Figure 1.--Here a Libyan boy gives the NAZI salute to German troops. Of course these boys were impressed with the Afriks Korps men and vehicles passihg through and had no idea of what thatb salute mean. That is understnhdable, but whht is much less understandable is that many Arab leaders has no idea. When this photograph wa being taken Germans of African ancestryb in Germany were being sterilized.

The Desert War was mostly fought in Libya, at the time an Italian colony. And it was from Libya that Mussolini launched the campaign by ordering his huge army to invade Egypt and seize the Suez Canal. The decisive battles, however, occured in Egypt and Tunisia--at the opposite geographic extremes of the battlefield. The fighting occurred mostly along a narrow coastal plain, a largely treeless arid expanse. The Qattara Depression in northwestern Egypt and the Sahara Desert prevented the two armies from going very far from the coast. Like the Soviet Union the terrain was basically flat with few natural obstacles--ideal grounds for tank warfare. It was essentially Russia without the snow. The problem for the Germans is that unlike Russia there was no rail connection to the Reich. Now the maritime connection to Italy was short, but that short distance, was contested by the British and would largely decide the fate of the Afrika Korps. The Allied supply lines were far longer--actually extending to the other side of the world, but the Royal Navy and eventually the U.S. Navy would maintain control of those crucial sea lanes. Libya is an Arab country. The Arabs as it worked out would play no real role in the campaign, but many Arabs were posed to join the NAZIs and Italians, especially the Young Officer Movement in the Egyptian Army. The Arab-Axis relationship is an often neglected topic. And this despite every reason to resist the Axis. First, the fact that Italy had brutally suppressed the Libyans in the Second Italo-Sanusi War (1923-31), even resorting to the use of poison gas. Second, NAZI racial doctrine assigned Arabs a very low racial ranking. This was doubly especially the case of Libya with a substantial African ethnic component. Africans were also near the bottom of NAZI racial rankings. And this was the not a minor matter. Where an ethnic group fell in the NAZI racial rankings often proved to be a matter of life and death in German occupied countries. Third, Axis policy was to severely exploit occupied countries of whatever valuable resources they possessed.. Fourth, the Axis powers suppressed political activity in occupied countries and far more severely than the British and French. Individuals who tried to organize politically beyond NAZI Party puppet regimes faced arrest and execution. What the Axis had in common with many, but not all, Arabs was vicious antisemitism and anti-British sentiment.

Created: 7:39 PM 10/5/2023
Last updated: 7:39 PM 10/5/2023