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element. Because their numbers were insufficient for nationwide opera-
tions, their activities were isolated, intermittent, and largely ineffective.
German officers attempted to assume responsibility for the direction of
Nazi propaganda throughout the country, publishing newspaper articles
and producing radio talks. Axis pilots participated in operational sorties
against RAF Habbaniya and KINGCOL, flying German and Italian air-
craft camouflaged with Iraqi air force markings. Axis officers visited Iraqi
troops at Falluja and surveyed the likely British approaches to Baghdad
from the minaret of a mosque. A German colonel spent an entire day at
the public works department studying plans and survey maps, several of
which he was permitted to retain. German petroleum engineers visited
northern oilfields, pipelines, and pumping stations, and tried desperately
but in vain to find a solution to the Luftwaffe’s aviation-fuel problem.^11
It was a motley crew: a peculiar assembly of mediocre bureaucrats and
technicians. It is self-evident that when historians write, as they often have,
of the Nazi aid to Gaylani’s fascists having been ‘too little, too late,’ it is
to these nonentities that they are referring, as much as to their small num-
bers and delayed arrival. Before leaving Germany, Brass and Kraytzberger
had apparently been tasked with the wholesale destruction of Iraqi oil
infrastructure, should the Germans be forced to withdraw, as if two men
could ever achieve such an objective. Though a Brandenburger officer
himself, Kohlhaas was kept in the dark about their ridiculous agenda.
However, when Canaris’s future successor as head of the Abwehr, Georg
Hansen of Abw I, arrived unexpectedly for a tour of inspection on behalf
of the army general staff on 27 May, Kohlhaas was astonished to learn that
the normally sane Hansen had been fully briefed in all seriousness about
the Brandenburgers’ absurd sabotage role.^12 It would seem that an ill-
timed turf war had broken out in Berlin over the Iraq mission between the
two branches of German military intelligence. While Abw II was clearly
responsible for sabotage, Abw I (active espionage) claimed precedence
because of its greater regional experience and deliberately upstaged
Kohlhaas. He was equally surprised to learn that the entire 2nd Battalion
of the Brandenburg Regiment (Abw II special forces) was under orders to
transfer to Syria and advance overland to Iraq, once the invasion of Crete
had been wound up. Such dysfunction at HQ, transposed to a foreign
field, was the precursor of worse things to come, as Grobba’s mission
encountered problem after problem and rapidly deteriorated into a rout.^13
So far as the Luftwaffe’s side of the mission was concerned, only 21
German warplanes (9 Heinkel He-111 bombers and 12 Messerschmitt