How does Spain being an Axis power impact the war?

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

In the long term, a disaster for Spain. Spain's economy will be crunched by shortages of food and oil. And there is a possibility IMO that the US/UK start the Western Front in Spain, in which case Spain gets fought over like Italy, with lots of things getting broken.

But in the short term, a lot of trouble for the Allies. With Spain in the war, Gibraltar falls or is completely neutralized. That means Italian battleships can sortie into the Atlantic. U-boats and surface raiders can operate from Spain, beyond RAF patrol reach. Allied shipping to Africa, Asia, and Australia would have to make a detour far to the west.

If the Axis can prevent Britain from seizing control of the Canary Islands and Spanish Sahara at the start of Spain's involvement, they can turn those territories into a powerful air/naval base area that IMO Britain by itself can't take. (Remember, from Dunkirk until Lend-Lease got started, Britain was making war on a shoestring.) Any British invading force would be operating very far from any base area, covered only by carrier aircraft. (Sea Gladiators against Me-109s?)

The British blockade of Europe would be ruptured. While Germany can't afford to pay for a lot of imports, it will gain at least some access to a lot of things that OTL it had none of.

 

[kham_coc]

Tbh, Spain only helps the axis if we pretend the the USSR doesn't exist.
Then Germany can probably deploy sufficient air assets to the Peninsula, Morocco and the Canaries, as well as turning the Western Med into an axis lake, quite possibly then neutralise the Suez, all of which would be horrific for the UK and probably sufficient to render the UK unable to continue the war.
But Germany didn't have the slack to do that and Barbarossa, so even if Spain was in a position to join (5 minute civil war) still not helpful -

 

[raharris1973]

Doesn't Spain being in the war cause a lot of handicaps for the Western Allies too? Including, spread further west of Axis air coverage, threats to Gibraltar, more Axis soldiers to fight, more resistance fighters calling on limited Allied resources.

When parts of Spain start to get liberated, all of Spain's food and fuel liabilities start to become the Allies food and fuel liabilities.

Of course there's drawbacks for the Axis, but the Axis will ruthlessly prioritize food and fuel priorities, starving political prisoners, expendable civilians and rebellious regions first, feeding the Spanish leaders, Army, Guardia Civil and families. The Axis will have an overly long coast to defend, but will have successive defensive lines along mountain ridges, with not that great infrastructure falling into Allied hands.

It seems to me this screws over the Spaniards, Germans, and Western Allies alike, while leaving the Soviets perhaps as the main beneficiary, in terms of being able to make gains at a similar rate to OTL in their sectors.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Coal, as well, IIRC.

Yes coal, grain as previously mentioned, then petroleum & no more Standard Oil tankers a used of delivering extra oil for Germany or accused of refuelling Axis submarines. Then there's all the other items Spain needed & which Germany had none to spare.

Re the coal. Does anyone have information on how much coal Spain needed to import?

According to International Historical Statistics Europe 1750-1993, Fourth Edition, by B.R. Mitchell...

• Spain produced 7.5 million metric tons of coal (hard and brown) in 1929 and remained at around that level until 1932.
• About 6.3 million metric tons were produced annually in 1933 and 1934.
• However, it returned to near 1929 levels in 1935 when 7.2 million metric tons of coal were produced.
• The outbreak of the Civil War led to a decline to 2.3 million metric tons in 1937, but this was temporary, because coal production increased to 6.8 million metric tons in 1939.
• Production in 1940 (Spain's first full year of peace) was 9.5 million metric tons, which was 2.0 million metric tons more than 1929 and 2.3 million metric tons more than 1935.
• Production continued to rise and in 1944 was 11.6 million metric tons.

By contrast (and from the same source) Italy produced 1.0 million metric tons of coal (hard and brown) in 1929, which increased to 3.1 million metric tons in 1939 and in the years 1940-42 was in the region of 4.5 to 5.0 million metric tons.

Also brown coal was never more than 11% of Spain's total production. Between 1929 and 1939 it never exceeded 400,000 metric tons. It grew to 1.2 million metric tons in 1943 and 1944, but the total coal production in those years was 10.9 and 11.6 metric tons respectively. Meanwhile, most of Italy's production was of brown coal. It was 80% of total coal production in 1929, declined to 50% in 1934, but then increased to 65% in 1939 and was around 75% in the years 1940-42. Therefore, the coal Spain was producing was of better quality than Italy's too.

Spain had a smaller population than Italy and wasn't as industrialised. Therefore, I suspect that the difference between total requirements and domestic production was not as large as Italy's. Unfortunately, I can't prove it because I don't have the statistics at hand. I'll have to spend some time in "spreadsheet hell" first.

Edit 25.07.22

This is the coal production of Italy, Portugal and Spain for the years 1929 to 1945 according to International Historical Statistics Europe 1750-1993, Fourth Edition, by B.R. Mitchell...

For the record (and according to the same source) Spain's average annual coal production in the years 1946-93 was:

• 1946-55 - 11.4 million metric tons (11.4 million tonnes Hard Coal and 1.5 million tonnes Brown Coal).
• 1956-65 - 15.7 million metric tons (13.3 million tonnes Hard Coal and 2.4 million tonnes Brown Coal).
• 1966-75 - 14.2 million metric tons (11.3 million tonnes Hard Coal and 2.9 million tonnes Brown Coal).
• 1976-81 - 23.2 million metric tons (12.3 million tonnes Hard Coal and 10.9 million tonnes Brown Coal). During this period.
  • Total Coal production rose 14.7 million tonnes to 35.8 million tonnes.
    • Hard Coal production rose from 10.5 million tonnes to 14.7 million tonnes.
    • Brown Coal production rose from 4.2 million tonnes to 20.9 million tonnes.
• 1982-85 - 39.8 million metric tons (15.7 million tonnes Hard Coal and 24.1 million tonnes Brown Coal).
• 1986-93 - 34.4 million metric tons (14.5 million tonnes Hard Coal and 19.9 million tonnes Brown Coal).

 

[thaddeus]

in a prior thread it was somewhat of a consensus that you need a successful Nationalist coup or a very much abbreviated Spanish Civil War (and IMO a different Spanish leader, for argument's sake let's assume Gen. Sanjurjo survives)

under such a scenario, a decent sized Spanish air force might be assembled and the Spanish army might eclipse the need for all the historical Romanian conscripts

but historical reality has already been discussed, Franco's Spain would be another military burden, the only point I can add is that Germany did not have much of a LRMP aircraft force to take advantage of the Spanish airfields (it's not like they had 200 - 300 Condors to take advantage of the better geographic position if it fell in their lap)

In the long term, a disaster for Spain. Spain's economy will be crunched by shortages of food and oil. And there is a possibility IMO that the US/UK start the Western Front in Spain, in which case Spain gets fought over like Italy, with lots of things getting broken.

But in the short, a lot of trouble for the Allies. With Spain in the war, Gibraltar falls or is completely neutralized. That means Italian battleships can sortie into the Atlantic. U-boats and surface raiders can operate from Spain, beyond RAF patrol reach. Allied shipping to Africa, Asia, and Australia would have to make a detour far to the west.

If the Axis can prevent Britain from seizing control of the Canary Islands and Spanish Sahara at the start of Spain's involvement, they can turn those territories into a powerful air/naval base area that IMO Britain by itself can't take. (Remember, from Dunkirk until Lend-Lease got started, Britain was making war on a shoestring.) Any British invading force would be operating very far from any base area, covered only by carrier aircraft. (Sea Gladiators against Me-109s?)

my prior posting was a negative view of historical (OTL) Spain entering the war, there is a somewhat different scenario (or solution), if Germany could "pay the price" to have them join the Axis.

it's not impossible that Germany have a more organized synthetic fuels program, and my speculation that they could have occupied Romania during their period of collaboration with the USSR (to gain all the oil production, not the half they had trouble even bartering for)

that's a long preamble to say IF they had not been so dependent on the USSR for oil, (just IMO) it wouldn't have been so onerous to have imported foodstuffs from them, as it was they needed both.

how Spain in the Axis would affect things is unclear, beyond the advantages of eliminating Gibraltar and basing for German u-boats and aircraft. Malta was in a precarious spot anyway, so that might be a domino to fall?

 

[brunohusker]

Other than some manpower not much. Maybe they can help in Africa but honestly there isn’t much they can do. Maybe they serve as another front and it bogs down the Allies a bit. If Spain fights well they might be able to allow for a longer European war, with the Russians taking all of Germany or at least northern Germany. You might even see threats of nukes in Germany but I doubt it.

Overall it’s a lose lose for Spain.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

How Spain in the Axis would affect things is unclear, beyond the advantages of eliminating Gibraltar and basing for German U-boats and aircraft. Malta was in a precarious spot anyway, so that might be a domino to fall?

If Spain did join the Axis in the summer of 1940 is it possible that several dominoes of a different sort will fall? That is, it encourages more countries that had an axe-to-grind against the British to join the Axis?

To my memory we've had one thread about Argentina joining the Axis. Unlike Spain it hadn't been ravaged by a recent three-year civil war, was self-sufficient in food, had its own oil supply (e.g. 2,897,405 long tons of crude petroleum was produced in 1940) and a small (but modern) navy that hadn't been worn out by a recently concluded three-year civil war.

Perhaps it could re-ignite the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in Palestine, bring forward the Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941 and/or make the Egyptians rise up against the British. In that event the British, Empire & Commonwealth (BEC) forces in the Middle East and Mediterranean would be too busy to mount Operation Compass, invade Italian East Africa, send RAF squadrons to mainland Greece, send reinforcements to Malta and set up the mobile naval base in Crete.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

OTOH

If Spain did enter the war on the Axis side it would be for territory, that is (apart from Gibraltar) French territory. I've read that the Spanish Government wanted Roussillon, the French portion of Morocco, part of Algeria and part of French West Africa.

Meanwhile, the Italian territorial "wish list" included (in alphabetical order) Algeria (the eastern part of), Corsica, British Somaliland, French Somaliland, Malta, Nice, Savoy and Tunisia... six out of eight of which belonged to France.

If Spain had joined the war in the summer of 1940 the knowledge that they would be handed over to Italy and Spain in the event of an Axis victory over Great Britain (which seemed likely at the time) might lead to more French colonies defecting from Vichy to Free France than ITTL and those that defected to De Gaulle IOTL might do so sooner ITTL than they did IOTL. Similarly, more French warships might defect to Free France and more individual French people might defect from Vichy too. Depending upon when Spain joined the war events like the invasion of Syria, attacks on Dakar, Mers El Kébir and Operation Catapult might be butterflied away and the French naval squadron at Alexandria might join the Free French sooner. The latter didn't join the Free French until 30th May 1943 and IIRC was the last part of Vichy France to join Free France. (It was either that or the French West Indies.)

The most extreme version of the previous paragraph is that Spain enters the war on the same date as Italy and that pushes the French Government into fighting on from North Africa instead of surrendering.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

My prior posting was a negative view of historical (OTL) Spain entering the war, there is a somewhat different scenario (or solution), if Germany could "pay the price" to have them join the Axis.

Re the above and what I wrote in Post 28.

I've also read that the British attack on Mers El Kébir led to the Germans thinking that war might break out between Vichy and the British. (If the relevant British official histories are to be believed that wasn't a far fetched idea because according to either Grand Strategy Volume 2 or the Mediterranean and Middle East Volume 1 (or both) war with Vichy was thought to be "touch-and-go" for about a week afterwards.) As a result the Germans amended the terms of the Armistice by increasing the size of the armed forces that Vichy was allowed to maintain in its colonies and increasing its fuel quota to help Vichy fight said war against the British.

IIRC/AIUI that created a dilemma for Hitler and Mussolini because having Vichy on their side would help them a lot more than having Spain on their side and pushing Vichy into the Free French camp would more than cancel out the advantages of having Spain on their side.

If I have remembered it correctly and understood it correctly that made them reluctant pay Franco's price in the summer of 1940. IMHO that's the only time when he would have joined the Axis on the grounds that the war looked like being a short one and would end before his people starved and/or revolted against him. However, in the autumn of 1940 it was clear that the war would be a longer one and it was less clear that the Axis would eventually win it which made Franco think that the definite disadvantages of Spain joining the Axis outweighed the possible benefits by a considerable margin.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

This is one of the first posts that I uploaded to this forum.

Link to Post 45 of the thread WI: Spain and Portugal join WWII?

Please be aware that I wrote it half as a joke and half in seriousness.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

The Spanish civil war was still rumbling on if Spain declares for the Axis I can imagine lots of SOE agents parachuting in with supplies of weapons and food for the republican hold outs.

Does anyone know how effective these groups were IOTL?

Although there are more than a few articles on the internet about them (which I haven't read) one of my teachers of Spanish (he was from Nottingham IIRC, but he did know a lot about Spain's culture and history) told me that the stories about groups of republicans conducting guerrilla warfare against the nationalists into the 1950s were a myth. This was because the Spanish armed forces maintained a tight grip on the countryside. That was part of conversation between me, him and another member of my evening class who anecdotally confirmed my teacher's story by saying that he visited Spain in the 1950s or 1960s (I can't remember which) and the countryside was full of Guarda Civil men riding horses.

If what they said was correct my conclusion is that the Spanish armed forces would have contained the guerrillas with the forces that they had IOTL in spite of being supplied by the SOE and the increased guerrilla activity won't divert any German and Italian troops from where they were fighting IOTL.

Another thing is that the need to replace the equipment the British Army lost at Dunkirk, strengthen Britain's home defences during the invasion scare, and after that complete the projected expansion of the BEC's armies to the equivalent of 55 divisions might mean that it wasn't not be possible to supply the guerrillas on a meaningful scale until well into 1941.

Spain will quickly run out of food and oil and become a drain on the Axis.

Except, that is, if running out of food precipitates a large-scale revolt of the Spanish people against Franco and his government. However, I presume that by quickly you mean at most six months after Spain declares war. That might not be enough time to supply the guerrillas with enough materiel to make a significant material contribution.

OTOH

Although I think they wouldn't achieve much physically, there's also the moral effect that the guerrillas would have. E.g. when I skimmed through the Wikipedia article on the Spanish Maquis I read this paragraph.

The government had a policy of total silence on the actions of the maquis. For this reason, outside of the areas of maquis activity, the population had practically no knowledge of the maquis. On the rare occasion that an item appeared in the press, the maquis were always referred to as "bandoleros" (bandits), in order to strip the actions of all political context.

ITTL the Allied propaganda machine would be flooding the Allied media with stories of their real and imagined exploits which would filter into to Spain by word-of-mouth. I can also imagine the Allied political warfare machine magnifying that by using Portugal as a base to "invade" Spain with pro-Allied propaganda to which RAF Bomber Command would contribute by dropping leaflets.

Stories contradicting what the state controlled media said about how the war was progressing abroad and knowing about the guerrillas at home might encourage more Spanish people to resist the Government by organising their own resistance groups (active and passive) or joining the existing guerrilla groups.

So to conclude, I think you were suggesting that supplying the Spanish guerrillas with food and weapons would be a panacea. I think it wouldn't. At best (for the Republicans) if the food shortage does precipitate a large-scale revolt of the Spanish people then support from the guerrillas would undoubtedly increase its chances of overthrowing the Nationalist Government. At worst (again for the Republicans) the guerrillas would be a bigger thorn in Franco's side, but it would still be one that the Nationalist forces could contain and therefore wouldn't divert any German and Italian troops form where they were fighting IOTL.

As an aside said teacher of Spanish is the person who told me the story about his father being a sailor on the Renown during the Bismarck chase and watching the Swordfish take off from Ark Royal that I've mentioned in several threads.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Re the coal. Does anyone have information on how much coal Spain needed to import?

According to International Historical Statistics Europe 1750-1933, Fourth Edition, by B.R. Mitchell...

• Spain produced 7.5 million metric tons of coal (hard and brown) in 1929 and remained at around that level until 1932.
• About 6.3 million metric tons were produced annually in 1933 and 1934.
• However, it returned to near 1929 levels in 1935 when 7.2 million metric tons of coal were produced.
• The outbreak of the Civil War led to a decline to 2.3 million metric tons in 1937, but this was temporary, because coal production increased to 6.8 million metric tons in 1939.
• Production in 1940 (Spain's first full year of peace) was 9.5 million metric tons, which was 2.0 million metric tons more than 1929 and 2.3 million metric tons more than 1935.
• Production continued to rise and in 1944 was 11.6 million metric tons.

By contrast (and from the same source) Italy produced 1.0 million metric tons of coal (hard and brown) in 1929, which increased to 3.1 million metric tons in 1939 and in the years 1940-42 was in the region of 4.5 to 5.0 million metric tons.

Also brown coal was never more than 11% of Spain's total production. Between 1929 and 1939 it never exceeded 400,000 metric tons. It grew to 1.2 million metric tons in 1943 and 1944, but the total coal production in those years was 10.9 and 11.6 metric tons respectively. Meanwhile, most of Italy's production was of brown coal. It was 80% of total coal production in 1929, declined to 50% in 1934, but then increased to 65% in 1939 and was around 75% in the years 1940-42. Therefore, the coal Spain was producing was of better quality than Italy's too.

Spain had a smaller population than Italy and wasn't as industrialised. Therefore, I suspect that the difference between total requirements and domestic production was not as large as Italy's. Unfortunately, I can't prove it because I don't have the statistics at hand. I'll have to spend some time in "spreadsheet hell" first.

My understanding was Spain had been a net importer of Coal. Perhaps thats wrong.

 

[Nivek]

Spain is not to join the war, the reactionaries weren't stupid, the only way to Spain to join is with a full RED spain

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Spain is not to join the war, the reactionaries weren't stupid, the only way to Spain to join is with a full RED Spain.

Which is missing the point of thread. Said point being... to understand why they didn't, by working out what would have happened if they did.

 

[Nivek]

Which is missing the point of thread. Said point being... to understand why they didn't, by working out what would have happened if they did.

And they didn't because they knew they wouldn't hold a candle vs the entente even if France fall as scheduled, the royal navy can make Spanish Life miserable without breaking efforts everywhere.

Franco have to wish to commit suicide for him to join

 

[James Ricker]

The Spanish Civil War ended in 1938, over half of the population hated Franco's guts
Restarting the Spanish Civil War would be easy.
German troops would be needed things from getting out of hand.
Their absence would have effects most noticeable on the Eastern Front

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

...the Royal Navy can make Spanish Life miserable without breaking efforts everywhere.

Not necessarily. It was overstretched after France fell IOTL. Blockading Spain would stretch it even further.

 

[Nivek]

Not necessarily. It was overstretched after France fell IOTL. Blockading Spain would stretch it even further.

Still Neither Germany nor Spain have a navy to counter it. Still the only one could win from it are the japanese

 

[Monk78]

Push comes to shove the die hard axis leaders and a few fanatical SS and Italian fascist divisions escape to Spain in 1945

 

[kham_coc]

till Neither Germany nor Spain have a navy to counter it

This is ww2 Air power would counter the RN.