Hitler's Gulf War

During the spring of 1941, on an isolated, indefensible airfield 55 miles from Baghdad a group of poorly armed and outnumbered RAF airman equipped with obsolete aircraft, together with a few soldiers, outfought the much larger and better equipped Iraqi forces who were aided by the Germans and Italians. The engagement would prove to be the first real defeat of the Germans in World War Two. After an heroic defense, the airfield was finally relieved by a hastily assembled column of trucks, taxis, buses and antiquated armored cars carrying infantry and Bedouins. The column had fought its way across a 500 mile barren, unmapped desert enduring temperatures approaching fifty degrees C to reach the airfield. In a gigantic game of bluff less than fifteen hundred soldiers supported by the RAF in their obsolete aircraft against odds of twenty to one went on to take Baghdad. They foiled a coup, returned a King to his throne and destroyed Axis aspirations in the Middle East.This book is...

This military history of the Iraqi revolt in WWII, told from the point of view of the men who were there, is "a fantastic and enjoyable book" (Col. Tim Collins, OBE).

In the spring of 1941, on an airfield fifty-five miles from Baghdad, a group of RAF airmen and soldiers were outnumbered by the better equipped Iraqi forces--soldiers who were aided by the Germans and Italians. After thirty days, this battle resulted in the first real defeat of the Axis powers in World War II.

Hitler's Gulf War presents the story of the Iraqi revolt from the perspectives of the British, Iraqi, and Germans who were involved in the battle. Along with the group at the airfield, historian Barrie G. James examines the small relief column of cavalry, infantry, and Bedouins who traveled across a five-hundred-mile unmapped desert to support the RAF. With Germany's successes in Greece and the Western Desert in 1941, a British defeat here would have changed the course of World War II. Hitler's Gulf War traces how the battle destroyed Axis aspirations in the Middle East and also set the scene for Iraq's future relations with the West.