If the Spanish Nationalists did not win the Civil War...

[eliphas8]

Depends how early or late the victory would have been. Kind of like every discussion on the Republican victory. I would say an early victory before the suppression of the more revolutionary elements of the Spanish coalition would have been a pretty big toss up, depends on who has influence, what the government in France is, and a whole bunch of other stuff. A later Spanish Republic dominated by the liberals and communists was likely to forced into the war in 1941 after toeing the stalinist line about not confronting Germany.

 

[raharris1973]

I remember a pseudo-documentary in a spanish channel that plot the victory of the Republic, in this documentary Franco is exiled in Germany and Hitler launch an attack against Spain, and conquer a big piece of it. The "documentary" shows images of Hitler near the Cybele Fountain (an iconic marble fountain in Madrid), how the Allies managed to reconquer the peninsula with the help of the remains of the spanish army and the battle on Gibraltal (is an allied base ather all).

Ridli Scott, that simply sounds awesome, like to an "el rey del mundo" awesome level. Do you have any recollection what it was called or how old it was and if it was Spanish state TV or an international Spanish broadcaster (univision o telemundo)? I'm thinking of the search terms to use (in english or spanish) to see if there's any of it available online.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ridli Scott, that simply sounds awesome, like to an "el rey del mundo" awesome level. Do you have any recollection what it was called or how old it was and if it was Spanish state TV or an international Spanish broadcaster (univision o telemundo)? I'm thinking of the search terms to use (in english or spanish) to see if there's any of it available online.

There you go.

 

[Niko Malaka]

There you go.

Oh, is that documentary about Mamen Mendizábal that incidentally talks about a counterfactual civil war...

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Portugal was a right-wing dictatorship, but Salazar disliked Hitler, and Portugal and the UK have a military pact going back centuries. No way Portugal gets involved.

Indeed. Crack open the books and you will find that Portugal hand ongoing secret discussions over cooperation with Britain. Talks were also attempted with Germany, which went nowhere and usually amounted to Germany demanding Wolfram from Portuguese mines be handed over for free. Britain was willing to top any German price for the Tungsten ore so the Germans walked away with some very expensive dirt, and whatever Spanish smugglers filched from Portugal. Salazar was also a bit miffed when his intelligence service came up with a Spanish plan to invade Portugal.

 

[Niko Malaka]

In my opinion, the most likely ways for the Republic to win is either an early victory or the war still going on when the euopean conflict starts, probably avoiding the offensive through the Ebro.

In the former case, communists won't be particulary powerful, so Spain wouldn't be determined by the Moscow-Berlin relations in any way. I would expect some discrete support for France in form of credit to buy spanish goods or something like that, but not a direct intervention in the war.

In the latter things can become...interesting. In the short term, the beginning of the european war would be specially noticed by the Nationalists, since in this situation german supplies would be cut from night to day. French generals would face the dilema of supporting a republic many of them despise or opening the possibility for an exposed southern flank...Could the spaniosh war be finished before the german attack against France? and would this attack follow OTL paterns or changed?

 

[Niko Malaka]

Also, even in case the Republic won the war in a more advanced stage*, it's not certain that the communists were to have the upper hand n the spanish politics, since they would faced the combined opposition of all the other republican forces and anyway, Moscow is too far.

*Let's say that the main offensive in 1938 is launched through Extremadura and Queipo de Llano manages to lose the war himself alone before somebody else can fix it. And he was prefectly able of this, as seen in OTL during the agonic republican offensive in Valsequillo-Peñarroya during 1939.