X. & XI. World War II Issues, 1941-1943

Currency: Iraqi dinar (1,000 fils = 1 dinar)

First issued: 1 April 1941
Production: Thomas de la Rue & Company, London

First issued: February-June 1942
Production: Geological Survey Department, Ministry of Public Works, Cairo

First issued: April-June 1942
Production: Thomas de la Rue & Company, London

First issued: January-February 1943
Production: Thomas de la Rue & Company, London

The history.

So when we stopped the story on the previous page, the veteran Nuri al-Said and new player Prince Abdul al-Ilah were attempting to consolidate their power in the face of the coup-prone Iraqi army. Now, Al-Said was smarter than the average bear and realised that trying to challenge the military directly would lead to him being gunned down at some quiet desert roadside, as had happened to Bakr Sidqi. So he resolved on a more subtle approach. Although the army was putting forward a monolithic facade, Al-Said knew there were tensions within the "Circle of Seven", as the group which managed the army's political interventions was known: divisions had arisen between the three senior members and the four younger ones, who called themselves the "Golden Square". Al-Said was on reasonable terms with the Golden Square and they formed an alliance which effectively marginalised the remainder of the Circle of Seven. 

As we saw a few pages ago, the 1932 Anglo-Iraqi treaty obligated Iraq to be in military alliance with Britain, and to make any wartime accommodations which Britain regarded as necessary. Britain declared war on Germany on the 3rd September 1939, effectively making Iraq a participant in the war on the British side. The outbreak of war initially strengthened Al-Said's position: he readily complied with all of Britain's demands, and took the opportunity to introduce a state of emergency, with him of course wielding the emergency powers. But developments began to turn against Al-Said. As the 1930s had progressed, an increasingly influential strand of nationalist thinking held that Germany was a natural ally for Iraq: the Nazis provided a model of dynamic, thrusting nationalism, they opposed the British, and they appeared to have no designs on the Middle East themselves. Germany's string of initial victories caused an increase in pro-German (and thus, anti-British) sentiment, which naturally put pressure on the notably pro-British Al-Said. The Golden Square, which was pro-German in outlook, made it known to Al-Said that they had lost confidence in him, and he resigned in March 1940. The initiative then shifted to Abdul al-Ilah: as regent, he was entitled to wield the king's power to appoint new prime ministers. As a concession to anti-British feeling, Al-Ilah chose the fairly pro-German Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, but put him at the head of a new coalition government which contained a number of pro-British figures, including Al-Said, who was now the foreign minister. 

Germany continued to enjoy great success in its military endeavours, and as the war began to spread to the Middle East the Al-Gaylani government leaned increasingly to the German side (as, indeed, did public opinion). Al-Said tried to stop the pro-German drift by having Al-Ilah sack Al-Gaylani and dissolve parliament. This was not achieved in the end but the affair caused Al-Gaylani to lose the confidence of the Golden Square and he resigned anyway. Next up in the prime minister's chair was Taha al-Hashimi, who had had a small walk-on role in the events of the previous page. Al-Hashimi initially had the support of the Golden Square but inevitably managed to lose it and was prodded into resigning. At this point the Golden Square decided they might as well just take power themselves, and launched a coup. Al-Ilah, Al-Said and Al-Hashimi all fled into British-controlled Transjordan, and the Golden Square assumed power on the 1st April 1941: Al-Gaylani resumed the prime ministership and an obscure member of the royal family, Sharaf al-Fawwaz, became the new regent.

The British naturally found all this rather disconcerting. The fate of North Africa hung in the balance and France's Middle Eastern territories had declared loyalty to the Vichy régime: the sudden appearance of a seemingly pro-Axis military government in Iraq was not a positive development under the circumstances. Post-coup Iraq was giving off very mixed signals: while Al-Gaylani was now firmly in the pro-German camp, the British nevertheless remained the local power in the area, and Al-Gaylani did not wish to provoke them. Al-Gaylani assured the British that Iraq would still comply with all of its obligations under their alliance, but meanwhile the Germans were launching a severe charm offensive against Iraq, making wide but vague promises of military assistance if Iraq went over to the Axis. 

Britain decided to force the issue and asked Al-Gaylani permission to land troops in Iraq — something which it was entitled to do under the terms of the Treaty. Al-Gaylani conceded this, knowing that a refusal would have been taken as an act of war, but the increasing buildup of British forces as April wore on led the Golden Square to believe war was inevitable. The Iraqi army was mobilised, but the British launched a pre-emptive strike on the 2nd May. Full-scale fighting immediately broke out and, long story short, the British were able to recover from an initially delicate strategic position and beat the Iraqi army. Unfortunately for Al-Gaylani, the promised German support largely failed to materialise —Germany having been somewhat surprised by the pace of events— although a small detachment of Luftwaffe aircraft made a useful contribution. With the military situation collapsing, Al-Gaylani and the Golden Square found they were left with little popular support and they fled the country. The British entered Baghdad on the 31st May and Al-Ilah returned on the 1st June.

Abdul Al-Ilah dug up Jamil al-Midfai (who we briefly met on the previous page) and appointed him as prime minister for a few months, but replaced him with Nuri al-Said in October. Al-Said naturally focused on revenging himself on his enemies and neutralising the army as a political force, and with a heavy British military presence in Iraq there was no effective opposition to him. Al-Said regarded Al-Ilah as a natural ally, and managed to pass some amendments to the constitution which concentrated more power in the crown. This however ended up backfiring: the two men began to separate politically —Al-Ilah became slightly more liberal in outlook and grew concerned with Al-Said's heavy-handed governing style— and Al-Ilah used his new powers to sack Al-Said in June 1944. Helpfully, Al-Said's popularity (such as it was) was beginning to wane: the war was of course still going on and the imposition of rationing, censorship and various other measures were widely resented. By the end of the war food shortages were widespread and in general people were having a bad time economically. Al-Ilah appointed Hamdi al-Pachachi as Al-Said's replacement. Al-Pachachi proved to basically be a safe pair of hands: he repealed some of the most oppressive laws of Al-Said's tenure and put down a brief Kurdish uprising in 1945.

Abdul Al-Ilah was in a very liberal mood by this point, and in December 1945 announced a dramatic series of reforms: the state of emergency was to be ended, political parties would be allowed to form again, and the electoral system would be reformed. This got everybody's hopes up but the great outpouring of radicalism caused by the freer political climate ended up startling the establishment and many of the reforms were reversed — a decision which, naturally, was poorly received in most quarters. In June 1946 workers of the Iraq Petroleum Company went on strike and certain of them ended up being killed by the police: this was followed by more repression which inevitably generated more opposition. The situation seemed like it was in danger of getting out of hand and Al-Ilah (having sacked Al-Pachachi in early 1946 and two other prime ministers subsequently) reluctantly went back to Al-Said in November 1946. Al-Said then resigned in early 1947 and was succeeded by a couple of nondescript Al-Said supporters. Law and order was duly restored and it seemed like Iraq was now on a stable footing as it faced the challenges and opportunities of the post-war world.... or was it?? We'll see what happened on the next page.

The stamps.

I break with my usual pattern by putting two separate series on a single page like this, but I do it in the belief that some increased understanding of the issues will be gained thereby. This period is, philatelically, a little more complicated than the last few, and in trying to write it up I am faced with an astounding dearth of information: Gibbons kindly supplies the dates of issue and the printers, but nothing else, so what follows is entirely my best guess, and nothing more.

The first thing to note is that the stamps printed in the UK were done by De La Rue, and not the traditional Bradbury Wilkinson. I have no idea whatsoever why this may have been. After the war the contract went back to Bradbury Wilkinson, so it doesn't seem to have been a deliberate choice on the part of the Iraqi postal authority to break with them. I can’t find anything to suggest Bradburys’ printing works were damaged by German air raids — this site here (see the seventh image) seems to show the premises as undamaged.

On the other hand, De La Rue’s printing works suffered severely — they were badly bombed in September and November, and worst of all in December, 1940. R. V. M. Vousden offers a detailed account of this in the December 1996 isue of The London Philatelist. The December damage seems to have been fairly catastrophic, with much work needing to be passed to other London printers. Indeed, some work ended up being done by Bradbury Wilkinson. I have to admit I find Vousden’s article a little difficult in parts, but Iraqi stamps certainly aren’t among the many interrupted orders he mentions. So, I suppose, either the stamps hadn’t been printed by c. January-February 1941, or they had already been printed, or they were in the process of being printed and this wasn’t interrupted by the bombing.

A very important question, which I cannot answer confidently, is how long a shipment would’ve taken to get from the UK to Iraq at this time — Axis warships and submarines would’ve made the oceans an uncommonly hazardous place. A brief online search suggests that an efficient journey from the UK to Bombay took around two months (a month to get to Cape Town and then a month again to Bombay) but, if a ship had to wait at some point for a convoy to form, that could add up to another month or so. Let’s say a conservative ten weeks, including the final leg from Bombay up to Basra. The first De La Rue stamps were issued on 1 April 1941, so let’s assume they needed to be in Iraq by, say, 15 March, to allow time for them to be sorted and disseminated out to post offices. Counting backwards, that has the stamps leaving the UK c. 1 January. The December bombing took place specifically on 29 December, so my best guess is that the printing had been finished and the stamps had left De La Rue’s premises before the bombing, perhaps only by a few days. Obviously this paragraph is about a dozen assumptions stacked on top of each other, and no reliance should be placed upon it.

Approaching the question from another angle — the 1941 De La Rue stamps are coloured for the tariff prevailing before 24 July 1940 — i.e., the 8 fils is red and the 15 fils is blue. The Iraqi postal authority would of course not have commissioned stamps with the wrong colours, so that implies the order must have been made before 24 July 1940. If we assume (via the above paragraph) the stamps were shipped out sometime in December 1940, that’s a minimum of five months needed to fulfil the contract, which doesn’t feel implausible.

None of this gets us any closer to guessing why the stamps were ordered from De La Rue in the first place — that really must remain a mystery to me for the moment.

The set issued on 1 April 1941 is an unusual set of values: basically it's all "middle" values with nothing very high or very low, for some reason. The most obvious answer would be simply that there was no need for high or low values (i.e. that there were enough stocks sitting around in Iraq and no more were needed), but this seems like it can't be the reason, seeing as the 1942 Cairo printing is entirely low values, and the 1942 De La Rue issue is mostly lowest and highest values. Perhaps the most pressing need was for the middle values, but the Iraqi postal administration planned to make a subsequent order for high and low values, envisaging these would arrive c. late 1941. This would’ve then been frustrated by the disruption at De La Rue, and/or the general chaos of the coup and Anglo-Iraqi War. If the second De La Rue set was issued in late April 1942, that has them being printed circa December 1941 or January 1942, very approximately. Another scenario would be Iraq ordering a full set of all values in 1940, but for some reason (perhaps the bombing raids before the December one) De La Rue was only in a position to print the middle values at that time. I do not know.

The next part of the story is highly obscure. It seems a serious shortage of stamps had developed by the end of 1941, to the extent that the postal authority was obliged to take the unprecedented step of authorising handstamps to be used in place of postage stamps. I speculate more on this on a different page — at the time of writing, the best information available to me suggests that this authorisation was nationwide, and lasted from 1 January 1942 to perhaps the end of the month or so. The handstamps were, it seems, only valid for internal mail, and the first of the Cairo stamps to be delivered, on 9 February, was 10 fils, the standard rate for an internal letter, so presumably there was a particularly sharp shortage of that denomination, despite there being a 10 fils in the 1941 De La Rue set. If the 1941 De La Rue set was intended to confirm to the pre-1940 rates, then perhaps there were far fewer sheets of the 10 fils ordered than there should have been — before the 1940 rate change that denomination wasn’t nearly as important as after it. The remainder of the Cairo series didn’t appear until 22 June, by which time the 1942 De La Rue set had been issued in full, so it seems like effort must’ve been made to expedite getting the 10 fils from Cairo.

The Cairo set, already mentioned, was printed by the Geological Survey Department of the Egyptian Ministry of Public Works. Despite its unpromising name, the Survey in fact possessed an excellent photogravure operation, which had produced the superb 1927 definitive issue of Egypt. They ran off a quick, cheap issue, which had the added bonus of being able to be transported overland to Iraq, avoiding the dangers and delays of sea transport.

The second De La Rue set appeared in 1942 and included a presumably much-needed 10 fils, as already mentioned, as well as a 1 and 2 fils, whose intended use may have been helping the now-obsolete 8 fils stamps reach 10 fils. There was also a half and full dinar, which would’ve been in increased demand owing to the exorbitantly increased airmail fees of these years.

The third De La Rue set followed in 1943, and contained a 20 fils for the external rate, and various other practical denominations. There were now, it seems enough stamps in Iraq to last until the end of the war.

Finally, De La Rue re-printed some denominations in 1946-1947. These can be identified by their different perforations. There’s perhaps a bit of subterranean postal history here, too deep for me to grasp — were the WWII issues perforated differently because the intended perforator was damaged by the Germans, or some such? I do not know. The next issue for Iraq appeared in 1948 (see next page) but this doesn’t seem to have immediately affected the validity of the stamps on this page, which can be seen used into the early 1950s.

As already mentioned, there was a general increase in postal rates on 24 July 1940. This can be seen most obviously on the 10 and 20 fils, which became the workhorse internal and external rate stamps under the new tariff. They were coloured in accordance with the pre-1940 tariff in their 1941 De La Rue appearance (i.e., not red and blue), but the 1942 and 1943 De La Rue sets featured them in appropriate colours (i.e., red and blue). The 8 and 15 fils in turn gave up their red and blue, and adopted the yellow and black discarded by the 10 and 20 fils. The 10 fils was coloured the appropriate red in the Cairo set, which interestingly lacked a 20 fils.

Aesthetically I don't think much bad can be said about the De la Rue designs: they perhaps lack the charm and energy of the 1923 pictorials but they're impeccably executed (although the very high relief they're printed in seems to attract dirt and stray ink quite readily, unless I just have terrible luck in the specimens I'm picking).[1] In the typical De la Rue fashion the stamps say what they're depicting, unlike the 1923 issue. That these stamps don’t depict the young Faisal II is intriguing: perhaps the Iraqi postal authority avoided him for reasons of taste (conferre the horrible "baby" stamps of late-1800s Spain), or they wanted designs that would still be acceptable if Faisal ended up being replaced by something else (no doubt the turbulent 1930s had caused some to question the stability of the monarchy).

Meanwhile the Cairo designs are rather tedious, although they were evidently produced under straitened circumstances. There may have been some perceived propaganda value in getting stamps out there with the king's face on them, seeing as the king was firmly in the pro-British camp, via his uncle the regent. The frame is just a tracing of the frame from the Faisal I and Ghazi portrait series — perhaps this was simply the format which required the least imagination, or perhaps it was thought the rushed, unusual quality of these stamps would be somewhat counterbalanced by their use of the old reliable frame. We see some novelty in technique: the frame was lithographed and the centre was printed by photogravure. Why they didn't just photogravure the whole design in one operation is unknown to me, but no doubt they had their reasons.[2]

[1] Also as a minor nitpick, the ٤ on the De la Rue 4 fils feels very badly-positioned.

[2] A puzzle-piece which I list down here because I have no idea of its significance: there exists a design of revenue stamp which is basically a "proper" version of the Cairo design: it looks broadly the same but is finely engraved and recess-printed. Ross and Powell date it to simply 1942, leaving open the question of whether it came before or after the Cairo postage stamps. They credit the Geological Survey for its production, which I’m not sure I believe — I’d never claim to be familiar with the Survey’s entire corpus but I can’t offhand think of any stamps they did by recess printing.