Word: balkans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sooner or later Germany would try to consummate the Drang nach Osten begun by the Balkan campaign. Turkey stands in the way. If Germany could get around to the back door via Syria or Iraq, Turkey, encircled, would have to talk turkey...
...accept the best arrangements she could get, and for the past month negotiations have been proceeding for a barter agreement with Germany. Such Nazi agreements have a way of corrupting by persuasion and bribery a nation's business element: they preceded German occupation of most of the Balkan countries. But in Ankara Franz von Papen is dealing with a tougher character than any other statesman in the Balkans. Furthermore, he is dealing with one who has his country solidly behind...
...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...
...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...