Word: iraq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Henry's patron and Britain's greatest soldier, General Sir Archibald Wavell, said last year: "The Caucasus, Iran, Iraq and Syria may well prove to be the great battlefield of 1942." He knew, and Hitler knows, that 1942 is the Germans' one year to fight for the bridge. The year is running out, and Hitler's armies are still at the approaches. The Allies' hope is to hold the Germans there. If the Germans reach the bridge this year, the Allies will probably lose all the Middle East...
...Iraq is the lesser third of Sir Henry's command; like Persia, it is an occupied, but theoretically independent, nation under a regency and seven-year-old King Feisal II. The British have more enemies than friends among the 4,500,000 Iraqi; it took British bombs and troops to suppress a brief, pro-Nazi regime in Iraq last year. In Iraq and in adjoining central Persia is the bulk of Sir Henry's Tenth Army, poised to turn northward if the Germans come down from the Caucasus, west if they approach from the Mediterranean and Egypt...
...Iraq is the most vital city in the Middle Eastern theater: Basra, the river port which U.S. and British engineers have turned into a busy reception point for war shipments through the Persian Gulf. At the military worst, it would be to Basra that the Tenth Army would retire, for with Basra would go the Persian Gulf, and its access to South Africa, the South Atlantic, the U.S. and Britain. The battle for the bridge would first be a battle for overland rail and highway routes from Basra through Bagdad to Persia, the Caspian and Russia; then, at the blackest...
...Army under General Alexander now holds the Mediterranean fringe from Egypt to Turkey. If & when Field Marshal Rommel masters Egypt and Suez, he may choose to turn north toward Syria, seize the Royal Navy's last (and insufficient) eastern Mediterranean bases at Haifa and Beirut, then drive on Iraq. His more direct route to Basra would be straight across the great deserts of Arabia, but even camel trails skirt those wastes...
Turkey is the imponderable X in all the Allied calculations for the Middle East. The Russian and British armies in Persia, Iraq and Syria hold guns at Turkey's back-friendly guns, aimed not at the Turks but at the Germans. Turkey's bouncing Premier Sükr ü Saracoglu and the Turkish army's tough, cagey old Field Marshal Fevsi Cakmak have no choice but to play with the winning side...