The Second World War is seen as the decisive turning point in the ‘decline, revival and fall’ of the British Empire. Nowhere was this more true than in the Middle East. With the crushing of revolt in Iraq, the making of cabinets in Egypt, the imposition of extensive economic control through the auspices of the Middle East Supply Centre, and the flooding of the region with British troops and personnel, British power in the Middle East had never been so visible nor so extensive and stood in stark contrast to the interwar period when the exertion of British power had been relatively indirect and restrained. This expansion of British influence intensified the already strong resentment in the region towards the British presence and gave impetus to a more radical strain of Arab nationalism whose footsoldiers were the lower and emerging middle classes most affected by the inflation and general economic dislocation of the war and postwar world. It was these – the economic sources of political discontent in the Middle East – which the British found particularly worrying and suggested to many the need for a new approach to the maintenance of British influence in the region. As Lord Altrincham, Britain's Minister of State in the Middle East during the latter part of the war, concluded: ‘In the preoccupation of fighting for our life … we have allowed the contrast between wealth and poverty to reach a dangerous state … Another Arabi will arise if this long deterioration is not effectively reversed.’