WWII Persian Gulf Command

[ProfessorB]

Apart from the unit's internal history and the brief account in the Army's official history of WWII, if you know of any resources -- and especially any veterans -- of the WWII Persian Gulf Command, please direct them my way. I would like to incorporate an analysis of PGC in a history of U.S.-Iraqi foreign relations I am currently writing, due for publication in fall 2009. Thank you. Professor B.

[davidbfpo]

I'd have thought the command's main role was to co-ordinate on logistics, primarily with the UK and the host nations. The railway through Iran was used for aid to the USSR and I have a vague recollection stats on this are in published histories. Iran was of course divided into British and Russian spheres of influence.

There maybe valuable clues in accounts of the Tehran Summit, in 1943? I read an account of Churchill a few years ago, which detailed the local arrangements and his method of transport. How did FDR get there? What local, non-Embassy presence was there? Churchill had a British infantry battallion guard; odd I thought as Tehran was in the Soviet zone?

Check the accounts of the oil industry for clues. Was this not the time the USA made it's impact on Saudi Arabia?

Good luck.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

Thread re-opened ten years since the last post! PM & email to original poster.

A short article that summarizes a new book, due out in May 2018 by Professor Ashley Jackson, which ends with:

Persian Gulf Commandis the story of the travails of state development in Iran and Iraq, of diplomacy, geopolitics, and the age-old contest between imperialism and nationalism. It is a tale of invasions, coups d’état, logistics, covert operations, scorched earth, high politics, and warfighting on land and in the air, set against the backdrop of local societies suffering the familiar blights of world war, including rampant inflation, food shortages, rationing, friction between occupying forces and civilian populations, and the migration of refugees. It is a story that begins with the interwar evolution of the Iranian and Iraqi states, one under the Qajar dynasty, the other under the Hashemite, a process shaped by the proximity of great powers and the presence of oil, and ends with the recolonization of Iraq and intense intra-Allied competition in Iran.

Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2017/12/04...ond-world-war/

Link to book via publisher's website:http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K...rue&m=1&dc=160

[davidbfpo]

An odd historical pointer to the journeys of a British diplomat in the Soviet zone of Persia in 1943, with a small Imperial Indian SOF escort:

It is just a moment in a little-known theatre of World War Two, but it tells us so much about the uneasy truce that existed between the Allied and Soviet occupying forces and the importance of the Persian Corridor in this global conflict.

Link:https://theconversation.com/british-empires-hidden-workings-in-india-and-iran-revealed-in-remarkable-new-film-footage-90958?

I have never heard of this Indian unit, Indian Long Range Squadron (not ILRP):

The ILRS had only just been formed, on December 25, 1941, specifically to patrol the Persian border between the Soviet Union and Baluchistan, and was modeled on the 8th Army Long Range Desert Group, the precursor to the SAS.

A very thin history:http://www.lrdg.org/Indian_Long_Range_Patrol.htm

Update: the Indian Army SOF unit was the Indian Long Range Squadron and I am preparing an article on them from on-line resources currently for a small journal 'Durbar' of the Indian MIlitary History Society.

[davidbfpo]

A year ago I posted that a new book was due out and it is now. From the publisher's website, with some rave reviews:

Anew history of the long-overlooked WWII theater in Iran and Iraq, its unrecognized significance, and its impact on local society and politics.

This dynamic history is the first to construct a total picture of the experience and impact of World War II in Iran and Iraq. Contending that these two countries were more important to the Allied forces’ war operations than has ever been acknowledged, historian Ashley Jackson investigates the grand strategy of the Allies and their operations in the region and the continuing legacy of Western intervention in the Middle East.

Iran and Iraq served as the first WWII theater in which the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. fought alongside each other. Jackson charts the intense Allied military activity in Iran and Iraq and reveals how deeply the war impacted common people’s lives. He also provides revelations about the true nature of Anglo-American relations in the region, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the continuing corrosive legacy of Western influence in these lands.

Link to US website:https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780...n-gulf-command
Link to UK website:http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300221961

[davidbfpo]

Just spotted via an email circulation that an author, Dr Adrian O'Sullivan, has three books on Iraq and Persia in WW2:

his latest book The Baghdad Set – the first-ever intelligence history of Iraq, 1941-45 – and the final third volume of a trilogy on regional intelligence and counterintelligence operations that includes Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia and Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia. Dr O’Sullivan’s account of covert operations in Iraq during the Second World War is based entirely on archival documents, diaries, and memoirs

Link to author's website:http://adrianosullivan.com/bibliography/