What if Spain had entered WW2 on the Axis side?

[hammy]

This seems a good point to play "What if Spain had entered WW2 on the Axis side" ( Following Hitler and Franco meeting at Hendaye )

1 ) - The Spanish Army and Air force , stiffened by German units , with big railway guns , including possibly one of the 36 inch Gustav or Dora weapons move south and start to establish a siege at Gibraltar . Axis aircraft soon achieve local air superiority , dominating by day the Rock itself and the sea lanes between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean . The British commander has already evacuated all except essential civilian personnel . High speed ships can still get into Gibraltar , or transit the straits during the hours of darkness , but short summer nights are risky .
Few RAF aircraft remain , and cannot use the runway by day . The Army Infantry Garrison , the Garrison Artillery ( who man the fixed defensive artillery in the fortifications , and the big 9.2 inch Guns which dominate the Straits from the top of the rock ) , and the Royal Artillery Light and Heavy AA regiments are all well dug in with plenty of ammunition and food and morale is good . The water supply , held in Giant cisterns very deep inside the Rock , and replenished from the Rain water catchment - a huge steep corrugated iron roof on the East side of the Rock - is , however , finite .

2 ) - The Royal Navy has realised that with Spanish Airfields within a quarter hours flying range , Gibraltar's harbour and dockyard are untenable , and so an aggressive fighting withdrawal is made . Heavy Units speed inside the Med and strike at Cartagena , damaging the Dockyards , the Spanish warships present , and destroying fuel tanks and supplies warehouses . on the way out the force bombard Almeria and Malaga . The strike force replenishes for the last time in Gibraltar , then heads out into the Atlantic , bombarding Cadiz on the way out . Royal Naval submarines attack Barcelona and the harbours of the Baleriac Islands , several Spanish warships and several merchant ships are sunk as are two of the four British submarines engaged .
Meanwhile the British Channel fleet has struck at Ferrol/Corunna , and at Vigo , using a combination of battleship and fleet air arm bombardments , and destroyer flotillas led by light cruisers which enter both roadsteads , as at Narvik , and do much damage to shipping , warships and installations . The Royal Air force follow on with repeated heavy minelaying at night in both locations , causing further losses and rendering the ports frequently unusable .
The Spanish Navy has few vessels bigger than its remaining destroyers in combat condition following this lightning campaign .

Go on boys , what happens next ?

[José M. Rico]

This seems a good point to play "What if Spain had entered WW2 on the Axis side"

Ok, I will split this post into a new topic and move it to the World War II subforum.

[hammy]

Gracias Jose !

[RF]

This issue has been debated at considerable length previosly in threads raised by me.

The main issue ignored by hammy in his analysis, as raised by me previously, is that the British would immediately seize the weakly defended Canary Islands and use them as a substitute base for Gibraltar. Essentially the British would continue to bottle up the Atlantic entrance to the Med and blockade the Atlantic coast of Spain. Malta would be cut off from the west, but could still be supplied from Alexandria.

My previous threads hypothesised a co-ordinated Axis battle plan based on the proper strategic planning that in reality was never used. Namely prior reinforcement of the Canary Islands by both Luftwaffe and Heer units, including airfields in Spanish Sahara, use of the Italian Fleet and Luftwaffe to attack and invade Malta, and the transfer of the twins to the French base of Dakar. Essentially Germany gains control of the whole of North Africa, while the KM uses Canary Island and African bases for operations in the Atlantic, with the benefit of substantial Luftwaffe air support extending up to the coastline of Brazil. All this would involve cancellation of Operation Barbarossa, while Rommel is reinforced for a push to reach the Suez Canal. Turkey is then ''persuaded'' to join the Axis and is used as a conduit for German troops to enter Iraq and then Iran to control the Middle East oilfields, Turkey seizing Cyprus as a reward.
These ideas were proposed, in watered down form, by Raeder to Hitler in November 1940. But the Fuhrer was already fixated by Russia, and having met Franco, accepted his rebuff when in fact had he used more tact and diplomacy he could have enforced compliance.

Without a proper battle plan by the Axis powers working together, then Spain entering the war would simply give Germany another useless ally in addition to the Italians. I know Tiornu objected to that verdict by saying ''Italy was hardly a useless ally'' on the grounds that Italy suffered nearly half a million war dead. But these losses underscore my point. Politically Franco would be more vulnerable to huge military losses than Mussolini - he wasn't that politically secure anyway, as Spain with its exposed coastline is open to infiltration and had politically unreliable areas in the form of the Basque regions and Catalonia.

Franco stayed out of the war - the only wise decision he could make.


hammy may also be interested to know that I also started a thread on the proposal that South Africa changed sides and joined the Axis. However there was no response to this - so far.

[RF]

As a separate post, in answer to hammy's point 1) in his initial post, Franco point blank refused to have German forces on his soil. Any attack on Gibraltar would have been by Spanish forces alone, and they would have failed. The Brutish could then hold Gibraltar and would be likely to seize Ceuta and Mellila, the Spanish enclaves on the coast of Morocco facing Gibraltar, as well as of course the Canaries.

Franco didn't want German troops, because they would make him Hitler's puppet - as happened to Mussolini.

[hammy]

Game over already then . Huh ! !

[madmike]

The war in Europe last longer and cost more lives on both sides, BUT ENDS THE SAME WAY, But with Spain broken up after by the allies.

[RF]

I don't think Spain would be broken up - like West Germany, Spain was needed by the Americans to join NATO - as Franco did in reality.

[lwd]

I'm not sure the war last longer either. It may well be that the operation Torch's target is Spain rather than North Africa and the Western allies get a foot hold on the continent even earlier. Also Spain is likely to be a drain on the axis in a number of ways. I'm pretty sure she wasn't self sufficent food wise but axis held Europe in general is not in good shape that way so throwing additional demand on anlaready overstressed system isn't going to help. Then Spain will need help arming and equiping its' forces and it's long coast line will require considerable defences over and above that. Germany is probably better off with Spain neutral. Indeed I've seen it argued that they would have been better off if Italy had stayed neutral as well.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Spain's involved in WWII on the Axis side is clearly a new challenge for the allies. However I don't see how it would have changed the outcome.

Now:

A Normandy landing should have to been quite different if there were Pro Nazi forces at the South of France. There is a new flank to consider for Ike and maybe the western allies should have to clear it before advancing to the heart of Europe. Maybe, just maybe, that would have help for a winter offensive on Hitler's side in 1944-45. But that would not matter because the war was being won by the Soviets and never by the western allies. Zhukov would have been at the gates of Berlin early in 1945 anyway.

[RF]

A Normandy landing should have to been quite different if there were Pro Nazi forces at the South of France. There is a new flank to consider for Ike and maybe the western allies should have to clear it before advancing to the heart of Europe. Maybe, just maybe, that would have help for a winter offensive on Hitler's side in 1944-45. But that would not matter because the war was being won by the Soviets and never by the western allies. Zhukov would have been at the gates of Berlin early in 1945 anyway.

You have overlooked the fact that American, British and Free French forces landed in strength on the French Riviera coast in August 1944.

Actually if Spain had joined the war in 1940 the British would have seized the Canary Islands and Spanish Sahara, and outflank any Spanish capture of Gibraltar by moving eventually through French North Africa, particulary once the US is in the war. In all probability southern Spain would have been invaded, and any WW2 version of the Peninsula War against German intervention would help the Normandy landings - because German forces are drawn south of the Pyrenees where they can then be cut off from the Reich by the Allied invasion of France.

[Karl Heidenreich]

RF,

That's easier said than done. Remember that even fighting B and C classGerman units the western allies almost failed at Omaha, Caen and they really failed at Arnhem and were on the brink of tactical disaster at the Bulge. If we add to the existing forces those of Spain the western front would be a more dangerous enviroment for the allies.

Anyway I'm not implying that Germany would not be defeated by early mid 1945, the soviets would have achieved anyway.

[RF]

RF,

If we add to the existing forces those of Spain the western front would be a more dangerous enviroment for the allies.

On the contrary, having Spain in the war makes it a lot easier for the Allies, particulary with the US in the war. In particular you disregard the internal situation in Spain - Franco would not have lasted long after the first setbacks (such as losing the Canary Islands), and most of the Spanish in mainland Spain would have backed the Allies.

Nazi Germany would have been very much more difficult to defeat if Italy as well as Spain had remained neutral, due to a greater concentration of the German forces on fewer fronts. That includes KM forces as well as Heer and Luftwaffe. One of Hitler's biggest military blunders was having Italy and Japan as allies, as they made the scope of the war too difficult for Germany to handle, while Italy and Japan couldn't compensate with war winning capabilities.

[Karl Heidenreich]

RF,

Franco outlived Hitler by decades. He only went when he died. I don't think that defeating the Spaniards would have been that easy, I think they should have been toughter than the Italians by far. Look at the grim violence of the civil war. Nope, I think that it would have been possible that a more dangerous enviroment should have existed.

[lwd]

Until I rand across this:
http://www.nber.org/digest/oct06/w12228.html
I hadn't realized how dependent the Spanish were on imported (US) petroleum. Germany really needed another large sector demand for oil during WWII didn't they.