Adolf Hitler looked upon Gen. Franco as a “good buddy”. Spain (although neutral) provided valuable services for Hitler’s war machine-spanish mercury and wolfram ore were vital materials for war production.
Yet Franco was smart and canny-he relaized that Hitler had bitten off too much (by invading Russia).
Militarily, Spain was pretty weak-they had an antique navy and a small army. Had Hitler decided to invade, would the Spanish Army have had any chance of repelling the invaders?
As I recall, Hitler tried (several times) to get Franco to join the Axis-but Franco demaned too much in return.
Read up on the head of the German intelligence services (Abwehr), Admiral Canaris. It sounds like he did a lot to convince Franco not to cooperate with Hitler.
Also, this Wikipedia piece makes it clear that any chance of alliance was dead long before Hitler ever invaded Russia.
Hitler had threatened invasion (or annexation) of parts of Spain into Vichy France.
Nothing ever came of it.
Can’t think of much else. By the time Germany might have demanded a lot more of Franco Germany had bigger fish to fry.
Canaris was a fascinating character. I wonder if we’ll ever really know what was going on between the Abwehr and the Allied intelligence services during the war.
The thing is Franco was never a friend to Hitler, Mussolini or anyone other than himself.
Hitler wasn’t all together stupid either. Spain had spent years at war with itself and was very weak. The only thing Spain was useful for was to provide access to Gibraltar. The only reason Hitler needed access to Gibraltar was to help out Mussolini who got himself into a mess all by himself.
Another huge issue was Vichy France. Technically France was independent. The USA recognized Vichy and the Vichy government had control over France’s colonies.
Spain was so weak that if it entered the war on Hitler’s side, within hours every colony it had would’ve been siezed by Great Britian. The British navy was still the most powerful navy in the world. That also meant that as soon as it was at war with Britian, all their food would be cut off as well.
So Hitler would need to promise Franco things to get him in the war. Like what? Well colonies and food. Hiter was having trouble feeding his own people much less all of Spain. And the only colonies he could offer Spain to make up for the ones Britian would instantly sieze were from Vichy France.
But here’s the kicker, Vichy France was still a LOT stronger than either Italy and/or Spain. Hitler had a nice puppet government in place and if he gave away all of France’s colonies he’d risked having Vichy up in arms.
Hitler wouldn’t invade Spain 'cause the second he did he would have the Spanish and the Portuguese screaming for British help. This meant the possibility of a land invasion of France if the British got a toe hold in Spain or Portugal.
In short there was nothing for Hitler to gain by invading Spain and there was nothing for the Spanish to gain by siding with Hitler.
Instead Spain played the Allies against the Axis. He sold materials and such to both sides, carefully making sure neither side was upset enough with him to invade. Franco sent a few troops to fight with Germany. These volunteers (yeah right) only fought the Soviets and Franco made sure of that. In that way he helped Hitler enough (Hitler called the Spanish the only “tough” Latins) and got revenge on the Soviets for supporting the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.
I’m pretty certain the Spaniard who fought against the Sovs really were volunteers. And of couse, it was less that they wanted vengeance on the Sovs for “supportiung” the Republic forces and more like they wanted revenge for “owning the Repoublic forces like the Stalinist puppeteers they were”. But yeah, I agree generally with your post.
Neither is there any question that Franco was a far better politician and general than Hitler.
Besides the fact that conquering Spain didn’t offer Hitler enough of a reward, isn’t it also a fact that historically Spain has been difficult to conquer? It took ancient Rome two centuries. The Moors and Napoleon Bonaparte never did.