The story of United States Army activity in the Persian Corridor during World
War II has a central theme, supply. Its major development, lend-lease aid to
the Soviet Union, grows out of its minor, lend-lease aid to Great Britain in
supplying Russia and in preparing against threatened Axis invasion of the
area. The fighting war, the war of guns, is but a muted obbligato to the
central theme. The strategic unity of the Middle East and its vital importance
to the final victory, the bloody struggle to fend off Axis drives toward Suez
and the oil fields of Iraq and Iran, of Saudi Arabia and the Caucasus-these
are high themes, but not the subject of this book.

This is not the story of guns and fighting. Here, men do not kill, though
.they are sometimes killed. The story of supply tells of another kind of
fight, not without its own brand of courage, its own price of endurance.
Supply is the theme, the fighting war all but an echo. There will be
dissonance; for in this story the United States finds itself upon a stage long
trodden in rivalry by Britain and Russia. From the mingled motifs arise
overtones, troubled echoes of the past, jarring notes of the present, and
unfinished phrases awaiting the future.

Supplying the Soviet War Machine

Military supply is a means, not an end. Mechanized warfare has made it a prime
factor in planning and in operations. Skill, spirit, supply-these are
essentials to victory; but without the third, the first

[3]

two cannot prevail in a struggle of industrialized antagonists. The pooling of
supply, the American idea which culminated in the Lend-Lease Act of 1941,
produced one of the most potent weapons of World War II. Conceived as a
defensive measure, on the principle that defense of Axis enemies was defense
of the United States, the Lend-Lease Act was in effect a declaration of
economic belligerency in a war that intertwined industrial with military
power. It was lend-lease which, long before Pearl Harbor brought military
belligerency to the United States, furnished the means by which American
economic strength could be shared with Great Britain in 1941 in the Middle
East. In that crucial area Britain waged a David and Goliath struggle against
Italian and German armies in North and East Africa, in Greece and Crete, and
against pro-Nazi elements in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Defeat would have entailed
the loss of an area necessary to the victor in a global war. Defeat would have
cut off Britain from her best source of essential petroleum. American aid in
the form of war materials and logistic services, brought to Africa in 1941 and
1942, weighed fully in the reckoning which took place at El Alamein in October
1942. There, spirit, skill, and superior supply overcame spirit, skill, and
vanishing supply, and the Axis threat from the west against the Middle East
was eliminated. (Map 1-inside back cover)

It was lend-lease which, in September 1941 after the German attack on the
Soviet Union, made the United States an auxiliary of Great Britain in the task
of delivering supplies to the USSR through the Persian Corridor. This route,
joining Soviet territory to warm water across the mountains and deserts of
Iran, was one of five by which 171 /2 million long tons of lend-lease supplies
were carried from Western Hemisphere ports to Soviet destinations. It is
difficult to visualize 171/2 million long tons in .the abstract; but 2,803
ships crossed the seas to carry them, a fleet more than nine times as numerous
as that which mounted the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa in November
1942. The total tonnage figure nearly matches the 22 million long tons landed
on the Continent of Europe for the American forces between January 1942 and
May 1945. Russia's share of the common pool was therefore considerable,
befitting her share in the common conflict. In committing munitions and
equipment to the titanic defense of Stalingrad, the USSR knew that material
losses could be mitigated in ever mounting quantities by future lend-lease
receipts.1The expul-
[4]

sion of the last Nazis from Stalingrad, completed by 2 February 1943, removed
the enemy threat to the Middle East from the north as El Alamein had done from
the west. Supply tipped the scales in both battles that saved the Middle East.
Afterward, as the German armies withdrew from the passes of the Caucasus and
receded westward round the Black Sea, the task of supplying Russia through the
Persian Corridor increased in intensity. The change in .the American role in
late 1942, from auxiliary to full partner of the British in the supply effort,
raised the Corridor's tonnage to second place among the five routes to the
USSR, and brought to the Persian Gulf ports nearly one fourth of the total
lend-lease tonnage shipped to the Soviet Union from the Western Hemisphere.2
How important for the Russians Anglo-American reinforcement through the
Persian Corridor might prove was accurately anticipated as early as the spring
of 1942 by a German study prepared for Hitler. It reads, in part, as follows:
In their endeavor to support Soviet Russia, Great Britain and the United
States will make every effort during the coming weeks and months to increase
shipment of equipment, materiel, and troops to Russia as much as possible. In
particular the supplies reaching Russia on the Basra-Iran route will go to the
Russian Caucasus and southern fronts. All British or American war materiel
which reaches Russia by way of the Near East and the Caucasus is extremely
disadvantageous to our land offensive. Every ton of supplies which the enemy
manages to get through to the Near East means a continuous reinforcement of
the enemy war potential, makes our own operations in the Caucasus more
difficult, and strengthens the British position in the Near East and Egypt.3
Written before El Alamein and Stalingrad extinguished the German drive for the
Middle East, the document stands as eloquent tribute to the effectiveness of
the logistical partnership of Great Britain and the United States in the
Persian Corridor. A few figures will indicate the reality Hitler feared.
A total of 4,159,117 long tons of Russian-aid cargo was shipped from the
Western Hemisphere to all Persian Gulf ports between November 1941 and May
1945; but this was only a fraction of the traffic
[5]

handled by British and American agencies in the area during that period.
Supplies and equipment destined for the Soviets came also from Great Britain,
Africa, and India; aircraft were flown in for delivery to the Russians; and
over half a million long tons of petroleum products originating in Iran were
carried north to Soviet receiving points. In addition to all this were the
supplies to maintain the British and American forces in the area, and to
support large numbers of Polish refugees, British and American civilian
agencies, and the Iranian and Iraqi civilian economies. All told, about
7,900,000 long. tons of imports were discharged at Persian Gulf ports between
1941 and 1945. Of this amount 3,900,815 long tons, 90 percent of it destined
for the USSR, were discharged at ports operated by the U.S. Army. British and
American agencies together, between 1942 and 1945, delivered to the Soviets
5,149,376 long tons of which the Americans accounted for 4,417,243 long tons.
The figures show that, although the British and Americans handled
approximately equal tonnages, the bulk of Russian-aid tonnage was delivered by
the Americans. It has been estimated that American deliveries through the
Persian Corridor to the USSR were sufficient, by U.S. Army standards, to
maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.4

But while statistics furnish an accurate measure of achievement, they ignore
the factor which made it possible and which was itself of equal significance.
The Persian Corridor operation was an experiment in international co-operation
with no exact parallel or historical precedent. Here was Iran, forcibly
occupied by Great Britain and the USSR, two long-standing rivals for its
control, serving as a highway over which one of the rivals, calling upon the
assistance of a fourth nation, the United States, delivered supplies to the
other rival, now, by the fortunes of war, an ally. As an American officer put
the case during the first months of confusion, one nation was attempting to
deliver supplies to a second nation with the occasional interference of a
third through the country of a fourth in which none of the first three, save
[6]

for the war, had any business to be. But the strange combination worked.
Even with war needs acting as a spur, the experiment in cooperation was from
the start both delicate and difficult. This would have been true had the
United States not been a newcomer to an area recognized internationally as
within the sphere of British influence. The United States, though long
represented in the Middle East by educational and philanthropic undertakings,
had entered substantially into Middle Eastern commerce by way of oil only
after the first world war. The second war found the United States unprovided
with a long-range policy. None had been needed up to 1939 save general
friendliness, since the United States had neither political nor military
interests in the area. Americans were so unfamiliar with the area that, in the
feverish planning of 1941, War Department intelligence had to turn for
information on highways and transport routes in Iran to the Consultant in
Islamic Archaeology at the Library of Congress. When the accident of history
brought the United States to Iran, problems of supply called for immediate
solution. Nobody asked what implications the future held. Action first,
questions later. There would be time enough to learn whether America had come
to the madhouse of Middle Eastern politics as visitor, doctor, or inmate.
The British and the Americans

Building docks and highways, assembling trucks and planes, running trains and
unloading ships-these were compassable, concrete jobs. But the exigent, active
present was haunted by the long, slothful past, and the past is nowhere so
long as in the parched valley where Eden once was green and fruitful. It was
to be a new experience for Americans, this dealing with the past as they
learned to adjust themselves to three main stresses in the urgent present.
First, there were certain British rights and obligations in Iraq and Iran
which were applicable to Britain's new American collaborator. Second, there
were unforeseen difficulties inherent in lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union.
And finally, there were the conditions accepted by Iran under the Anglo-Soviet
occupation.

When the first Americans reached the Persian Gulf late in 1941, forerunners of
some 30,000 U.S. Army service troops to come, the British position east of
Suez reflected three campaigns fought earlier that year. The first was in
Iraq, oil-rich geographical core of the Middle East. Iraq had been mandated to
the British after World War I at the carving up of the old Ottoman Empire. In
1932 the mandate had
[7]

been terminated and Iraq became an independent state and member of the League
of Nations. Independence had been buttressed by a treaty of alliance with
Great Britain, signed in 1930, whereby Iraq was guaranteed "against external
aggression." In return the treaty (revised in 1936 ) had granted Britain air
bases at Habbaniya near Baghdad and Shu'aiba near Basra, to be occupied during
the life of the treaty. The treaty further provided, in its fourth article, as
follows:

Should . . .either of the High Contracting Parties become engaged in war, the
other High Contracting Party will . . . immediately come to his aid in the
capacity of an ally. In the event of an imminent menace of War the High
Contracting Parties will immediately concert together the necessary measures
of defence. The aid of His Majesty the King of Iraq in the event of war or the
imminent menace of war will consist in furnishing to His Britannic Majesty on
Iraq territory all facilities and assistance in his power including the use of
railways, rivers, ports, aerodromes and means of communication.
The Iraqi part of the railway, connecting the Persian Gulf via Baghdad with
the Mediterranean at Tripoli and the Bosporus at Istanbul, was British
controlled. So was the pipeline network from the Kirkuk oil fields to Tripoli
and Haifa. The treaty thus recognized British interest in the defense of an
essential part of British economy. The fifth article of the treaty stated
It is understood between the High Contracting Parties that responsibility for
the maintenance of internal order in Iraq and . . . for the defense of Iraq
from external aggression rests with His Majesty the King of Iraq. Nevertheless
His Majesty the King of Iraq recognizes that the permanent maintenance and
protection in all circumstances of the essential communications of His
Britannic Majesty is in the common interest of the High Contracting Parties.
For this purpose and in order to facilitate the discharge of the obligations
to His Britannic Majesty under Article 4 above [air bases were granted as
previously stated].5

In April 1941, as a corollary of the swift German triumphs in Greece and
Crete, a coup d'etat in Iraq deposed the pro-British Regent, Prince Abdul
Illah, whose escape to Habbaniya and thence by air to Basra on 2 April was
assisted by the American Legation at Baghdad.6 At Basra the regent was
smuggled aboard H.M.S. Falmouth to await a more propitious time to show
himself. An anti-British government took over. The transformation was aided by
the covert and well-organized encouragement of German agents. The hospitality
which
[8]

Vichy airfields in Syria offered to German war planes may have seemed to Iraqi
Anglophobe elements a more concrete assurance of support than the protection
afforded Iraq under the treaty with Great Britain. British prestige fell.
Nevertheless, the British moved as provided by treaty to protect their vital
interests. By an operation planned and executed by the British India theater
under Gen. Sir Claude J. E. Auchinleck, British forces, predominantly Indian,
landed at Basra on 18 April and moved north toward the oil fields and
Habbaniya. Reinforcements from India followed on 29 April and Gen. Sir
Archibald P. Wavell, as Middle East theater commander, moved troops into Iraq
from Palestine. Contact was made on 6 May south of Habbaniya between British
forces and two infantry brigades of the Iraqi Army which suffered severe
casualties. There was also air contact with German aircraft. What amounted to
a siege of the British Embassy at Baghdad was lifted and the Iraqi forces sued
on 31 May for an armistice. Members of the British community who had withdrawn
.to the hospitality of the American Legation came back into circulation, and
on 1 June the regent returned to his capital from a short vacation. The crisis
was surmounted in Iraq.

Surmounted, but highly dangerous in view of the insistent pressure of the Axis
west of Suez which only the month before had driven the British inside the
Egyptian border at Halfaya Pass. Firm control of Iraq would save the
Mosul-Kirkuk oil fields if the threat from the west were contained. There was
as yet no threat from the north. Hitler had not yet invaded Russia.
But there were other dangers nearer than Suez. The lurking menace of German
intrigue and German aircraft having been subdued in Iraq, the British moved
forthwith to root these elements out of Syria. The ensuing campaign, under
command of Gen. Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, involved forces sent from Palestine
by General Wavell as well as assistance from the Indian divisions which had
occupied strategic points along the Iraqi line of communication between Basra
and Baghdad. Begun on 8 June, it was concluded by the capitulation of the
Vichy French signed on the anniversary of Bastille Day, 14 July. With Syria
and Iraq now free of Axis influence, the way was cleared for the events which
were to take place in Iran the following month.

The Fertile Crescent, linking the Nile Delta with the head of the Persian
Gulf, would now have been secure and the Suez Isthmus defended from the east
had it not been for the wholly new danger to the Middle East posed by Hitler's
invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. His rapid and apparently
inexorable sweep eastward was to bring him by the year's end past Odessa to
Rostov at the head of the
[9]

Sea of Azov. It was all too apparent, even in midsummer, that he was driving
for the Caucasus, nor did the changing fortunes of battle that winter reduce
Allied concern lest he succeed. Success in penetrating that barrier and
winning the Soviet oil lands lying between the Black and Caspian Seas would
expose not only Iraq but Iran also, with its British oil fields in the south
and vital corridor linking the USSR with the Persian Gulf.

To cope with any such calamitous sequel to German penetration beyond the
Caucasus, the Soviet Union and Great Britain, now allied in the common
struggle, determined upon a joint invasion of Iran. With no illusions that
they could stop the Germans in Iran if the Russians could not contain them
north of the mountains, the British sought merely to delay the invader and to
destroy anything useful to him. Moreover, Iran's despotic ruler, Reza Shah
Pahlevi, was openly partial to the Axis cause, and the presence of some two
thousand German subjects in Iran created a powerful counterweight to Allied
interests there. Joint Anglo-Soviet military action began on 25 August, when
40,000 Soviet troops entered Iran from the north and headed for Tehran. On the
same day about 19,000 British troops, mostly in Indian brigades, entered from
various directions; half of them moved straight for the oil fields in the
neighborhood of Ahwaz, and some airborne units went to Abadan to protect
British subjects there and the great refinery of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company, then the largest in the world. There was some slight resistance on
the part of Iranian troops and some blood was shed. No force Iran could have
brought to bear could have withstood the power of the occupying armies of
Britain and Russia, and, thanks to the recent British actions in Syria and
Iraq, German help by air was now as far away as Crete. On 30 August identical
notes were submitted by the invading powers to the Iranian Government which
accepted their terms on 9 September. On 16 September the Shah abdicated in
favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, and left the country, to die in exile
in South Africa. The next day Tehran was jointly occupied by the British and
Russians, but without show of military force, the troops having bypassed the
city en route to barracks on the outskirts. Local civilian authority continued
uninterruptedly.7

The terms imposed in September 1941 by the occupying powers
[10]

were designed to secure the control by them of an area vital to their survival
in the war against Germany. They disavowed any designs against the territorial
integrity or independence of Iran and promised withdrawal when the military
situation permitted; and they provided for the co-operation of Iran in what
had perforce become the common cause. Iran agreed to remain neutral in the war
and to refrain from any act contrary to British or Soviet interests. These and
other provisions were incorporated into a Tri-Partite Treaty of alliance which
was signed on 29 January 1942 by Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Iran.
The treaty provided for withdrawal from Iranian territory of British and
Russian troops six months after the cessation of hostilities against Germany
and its associates. It stipulated that Iran's contribution to security was to
be restricted to internal security only; and it provided by Article 9 that on
the date fixed for withdrawal of the forces of the Allied Powers, the treaty
would cease to be binding on any of its signatories.8

Two clauses of the treaty proved of especial significance, in the light of
subsequent events which were to make the Persian Corridor a principal line of
communication linking the American source of vital war materials with the
Soviet battlefields. By Article 3 ii (b), Iran granted Britain and Russia "the
unrestricted right to use, maintain, guard and, in case of military necessity,
control in any way that they may require, all means of communications
throughout Iran, including railways, roads, rivers, aerodromes, ports,
pipelines, and telephone, telegraph and wireless installations . . . ." By
paragraph ( d ) of the same clause, Iran agreed "to establish and maintain, in
collaboration with the Allied Powers, such measures of censorship control as
they may require for all the means of communication referred to in paragraph (
b ) ." Thus by September 1941 Britain in the south and Russia in the north
found themselves firmly in control of Iranian communications.

There were other consequences of the Anglo-Russian occupation. For a time
following it, a considerable pro-German sentiment flourished among a
population which resented the invaders and longed for "liberation" by Germany.
Until El Alamein and Stalingrad their longings seemed all too near
realization. A second consequence, likewise undesirable, was the division of
Iran into areas of control allotted to the occupying powers-Russia north of
Tehran, Britain south; both at the capital. The numerous authorities resulting
did not always work together efficiently. But these disadvantages were far
outweighed by the
[11]

value of the Corridor as a line of supply into the Soviet Union. The
occupation, although conceived and carried out to deny the area to the Axis,
provided a supply route to the USSR just when the north Russia route to
Murmansk and Archangel was beginning to prove unduly hazardous to Allied
convoys.

So here, in September 1941, were the British and the Russians once again in
Iran, whose occupation by their forces was the price it innocently incurred
for its strategic location. It was also the price of the sins of Reza Shah. It
was not the first time armed forces of Britain and Russia had invaded Iranian
soil.9 For a hundred years Russia had pressed upon the northern borders. Three
times in the twentieth century Russian troops had crossed them against the
Iranian people's will. Opposed steadily by British counterpressures, these
Russian incursions had twice been matched in the twentieth century by the
presence of British troops. After Napoleon, the southward. sweep of Russia in
Asia was met by Britain's strengthening her position in the North West
Frontier Province of India, Baluchistan, and the area of the Persian Gulf.
With only Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet as buffers, Russia penetrated
culturally and economically into northern Iran and dominated Tehran.
In due course Germany's drive to the east forced Russia and England into each
other's arms. The Convention of 1907, while affirming the integrity and
independence of Iran, virtually partitioned it into English and Russian
spheres with a neutral zone between. So complete was the disregard of Iran's
independence that her declared neutrality in the war of 1914 was ignored,
while Russia, Britain, and Turkey made her territory their battlefield. In
that period Britain used 22,000 troops to quell a German-encouraged revolt of
Iranian tribes.

From 1907 to the Russian Revolution, Britain and Russia cooperated in Iran.
With the revolution and Russian preoccupation with internal affairs, Britain
seized .the chance to outwit her Asiatic rival and negotiated with Iran the
abortive Anglo-Persian treaty of 1919 whereby Iran was to become a virtual
protectorate. Even so, Bolshevist troops occupied the Caspian province of
Gilan and did not withdraw until the British, realizing the Iranian Majlis
would not ratify the proposed treaty, removed their own troops in 1921. These
maneuvers, as Chapter IX will show, were played to off-stage gesticulations by
a United States unhappily divided between Wilsonian advocates of inter-
[12]

national responsibility and those who wished to escape backward into
"normalcy." In a world which did not at Versailles wholly abandon the old
diplomacy for the new, a United States with no vital material interest in Iran
could do little but gesture at a situation it protested. But Lansing and
Wilson, if they were not heeded, were observed; and the American voice, though
but a stage aside in support of Iranian sovereignty, was heard in Britain, in
the USSR, and in Iran.

That year-1921-the Soviets countered the British agreement with a
Soviet-Iranian treaty of friendship containing an important concession which
allowed the USSR to advance troops into Iranian territory if any third power
should threaten Iran or the Soviet Union from Iranian territory. The treaty
was signed in February just after a coup d'etat put Reza Khan into the
government for the first time. After serving as Minister of War and Prime
Minister he became Shah in 1926. There followed a period of iron rule during
which, by borrowing American and German technical skills for the improvement
of the country's economy, and by playing off Britain and Russia against one
another, Reza Shah made Iran relatively strong and independent. All this came
to an end when the situation in 1941 brought about the new Anglo-Soviet
occupation and the tripartite alliance of January 1942 with its guarantee of
Iranian integrity and of withdrawal of foreign troops after the cessation of
hostilities. Uneasy as the alliance was in the area of ancient rivalry, it was
no combination, as in 1907, of two strong powers to exploit a weaker. The
spirit of 1941 was one of co-operation in common defense. When Britain called
upon the United States to aid her, the spirit was significantly fortified.
American aid in the Corridor proved important not only in the supply task but
also politically as a kind of counterweight in the intricate clockwork of a
troubled area.10

Events which preceded the American arrival in 1941 had strained British
resources in both regional areas of the Middle East. The suppression of the
pro-German revolt in Iraq, completed in May 1941, left the British forces in
control of the line of communications running between their treaty bases near
Basra and near Baghdad; but in that same month the Germans were occupying
Crete and were driving British forces back in the North African fighting
inside the border of Egypt. The newly passed Lend-Lease Act having provided a
procedural framework for American aid, conversations were going forward in
London between the British Joint Planning Staff and members
[13]

of an American Special Observer Group under Maj. Gen. James E. Chaney. The
object of the conversations was to determine where and how American aid could
be effectively applied in that dark spring. Prominently under study was the
Middle East; but because it was less in need than the area west of Suez, the
Persian Gulf area of the Middle East was scarcely mentioned.11
Previous to the German invasion of the USSR, the commander of British forces
in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Sir E. P. Quinan, arriving at Basra early in May, had been
directed by GHQ,, India, to secure the line of communications, and to provide
for the maintenance of "such forces as may be required to operate in the
Middle East, including Egypt, Turkey, Iraq . . . ." 12 Hitler's sweep across
Russia in the summer led to the enlargement of General Quinan's
responsibilities. He was not only to maintain the Basra-Baghdad line of
communications, with such port development as that entailed, but was to
provide for maintenance of ten divisions, increased from the three of his
original directive; and he was to prepare against invasion of Iraq via either
Anatolia or the Caucasus. The events in Syria in June and July and the
occupation of Iran in August measurably expanded the British task. When in
September General Wilson took over command of the newly designated Persia and
Iraq Force (PAI Force), his Tenth Army included 3 corps headquarters, 7
infantry divisions, 1 armored division, 1 independent armored brigade, 1
independent motor brigade, and some antiaircraft artillery. With more area to
defend, more troops had to be maintained. Not until early 1943, after El
Alamein and Stalingrad, was it possible to reduce British defensive strength
or base installations in Iran.

The new German threat from the north to the British position in Iraq in
midsummer 1941 brought that country into Anglo-American discussions of aid to
Britain in the Middle East. In July President Franklin D. Roosevelt dispatched
W. Averell Harriman, who visited the British bases in Iraq and informed
himself on the defense of the oil fields. At that time British
responsibilities were confined to security and communications, and American
aid was being considered on the basis of those British responsibilities. The
Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran in August and the feasibility of opening there
a new supply route
[14]

to Russia further extended British responsibilities and, as a corollary, the
scope of American aid. Without waiting for the acceptance by the Iranian
Government of the terms submitted to it in the identical notes of 30 August,
the British Government promptly charged the United Kingdom Commercial
Corporation with procurement of commodities for the USSR and their delivery
through the Persian Corridor. The British task now embraced not only security
and communications but supply to the Soviet Union. It was immediately
recognized that in this new undertaking the Iranian State Railway (ISR) would
play a vital role. After informally ascertaining from President Roosevelt
American willingness to help in equipping the railway, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, through a cable from Lord Beaverbrook to the Messrs. Harry Hopkins
and Harriman, on 6 September expressed the hope that the United States would
send certain quantities of locomotives and freight cars inasmuch as the best
available route into the Soviet Union during the winter months was that via
the ISR.13

At the same time the London War Office instructed the British Supply Council
in North America in details of similar requests to be made direct to the
fountainhead of lend-lease in Washington, emphasizing the needs for the ISR as
the most pressing transportation requirement in the entire Middle East. The
ensuing memorandum, presented by E. P. Taylor, Chairman of the British Supply
Council, to the Division of Defense Aid Reports in Washington,14 while dealing
mainly with requirements for the hard-pressed Red Sea area and Egypt, embodied
in its final paragraph the British intention of raising the capacity of the
ISR from 200 tons to 2,000 tons per day, and of the Iranian highways to 12,000
tons per month. The expanded highway program was needed to supplement rail
haulage in a country whose aridity set limitations on the use of the steam
locomotives then planned for and on order. On 10 September Brig. Gen. George
R. Spalding
[15]

requested that the ISR be made an approved lend-lease project under aid to
Britain.15

Meanwhile, the conversations held in London the previous May regarding
lend-lease aid to the British in the Middle East had been evolving machinery
for rendering that aid. On 11 September the War Department notified General
Chancy that, "to comply with the desires of the British Government," it
contemplated setting up supply and maintenance depots in the Middle East.16
Two days later, a presidential directive to the Secretary of War to render
lend-lease aid to Great Britain in the Middle East embodied the principles of
the message to Chancy and set in motion the plans which had been brewing since
spring. Though the plans were the product of many minds, the Middle East
Directive of 13 September 1941 bears the stamp of the President's peculiar
skill in sensing public opinion. Where the draft presented to him had borne
the words "expressed wishes" of the British Government, the President's pen
had substituted .the words "expressed needs." This slight but significant
change recognized both the undoubted need of aid and the equally ponderable
sensibilities of a part of the American public.17

Two salient features of the Middle East Directive need underscoring at this
point: first, the method by which it was proposed to furnish the aid; and
second, the strictly auxiliary status of American aid. Under the first point,
the directive made plain that the aid was to be furnished not by an
expeditionary force, but through the Defense Aid Division of the War
Department.18 This consideration, made expedient by the fact of continued
American military neutrality, confined the war aid to be furnished Britain to
the economic sphere and determined that, though under Army supervision, it was
to be furnished by private contract and civilian personnel. Second, the status
of American aid was determined by the method, whereby the British were to
requisition the War Department for aid through the Defense Aid
[16]

director in accordance with normal lend-lease procedure. "The British
authorities should be consulted," the directive stated, "on all details as to
location, size, and character of depots and transport facilities. Their needs
should govern." The auxiliary status of the Americans was thus clearly
established.

Some indication of the scale of the September planning for the Persian
Corridor, even in this early and tentative stage, appears in a memorandum
prepared for Harry Hopkins:

The entrance of Russia into the war has given the Iranian theater urgent
priority. The demands of the new theater are tremendous-250,000 ship tons of
railroad material in one project, more than the total shipments to the Middle
East to date, requiring from 50 to 75 ships, with the distance so great that
only three trips a year can be made. A big automotive project is superimposed
on the railroad project. Diversions of material hitherto destined for Egypt
are being made to the new theater.19

If there had been any thought in the War Department that the Persian Corridor
aid could be administered under the Middle East Directive through General
Chaney's mission in London, or even through a War Department mission for the
entire Middle East, a War Plans Division paper disposed of it. It was urged
that, in view of the "rapidly changing Russian situation with the threat of a
German offensive south through Turkey," the need of extensive supply
facilities, not only for the British in the Persian Gulf area now commanded by
General Wavell from India, but also for the support of the Soviet Union,
called for the establishment of a separate American military mission. It was
therefore recommended that an independent Iranian mission be formed under "an
officer of broad engineering experience," and on 27 September Col. Raymond A.
Wheeler, Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, who had served as Engineer of
Maintenance of the Panama Canal and as Acting Governor of the Canal Zone, and
who was a specialist in rail and highway matters, was appointed Chief, United
States Military Iranian Mission. At the same time a parallel mission, the
United States Military North African Mission, Brig. Gen. Russell L. Maxwell,
Chief, with headquarters at Cairo, was set up to aid the British forces under
General Auchinleck. These two missions were designed to carry out the
responsibilities for implementing lend-lease aid to Britain in the Middle East
which President Roosevelt had laid upon the Secretary of War in his directive
of 13 September.20
[17]

That directive, however, had specifically confined itself to aid to the
British, and it was under its provisions that the Iranian Mission was
established on 27 September to support the British forces in the Persian
Corridor. But in this area, aid to Britain meant participation, on the supply
side, in two different British responsibilities, namely, security of the line
of communications (a vital part of a third British responsibility, defense
against invasion) and supply to the Soviet Union. This indirect responsibility
for Russian aid differentiated the two missions, the Iranian and the North
African, which were established under the Middle East Directive.
Almost simultaneously, instructions were handed to British and American
commanders in the field which recognized the Russian task in so many words.
After a conference at Baghdad in September between General Wavell for India
and General Auchinleck for Middle East, General Quinan's directive was widened
to include taking "steps to develop such road, rail, and river communications
as are necessary to ensure . . . the maximum possible delivery of supplies to
Russia."21

And on 21 October the Secretary of War instructed Wheeler, now a brigadier
general, "to assure the timely establishment and operation of supply,
maintenance and training facilities as required by present and contemplated
British, Russian and other friendly operations within or based upon" his area.
In the years that followed, it was to be the destiny of the Iranian Mission
and its successors to be primarily concerned with the Russian-supply aspects
of British aid, rather than with the strengthening of British communications
for area defense. But at the beginning, although lumped with British and other
friendly operations, the Russian-aid aspect of this mission was not stressed.
Indeed, in describing the two Middle East missions to the Secretary of State
in a letter of 30 October, the Secretary of War referred only to "contemplated
British operations." Russia was unnamed. Such an omission suggests either a
politic underemphasis or imperfect information. Neither explanation suffices.
The plain fact is that aid to Russia was necessarily being set up as a part of
aid to Britain. Why was this so?22
[18]

The Russians and the Americans

The main reason was that Britain, enjoying treaty rights in Iraq and Iran, had
requested neutral American aid in the field of supply. Furthermore, not only
was the United States neutral, but the Soviet Union had not yet been declared
eligible for lend-lease aid. Yet in the face of clear and urgent need to
utilize the Persian Corridor supply route to the USSR, and in view of the
British machinery at hand, the means adopted under the presidential directive
for Middle East aid to Britain were the most practicable. Behind the continued
ineligibility of Russia for lend-lease aid lay intangibles which added
immensely to the material difficulties in establishing the new supply route.
The relations of the Americans to the British in the Corridor were conditioned
by the responsibilities of the British in that area. They were also
conditioned by the relations of the Americans to the Russians. Aid to the
Soviet Union, catapulted into American public concern by the German invasion,
created political puzzles more baffling than those inherent in aid to Britain.
During the debate over the adoption of lend-lease, objections to British aid
had stemmed largely from Anglophobia, but even Anglophobes knew instinctively
that the force of logic behind such help was inescapable. Hitler's attack of
22 June 1941 caught the American people completely unprepared in their minds.
Always stronger on the side of championing the weak against the strong than on
the side of viewing situations with the cold perspective of, say, the
professional strategist or European diplomatist, the American people in 1941
were still shocked and grieved over the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 which
resulted in expulsion of the USSR from the League of Nations. One summer the
Soviet building at the New York World's Fair had been "the" spot to visit; the
next summer, the building had vanished, and with it nearly every trace of
Soviet-American good feeling. It was inevitable that, reflecting this drastic
shift in public opinion and buttressed by the Hitler-Stalin pact of August
1939, the policy of the American Government toward the Soviet Union should
have been one of austere aloofness tinged with suspicion. The American people,
having gradually come to admire the postrevolutionary Russian people and
having suffered a violent revulsion following the Soviet attack on Finland,
now, in June of 1941, were stunned and puzzled. It was difficult for them to
make another about-face overnight and suddenly champion the newly attacked
USSR. Soon after Hitler's invasion a former American ambassador to the Soviet
Union
[19]

publicly proclaimed that country's government "a godless tyranny, the sworn
enemy of all free peoples of the earth." 23

The delicacy of the American Government's position, even as late as the date
of the formation of the Iranian Mission, was therefore reflected in the
somewhat indirect approach that mission took toward the problem of Soviet aid.
Inasmuch as the United States was still militarily a neutral and the Soviet
Union not yet officially eligible for lend-lease, the mission, while
undertaking to aid Great Britain and Russia, was to proceed to aid the latter
by aiding Britain. The reasons were not only that the southern part of the
Persian Corridor was under British authority by virtue of the Anglo-Soviet
occupation of August 1941 and that American forces were going in as an
economic auxiliary furnished under military auspices by a neutral friend. The
indirection as to aid to the Soviet Union was also still politically necessary
in September, and requires further explanation.

For a considerable period prior to the sudden German attack, the Soviet Union,
along with the Axis Powers and Vichy France, had been subject to economic
blockade by the Allied Powers. The United States had set up machinery for
waging economic warfare and after the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin pact had
taken various measures against the Russians. Only the week before the attack
upon the Soviet Union the United States Treasury had frozen forty million
dollars of Soviet credits, and as late as 20 June reports of leakage in the
economic blockade against the Soviet Union had been discussed by members of
General Chaney's Special Observer Group in London as among disturbing elements
in the Middle East picture.24

When the attack came, Prime Minister Churchill, in an early broadcast to his
people referring to Hitler as "this bloodthirsty guttersnipe," pledged British
aid to the Soviet Union. The American official reaction was bound to be slower
in the light of the shock to public opinion a similar announcement would have
caused.25 The next day, 23 June-with a background of gloomy predictions in the
newspapers that the German armies would smash through to the Black Sea in a
few weeks, consolidate their supply lines, and drive on through the Caucasus
to Iraq and Iran-The New York Times, in a front-page article headed,
"Washington Waits," stated, somewhat cryptically,
[20]

"If Britain wants the United States to extend lend-lease aid the attempt will
be made." As for official utterance, the government contented itself with
Acting Secretary of State Summer Welles' statement of that same day, "Hitler's
armies are today the chief dangers of the Americas." One day later the
President was quoted indirectly in a press conference as prepared to implement
the policy announced by Welles; but the President's remarks, mainly
anti-Hitler, stressed American inability, through prior commitments to
Britain, to be of much present help to the Soviets. After all, the United
States was still a nonbelligerent. But that same day, the 24th, the Times
quietly reported release of the Soviet credits frozen ten days before.
The Department of State did not share the shock and surprise of the less well
informed general public. It had long been formulating a policy of American aid
in case Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and when the attack came it was
ready with recommendations for reconsideration of restrictive anti-Soviet
export control regulations. Then on 9 July the President told Summer Welles
that he was anxious to send Russia substantial aid at once, preferably before
October, when winter would interfere with transportation. The Department of
State set to work to devise a modus operandi for handling requests from the
Soviet ambassador outside the established machinery of lend-lease, which, for
obvious political reasons, could not yet be extended to the Soviet Union.26
By mid-July a committee had been created, consisting of the Soviet ambassador,
the chairman of the British Supply Council in North America,27 and Harry
Hopkins, the moving spirit in lend-lease affairs and the President's deputy in
their administration. Hopkins' dramatic flight from Great Britain to Moscow
via Archangel, bearing to Stalin a reassuring message from Roosevelt, bridged
far more than the vast distances of land and sea that separated those two
chiefs of state. In his conversations, following his arrival at Moscow on 30
July, Hopkins obtained from the Russians a detailed statement of their supply
needs. He also won their confidence to an extent not hitherto achieved by
others; and he returned to Washington equipped to speed the ma-
[21]

chinery of Russian aid. An early sequel to Moscow was a joint
ChurchillRoosevelt statement of 5 August regarding aid to the Soviets.28
Meanwhile, on 12 July, Maj. Gen. James H. Burns of the Division of Defense Aid
Reports brought to Washington for consultation Col. Philip R. Faymonville, who
had served from 1934 to 1939 as United States Military Attache' in Moscow,
winning from Ambassador Joseph E. Davies praise for his "unusual good
judgment," a quality called for particularly in the newly developing
Soviet-American relationship. "He speaks Russian fluently," Mr. Davies wrote,
"and apparently is most highly thought of by the leaders of the Army here,"
that is, in Moscow.29

Shortly after reaching Washington, Faymonville joined Burns' staff and was
useful in receiving the Soviet Military Mission which arrived in the capital
on 23 July. He was also present at a series of conferences held in the office
of Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy from 9 to 11 August to determine
the extent of American aid and the means of furnishing it.30 The policy
arrived at was that no War Department materials could be made available to the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics without prior release by the British of
materials allocated to them. Since the British were committed to aid Russia,
the question became one of three-cornered negotiations, with the arrangement
of quantities and priorities subject to three valid points of view with the
Americans in the middle. A sampling of October cables and letters will
indicate how the machinery worked.31 On 3 October a consignment of tanks went
off to the Soviet Union by arrangement with the United Kingdom, whose quotas
were affected by the amounts diverted to Russia. On 24 October the Assistant
Secretary of War wrote the Secretary of State on the procedure adopted for
speeding shipments to Russia of goods originally contracted for by the United
Kingdom. On 29 October General Chancy in Washington cabled his Army Special
Observer Group in London that the Anglo-American agreement (Balfour-Arnold) on
aviation aid, approved by the Secretary of War on 28 October, corresponded
exactly with the previous agreements with the Soviet authorities.

In September the President sent Averell Harriman, his special representative
in London on material aid to the British Empire, to Moscow
[22]

for important three-cornered conferences there with a Soviet commission under
Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov and a British group under Lord
Beaverbrook. Travel orders naming the expedition the Special Mission for War
Supplies to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were made out for Mr.
Harriman, General Burns, Colonel Faymonville, acting as secretary, Admiral
William H. Standley, shortly thereafter to become American Ambassador to
Moscow, William L. Batt of William S. Knudsen's Office of Production
Management, and General Chancy.32 The discussion following, in which Marshal
Joseph V. Stalin participated on three occasions, produced the signing at
Moscow on 1 October by Beaverbrook, Harriman, and Molotov of the First (
Moscow ) Protocol, described as "a binding promise by this Government to make
specific quantities of supplies available for shipment to Russia by a specific
date."33

The Moscow Protocol was the first of four similar instruments for aid to
Russia. It called for shipment from the United States through 30 June 1942 of
roughly a million and a half tons of supplies. The Second ( Washington )
Protocol, signed 6 October 1942 and covering the period to 1 July 1943,
promised 3,300,000 tons to be shipped by the northern Russian ports and
1,100,000 via the Persian Gulf route. The Third ( London ) Protocol, running
through 30 June 1944, promised 2,700,000 tons via the Pacific route and
2,400,000 by either the northern Russian ports or the Persian Gulf. It was
signed 19 October 1943. The Fourth (Ottawa) Protocol, signed 17 April 1945,
promised 2,700,000 tons via Pacific routes and 3,000,000 via Atlantic routes
including the Persian Gulf and the route into the Black Sea, then newly
available. It covered the period to 12 May 1945. These protocols were definite
commitments on the diplomatic level, different from those given to any other
lend-lease recipients. While they contained escape clauses, President
Roosevelt was always intensely concerned that they be honored to the letter.
Behind every other circumstance that was to affect the supply program which
the United States was to undertake in the Persian Corridor stood the protocols
and the inflexible necessity of meeting their tonnage promises, come what
may.34
[23]

The commitment of October 1941 had been carefully prepared for by the
President's statement to Congress on 11 September, "The Soviet Government's
purchases here are being made with its own funds through its regular
purchasing agency."35 This statement followed the making available on 24
August of five billion dollars for lend-lease expenditures, from which the
Soviet Union was excluded. At the time of the Moscow Protocol, the situation
was that the United States had joined Britain in pledging almost unlimited
aid, that much could be done through lend-lease aid to Britain, and that it
was by then apparent that the President deemed the American public not
unfavorable to Russian aid.36

So far, Russian supply was on a cash basis. During September-October, for
instance, the United States loaned the USSR ninety million dollars with which
on 21 October to purchase ammunition then available in the United States.37 In
an exchange of messages between Roosevelt and Stalin of 30 October and 4
November respectively, the United States agreed to advance one billion dollars
to Russia to be repaid without interest over a 10-year period, commencing five
years after the end of the war. The arrangement was in accordance with the
Soviet's expressed preference and was similar to that granted the Netherlands
and Iceland, which paid cash for aid procured, for efficiency's sake, through
the usual lend-lease channels. On 7 November 1941 the Soviet Union was
officially declared eligible for lend-lease as a nation whose defense was
vital to the defense of the United States. When a second billion was allocated
to the Russians on 20 February 1942, the President took steps to formulate an
agreement for repayment in kind, to allay Soviet fears that they would have to
repay in dollars. Signed 11 June, this became the Master Agreement,
superseding the first billion loan arranged.38

The financial aspects have been labored at this point for two reasons. First,
their complexity was largely a product of the political difficulties of
launching the program in the face of American opinion toward the
[24]

Soviet Union before Hitler's attack. Second, Soviet property rights over the
goods shipped had been first determined when the Soviet Union was purchasing
on a cash basis. These rights, carried over into the lend-lease period, gave
rise to much of the friction that developed later during the stages of
shipment and delivery for they permitted the Soviet agents to exact the most
scrupulous adherence to the letter of their bond at every stage of the
process.39

The severity of Soviet inspections can be traced quite as much to these
financial arrangements as to their national traits. In this connection it must
be borne in mind that the Russians enforced upon their own people equally
strict personal responsibility all along the chain of command. Their readiness
to punish individuals of their own forces who passed inferior goods became
legendary among the Americans who worked with them in the field. It is
unrealistic to deplore the Slav's lack of easygoing Anglo-Saxon
adaptability.40

After the signing of the protocol it was decided, on the recommendation of
Harry Hopkins, to leave in Moscow an American representative of lend-lease who
had been a member of the Special Mission for War Supplies to the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics which had negotiated the protocol. Colonel
Faymonville, secretary of the mission, thus remained for some years as chief
of the special mission, first in his capacity as a representative of the
Division of Defense Aid Reports, thereafter as a member of the Lend-Lease
Administration.41 To the Iranian Mission, authorized to render aid to Great
Britain, the Soviet Union, and other friendly powers in the Persian Corridor,
and to the civilian lend-lease mission in Russia, the War Department added a
second military mission charged with aiding the Soviets. This was the United
States Military Mission to the Union of Soviet Socialist
[25]

Republics, established on 5 November, with Maj. Gen. John N. Greely as
chief.42

The Iranians and the Americans

The United States Military Iranian Mission and the United States Military
Mission to the USSR formalized the logistical partnership entered into before
Pearl Harbor between neutral America and belligerent Britain and Russia. But
there was a fourth partner, Iran, whose role it was to smile appreciatively
while the bigger fellows tramped up and down in her house. To be sure, the
presence of British and Soviet forces, backed by the tripartite agreement,
provided Iran with a protection against the Axis which she did not herself
possess, whether or not she might have wished to use it. The large matter of
external security was thus taken care of, and neither the Americans nor the
Iranians were concerned with it.

Internal security, though also an assumed responsibility of the occupying
powers-the United States was not at any time during the war an occupying power
in Iran-was another matter. Protection of trains and truck convoys against
marauding tribesmen, patrol of tracks, roads, docks against sabotage,
vigilance against pilferage-these primarily local functions should
theoretically be performed by the Iranian authorities, lest a populace made
hostile by foreign surveillance become itself a rearward threat to
communications.

In the fall of 1941 the forces at Iran's disposal were inadequate to assume so
staggering a task of policing as the ambitious supply plans of the Allies
involved. Although the Allies permitted Iran in September 1941 to break off
diplomatic relations with certain of the Axis Powers, it was two years before
they allowed that country to declare war against Germany. Meanwhile, the
Allies discouraged development of military power by Iran. These were policies
and decisions in which the United States as an auxiliary remained silent. But
there was a feeling in some quarters that the Iranian partner in the
logistical task might relish a less passive role than that of the appreciative
smile originally called for by the script of 1941. It was less a problem in
logistics and security than in diplomacy.

After American entrance into the war Iran's eligibility for lend-lease,
declared on 10 March 1942, offered a fresh approach. The
[26]

establishment in that year of two additional American military missions, one
to advise Iran on certain matters affecting its Army, the other to reorganize
and command its Gendarmerie, brought Iran, though on a modest scale, into
direct partnership with the United States. These missions also brought the
United States for the first time directly into the four-sided Corridor
partnership.

The advisory missions, under Maj. Gen. Clarence S. Ridley and Col. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf respectively, performed two important functions. By aiding Iran's
ability to preserve law and order along the supply line, they helped the
lend-lease operations. But even more importantly, by demonstrating American
concern for Iranian sovereignty, they contributed something new to the
historic situation, easing, if only briefly, dangerous tensions.

One thing remains to note before commencing an account of the American effort
in the Persian Corridor. It was not like the historical facts of enemy threat,
Allied need, American planning, tonnages delivered. It could not be felt, as a
swirling sandstorm is felt; it was not visible as were swarms of stevedores
unloading ships, or convoys of trucks creeping through snow-choked mountains.
It was a thing as intangible as discouragement, as impalpable as heat.
It was a spirit shaped by diplomatists and expressed by the sheer obstinacy of
men's guts, a spirit animated by Roosevelt, who "considered Iran as something
of a testing ground for the Atlantic Charter and for the good faith of the
United Nations."43
[27]