Deleted member 1487
For starters yes.
If invaded yes, but that wouldn't be on the table unless Portugal gave them a reason to.
There isn't much need to go after Portugal if Spain is in the war, they could be easily intimidated into compliance.
British and French options if France fights on from Algeria in 1940?
- Thread starter Lee-Sensei
- Start date
thaddeus
Donor
my point was Spain wanted all of Morocco, yes, but they wanted other things as well and mentioned Portugal at one point, the French Pyrenees have been aim for some Spanish also. those were territories that do not require a large naval operation which is an issue being raised as one of the barriers to Spain entering the war.
Deleted member 1487
Portugal was not mentioned by Franco to Hitler, though apparently he did fantasize about it privately.
His list IOTL:
Meeting at Hendaye - Wikipedia
No mention of the Pyrenees or Portugal.
Cameroon could be promised, but realistically, as you say, without a serious naval campaign, which would be impossible, it won't be had unless the French choose to give it up.
Naval ops weren't a reason for Franco not to enter the war, it pretty much came down to the territorial demands being incompatible with the treaty with Vichy (not a problem ITTL). I'm guessing in terms of the part of Algeria claimed by Franco would include Oran.
Three short divisions (VII Infantry with 10 battalions, XIV Infantry with 7 and XVIII infantry with 6) over a front of roughly 80km. With its eastern flank for 90km covered by 2 forts in Thrace and a single brigade of 3 battalions on Nestos river. And the western flank effectively wide open with the equivalent of 2 battalions of the Krousia detachment and 3 battalions in the 19th motorized infantry supposed to cover it. The Greek general staff expected it needed 8 to 9 divisions to effectively defend the Metaxas line. Not exactly a good example of mountain line properly defended. Now had the Greeks and British actually pulled back to the Olympus line instead of spreading their forces in two separate defensive lines that could be flanked and leaving 15 divisions in Albania it might be a more interesting question.
History Learner
Banned
If your on take on the scenario is the Spanish joining the Nazis, then yes, this argument is pointless; your original post, however, was suggestive of an unprovoked attack on the Spanish by the Germans.
The German biggest have just lost one of their biggest asset in OTL WW2, active collaboration from the French authorities. France, by the way, represented as much as 10% of Nazi Germany economy OTL during the war. A vast majority of the French population genuinely though that Vichy and Pétain protected them in the first few years, limiting the possibility for the Résistance to expand. It's only when the bubble burst that a significant portion of the population
So they did it one year latter, after a year of reorganization and integrating the French truck pool, is you argument. They just got out of a major campaign which severely depleted all of their reserves in munitions and responsibility of their logistical pool.
You also don't take into account the Armée des Alpes blocking the Rhône Valley for a time as they are not locked in battle with the Italians. This will cause disruption and destruction of the infrastructure in what is the logistical choke point of France.
Your citations about Luftwaffe capacities in 1943 are completely outside the scope. The scenario is in 1940.Sure. They could fly supplies and men over, as after all they did that in the SCW. Spanish shipping existed, they built some they used IOTL in the Mediterranean so could here too, and there is of course what they capture in France.
Air transport is unsuited to supporting an offensive? Then all those air dropped supplies in Russia must have been imaginary. Or everything flow in to Tunisia in 1942-43.
Airbridge (logistics) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
That was at the same time as the Tunisian campaign that used Ju52 transports, so if Germany goes all in they could do quite a bit more than this per day.
Tunisian campaign - Wikipedia
Where are your "established airfields with good supply and maintenance facilities" in Southern Spain or in Spanish Morocco ? Nowhere.
Also, remind me how far are the French airbases and their fighters from Tangier ? A few dozen kilometers away, and they are in far better shape than the Spanish ones.
Where is the fighter cover for the operation ? In Northern France, with it's high octane fuel, spare parts and munitions.
You keep saying that the Allies are constrained by the logistics and infrastructure, but you are very quick to forget it for Germany.
That's superb bad faith arguments.Oh the French bombers that weren't even able to knock out Gibraltar?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milit...uring_World_War_II#Vichy_French_attacks:_1940
If aircraft and naval units were enough, why did German naval guns on the English Channel survive for years? After all they were shelling Dover:
Why would it take the Luftwaffe 2-3 months from the point Spain declares war to intervene? They could fly in with their transports and be operational within a week.
Dover Strait coastal guns - Wikipedia
So no specifics, only hearsay.
You don't present your "theory" as such, you present it as if it was 100% sure. It's not. Specially because you don't take Nazi Germany decision making in consideration. For example, at that time, Goering had Hitler's hear and pushed hard for the BoB. Or the fact that attacking the Soviet Union was the core of the Nazi regime, and your solution means a long campaign in the Med.
He does that a lot.
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Deleted member 1487
Right, that post was simply saying that if absolutely necessary Spain could be invaded and held if done in 1940-41 pre-Barbarossa, not that it was likely or even necessary.
I didn't say it was perfectly comparable. There was nothing equivalent to the Metaxas Line on the Pyrenees, so the Greeks had an enhanced capability relative to their numbers vs. what the Spanish would have been able to field.
Just because the French government isn't there to collaborate won't mean the French wouldn't have contributed to the Nazi economy or collaborated, they just wouldn't do so as much and it would require more German direct intervention into France to get their OTL exploitation levels. Plus if anything before 1944 France was more than 10% of the total resources available to Germany. That is all the more reason to go hard against the French government in exile to shut down the flames of resistance.
As to why the resistance grew there were plenty of reasons, many of which had to do with US entry and the defeat of German forces on all fronts and the imminent invasion of France by the Allies.
French Resistance - Wikipedia
The above cites this book review:
The truth behind the French Resistance myth
Nicholas Shakespeare welcomes a sweeping account of the French Resistance that gives credit to those previously overlooked by de Gaulle
www.telegraph.co.uk
Likely even without Vichy the French wouldn't start significantly resisting until the French government in exile becomes a credible threat, the USSR is invaded (not necessarily a given ITTL because of the butterflies unleashed by the POD), Germany is facing severe defeats, and it gets exceptionally brutal in it's treatment of the French. No doubt though that the Allies would work hard to stimulate resistance at home.
What? No. I have no idea what you are even trying to jump to based on what I wrote.
And mere two weeks after the armistice launched a massive aerial campaign against Britain:
Kanalkampf - Wikipedia
You mean the fortress garrison forces who's forts aren't in the Rhone? They were largely brushed aside IOTL:
Bataille de la vallée du Rhône (1940) — Wikipédia
Rhône
www.google.com
You can see on the map that roads and rail run through Alsace-Lorraine south of Paris to Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Perpignan.
The Luftwaffe was weaker in 1943 than in 1940! The loss at Stalingrad and Tunisia destroyed something like 40% or more of the Luftwaffe that existed in November 1942. The losses in France in 1940 amounted to about 25% losses. And remember in 1941 the Luftwaffe forces that invaded the USSR were smaller than those that were used to invade France in 1940.
Are you really that ignorant?
Seville Airport - Wikipedia
Aeropuerto de Jerez - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Spanish Morocco:
Sania Ramel Airport - Wikipedia
Spanish protectorate in Morocco - Wikipedia
Archnet > Site > Aeroport Ibn Battouta de Tanger
Archnet is an accessible resource for architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation related to the Muslim world.
What French air units were stationed in Morocco in 1940?
Fighter cover from the Germans can be flown in, while in the meantime the Spanish have their own air force:
The Allies just lost in France quite badly and their situation post-FoF is well known. Germany's situation post-FoF is well known too especially considering they were able to occupy the entire country and launch the world's largest air campaign to that point weeks after the armistice. Plus I did not claim that they'd be able to move into Spain for some time, until at least August with Spanish help. Of the two sides in 1940 Germany was the only one in a position to move rapidly, especially given that they just captured the entire French strategic reserve of things like aviation fuel among others.
How so? If anything it seems like you're projecting after your arguments above.
About which part? Brute Force by John Ellis gets into the seriously messed up situation in France at the end of the 1940 campaign, which is substantiated by just about any source that covers the latter part of Case Red. French sources are particularly interesting in that regard:
Bataille de France — Wikipédia
French Air Force 1940: the outcome.
aerostories, des avions et des hommes.<br>aerostories, planes and people.
aerostories.free.fr
Required reading about the utterly jacked up state of the French air force before the fall of the country:
The French air force in 1940
I have read numerous works covering the German invasion of the Low Countries and France in 1940, but I am very much in the dark concerning the performance of the French air defences. In some places you read that people were shocked to see French fighters stuck on the ground while the Luftwaffe...
historum.com
I'm arguing a position. The situation was quite a bit different from OTL, so trying to use post-armistice OTL examples isn't really relevant in an ATL. Plus you're clearly ignorant of the lengthy decision process that went into the decision to invade the USSR IOTL (including Goering's very heavy opposition to it) and how that would be altered in an ATL where the conditions were quite a bit different than they were IOTL. On top of that you're also ignoring the very well documented fear Hitler had of continued French resistance and the influence of the fleet, which seriously informed his strategy going forward.
People living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
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marathag
Banned
Three, WWII the 1928 Canfranc Terminal, east of Pamplona was open, with tunnels thru the mountains to Pau, France.
Wiking's arguments in the next to last posting above remind me of the irrational arguments for a successful Sealion. To make it credible, Wiking would need to establish a much earlier point of departure that makes Nazi Germany far more powerful in 1940 than it actually was in OTL. But that would render implausible any decisions by Italy and Spain to remain neutral and might even lay the basis for a successful Sealion, thus obviating the need for a full-scale Mediterranean war since the Nazis, having occupied Britain, can go on to seize the British colonies in the Med and easily crush French North Africa. When a scenario framework creates contradictions on that scale--and veers so far from discussions that illuminate our REAL military history--it's time to either pack it in or move the discussion to the ASB category.
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Deleted member 1487
Baseless assertions? It's a matter of you scrambling up two timelines so that what happens in one timeline post-POD is illogically used as evidence to explain what happens in the other timeline post-POD. For instance, you stated above:
No counter argument, just more baseless assertions.
Without getting into the question of whether your assertions about the OTL Luftwaffe are accurate, they are irrelevant to questions of the relative air power of Germany, France and Britain in 1942-43 in the radically different timeline you've framed. See the Wikipedia article about philosopher-logician David Kellogg Lewis's modal realism.
To be fair, much of your argument is based on events and circumstances prior to the Point of Departure and inferences therefrom. Here, the illogic is of a different order; for instance, your regarding as comparable the unopposed (at both ends) air transport of Spanish troops from Spanish Morocco to Nationalist controlled territory in peninsular Spain in 1936 to possible FFO reaction by the French to Nazi troops being sent by air in 1941 to establish a beachhead in this Spanish sliver bordering on French Morocco.
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Deleted member 1487
That was used to illustrate what was possible with Ju52 transport when it was claimed it was impossible to do a sustained airlift supply across a narrow strait. What is irrelevant is the absurd claim it is irrelevant because it happened at a later date IOTL despite that fact that there were at least as many Ju52s available in 1940 post-fall of France than were available at Taman in 1943 if not hundreds more. The issue is what was possible. If you're going to contest that because that's the only 'argument' you have left, then look at what was achieved IOTL airlifting units out of Spanish Morocco to Spain during the Spanish Civil War moving men and equipment.
This reply (which does not include the quote from you drawing inferences from OTL in 1943 ) is ridiculous. The 1936 air transport was unopposed at either end and there was little possibility that the French would intervene in Spanish Morocco at any time during the Spanish Civil War.
History Learner
Banned
Invading Spain would be a disastrous affair for Germany, resulting in high casualties and little gain; Gibraltar means nothing, in the grand scheme of things, with Malta and Suez in British hands and Dakar in French hands. But, as I said, if we're presuming an Axis Spain such is different.
The willingness of Franco to join the war in return for colonies afterwards is being misrepresented.
Franco doesn't need an unreliable promise of colonies in the future, he needs food, oil and money now. Not to mention that Franco knows full well that he is in no position to enforce any bargain struck, not then and certainly not at the end of the war.
Wiking - it would be helpful if you could lay out what Franco's immediate demands where, and how they related to Germany's reserves and production capacity.
A
Franco doesn't need an unreliable promise of colonies in the future, he needs food, oil and money now. Not to mention that Franco knows full well that he is in no position to enforce any bargain struck, not then and certainly not at the end of the war.
Wiking - it would be helpful if you could lay out what Franco's immediate demands where, and how they related to Germany's reserves and production capacity.
A
One thing I'm wondering about is just how likely is a successful French evacuation of 60-100 divisions to North Africa? How is such an evacuation accomplished in the midst of German units going from victory to victory in their French campaign. Of course some could be evacuated, but I wonder how significant amounts would get away, assuming the German armies are actually aggressive enough and don't hold back like at Dunkirk. Were there that many intact, logistically healthy French units just hanging out in Southern France just waiting for the Germans to arrive? How is it possible for an orderly withdrawal to evacuation points when so far things have gone so bad for the French armies? Also, as the evacuation perimeters get established, will there be enough room for French and British air forces to have workable air fields to fight off the Luftwaffe?
Deleted member 1487
Utterly impossible given that there were only 64 left on June 5th, the start of the invasion of France proper. At best given how most were overrun on the retreat to the coast and even at Dunkirk only about 100k French were evacuated (returned to France in June in time to be overrun), 10 might be about as good as could be expected, but it will be without heavy equipment and not intact. The vast majority of evacuees will be civilians, LOC troops, naval and some air personnel. Front line troops were among the least likely to reach the coasts IOTL. The Alpine forces (about 185k total including fortress troops) were the most likely to get out, but if they retreat too soon Italy might join in to take advantage.
Until other people start putting up actual information and sources I doubt him him less than the opposition.