Middle East #3: World War II

When France suffered a “nauseatingly swift collapse” to Germany in World War II, Britain was desperate to find someone who could serve as the face of French resistance, to create a feeling that they (the British) weren’t as “isolated as they felt”, writes James Barr in A Line in the Sand. They picked on Charles de Gaulle.

 

De Gaulle struggled to wield any real influence on within-France resistance. Why? For one, he was barely known in France at the time. Secondly, much of the army in France considered itself a professional unit – if the Vichy government of the day had surrendered to Germany, well, it was their professional duty to obey the government, not become outlaws. Thirdly, for the French who did resist, who said de Gaulle was their boss anyway? And lastly, since the ancient enemy (Britain) was backing de Gaulle, it only detracted from his credibility.

 

When the French in the Middle East aligned with the Vichy government in France, the British had a major problem. What if the Middle East was opened up to Hitler by the French? With Rommel coming from the Africa side, the British couldn’t afford to be encircled from the Middle East as well.

 

And so British tried to get their man, de Gaulle, to take over in the French Middle East. But de Gaulle would not always align with what the British wanted – he had to appear to be strong and independent, after all. Plus, he didn’t trust the British to not try and take over the French areas of the Middle East.

 

Both sides’ actions were as if they were Allies in Europe only, but continued their traditional enmity in the Middle East. Both sides would subvert and sabotage each other; and instigate the Arabs in the others’ territory to rebel.

 

Britain wanted a friendly Arab state to be established – both from an oil and Suez perspective. Therefore, they put a limit on how many Jews could immigrate to Palestine since that was a topic that infuriated the Arabs. But as the scale of Nazi massacres of Jews began to grow public, the Jews grew desperate – they started resorting to terrorism in Palestine. Since Palestine was under British control, the victims of this terrorism were both Arabs and the British. When the British started to act against the Jews, the outnumbered and outgunned Jews turned to the French for help. The French were only too glad to support the Jews against their old enemy – besides, weren’t the British doing the same in French controlled parts of the Middle East?

 

As the war in Europe started to swing clearly in favour of the Allies, things got even more muddy. Did any British agreements made to de Gaulle hold any sanctity? After all, he wasn’t the elected head of France. In turn, the French expected to be stabbed in the back by the British and started acting accordingly.

 

This then is how things stood at the end of World War II.