Why did Iran fall so quickly in WW2? (Short Animated Documentary)

conquering a country normally takes a while especially if that country is covered in mountains and deserts but during World War II when Britain and the Soviet Union decided to conduct a joint invasion of Iran the country fell in only 6 days which raises the question why why did Iran fall so quickly so in 1941 German leaders decided that they'd like to take a trip to the urales and began the invasion of the Soviet Union 4 seconds after this Britain and the USSR became allies and making sure that the USSR had the supplies necessary to fight Germany became of Paramount importance one way of doing this was via the Northern sea route here but that was fraught with risk the other way was going via V Divo stock but that was too far and so another option was needed and that option was Iran which also had lots of oil as a bonus however much to the annoyance of the British the sh of Iran saw his country as Sovereign and didn't want to upset the Germans whom he got along with as such the British and the Soviets decided to invade while supplying the USSR was the primary objective of the invasion stopping Iran from selling oil to Germany and potentially threatening British India were also important reasons for Iran things were pretty bleak to begin with the USSR had a massive land border to the north and British troops were waiting to the East and the west but even with this 6 days is a very short time to conquer such a mountainous large country so how did the Allies do it well reason number one was that the Allies launched a surprise attack unlike most conflicts of the time there was no formal declaration of war or ultimatum before that just that one day British and Soviet troops had crossed into the country and tan was being bombed which meant that the Iranians weren't able to mount a defense because the Allies are taking infrastructure within their first few hours the second reason was that the Iranian Army wasn't very capable whilst they were on the defensive and had a numerical Advantage the point of the army was to shoot the Sha's internal opponents not hold off a mixed arms Invasion on multiple fronts by two great powers and reason number three why Iran fell so quickly was that nobody really liked the Sha very much many Iranians had been at the shooty end of the Sha's regime and ethnic minorities there had been having a pretty bad time and so when the Sha were threatened very few really cared furthermore whilst Iranian generals knew that winning conventionally would be impossible they did want to resort to Guerilla tactics to make occupying Iran too costly the Sha however felt that this would cost too many lives and much much more importantly would ruin all of the nice New Roads that he built during his Reign and as such he called for a ceasefire after just 6 days the Sha had hoped that by giving up the Allies would be much more generous towards him in his country but fun fact no he was soon forced to abdicate in favor of his son and Britain in the USSR occupied these parts of the country the agreement was that they would stay until 6 months after Germany's defeat but instead they stayed for about a year in fact the USSR was hard pressed to leave at all they were soon pressured by the USA into retreating and after they'd left Iran was once again a free Nation I hope you enjoyed this episode with a special thanks to my patrons James Bizet Kelly Money Maker Sky Chappelle kitka Anthony Becket rod D Martin Udan Wang Marcus arner YN hockey Alex Schwin AF Firefly Captain sidey Dog Spencer Li foot Gustav Swan the MC Whopper shenin Marvin CAU Winston kwood spinning three plates Andy McGee kimun Yun calling Dr Howard Dr fine Howard Todd short copper tone Maggie patkowski words about books podcast Jim Stromberg Miss iset and Charles I

Channel: History Matters

Views: 533,922

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Id: p9SAuG8_FlA

Length: 3min 9sec (189 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024