Portugal joins world war 2 could it gain Somalia.
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Not sure about that. While the end of WW1 saw colonial exchanges in the form of League of Nations Mandates, the principle of self determination was pretty accepted by the end of WW2. The British trusteeship of Italian Somalia was to be for 10 years as a transition to independence. I would assume a Portuguese one to be similar.
Which they wouldn't be interested in because they had no intention of granting independence to their other colonies.
Exactly. Though do you think there is any scope for them to hold onto Somalia? Cold War dynamics allowing them to position themselves as a bastion against Communism? I recall that the USA had little patience for the Europeans rebuilding their empires after WW2 but after the death of Roosevelt and the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, the eased back on their demands for the British to hand over HK and France to give up Indochina.
Could the Portuguese have manufactured some sort of Communist spectre in Somalia which would justify them in holding it indefinitely?
I think there is, but less than the others. Angola, Guinea and Mozambique pushed them to their very limits. Somalia would add another territory with the disadvantage that they had no time to forge alliances with locals or otherwise build up any sort of presence in the area that would make holding onto it easier. Portugal would resort to unpopular and unsavory tactics, some of which would probably be quite unsustainable in modern times.
They already had Somalia before WWI and after WIII they used it to attack Ethiopia and British Somaliland, then lost the war.
[edit. Yes, they did give it back to Italy for trusteeship]
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I suppose you mean WWII.
Italy lost the war, yes. Former Italian Somalia was occupied by British (Imperial) forces during the war and for a while thereafter. The peace treaty then restored it to Italian administration as a ten-year UN trusteeship.
Oh my gosh, you're right. They really did put it under Italian trusteeship. I shouldn't have doubted an AHer so readily.
Sincere apologies, you are absolutely right. It was initially occupied by British forces and handed over back to Italy for a 10-year trusteeship.
Which makes it even more unlikely that it would be given to Portugal.
Portugal wouldn't want it as a trusteeship, probably. They'll ask for a full colony, and had no intention of letting the ones they had go. And in post-WWII, the US would not be happy with that, like, at all.
Of course, the Italian trusteeship itself was not set in stone and required some bickering. But nobody else wanted the burden to administer the place (except Ethiopia, which the locals did NOT welcome). It was supposed to be an obvious money sink (which actually was to Italy, except they put very little money into it). Britain was the only obvious alternative and they were into cost-saving measures, not Imperial expansion to prepare places for independence.
The winning powers IOTL tried to get their hands off the captured Italian colonies as soon as they could, with the partial exception of the French with Fezzan (which they considered keeping). This led to some poor (with hindsight) decisions, such as letting Ethiopia take Eritrea, and establish a weak monarchy in Libya (though one which had at least a veneer of legitimacy). Now, if Portugal is a willing partner, they might be happy with giving them something... but again, this is going to be a poison pill. There is little of much value in Somalia, the Portuguese would be supposed to give the country independence in a few years, and they have little capital to invest in the area... what is Lisbon even supposed to do with it? Italy was the logical trustee because they had already local administrative experience, and political desire to keep a presence.
Why would Portugal even want Somalia?... we had our hands full with the other colonies allready...
No. There was never any possibility of Portugal joining. We had no conditions whatsover to do so, and doing it would almost certainly result in a german-forced spanish invasion, carried out long before the allies could arrive to help...
In regards to what someone said about Ethiopia wanting to administer Somalia, that’s also not happening either when Ethiopia has her own issues to deal with.
But if Portugal joins the Allies and then Spain invades them, the Allies will almost certainly declare war on Spain. And Franco had a number of compelling reasons for not wanting that to happen, which is why he didn’t join the Axis IOTL despite being a fascist.
Portugal would declare war only if Salazar was a complete and utter dumbass, a nutter even worse than Trump. And that, he wasn't...
They (more precisely, the imperial Ethiopian Court) may have liked to annex Somalia; I think not administer it as temporary trusteeship anyway (so yes, my wording was a bit vague). It very true that Ethiopia had her issues (pretty serious ones) and in the remote event this were implemented, it would be very unlikely to end well for all parties involved (well, the Italian administration did not really end well either, with hindsight).
I have yet to see any desire in the IEC to directly annex Italian Somaliland but I'd agree that this ends well for no one.
It was mentioned in passing in a book I read years ago on Italian colonial history and its aftermath (in the context of the diplomacy leading to the Italian trusteeship), but I suppose it was never particularly serious.