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Finally the enemies brushed in Iraq. First-line German planes, Heinkel bombers and Messerschmitt fighters hurried to attack the British at their Habbannia airport. German cadres of officers headed Iraqi troops for new infantry attacks near Basra. The British counter-bombed the Luftwaffe bases. The Fleet Air Arm planes flew 160 miles up the Tigris to bomb oil tanks at Amarah. R.A.F. fliers caught convoys of French motor trucks carrying Arab volunteers from Syria to Iraq.
Germany's Lawrence. These convoys were bad news. National uprisings play an important part in Empire warfare, as the British well know. The British have used them to good advantage in Ethiopia. They were the crux of T. E. Lawrence's successful operations in World War I. But in World War I the British position in the Middle East was exactly the opposite of the present position: then Britain was out to deliver the Arabs from Turkish dominion; now the British are supposed to be oppressors, and the Axis warriors call themselves liberating knights.
Leader of the knights is a German named Dr. Fritz Grobba. He was born Arthur Borg and as a boy was prophetically nicknamed "the Turk," because he looked like one. As a soldier in World War I he was assigned to the Turkish Front, was wounded, and, as a convalescent, fell in love with a Syrian Arab girl. He took her back to the mountains of Bavaria; but her lungs were not fit, and she died. Borg became a Mohammedan, studied Orientology, and eventually was persuaded by General Erich Ludendorff to undertake military intrigues in the Middle East. He disguised his name by spelling his signature, A. Borg, backwards and adding a euphonious b.
Grobba showed up in Bagdad. He persuaded the then King, Ghazi I, to send some young officers to military war games in Germany. They returned to Iraq amazed. In 1938 he had 50 German officers invited to Iraqui war games. They stayed in Iraq. Next he arranged to have some "research expeditions" sent from Germany to Iraq. They stayed in Iraq. In October 1938, some Arabs attacked and fired the main British pipelines from the Iraq fields; when this was found to be a Grobba job, he had to flee to Saudi Arabia.
He did not cease his operations. He spent millions of English pounds (reportedly counterfeit) softening up Iraqi officers. He met some of them in Damascus last winter, and by April had evolved a thoroughly pro-Nazi native organization in the Iraqi Army.
It was simple then to engineer the El-Gailani revolt. Without firing a shot, Grobba thus won the first skirmish in the Battle of the Middle East. Last week he was out in front, getting the German Army in touch with native soldiers not only of Iraq, but also of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Battle for a Battlefield. But the Battle of the Middle East was much more than a nationalist movement. It was a strategic contest of the first importance, in which time was a crucial factor. The immediate stake was the oil of Iraq, and last week's scrimmages suggested that the British might not have time or strength systematically to destroy the wells and refineries before the Germans arrived in force. The secondary stake was the Suez Canal.