White the House of Saud was conquering most of the peninsula for the princes around 1920, British warplanes under Winston Churchill were bombing all of these areas, leveling whole cities and massacring countless civilians. Much of the Hijaz was leveled as this region had always hated and the Najdis now in power as the House. All of the gorgeous architecture was leveled by Saud’s Wahhabi warriors from the Najd because the Wahhabis felt that anything but the most drab architecture was sacrilegious. Hijazis were massacred in huge numbers and piles of bodies lay on the ground.
The Najdis had to impose their will be force as Wahhabism had only been popular in the Najd and was widely disliked everywhere else, especially in the Hejaz where a much more peaceful, tolerant and artistic form of Islam (almost Sufi-like) had long held sway. The Wahhabis conquered that whole peninsula at the point of a sword. Everyone who resisted or imposed them was executed. The death toll was gruesome. Of course the British helped the whole way, offering needed help to kill more civilians and level more sacreligiously beautiful buildings.
At the same time, Iraqis were in armed rebellion against British colonial rule in Iraq. The charming Churchill responded by bombing them with chemical weapons. Yes, not only Saddam gassed Iraqis. The first man to gas the Arabs was Winston Churchill.
Churchill was a real bastard. He was a mean old coot and a reactionary to boot. He was also depressed most of his fat miserable life. He called it his “black dog.” It descended on him most mornings and lasted most of the day. That sounds like melancholic depression, as that is worse in the mornings. He was also a profoundly racist man. Read some of his statements about Jews and Arabs. Pitiful.
Some hero.