The Egyptian Revolution ••• 263cabinet to the next (most of them coalitions of independent or minor-
party politicians) as the king kept the Wafd out of power.
World War II
Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939. As Hitler's
troops overran most of Europe, many Egyptians expected Britain to fall
and hoped to free their country from its army of occupation. Instead Egypt
became a vast army camp for the Western Allies, although popular feeling
was hostile. Even King Faruq and his ministers were trying to wriggle out of
the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, as General Rommel's crack Afrika Korps
swept across Libya into Egypt's Western Desert in early 1942. With demon¬
strators filling Cairo's streets and calling for a German victory, the British
ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, sent tanks to surround the royal palace
and handed an ultimatum to King Faruq: He must either appoint a Wafdist
government that would uphold the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty or sign his own
abdication. After some hesitation, Faruq caved in. Mustafa al-Nahhas, the
Wafdist leader and hence the standard-bearer for Egypt's independence
struggle, came to power at the point of British bayonets.
Neither Nahhas nor the king ever recovered from Britain's action, taken
in the darkest hour of World War II to help save the Western democracies
from the Nazi menace. Faruq, a handsome and popular youth with high
political ideals and moral courage, turned into the gargantuan monster
and dissolute playboy older Egyptians and Westerners remember today.
Probably, as Egyptians said after Faruq was deposed in 1952, he had been
spoiled by the people who surrounded him, once he realized that the
British would not let him rule Egypt. For the rest of the war, thousands of
soldiers, sailors, and airmen from all parts of the British Commonwealth
(and the US) poured into Egypt, which was visited by such statesmen as
Churchill and Roosevelt. Major economic activity throughout the Arab
world and Iran was coordinated in Cairo by the British-run Middle East
Supply Center. Industrial and agricultural employment and output
boomed. So did price inflation, urban congestion, disruption, and crime.
Egyptians wondered if the end of World War II would lead to popular up¬
risings as massive as the great 1919 revolution.
THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTIONBetween 1945 and 1951 Egypt experienced many uprisings, but no revolu¬
tion. One reason was that Britain no longer seemed so potent as a foreign