I Blame Communism
Banned
No need to force him. You'll get halfway there by not having Admiral Canaris (a British agent!) doing his best to discourage Spanish participation.
And what, precisely, are the consequences? We already had operational plans to seize the Canaries, so the situation in the Atlantic is unchanged. If anyone can demonstrate to me that a convincing operation plan to capture Gib existed, then I shall certainly concede the point, but no-one ever has, so: how do you take Gib, which in the past has held up against foes actually abel to contest the seas? It's a narrow strip of sand with a gigantic natural fortress at the end of it. Once again, feel free to correct me, but all I can imagine happening is Spanish troops getting slaughtered.
So, we basically have a couple of tiny pinpricks on British manpower (seizing the Canaries and keeping the Gib garrison at strength).
And Spain itself? No Atlantic wall, a large part of its population bitterly opposed to the ruler who finished conquering them merely a year ago, with a handy pro-British regime in Portugal (speaking of which, Salazar, who had backed Franco during the civil war, will still be working for British interests in Iberia whether Canaris is or not) for organising supplies...
Just find a way for him to keep his eye on the ball. Maybe keep him randomly obsessed with a coincidentally useful objective (like say Leningrad), or SOMEHOW more open to using Hiwis.
Racial prejudices quite aside, there remains the issue of eqipping and motivating all these "Hiwis". The PoW battalions actually raised were so unreliable that German battalions sometimes had to fire on them.
Agreed. Hitler should have made it a precondition to declaring war on the US.
Achieving what? A tightening of the Soviet manpower situation and a slash in LL rates that's unlikely to tell too badly before Japan is comprehensively defeated, since their army in Manchuria was in no condition to take the fortress of Vladivostok or take on the Far East whatsoever. Without elite divisions to strike southward, Japan rapidly runs out of resources while America starts to equip a new Chinese army using the Burma road.