November 3, 1997
The Iranian

The following is an excerpt from "On Borrowed Wings" by Robert D. Burgener on the activities of the Allied forces in Iran during World War II. The first of a series of documentary videos on this subject -- "Tales of the Persian Corridor - Bridge To Victory; World War II supply route through Iran bridged colonial past and Cold War future, written and produced by Burgener -- is now available from the INTERNECT organization.

Video clip (1): Introduction to "Tales of the Persian Corridor" (RealPlayer format)
Video clip (2): The importance of the Persian Corridor as told by Lt. Col. A. George Mallis, U.S. Army (RealPlayer format)
Video clip (3): The equipment sent to Russia through Iran during the war (RealPlayer format)

It was the summer of 1941. Food shortages and inflation were the most pressing concerns for the average citizen in Iran. The war in Europe, which had begun in 1939 when Nazi Germany and its ally, the Soviet Union, invaded Poland; had spread west across the continent and south, to North Africa and the Middle East.

In May of 1941 the British had taken control of Iraq to safeguard their access to oil resources. On June 22 the Nazis, concerned about Stalin's aggressive annexing of territory in the Balkans which could threaten Germany's access to the Romanian oil fields; turned on their former ally and invaded the Soviet Union.

Iran had declared it's neutrality from the beginning. Its strategic location at the cross roads between Europe and Asia, however, made it vulnerable to both the European power conflict and, the Japanese forces which controlled Manchuria and in recent weeks had occupied Indo-China.

It was against this ominous backdrop that Reza Shah came to hand out diplomas for the graduates of Tehran's military academy. With great sadness in his voice, he addressed them as sons and officers of Iran. "Unfortunately this year you cannot take your month vacation upon graduation," he told them." You must go immediately to the regiment to which you are assigned."

"For your information, sons," Reza Shah continued, " our country is on the edge of very dangerous times."

In the summer of 1941 much of the world was already over the edge. An edge pushed relentlessly forward by the Nazi war machine in the west and Imperial Japan in the east.

Since the turn of the century, Iran had maintained a cautious policy of courting foreign governments as third powers to balance the influence exerted by the British and Russians. By 1939 that policy had resulted in Germany surpassing Russia as Iran's major trading partner. The economic facts, coupled with rumors and suspicion surrounding the large German enclaves in Iran; and Reza Shah's open admiration of Hitler's Aryan race propaganda, provided the pretext for a joint Soviet and British invasion of Iran on the 25th of August 1941.

Junior Lieutenant Mohammed Ali Sobhani along with 35-40 other new officers loaded onto a bus in Tehran headed for Tabriz, Azerbaijan to join the 3rd Division. At one of the check points along the route, they learned of the Soviet invasion from the north. "I remember as soon as we heard we were all very happy," Sobhani recalled, "because now we would be fighting our real enemy - the Russians."

It was a short and very one sided fight as Soviet armored units rolled into Tabriz aided by advance guards of fifth columnists and infiltraitors who identified key targets and eliminated them before any significant resistance could be organized.

Hasan Javdi, former chairman of the English department at Tehran University, was a child at the time and his parent's home was near one of the German trade missions in Tabriz. He remembers a young begger woman and her child who had camped out on the street in front of his parents home for several months.

On the morning that the skies over Tabriz were filled by black airplanes with red stars , the woman appeared in an officer's uniform at the head of a column of Soviet soldiers. That story is repeated in many variations as part of the folklore of the Soviet invasion of Iran. For Lt. Sobhani and the reinforcements, it meant withdrawal to Teheran and surrender.

By the summer of 1942, as Nazi units pushed through Ukraine and the Crimea towards the Caucasus, the first elements of American logistic and combat engineer units began arriving in Iran to form the Persian Gulf Command. Working with Soviet construction battalions, the Americans built a network of roads to replace the narrow trails that proved impassable to large trucks.

Lt. William H. Bird commanded one of the first American transportation units made up of White officers and Negro troops from the Illinois National Guard. "Our run from Andimeshk to Khorramshahr was supposed to take 10 hours" Bird recalled, "it was 135 miles, but there were 1,300 curves so it often took 15 hours or more."

The huge tractor -trailer rigs and the treacherous mountain roads overwhelmed this first batch of US Army Quartermaster drivers whose experience had been limited to civilian jobs driving delivery trucks in Chicago. The war department contacted the American Trucking Associations and through them the Teamsters Union calling for volunteers for a "secret mission."

At that time, most heavy duty truck drivers in America were exempt from the draft for military service because they were needed to haul supplies between factories for the war effort. Within a short time more than one thousand of these professional drivers had given up their deferments and joined the Army.

They arrived at Khorramshahr via Australia and the Indian Ocean with no idea exactly where they were going. The Pocket Guide to Iran, a small booklet published by the War Department began with familiar themes - Iran was a life line for supplies to the war front and a critical source of oil.

The highways and the Iranian State Railway became a vital life line from American factories, which were beyond the range of Nazi bombers, and the beleaguered Soviet Army, which could no longer be supplied as factories in Russia and Ukraine, were rapidly being destroyed by the advancing Nazi forces.

The aid program known as "Lend-Lease" which had allowed a neutral United States to provide war supplies to England, China, and the anti-Axis effort; expanded greatly after America entered the war in December of 1941. Some 4.5 million tons of war supplies arrived at the ports of the Persian Gulf for shipment north.

Although the total tonnage of American lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union amounted to only seven percent of the total supplies consumed by the Soviet Union during the entire war, Russian historian Alexander S. Orlov acknowledges that supplies received during 1941 and 1942 amounted to closer to 90 percent of what some front line units had to fight with.

Thousands of Iranian civilians played a role in the war effort from laborers for road building and drivers to skilled mechanics at the "little Detroit's" truck assembly plants at Andimeshk. In one year 648,000 vehicles were built in Iran for shipment to the Soviet Union.

The success of the vehicle and aircraft assembly facilities is a tribute to the imagination of the Iranian people and the ingenuity of American soldiers - most of whom couldn't speak Persian. The fact was, the Persian language did not contain a vocabulary of terms for the tools and procedures needed to assemble modern machines - and yet they did it and did it well.

The sudden availability of large quantities of lumber, salvaged from the crates used to ship aircraft and other war materials, created a building industry for industrious Iranians. Even the children became involved in a sort of cottage industry - straightening nails!

It is rather easy to get caught up in the excitement of a "war story" and the big picture of battles and heroes and loose sight of the impact of war on individuals who were innocent bystanders to the history- making events around them.

In her novel, Savushun, Iranian author Simin Daneshvar captures that tragedy as she chronicles the impact of the war and foreign occupation on one Iranian family. The food shortages, caused by British and Soviet forces buying up grain intended for the Iranian marketplace, lead to riots in several western Iranian cities. The growth of the communist movement, supported by the Soviet occupying forces, lead to further instability and confrontation when the war ended and the Soviet forces did not immediately withdraw from northern Iran.

The Persian Corridor, or Bridge To Victory as it was called in Persian, provided a vital link for war supplies in one direction while at the same time serving as a humanitarian passage for Jewish and Polish refugees, many of whom arrived in Iran by crossing the Caspian in ships that had delivered supplies to ports in Baku, Azerbaijan or Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan.

There were no great tank battles or aerial dog fights on this front. Considering the number of double agents and the plight of refugees, an appropriate description might be "Casablanca East." This collection of memories of the men and women whose lives were thrown together by World War II or the Great Patriotic War as it was called in Russian, is not a well orchestrated chorus in praise of international cooperation.

It is, rather, an impromptu jam session in which, if we listen closely, we may hear the dissonant chords of our own mis-perceptions and prejudice set against a recurring theme of individual friendships and private acknowledgment of the public reality that, from time to time, we are all dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 by Robert D. Burgener. Permission to reprint given to The Iranian.

For information on a documentary video on this almost-forgotten chapter of World War II, click here.

Related links

* THE IRANIAN History section