1940 - Hitler turns West - Elimination of Britain

23.1. Iraqi insurgency - The Beginning - May 1941

It is not easy to write a coherent account of the Middle Eastern events of May 1941 as they were an interaction between three theatres of war - the Western Desert, Iraq and East Africa. Fortunately we can rule out one theater of war out of this account and this was the British Isles. As the defence of Britain was being reinforced by transfer of Canadian troops and the troop carrying capacity of the Indian Ocean was employed in various emergency operations it proved to be impossible to reinforce Middle East by British means before Unternehmen Seelöwe. This did not mean that reinforcements would not come at all, as can be seen later on.

Even nowadays it is a cheap rhetorical device to say that conflicts in the Middle East have long roots. It is sufficient for our account on Iraq to go back to 1940 when German intelligence and Rashid Ali al-Gaylani made contact in Turkey. German support in form of Brandenburgers was promised for Rashid Ali and the Golden Square and in exchange the Golden Square promised to hold off any action until the situation was ripe to be exploited.

Thus, on 8 May 1941 a car bomb exploded, the Iraqi Regent Abd al-Ilah was killed and the Golden Square and Rashid Ali took power. The British had prepared for the contingency by basing a modest force based upon 10 Indian Division headquarters and two out of it's three brigades to Emirate of Kuwait, ostensibly for transportation to Transjordan via land route. This force secured the city of Basra right after the assasination and began to prepare for a march towards Baghdad. RAF Habbaniya prepared itself for the siege and preparations were made in Transjordan to move a reinforced brigade from there towards Iraq.

Unfortunately for the British, Germans had also prepared for a possible Iraqi insurgency and thus the German airlift to Iraq via Syria began on 9 May 1941. In somewhat similar manner to deployment of SMS Goeben during the First World War Germans deployed a composite aerial Gefechtsverband composed of approximately 100 combat aircraft via Syria. This was to be, of course, an Iraqi Air Force unit. The force began operations by a hasty bombardment of RAF Habbaniya on 12 May 1941.

While the planes and the support personnel were flown in the forthcoming supply traffic was routed through Turkey which had to allow transportation of goods, "medical personnel", "wounded" and those going to "vacation" as part of Turko-German transshipment deal. The ground contingent was to arrive through Turkey in small parts and was to be a light combined arms divisional sized task force. The force, named after it's leader as Gruppe Bader was formed around 3. Infanteriedivision minus most of it's artillery. Additionally German advisers, some of which proved to be less than able cultural agents, were distributed to rather amateurish Iraqi Army.

With German approval, Vichy Syria was also allowed to mobilize in order to protect western flank of Iraq as British counter-reaction not only against Iraq but Syria and Lebanon too was certain to follow.
 
23.2. Western Desert lives and breathes - May 1941

In order to understand what reaction could the British take at Middle East misfortunes we must turn our eyes west of Suez canal, to the Western Desert to El Agheila where Italian 5th Army and British 8th Army had been locked in a standstill since early February.

At this date the British 8th Army had a total of 6 infantry and 2 armored divisions. On the opposite side the Fifth Italian Army had four Italian motorized infantry divisions and one Italian armored division. The German component, Deutsches Afrika Korps, had two armored divisions and two light divisions. British divisions, having rather lavish corps assets, were in practise stronger and it must be remembered that the Italian divisions had just two infantry regiments.

The breakthrough battle was hard, slow and methodical but the pursuit of the British forces rather fast. During the pursuit the Axis forces were particularly helped by strong air support. By end of May the important supply harbor of Tobruk had been captured together with vast amount of supplies, thanks to lavish air support by Luftflotte 2. During Battle of Tobruk the 9 Australian Infantry division and 1 South African Infantry Division surrendered, which was a heavy blow not only for 8th Army but also for the respective countries.

For layman it seemed that it would not be long before Rommel would dip his feet in Suez and shake his hands with Arab armies arriving from the east. However, the realities of time and space would make things rather more different. At this date, while British 8th Army was broken the German DAK was heavily attrited and Italian 5th Army far behind, not to mention basing machinery of Luftflotte 2. In order to continue any drive towards Suez canal the key question would be if the Axis would be able to direct their supplies to Tobruk instead of Benghazi. The war on dry desert was to depend upon sea battle on very wet Mediterranean.

For situation in the Middle East the most significant factor of the Western Desert campaign was that virtually all first-rate forces had to be directed towards Western Desert.
 
I like what you've done so far - looking forward to a successful Iraqi rebellion (now quite likely as the German's are actively helping them)
 
I like what you've done so far - looking forward to a successful Iraqi rebellion (now quite likely as the German's are actively helping them)

Thanks for support, on Iraqi rebellion one must remember it's the Iraqi Army we're talking about... ;)
 
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