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Sadat's revolutionary course was interrupted by World War II. Fanatically anti-British, the young officer plotted with the Germans. When he was caught, he was cashiered from the army and spent more than two years in prison for spying. While there he learned to read and speak English and German and read French and Persian. After the war, Nasser helped him get his commission back.
Sadat was the firebrand of the young officers' group that gathered around Nasser. His most spectacular idea was a plot to blow up the British embassy. Nasser talked him out of that. "I was always eager to step up the pace. But Gamal, a man of deliberation, acted as a restraining influence," Sadat once wrote. On the night of July 23, 1952, when the planners decided to move against King Farouk's corrupt regime, Sadat was nowhere to be found; he had gone to a movie in Cairo with his wife, Gehan. Eventually he received a message from Nasser, threw on his uniform and arrived in time to make the radio announcement of the successful coup. Later, Sadat was assigned the task of supervising King Farouk's departure into exile aboard his royal yacht, Mahroussa. Watching the scene from the bridge of an Egyptian navy destroyer, Sadat was so overcome with emotion that he had to be carried ashore by sailors. Years later, in a similar surge of emotion, he collapsed in tears over Nasser's coffin.
In spite of his key role in the revolution, Sadat was never trusted with a really sensitive job. At one point he was named editor of the party newspaper Al Gomhouria, and he filled it with tirades against U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the "felonious and stupid horde" of British and French government figures. A devout Moslem who prays so often and so intensely that he has developed a mark on his forehead where it touches the prayer mat, Sadat was later made secretary-general of the Islamic Congress, an organization of Islamic nations. Because he was an avid Ping Pong player, he was named chairman of the African Union for Table Tennis.
In 1966, as president of Egypt's National Assembly, Sadat made his only trip to the U.S. He studied the operations of Congress, marveled over the extensive staffs that served its committees, and met Lyndon Johnson. He toured California and visited Disneyland. In New York, Sadat poked through second-hand bookshops until he had a copy of every book written by his favorite author, Lloyd C. Douglas (The Robe). Sadat had discovered Douglas' books while he was in prison, he explained, and he liked them because "he has tremendous power and he gives faith and confidence."
Sadat's loyalty to Nasser was unquestionable, and it finally paid off. One gray December morning in 1969, Nasser summoned Sadat to his home in the Cairo suburb of Manshiet al Bakri. He was preparing to go to an Arab summit in Rabat, and he had spent all night reading intelligence estimates about a supposed assassination plot against him. Nasser figured that he ought to have a Vice President and swore Sadat in on the spot. Less than ten months later, the man who had announced the success of Nasser's 1952 revolution was called upon to tell the Egyptian people that their beloved El Rais (The Boss) was dead. Shortly afterward, Sadat was sworn in as the third President in Egypt's history.