35
cultivating land controlled by Baghdadi politicians and endowed land over
which Rashid Ali himself exercised jurisdiction.^17
In April 1939, a dramatic event occurred which revealed for the first
time the extent to which seven years of German meddling in Iraq had
eroded British influence on public opinion and had enabled the Nazis to
manipulate the mood of the Arab street in their favour. Young King
Ghazi (1912–1939)—a rather unpleasant, self-indulgent playboy with a
strong affinity for fascism and little interest in anything but aircraft, horses,
drinking, and speed—was killed late at night in a single-vehicle accident
while driving, possibly drunk or in an angry mood, in the suburbs of
Baghdad. Though the headstrong Ghazi, who lacked the gentle disposition
of his little son Faisal (1935–1958) and his cousin the Emir Abdulillah, was
popular with young army officers, he was regarded warily by the British,
who were generally alarmed at the king’s unwillingness to accept advice and
his extreme right-wing political views. Immediately after the crash, rumours
spread. Some said that the king had been assassinated on orders from the
pro-British prime minister, Nuri Pasha as-Said (1888–1958), who wished
to counter Ghazi’s plan to take over Kuwait as Hitler had annexed Austria
a year earlier. But then a more persistent conspiracy theory took hold, con-
ceived and broadcast by either Grobba, Jordan, or the ex-Mufti (or all
three), to the effect that the ‘British secret service’ had murdered Ghazi
and had staged the car accident. Dr. Harry ‘Sinbad’ Sinderson, the Scottish
palace physician who attended the dying king at the crash site, took the
precaution of insisting that Ghazi’s death be jointly certified as accidental
by another British doctor, Dr. Noel Braham, and the prominent, pro-Nazi
Iraqi physician, Dr. Saib Shawkat, to pre-empt any possible suspicion that
he (Sinderson) might have been complicit in Ghazi’s death, or that the king
had been assassinated by either Nuri Pasha or the British.^18 Various non-
technical accounts of the accident have sought to explain its fundamental
cause as habitually reckless driving. However, the details of Seton Lloyd’s
narrative make better sense: ‘In the West Bank palace, [Ghazi] had been
listening to his favourite radio programme when the sound was suddenly
cut off by a fault in the instrument. In a temper, he jumped into his sports
car with the idea of hearing the rest of it at his Summer Palace, out on the
Ramadi Road. Reaching the railway, he drove too fast over the level cross-
ing, developed “wheel-bounce”, and hit a telegraph pole, which fell across
the car killing him outright.’^19 The problem with Lloyd’s account is that,
while the cause of death is the same, his story hardly corresponds with the
version that the British diplomat Gerald S.H.R.V. De Gaury (1897–1984)
PRELUDE TO CONFLICT AND THE EMBASSY SIEGE