This seemingly idyllic and glamourous pre-war age of air travel within the British Empire would be rudely overturned by the outbreak of the Second World War. Even before this, however, Germany's Nazi government made considerable efforts to convince the Arab peoples and their governments - where such government existed beyond direct French and British control - that Germany had no territorial ambitions in the Middle East and North Africa.
After hostilities began the Nazis continued to proclaim that they and Italy would ensure Arab independence once they won the war, an unconvincing claim given Italy's recent behavior in Libya and in the Arab world's southern neighbor Ethiopia, then known as Abyssinia. Amongst the primary targets of Nazi and to a lesser extent Fascist propaganda was King Faruq of Egypt and those members of Egypt's armed forces who still believed that their King could bring true independence and dignity to Egypt. How far such propaganda succeeded remains a matter of intense debate.
From the outbreak of the Second World War until the close of 1940 the only Arab air forces which existed in anything more than name, those of Egypt and Iraq, contributed towards the Allied war effort. Once Italy entered the war in June 1940 the conflict entered Egyptian territory and, although the Egyptian government remained nominally neutral, the Royal Egyptian Air Force and Egyptian Army became directly involved, though largely "behind the lines".
