Spring 1941 was a high point for the Axis war machine. Western Europewas conquered; southeastern Europe was falling, Great Britain on itsheels; and Rommel's Afrika Korps was freshly arrived to drive on theall-important Suez Canal. In Blood, Oil and the Axis, historian John Broich tells thestory of Iraq and the Levant during this most pivotal time of the war.
The browbeaten Allied forces had one last remaining hope for turning thewar in their favor: the Axis running through its fuel supply. But whenthe Golden Square-four Iraqi generals allegiant to the Axis cause-stageda coup in Iraq, elevating a pro-German junta and prompting militarycooperation between Vichy French-occupied Syria and Lebanon and theAxis, disaster loomed. Blood, Oil and the Axis follows those who participated inthe Allies' frantic, improvised, and unlikely response to this direthreat: Palestinian and Jordanian Arabs, Australians, American andBritish soldiers, Free French Foreign Legionnaires, and JewishPalestinians, all who shared a desperate, bloody purpose in quashing theformation of an Axis state in the Middle East. Memorable figures ofthis makeshift alliance include Jack Hasey, a young American who ran offto fight with the Free French Foreign Legion before his own countryentered the war; Freya Stark, a famoustravel-writer-turned-government-agent; and even Roald Dahl, atwenty-three-year-old Royal Air Force recruit (and future author ofbeloved children's books).Taking the reader on a tour of cities and landscapes grimly familiarto today's reader-from a bombed-out Fallujah, to Baghdad, to Damascus-Blood, Oil and the Axisis poised to become the definitive chronicle of the Axis's menacingplay for Iraq and the Levant in 1941 and the extraordinary alliance thatconfronted it.
