The Commander by Laila Parsons

Author:Laila Parsons
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374715380
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

FRITZ GROBBA

Qawuqji’s military service with German officers during World War I, combined with his pan-Arab, anticolonial politics, had always inclined him to the idea of seeking German support for fighting the British and the French in the Middle East. In the summer of 1936, before he left for Palestine, Qawuqji met for the first time the German ambassador to Baghdad, Fritz Grobba. From that moment until the Russian occupation of Berlin in the summer of 1945, Qawuqji’s fate was linked to that of this German diplomat.

Grobba, sometimes referred to as the German Lawrence of Arabia, had studied law and Oriental languages at the University of Berlin before World War I. As an officer in the Imperial German Army Grobba had fought on the Turkish front during the war. After the war he worked for the German Foreign Ministry and became an expert on the Muslim world and one of the leading architects of Germany’s foreign policy in the Middle East. After his appointment as ambassador to Iraq, he persuaded the Iraqi government to accept German officers in Iraq as advisers. He also made connections with the pan-Arab radicals living in Baghdad in the late 1930s, including Qawuqji. In the summer of 1936, according to a report that Grobba sent back to the German Foreign Ministry, Qawuqji asked for German support for his campaign in Palestine. Grobba was sympathetic but refused material support because Germany was still trying to maintain good relations with the British. Qawuqji visited Grobba again after returning from Palestine in late 1936 as well as several times in 1938, after he had been allowed to return from Kirkuk to Baghdad following the fall of the Hikmat Sulayman government and the installation of Jamil al-Madfaʿi as the new prime minister.

According to Qawuqji’s memoirs, by the summer of 1938 Grobba had made it clear that the German Foreign Ministry was now willing to support Arab organizations involved in anti-British activities. Grobba apparently promised Qawuqji substantial material support. It was also in the summer of 1938 that Qawuqji first made contact with German counterintelligence. He had a meeting in Baghdad with Helmuth Groscurth, who was then the director of the Second Counterintelligence Division of the Department for Foreign News and Counterintelligence. But the British discovery of Qawuqji’s plans for revolt in Transjordan and the fact that Grobba was forced to leave Baghdad because of his connection to an incident of Iraqi sabotage of the oil pipeline brought a lull in Qawuqji’s contacts with German officials.

By 1939 Grobba was back in Germany, serving in the Foreign Ministry. After the fall of Paris to the Germans in June 1940, he became part of the German Foreign Ministry’s efforts to recruit Arab nationalists in the Middle East to the German side. German foreign policy makers, including Grobba, planned for a postwar pan-Arab union that would be dependent on Italy and Germany. They also supported the idea of a Muslim jihad against the British, French, and Russians. German officials focused on the Mufti as someone who could help bring this about.

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