1941: Arabia

The peace of the vast peninsula, of which by far the larger part is under the energetic and enlightened government of King Ibn Saud was not disturbed during 1941. Ibn Saud followed, in spite of blandishments proffered by Nazi and Fascist agents, a policy of benevolent neutrality towards the Allies. The coup d'état in the neighboring Arabic kingdom of Iraq, by which a pro-Nazi government came into power and tried to provoke a pan-Arab revolt, remained without any influence upon Ibn Saud, who kept his Arabic tribesmen under control and thus helped the British to reinstate in Iraq a friendly government. In the summer of 1941 a meeting of the tribal leaders of Saudi Arabia was held at Taif, the famous summer residence near Mecca, in which the viceroy of Hejaz, Ibn Saud's son, Feisal, read a message from his father exhorting all his subjects to maintain order and to pursue their callings without worrying about international developments. Ibn Saud also interned the Germans and Italians who had taken refuge from enemy action in the Red Sea and East Africa, and did not allow the German minister to Iraq, Dr. Fritz Grobba, to go to Arabia to continue his propaganda there.

The Arabs welcomed the repeated statements of British statesmen which, in unequivocal terms, promised British support for Arab independence and especially for the achievement of Arab unity, for which all the Arabs strive. The fact that Syria received her formal independence after the Free French and the British forces had entered the country, and that the French mandate was declared terminated, was generally regarded as foreshadowing the British intentions after the termination of the war. The new president of the Syrian Republic, Sheikh Tajeddin Hassani, welcomed this step as definitely aligning the Arabs with the democratic powers in the struggle for the longed-for Arab unity. He rightly pointed out that all the details for a free economic and cultural intercourse between the Arab lands and for political forms of close collaboration or federation must be worked out by the Arabs themselves. Different schemes were discussed, but the dynastic claims of the Ibn Saud family and of the Hashimite family, members of which are ruling in the Arab countries of Iraq and Trans-Jordania, and the promise of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine presented difficulties for the future. All these questions of course had to wait for a definite settlement until after the war, but Great Britain's strengthened position in the Near and Middle East reflected favorably upon the Arab attitude towards her. Only one of the Arab extremist leaders, the former mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, made common cause with the Fascists. Having been driven from Palestine, he took refuge in Syria, in Iraq and finally in Iran. There he maintained close contact with German propagandists and in October 1941, succeeded in fleeing by plane from the Middle East to Rome. The Italian radio station at Bari was the main source for Axis propaganda in Arabic among the Arab-speaking populations of the Near East.