In Blood, Oil and the Axis, John Broich reconstructs the story of how a Fascist State was likely to rise in Iraq and the Levant and how this was prevented by what the publisher terms on the book's dust jacket, an “unlikely coalition of individuals.” Broich has the merit of bringing attention to a neglected and less known front of the Second World War and contributing to expand our understanding of the conflict on a global scale. Following a coup in 1941, the regime of Abd al-llah in Iraq was overthrown by Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, supported by a group of pro-Fascist officers called Golden Square. Their goal was to reach an agreement with the Axis and remove British influence from the country. Within some months, the British were able to remove Golden Square during the brief Anglo-Iraqi war, thus preventing the Axis from establishing a foothold in the region.

Broich begins with an overview of the situation in the Middle East during the spring of 1941, highlighting the existence of pro-Fascist and pro-British “parties” in the region and describing the events that led to the coup and the consequent rising threat of a Fascist penetration in the area. The core of the narrative, then, focuses on the different individuals and groups that constituted a diverse coalition that was able, despite material and logistic difficulties, to defeat Golden Square and reinstate a pro-British regime in Iraq.

The reconstruction of the events that led to the creation of the coalition and the military operations are highly detailed and largely based on archival sources, memories, and interviews. This allows the reader to access a valuable amount of information that goes well beyond the simple description of events and operations. In particular, it shows the importance of personal connections, of alliances and legacies established through the British Empire and protectorates and how it allowed, or complicated, the search for local alliances and support.

This gives Broich the chance to lead the reader into the complex world of local nationalism and aspirations that characterized and still characterize the Middle East while providing insightful views on how the British managed to use them to their advantages. Although Broich does show how British rule and involvement in the region could be detrimental to the political stability of the region, he does not go into this in great detail. Similarly, his analysis of regional peculiarities, nationalisms, and local interests remain in the background and could have been more probing. Broich's story largely revolves around individuals that, through their commitment, personal networks, and experiences, managed to accomplish an almost impossible mission, defeating a 30,000 strong Iraqi Army with fewer than 2,000 soldiers and with outdated equipment. This focus represents both the strength and the weakness of the book. While the personal perspectives add intensity and depth in the narration and provide useful insights into the overall context and development of events, sometimes Broich dives too deep into the personal stories and conveys a feeling of irrelevance. While it cannot be denied that the personal experiences of historical agents inform their actions, the level of detail that Broich goes into seems like an unnecessary diversion that detracts from the central narrative. An example of this is the digression on John Masters's travels through Japan, the Pacific, and the United States. While fascinating to describe the person, this digression on his tourist activities hardly adds valuable information to the activities of Masters in Iraq. This and other stories, while unnecessary to the book, surely fit what seems to be Broich's overall intent to be both a storyteller and a historian. In this respect, Blood, Oil and the Axis is a fascinating and compelling read for the general public and history enthusiasts. For an academic audience, while the book provides a thorough and detail account of the events, the digressions might be somewhat irrelevant.

The endnotes and references, on the other hand, are quite detailed and show the impressive documental work behind this narration, contextualized by a preliminary methodological note explaining the rationale behind the apparently fictional parts of the book. The reader can be reassured that nothing is fictional. In this respect, however, a slightly more extensive use of notes would have been welcome with a view to using this work as source of reference for further studies. While the amount of archival and secondary sources cited is impressive, collecting several different references into a few notes makes it difficult and time consuming for the reader to then isolate useful information. The lack of a comprehensive bibliography and index of the sources further complicate things in this sense.

In conclusion, Broich provides a pleasant, well-documented, and intense narration of the events that prevented the birth of a Fascist state in Iraq and the Levant. Blood, Oil and the Axis revisits an history that is less known in the global perspective of the Second World War and, as such, is an important book. Nonetheless, some limits in the exploration of the local context, mainly the nationalisms and the factionalism in the Middle East, and the inefficient bibliographic and sources indexing—sacrificed to the goal of a more accessible and popular narrative—might represent a limit for an academic public.