Play as · WW2 1939 · L1 · Neutral · Pre-oil Kingdom

Saudi Arabia - September 1, 1939

Saudi Arabia in 1939 is seven years old and almost completely broke. Abdulaziz ibn Saud proclaimed the Kingdom in 1932 out of the Nejd he had taken by raid and the Hejaz he had taken by conquest, and what he governs is less a state in the European sense than a settlement between a dynasty, a religious establishment and the tribes that put both in place. There is no oil money. The Dammam field came in on the seventh well in March 1938 and the first cargo left Ras Tanura in the spring of 1939, but the concession the Americans of Casoc hold is still costing them more than it pays, and the King's treasury lives on the Hajj - on the fees, tolls and trade of the pilgrims who come to Mecca and Medina, a revenue the world depression has cut close to the bone. The strategic identity of this kingdom in 1939 is potential without means: enormous territory, unrivalled religious prestige, a shrewd and personally dominant ruler, and nothing whatever with which to fight anybody.

Starting position

The starting board is space, prestige and poverty. The Kingdom spans most of the Arabian peninsula, but the borders that matter are agreements rather than lines: the Taif settlement that closed the short war with Yemen in 1934, the neutral zones pencilled in with Iraq and Kuwait, and a long southern frontier with the British protectorates of Aden and the Trucial Coast that nobody has troubled to fix. Force is tribal levies and a small regular guard - useful for holding the interior, useless against a European army, and not ten years past the Ikhwan revolt that had to be broken with British aircraft and armoured cars. Britain is the incumbent power in every direction: it holds Egypt, Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Aden and the Gulf coast, it pays a subsidy, and it treats the Red Sea as its own. Against that, Ibn Saud has the two Holy Cities, which give him standing across the Muslim world that no British official can match, and a quiet American oil company whose engineers are the only large foreign presence in the country not answering to London. The pieces are pilgrims, tribal loyalty, geography and one unproven concession.

What turns the campaign

What Ibn Saud wants is to stay independent and stay solvent, in that order, and 1939 makes both harder. War in Europe collapses the pilgrimage - the sea lanes close, the pilgrim traffic falls away, and the revenue the state runs on goes with it. It also makes the King interesting to everyone. Germany spent 1939 courting him: an envoy went to Berlin in the summer, arms were discussed, and a German legation was extended toward Jeddah, all of it aimed at the British position in the Middle East rather than at Arabia itself. Britain answers with subsidy and pressure, because a hostile Hejaz astride the Red Sea approaches to Suez is a nightmare it will pay a great deal to avoid. The campaign turns on how long neutrality can be sold to both sides at once, and on what it costs. Lean too far toward Berlin and the Royal Navy is at the Red Sea ports with the pilgrim trade in its hands; lean too far toward London and the King is a client in the eyes of the Arab opinion that is currently in revolt against British rule in Palestine. Underneath all of it, the oil is coming. Every month of the war brings the moment closer when the thing under the Eastern Province stops being a promise and becomes the strategic fact that reorders the whole peninsula - and the player's real problem is to reach that moment with the Kingdom still whole and still his.

Signature challenge