Word: iraqization
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...British had, besides, sent troops and planes to Iraq. In three weeks of sand-lot holy warfare, they had crushed the Air Force and just about crushed the land forces of the pro-Axis Premier-by-Revolt Rashid Ali El-Gailani. Last week the British reinforced their garrison in Iraq by sending units of the Fleet Air Arm to the top of the Persian Gulf...
Giant Leapfrog. Until Turkey might be persuaded either to do something or to do nothing, the Axis plan was apparently to play a giant game of leapfrog, transporting men, small artillery, light tanks, food and maintenance supplies by plane from Greece to Iraq. In Iraq they would, for the time being, fight a kind of vanguard delaying action, keeping the British from getting firmly established in the area until they themselves could...
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...
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...
...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...