Egypt in World War II

By the start of the war, native power in Egypt was split in between King Farouk, and parliament, led by the conservative anti-Wafdist prime minister Ali Maher Pasha.

The return of British soldiers to Egyptian streets merely a handful of years after they had been removed or relocated to the Suez Canal Zone, increased the already powerful opposition in Egypt to the United Kingdom.

[7] These demands led to a compromise; General Henry Maitland Wilson would command Egyptian forces in the Western Desert, and al-Misri was dismissed from his post.

After Maher was forced to resign due to British influence, Hassan Sabry was appointed prime minister, leading a coalition of anti-Wafdist parties.

The Wafd, led by veteran politician Mostafa el-Nahhas Pasha, saw this as their chance for regaining power, arguing for an end to the Egypt-British condominium in Sudan and the complete evacuation of British forces after the war.

The Wafd blamed these problems on the British presence in the country, as the Egyptian people, spurred on by Ali Maher, protested their declining living conditions.

On February 2, Lampson demanded Farouk worked with the Wafdist leader Nahhas to form a coalition government to continue the British presence in Egypt.

Lampson was convinced that the Wafd's anti-British rhetoric was only opposition politics, and at their heart, their liberal democratic values and popularity in Egypt would make them a strongest possible ally.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, then a young military officer who would later lead the Revolution of 1952 with Mohamed Naguib, declared the incident a blatant violation of Egyptian sovereignty, and wrote: "I am ashamed of our army's powerlessness".

Finance minister Makram Ebied Pasha broke with the Wafd Part after calling the agreement between Nahhas and Lampson a "second treaty" and objecting to corruption within the government.

Nahhas' legacy as the successor to the revolution after Sa'ad Zaghoul was in serious ruin by this time, especially after Ebied and 26 Wafdist politicians loyal to him formed a rival party.

[25] Egypt's contributions to the war effort re-opened points of contentions like the status of the Sudan, British troop presence in the country, and the Suez Canal.

The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram denounced Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, criticizing not just the brutal Italian conquest, but the world for allowing a League of Nations member to be invaded.

The Egyptian journalist Muhammad Zaki Abd al-Qadir criticized appeasement, saying "If the world comes under the influence of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and their ilk, it will suffer a ghastly regression into the Dark Ages when the military knighthood was the law and war was the symbol of glory".

"[39] Taha Hussein, the famous Egyptian academic and twenty-one time Nobel Prize in Literature nominee,[40] criticized the lack of freedom of thought in Nazi Germany, writing "They live like a society of insects.

It is therefore a duty more than a right for anyone who believes in spiritual, moral, and religious values, and in liberty, to stand up as the adversary of that man and that regime, and to mobilize every resource against both so that humanity may one day recover its civilization intact and its conscience in integrity.

Egyptian troops were posted along the Canal every 200 meters in order to keep watch, remove and destroy anti-naval mines dropped by the Axis planes.

[49] A report published by the military delegation to Egypt in 1945, mentioned that in taking over the administration of the air power, the Egyptian army had saved Britain a thousand men that were deployed elsewhere in other areas.

[49] When British planes would crash in desert areas or other uninhabited locations, the responsibility of finding the aircraft and missing pilots fell on the Egyptian Camel Corps.

The government also printed 669,060 banknotes for the National Bank of Egypt, which were used to purchase supplies for the British but were never paid back, eventually leading to a financial crisis.

[52] The Italian invasion of Egypt (13–18 September 1940), began as a limited tactical operation towards Mersa Matruh, rather than for the strategic objectives sketched in Rome, due to the chronic lack of transport, fuel and wireless equipment, even with transfers from the 5th Army.

The 16th Brigade, supported by a squadron of Matilda II tanks, RAF aircraft, Royal Navy ships, and artillery fire, started its advance at 9:00 a.m..

In two hours, the first objectives had been captured; only a sector 2 mi (4 km) east of the harbour, held by a Blackshirt legion and the remains of the 1st Libyan Division, was still resisting.

Nazi Germany's General Erwin Rommel's Deutsches Afrikakorps coming from victories at Tobruk in Libya, and in a classic blitzkrieg, comprehensively outfought British forces.

In July 1942 Rommel lost the First Battle of El Alamein, largely due to the problem of an extended supply line which troubled both sides throughout the war in Egypt.

With British forces from Malta interdicting his supplies at sea, and the massive distances they had to cover in the desert, Rommel could not hold the El Alamein position forever.

Beside these units, the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiments all over Egypt played a vital role in destroying Luftwaffe attacks on Alexandria, Cairo, Suez, and Northern Delta.

Following the First Battle of El Alamein, which had stalled the Axis advance, British general Bernard Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army from Claude Auchinleck in August 1942.

By July 1942, the German Afrika Korps under General Rommel had struck deep into Egypt, threatening the vital Allied supply line across the Suez Canal.

The second major Allied offensive of the battle was along the coast, initially to capture the Rahman Track and then take the high ground at Tel el Aqqaqir.