Mohamed Naguib was first introduced to the Free Officers Movement by
Abdel Hakim Amer during his tenure as the director of the Royal Military Academy in Cairo. The Free Officers were a group of nationalist army officer veterans of the unsuccessful nationalist uprisings of 1935–36 and 1945–46 as well as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, fiercely opposed to the continuing presence of British military personnel in Egypt and
the Sudan since 1882 and the attendant political role that the United Kingdom had in Egyptian affairs. Additionally, they viewed the
Egyptian and Sudanese monarchy as weak, corrupt, and incapable of protecting Egyptian and Sudanese national interests, particularly against the United Kingdom, and the
State of Israel. In particular, they held King Farouk responsible for the poor conduct of the war in
Palestine, in which 78% of the former
Mandate for Palestine was lost to the newly proclaimed State of Israel, and some three-quarters of
Palestine's Muslim and Christian population variously
fled into exile. The movement had been originally led by
Gamal Abdel Nasser, and was composed exclusively of servicemen who were all under 35 years of age and from low-income backgrounds. Nasser, who, like Naguib, was a veteran of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, felt that the movement needed an older officer from a distinguished military background in order to be taken seriously. The highly respected and nationally famous Naguib was the obvious choice, and he was invited to assume leadership of the movement. While this proved successful in strengthening the Free Officers, it would later cause great friction within the movement, and an eventual power struggle between the elder Naguib and the younger Nasser. Historians have noted that whilst Naguib understood his position and duty as being the movement's
bona fide leader, the younger Free Officers saw him as a figurehead who would yield to the collective decision-making of the movement, giving Naguib a more limited, symbolic role. ==Revolution of 1952==