Word: balkanize
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...days before Germany's Balkan campaign, a pro-German Arab nationalist, Seyid Rashid Ali El-Gailani, overthrew five-year-old Monarch Feisal II's pro-British Regent. Because of the threat implicit in this coup, the British sent 1,200 troops to Basra, Iraq's main port, at the head of the Persian Gulf. El-Gailani acquiesced in the landing and publicly subscribed to the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty of Alliance which justified it ("The aid of . . . Iraq in the event of war or the imminent menace of war will consist in . . . use of railways, rivers, ports...
...Germans, on the other hand, claimed great gains from their Balkan enemies: "more than half a million rifles, far more than 1,000 guns, many thousand machine guns and anti-aircraft machine guns, vehicles and large amounts of ammunition." Most of this booty was taken from the Yugoslavs and Greeks; the British destroyed most of what they left behind...
...third the divisional strength of the Germans, can ill afford to lose even handfuls of men. The highest estimate of German losses, which the Germans are almost certain to deny, is 60,000 men. This seems heavy, but it is no more than 10% of Germany's Balkan strength, and Adolf Hitler has hundreds of thousands of idle troops with which to fill the breach...
There will be no pause in military operations after the successful conclusion of the Balkan campaign, and all the enemy's vital points in the Mediterranean will be attacked...
...bare. Turkey's Black Sea flank was also bare now that Germany controlled the entire length of the Danube. So giant pincers on Turkey (see map) seemed to be in the blueprints. It might be no more than political pincers, to make Turkey come to terms. After the Balkan fight, Turkey might be induced to give in. But if necessary, the great pincers might be used militarily...