In the grand mythology of the Second World War, the Anglo-American alliance was a “special relationship,” a bond of brothers united against the darkness of fascism. But beneath the surface of wartime solidarity, a ruthless power struggle was unfolding. The war was not just about defeating Hitler; it was about determining who would dominate the post-war world. And the grand prize in this hidden conflict was the Middle East and its ocean of oil.

This is the gripping story told by the historian James Barr in his book Lords of the Desert, a sequel to his acclaimed A Line in the Sand. As a recent episode of the Explaining History podcast explores, Barr’s work reveals how the United States, under the guise of an anti-imperialist ally, systematically dismantled Britain’s empire in the region and supplanted it with its own.

The End of the Beginning: A Victory and a Warning

In November 1942, Winston Churchill stood up at the Mansion House in London to announce a great victory at El Alamein. It was, he famously declared, “not the end… but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The speech was a much-needed morale boost for a nation battered by years of defeat. But as Barr reveals, Churchill was also speaking to a different audience: his American allies. He knew that with victory on the horizon, the debate over the shape of the post-war world would intensify.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, like his predecessor Woodrow Wilson, was publicly committed to a world free of European empires. This was not born of pure idealism. As the podcast host notes, America was its own kind of empire, with a brutal colour bar at home and colonial possessions like the Philippines. The real driver of American anti-imperialism was economic. The elites of American capital saw the British Empire, with its system of “imperial preference” tariffs, as a colossal closed market. They wanted it broken open.

This tension came to a head in August 1941, at a secret meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland. A desperate Churchill, hoping for a US declaration of war, was instead presented with a demand to sign what would become the Atlantic Charter—a joint declaration committing both nations to the principles of self-determinationSelf-Determination Full Description:Self-Determination became the rallying cry for anti-colonial movements worldwide. While enshrined in the UN Charter, its application was initially fiercely contested. Colonial powers argued it did not apply to their imperial possessions, while independence movements used the UN’s own language to demand the end of empire. Critical Perspective:There is a fundamental tension in the UN’s history regarding this term. While the organization theoretically supported freedom, its most powerful members were often actively fighting brutal wars to suppress self-determination movements in their colonies. The realization of this right was not granted by the UN, but seized by colonized peoples through struggle. and free trade. Churchill knew this was a dagger aimed at the heart of his empire. Global free trade would allow American manufacturing to flood into markets from India to Australia, cratering the British economy. He had no choice but to agree, but the battle lines were drawn. “I have not become the King’s First Minister,” he would later defiantly declare, “in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

The American Trojan Horse

The American “assault” on the British Empire was not just economic; it was carried out by a cadre of diplomats and envoys who were deeply suspicious of British motives. One of the most significant was Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate who had lost to Roosevelt in 1940. Sent to the Middle East as the president’s special envoy, Willkie arrived as a supporter of Britain and left as one of her most outspoken critics.

What he witnessed in Egypt shocked him. Britain, which had invaded in 1882 to control the Suez Canal, still ruled the country through a “veiled protectorate.” As Barr describes, the British Ambassador, the towering bully Miles Lampson, was for all practical purposes the country’s actual ruler, governing “the governors of Egypt.” This colonial arrogance, combined with what Willkie saw as British military bungling, convinced him that British imperialism was an obstacle to winning the war and a recipe for future instability.

Willkie’s journey was a formative experience that would shape American policy. He represented a growing consensus in Washington that British colonialism was an anachronism that needed to be replaced by a new American-led order. This view was shared by many influential figures, from the notoriously Anglophobic Admiral Ernest King to General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. They saw the British as sly, self-interested, and elitist, and were determined to ensure that America, not Britain, would reap the rewards of victory. The veteran journalist Robert Fisk, in his monumental The Great War for Civilisation, often documented this deep-seated rivalry, showing how it shaped the contours of the modern Middle East long before the wider world was paying attention.

The Real Prize: Oil

The strategic heart of this rivalry was, and remains, oil. Britain’s war in North Africa was not just about defending the Suez Canal; it was about preventing the German Afrika Korps from punching through to the vast oil fields of Arabia. As the podcast points out, the Axis powers were facing a severe energy crisis, and the seizure of Middle Eastern oil would have been a game-changer.

The British were already exploiting this prize through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a colonial enterprise that extracted enormous wealth from Iran while paying a pittance to the Iranian people. This was a model of colonial extraction that American oil companies deeply coveted. The struggle detailed in Lords of the Desert is ultimately a story of how American oil interests, backed by the full power of the US state, maneuvered to push the British out and secure control of the world’s most vital resource.

This intra-imperial rivalry, often overlooked in standard histories of the war, is crucial for understanding the present. The post-war order in the Middle East was not a clean break from colonialism, but a transfer of power from one empire to another. The American-led system that replaced British rule may have used the language of freedom and independence, but its underlying logic was the same: the control of strategic resources and the maintenance of Western dominance. The upsurge in post-war Arab nationalism, culminating in events like the 1956 Suez Crisis, was a direct reaction to this reality. The peoples of the Middle East, caught between competing imperial powers, were simply fighting for the self-determination they had been promised but were consistently denied. James Barr’s work is a vital reminder that the conflicts of today have deep roots in this forgotten power struggle, a secret war fought in the shadow of the great one.

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Further Reading

• James Barr, Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the United States and Great Britain for Dominance in the Modern Middle East: The central text of the discussion, detailing the Anglo-American rivalry. Also essential is its prequel, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East.
• Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East: A masterpiece of journalism and historical analysis from one of the most respected correspondents to ever cover the region.
• Christopher de Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: A concise and brilliant account of the Anglo-American coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic government in 1953 to protect British oil interests.
• Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power: The definitive history of oil and its central role in shaping geopolitics over the last century.
• Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East: A powerful critique of American policy in the region, arguing that it has replicated the patterns of earlier European empires.
• Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945: Provides excellent insight into the strategic and personal rivalries at the top of the Anglo-American alliance during WWII.