s fears. Invoking the terms of the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, the British requested permission to land troops in Iraq. Rashid Ali and the nationalist officers demurred, as they mistrusted British intentions. Undaunted, the British began landing troops without official sanction. The Iraqis threatened to fire on unauthorized British aircraft, which the British warned would be grounds for war. Under the circumstances, neither side could afford to back down. Britain and Iraq went to war in May 1941. Fighting began outside the British base at Habbaniyya and lasted several days until the Iraqi forces fell back on Falluja, where they regrouped to defend Baghdad. Fresh British troops were sent from India and Transjordan. Rashid Ali turned to Germany and Italy to request assistance against the British. The Axis powers managed to send thirty aircraft and some small arms but, under the time constraints, were unable to intervene more directly. As British forces closed in on Baghdad, Rashid Ali and his political allies, including Hajj Amin al-Husayni, fled the country. They left the mayor of Baghdad to negotiate an armistice with the British, and the country as a whole in a state of chaos. It was the Jewish community of Baghdad that fell victim to the chaos after the fall of Rashid Ali’s government in 1941. Anti-British sentiment combined with hostility to the Zionist project in Palestine and German notions of anti-Semitism to produce a pogrom unprecedented in Arab history, known in Arabic as the Farhud. The Jewish community of Baghdad was large and highly assimilated into all levels of society—from the elites to the bazaars to the music halls, in which many of Iraq’s most celebrated performers were Jewish. Yet all of this was forgotten in two days of communal violence and bloodshed that claimed nearly 200 lives and left Jewish shops and houses robbed and gutted, before the British authorities decided to enter the city and restore order. The fall of Rashid Ali’s government led to the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq. The regent, Abd al-Illah, and those Iraqi politicians most sympathetic to the British were returned to power by their former colonial master. Iraqi nationalists were outraged. They argued that Rashid Ali enjoyed widespread support among the Iraqi people. Clearly the British would only allow the Iraqis a leadership that met with London’s approval. Coming only nine years after Iraq had achieved its nominal independence, this intervention served to discredit both Great Britain and the Hashemite monarchy in the Iraqi people’s eyes. Britain, however, was the ultimate loser in Iraq. The mandate, which had once been a success story, was now left with a shaken monarchy, a dangerous military, and a population so hostile to Britain’s role in the Middle East that they preferred to throw their lot in with Britain’s Axis enemies.

The Axis had its supporters in Egypt as well. Egyptian nationalists were not satisfied with the partial independence achieved in the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. Britain continued to exercise disproportionate control over Egypt’s affairs and full control over Sudan. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Egypt was flooded with British troops, and the Egyptian government seemed more subordinate to Britain since independence than it had been before. This situation was intolerable to a new generation of Egyptian nationalists whose enmity for Britain made them look with favor on Britain’s Axis enemies. The Italians and the Germans played on nationalist sentiment to isolate the British in Egypt. The Italians launched a powerful new radio station to carry their propaganda to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Radio Bari trumpeted the accomplishments of the fascist government of Benito Mussolini. The combination of extreme nationalism, strong leadership, and the military might of fascism appealed to Egyptian nationalists far more than the petty squabbles of the multiparty democracy that Britain had imposed on their country. With Germany and Italy at war with Britain, many in Egypt hoped to see the Axis powers defeat the British and force them from Egypt once and for all. With the launch of the North African campaign in 1940, some Egyptian nationalists believed the moment of deliverance was at hand. Italian forces crossed from Libya to attack British positions in Egypt. German forces joined the Italians in North Africa with the specially trained Afrika Korps, commanded by the brilliant field marshal Erwin Rommel. By the winter of 1942, Axis forces posed a real threat to Britain’s position in Egypt. Some Egyptian political leaders, including even King Faruq himself, seemed quite receptive to the idea of Germany driving the British out of Egypt for them. British mistrust of Egyptian prime minister Ali Mahir’s fascist leanings led them to demand his resignation in June 1940. This sort of intervention revealed Britain’s disregard for Egypt’s sovereignty and independence and further soured Anglo-Egyptian relations. As German and Italian forces gained the upper hand in the battlefields of North Africa, the British sought to crush support for the Axis within Egypt’s political circles. Ironically, the only Egyptian political party with reliable antifascist credentials was the nationalist Wafd party. On February 4, 1942, the British high commissioner Sir Miles Lampson presented King Faruq with an ultimatum either to name Mustafa Nahhas to form an entirely Wafdist government or to abdicate his throne. To back up his ultimatum, Lampson deployed British tanks around Faruq’s Abdin Palace in central Cairo. The Abdin Palace ultimatum shattered twenty years of Anglo-Egyptian politics by compromising the three pillars of the system: the monarchy, the Wafd, and the British themselves. King Faruq had betrayed his country by succumbing to British threats and allowing a foreign power to impose a government upon him. Many nationalists believe their king should have stood up to the British, even at the risk of death. As for the Wafd, the party that had won the support of the Egyptian people to struggle against imperialism had agreed to come to power by the bayonets of the British. Yet it was the hysteria behind the ultimatum that revealed how weak and threatened the British were in the face of Axis advances in the Western Desert. The British were on the defensive against the Axis and Egyptian nationalism alike, and had shown their fallibility. The three-way power struggle between the British, the palace, and the Wafd collapsed in February 1942. All three parties would be swept away a decade later in the revolutionary ferment of the 1950s.