See R.M. Douglas, ‘Did Britain Use Chemical Weapons in Mandatory
Iraq?’ Journal of Modern History 81, no. 4 (December 2009): 859–87, for
conclusive archival evidence.
Stark, East Is West, xix. It should be noted that the conflation of ‘imperial-
ism’ and oil is inherently simplistic. Since its beginning, the strategic quest
for oil has been exploitative perhaps, but not colonialist. Both the oil com-
panies and their interests have always been multinational in structure.
Iraq’s oil resources were initially developed by the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company (APOC) (under British control), IPC (under British, Dutch,
French, and US control), and the British Oil Development Company
(BODC) (under British, French, German, and Italian control). ‘The
Middle East: I. Political and Strategic Position’, Bulletin of International
News 17, no. 3 (10 February 1940): 150. Even during the first two years
of the Second World War, before Pearl Harbour, some US oil companies
(most notably Standard Oil) openly supplied Germany with oil and equip-
ment. See inter alia Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of
the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933–1949 (New York: Delacorte Press,
1983).
A mildly disparaging British term for RAF personnel, whose slick hairstyles
sometimes seemed (to ordinary soldiers and sailors) to betray a vain inter-
est in their personal appearance (especially when off-duty and seeking
female company). Brylcreem was a popular brand of hair cream.
For more about air policing and RAF Habbaniya, see inter alia Jafna
L. Cox, ‘A Splendid Training Ground: The Importance to the Royal Air
Force of Its Role in Iraq, 1919–32’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History 13, no. 2 (January 1985): 157–84; Warren Dockter, Churchill and
the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire, and Diplomacy in the Middle East
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 96–120; Joyce Grenfell, The Time of My Life:
Entertaining the Troops, 1944–45 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989),
165; David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air
Force, 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 20–1;
Priya Satia, ‘The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea
of Arabia’, American Historical Review 3, no. 1 (February 2006): 16–51;
Adrian O’Sullivan, Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia
(Iran): The Success of the Allied Secret Services (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015) [ECOP], 2–3, 6n2.
For more about Nazi propaganda in the Middle East, see Jeffrey Herf,
Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2009). For Grobba’s diplomatic curriculum vitae, see Maria Keipert
and Peter Grupp, eds., Biographisches Handbuch des Deutschen Auswärtigen
Dienstes, 1871–1945, vol. 2 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005), 102–3.
