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Abstract
Although coveted by the Axis powers for its rich oil supplies, the Persian Gulf Theater was the scene of very little fighting in World War II due to strategic allied victories on the distant periphery. The theater remained important, however, for several reasons. The early years of World War II saw Anglo and Anglo-Russian military attacks on two Gulf regimes sympathetic to the Axis, Iraq and Iran. Logistics delivery to Soviet Russia, furthermore, brought for the first time a substantial American military presence to the Gulf, which totaled at its peak approximately 65,000 civilians and uniformed service members of the United States, primarily in Iran. The potential loss of the Gulf's prolific oil fields became a key concern early in the war, and a dialogue arose between Western diplomats, military leaders, and oil company executives over who should defend them, and if needed, who should destroy them to deny their use by invading Germans. This article analyzes the significance of the Persian Gulf Theater during World War II and its most lasting impact, the enduring relationship that emerged between the United States and the Iranians, and the United States and the Saudis.
Notes
1For a full campaign analysis, see Robert Lyman, Iraq 1941: The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad (Colchester, Essex, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2006).
2For the naval aspects of the regent's escape into the Royal Navy ships, see Royal Navy Account of Operations against Iraqi Rebels: Commodore, Senior Naval Officer Persian Gulf Report No. 15/587 [Dispatch] – Persian Gulf War Diary – April 1941, 27 May 1941, in Anita Burdett, ed., Persian Gulf and Red Sea Naval Reports, Vol. 15 (London: Archive Editions, 1993), 8–14 (hereafter cited as PGRSNR.).
3Senior Naval Officer Persian Gulf Commodore, Enclosure to Senior Naval Officer, Persian Gulf's No. 20/587 [Dispatch], Dated 20th June 1941 – Persian Gulf War Diary – May, 20 June 1941, PGRSNR, 16.
4J. M. A. Gwyer and J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy III, Part I, Vol. III, History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Military Series (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1964), 188.
5For primary documents on the naval aspects of this campaign, see Senior Naval Officer Persian Gulf Commodore, Account of Operation Countenance, British June 1941 Attack on Iran: Dispatch #196/655: Report of Proceedings of the Persian Gulf Division During Operation “Countenance”, 26 September 1941, PRGSNR, Vol. 15, 59–75. For a secondary accounting of the land invasion and the participation of British Indian troops in it, see Compton MacKenzie, Eastern Epic (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951).
6 PGRSNR, Vol. 15, 59.
7Gwyer and Butler, 188.
8Joel Sayre, Persian Gulf Command (New York: Random House, 1945), 139.
9Gwyer and Butler, 191.
10See Steven R. Ward, Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009).
11The unit was originally called the Persian Gulf Service Command.
12T. H. Vail Motter, United States Army in World War II – the Middle East Theater: The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia, ed. Kent Roberts Greenfield (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1952), 125–135, 291.
13It was generally accepted by Anglo-American defense officials that, once the Germans seized British military strongholds at Suez and in Palestine, they would march onward toward the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. This seems a logical conclusion. I, however, have not yet found conclusive evidence of this German intent. The German Research Institute for Military History's official account of the entire war, Wilhelm Deist et al., eds., and S. Falla et al., trans., Germany and the Second World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, seven volumes 1990–2006), for example, scarcely mentions the Gulf, and does not address the Nazis' potential plans for the oil fields in the region.
14Sec State Hull to Minister in Egypt (Kirk) 28 August 1942, FRUS 1942, Vol. 4, 583.
15California Arabian Standard Oil Company President Fred Davies passed a message to the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. State Department requesting U.S. military protection for the oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia. Quoted in Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Alling), 16 April 1942, in Foreign Relations of the U.S. (FRUS), 1942, Vol. 4, Near East and Africa, 576.
16William E. Mulligan, ““Air Raid! A Sequel”,” Saudi Aramco World, July/August 1976.
17Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Alling), 16 April 1942, in FRUS 1942, Vol. 4, 576.
18Minster in Egypt (Kirk) to the Secretary of State 14 July 1942, in FRUS 1942, Vol. 4, 572.
19For a treatment of the British in the Gulf in the 1800s, see James Onley, “Britain's Native Agents in Arabia and Persia in the Nineteenth Century,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 24 (2004): 1; Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf (London: Oxford University Press, 2007).
20Minister in Egypt (Kirk) to the Secretary of State, 13 July 1942, in FRUS 1942, Vol. 4, 578.
21Sec State Hull to Minister in Egypt (Kirk) 28 August 1942, FRUS 1942 Vol. 4, 583.
22Memorandum of Conversation [with CASOC's Mr. Lenahan], by the Asst Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Merriam), 13 July 1942, FRUS 1942, Vol. 4, 579.
23Memorandum of Conversation [with CASOC's Mr. Lenahan], by the Asst Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Merriam), 13 July 1942, FRUS 1942, Vol. 4, 579.
24C. S. Ridley, Letter to U.S. Ambassador to Tehran, Mr. Wallace Murray, 9 September 1945, RG 334, Box 2, File Name: “General Administrative Files 1945”, U.S. National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
25For details of this Anglo-American competition over Saudi Arabia during World War II, see Jeffrey R. Macris, The Politics and Security of the Gulf: Anglo-American Hegemony and the Shaping of a Region (London: Routledge, 2010), chapter 2, 33–80.
26For a first hand account of the historic meeting, see William A. Eddy, “Eddy's Account of Ibn Saud-Roosevelt Meeting on 14 February 1945,” in K. E. Evans, ed., U.S. Records on Saudi Affairs, 1945–1959, Vol. 2 (London: Archive Editions, 1997), 255; William A. Eddy, “Memorandum of Conversation between the King of Saudi Arabia and President Roosevelt, Aboard the USS Quincy, 14 February 1945,” Foreign Relations of the United States 1945, Vol. VIII (Washington: GPO), 11.