During the Second World War traffic on PR increased dramatically from 1940 to 1945. The PR main line was a supply route for the North African Campaign that lasted from the Italian attack on Egypt in 1940 until the German surrender in Tunisia in May 1943. In April – May 1941 the Italian air force and German "Luftwaffe" used Vichy French air bases in the mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon as staging posts to support Rashid Ali's "coup d'état" against Iraq's pro-British government. British and Empire forces landed in southern Iraq and overthrew the coup in the brief Anglo-Iraqi War of May 1941. Then in June and July 1941 PR served as a supply route for the British Empire invasion of Vichy Syria and Lebanon.