WWII Q: Instead of Normandy, why not go through Spain?

Factual Questions
21

[QUOTE=Koxinga]
When did I say the Allies would be wiping out the Franco regime or “liberating” the country? All I proposed was establishing a beachhead on Spain’s northern coast and making an end-run around the Atlantic Wall.

Furthermore, in the extremely unlikely event that this did somehow cause the Franco regime to collapse of its own accord and the country to collapse into anarchy, in what way would this be a “disaster” in regard to the paramount goal of reaching Germany and fighting Hitler on his own soil?

And don’t we have plenty of precedents in the Pacific theater of Allies island hopping through territories whose ultimate fate we didn’t give a whit about? It might not be nice, but neither is war, and it didn’t do anything to harm our stated objectives.
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It’s a reasonable assumption that Franco would not have allowed the Allies to establish such a beach-head unmolested. He had to be conscious of the fact that he had been put into power by Hitler, and that once established in Iberia, the Allies might not leave him there.

Churchill was very cognizant of the fact that if and when Germany was defeated, Europe was going to be a very messy place for many years. He was concerned about the damage done to Western Europe in the effort to push the Nazis out, and a return to the messy civil war in Spain would have been very hard to deal with on top of everything else.

I’m trying to think off the top of my head if there were any countries that the Allies “went through” in the Pacific that were not colonies of Western powers. It’s possible there might be some, but I can’t think of any, and certainly there were none as politically important as Spain.

22

[QUOTE=Koxinga]
When did I say the Allies would be wiping out the Franco regime or “liberating” the country? All I proposed was establishing a beachhead on Spain’s northern coast and making an end-run around the Atlantic Wall.

Furthermore, in the extremely unlikely event that this did somehow cause the Franco regime to collapse of its own accord and the country to collapse into anarchy, in what way would this be a “disaster” in regard to the paramount goal of reaching Germany and fighting Hitler on his own soil?

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I doubt the Franco regime would collapse, having a good bit of popular support, and no doubt getting more after an invasion. They would no longer be neutral, so the German troops would come streaming in, both through the mountains and by sea. If the Allies managed to even get to France, they’d have to station a lot of troops on the Spanish side to protect the ports and protect against an attack from the rear.

I think there is a big difference between ignoring lightly garrisoned islands cut off by our naval superiority and ignoring a large and well trained land army. Forcing Franco into the war against us just doesn’t sound like a good idea, even if there weren’t so many physical issues.

23

I don’t think nearly enough emphasis has been put on the long-standing tradition of not violating the status of neutral countries.

Switzerland, Sweden, and Ireland were all neutrals during the war. They were left that way and were freely used by all sides. The U.S. itself was officially neutral until December 1941 and while we obviously tilted heavily in favor of Britain we did a large number of things that allowed the Germans and Japanese to work freely in the country.

The idea of invading a neutral country to get to Germany was anathema to the Allies as a general policy. Invading Spain would have been a ludicrously bad idea, as this thread has shown, but that was irrelevant. We didn’t do it because it would have been wrong.

I understand that’s a notion that has fallen out of favor among certain groups, just as the previously referenced notion that it is wrong for the U.S. to invade a country pre-emptively fell out of official favor. However, history shows rather conclusively that countries doing things are are plainly wrong suffer for their acts. Some people consider the use of the atomic bomb to end WWII a plainly wrong act. I’m not one of them, but that act continues to have worldwide echoes today. The consequences of invading a neutral country would have been many times worse. It is likely that the prestige of the U.S. would never have survived the war if it had done something so stupid.

24

[QUOTE=Koxinga]
And don’t we have plenty of precedents in the Pacific theater of Allies island hopping through territories whose ultimate fate we didn’t give a whit about? It might not be nice, but neither is war, and it didn’t do anything to harm our stated objectives.
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That would be No. All of the territories we island-hopped through were occupied by Japanese troops or belonged to an ally. We didn’t invade any neutral countries on our way to Japan.

Spain was a no-go from the start. Anybody with a map could see that.

25

The german certainly helped, but I wouldn’t say they put him in poewr. He wasn’t exactly sitting around while the German army did his fighting for him. The man was a general through and through.

26

Forget Franco’s reaction - it just makes no military sense. Why use scarce amphibious assets to land what would have to be a relatively small force as far away from your ultimate objective as it is possible to get on the European mainland?

Essentially the north coast of France was the only possible place that the Allies could bring the full weight of their forces to bare. British and American forces had been building up in Britain for nearly two years and by 6 June 1944 there were 39 Divisions available for Overlord in the UK. It was essential to get them into action as rapidly as possible - to build up Allied forces on the continent faster than the Germans could bring forces in to contain the bridge head. Given the available shipping and landing craft that meant landing close enough for the ships to go back and get another load in a few hours. Also, to ensure air cover the beaches had to be within Spitfire range of of the airfield in England.

Then once ashore you have to keep supplying the armies as they advance. You need a port to land the supplies and transport to get them to the front. Carrying supplies from Brest - the only major port available - to the front in Belgium and North East France was massive logistical problem. Imagine trying to bring supplies up from Spain :smack:

To win the war the German army had to be beaten and the only sensible place to do that was as near the main Allied base in the UK as possible - the same logic as led to the Western Front in WW1. Churchill was always looking for ways of avoiding the necessity of fighting the Germans, hence schemes for invading “the soft underbelly of the Axis” through Italy and/or Greece. The trouble was you still ended up fighting the Germans but in unsuitable terrean a long way from your main base with all the waste in resources that entailed. Spain would have just been the same problem but with the additional consideration of invading a neutral country.

27

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
It also permitted Overlord to be launched in the North . . .
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Did you mean Cobra here? Overlord was already launched much earlier, as you pointed out.
Operation Cobra, the breakout from Normandy into the rest of France, had also started by Aug 15. However, Dragoon was definitely intended to support it. The invasion of Italy (in 1943) was another part of this plan, hemming in Germany from the south and west. Spain would have been too far away to accomplish it as easily as in France. In fact it was the success in Italy that allowed Dragoon to go into action, since forces were diverted from Italy for the operation.

I don’t know if Churchill ever considered Spain, but he wasn’t too fond of the invasion of southern France. He would have preferred going into the Balkans (or northeast Italy) toward Hungary and Austria, to ‘block’ the Russians as they came into Eastern Europe.

28

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Most importantly, Franco’s “support” for the Axis basically went as far as sending a volunteer unit to fight the Russians. That’s about it. Hitler standing over the Pyrenees made him nervous, too, and he largely staye dout of the fighting because he saw a lose-lose situation if he did. But in practical, of course, “support” for the Nazis cost him nothing and made his country safer.

The Allies did invade Morocco, but the circumstances there were totally different.
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It seems like Franco stayed out as his personal friend, Admiral Wm Canaris, head of German Intelligence (and one of the anti-hitler coup) recommended it. If the head of Intelligence of your putative ally says “Hey, don’t get too cozy with us, our leader is a madman, and is going to lose” you likely listen. For all the talk about Franco being pro-nazi, he sent less help to the Germans than the Germans sent to him during the Spanish Civil war. wiki "There is a letter that remained from a Spanish contact he (Canaris) had that confirms clearly his opinion against the Nazi regime. He tried to hinder Hitler’s attempts to absorb Czechoslovakia and advised Franco not to permit German passage through Spain for the purposes of capturing Gibraltar. It has been written that all of Franco’s arguments on this stance were studied and dictated in detail by Canaris..."
However, invading a Neutral was on the Allies list. We did take over Iceland, but you can argue it wasn’t Neutral. However, Churchill had definate plans to invade Norway, but the Germans beat him to it.
wiki: "Norway also attempted to claim neutrality during World War II, but was invaded by German forces on April 9, 1940. The Allies also had plans to invade Norway, in order to take advantage of her strategically important Atlantic coast, but were thwarted by the German operation". But at least here, Churchill could rightly argue it was a pre-emptive strike to liberate and protect them from the inevitable Nazi invasion. Of course, one reason why the Nazi’s invaded Norway isthat GB was already taking liberties with Norwegian Neutrality. wiki :"Altmark was assigned to support Admiral Graf Spee during her raid in the South Atlantic. Seamen rescued from the ships sunk by Admiral Graf Spee were transferred to Altmark. After Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by her crew in Montevideo, Altmark attempted to return to Germany, steaming around the north of Great Britain and then along the Norwegian coast. Discovered by British planes and pursued by the British destroyer HMS Cossack, she fled into Norwegian waters in February 1940 with 303 British merchant seamen prisoners on board. On 16 February 1940 she was boarded by sailors from Cossack who killed seven of the Altmark crew and freed the captive merchant sailors. The boarding was a breach of Norwegian neutrality and would be pivotal for the subsequent German decision to invade Norway and Denmark in April 1940. "

Spain was a tough nut to crack, and unlike Norway, we couldn’t argue it was a “pre-emptive strike to save them”. The people would mostly not recognize us as liberators and would have fought fiercely. Then it was also a very long sea voyage, and there were the Pyrenees. We already got bogged down in mountains in Italy.

29

[QUOTE=Quartz]
No cites - I’m going from memory of a radio program - but Churchill did ask a general about this, possibly with the idea of landing in the friendly country of Portugal. The general dutifully got his staff to look into this, reported back that it was not feasible, and then gave Churchill a bollocking for wasting his time.
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[QUOTE=Koxinga]
As for Quartz’s anecdote about Churchill–very interesting–if he did have an idea of making an end run like that, I wonder if had any resonance with his disasterous plans for Gallipoi in WWI.
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While I haven’t come across that specific story, it is consistent with one of the central themes of David Reynolds’s interpretation of Churchill’s thinking in his In Command of History. Reynolds convincingly argues that, back in 1940, Churchill developed the conception that Britain would have to win the war by grinding down the Germans in lots of places round the edges of the Continent. One of the first steps of which was setting up SOE to “set Europe ablaze”. That would be followed, in time, with an escalating series of different expeditions and attacks. Even after the USSR and the US enter the war, Reynolds’s argument is that Churchill still sticks to this strategic conception. It’s why he favours opening the Italian front and repeatedly considers attacks on Norway, Greece and the Balkans. However, the startling point of the thesis is the argument that he was ambivalent about Overlord. Prepared to back the American emphasis on this as the decisive move in the west, yes, yet still worried that it wouldn’t succeed as such. In particular, he had the fear that the battle in France might simply develop into another version of 1914-18 and that this concern persisted in his mind until late 1944. Dragoon thus becomes another move that keeps the strategic game open.
Reynolds’s point is that, of course, Churchill then used hindsight to systematically obscure all this in his war memoirs. With considerable success.
And it is a serious question as to what extent he was being influenced by Gallipoli in going down that path.

Him thinking about stirring up some sort of trouble for the Axis in Iberia is thus plausible.

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
The idea of invading a neutral country to get to Germany was anathema to the Allies as a general policy. Invading Spain would have been a ludicrously bad idea, as this thread has shown, but that was irrelevant. We didn’t do it because it would have been wrong.
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Only really true in retrospect. There were serious discussions in May 1943 about seizing the Azores, which were Portugeuse territory and hence neutral, but which would be very handy as air bases in the Battle of the Atlantic. The proposal was pushed by Washington and accepted by Churchill until the rest of the cabinet, led by Eden, talked him out of it. Respecting neutrality was an extremely strong argument, but violating it if the circumstances demanded wasn’t unthinkable.

30

[QUOTE=Koxinga]
When did I say the Allies would be wiping out the Franco regime or “liberating” the country? All I proposed was establishing a beachhead on Spain’s northern coast and making an end-run around the Atlantic Wall.
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It’s unclear to me as to what the possible benefit is here. You’re going much further, extending your lines of supply, creating a large and reasonably well armed enemy that will oppose you before you even gert to fight the Germans, AND putting yourself further away from the critical areas you were trying to overrun.

A major factor in the Allied success in northern France was their complete air supremacy - as the old German joke went, “if you see a white plane, it’s the Americans, if you see a black plane it’s the British, if you see no planes, it’s the Luftwaffe.” A landing in Spain takes you further away from air support, creates longer lines of supply… I mean, it’s just kind of silly.

Why would you think that creating a new enemy with a big army and making the process of invasion ten times harder would be an advantage?

31

[QUOTE=bonzer]
Only really true in retrospect. There were serious discussions in May 1943 about seizing the Azores, which were Portugeuse territory and hence neutral, but which would be very handy as air bases in the Battle of the Atlantic. The proposal was pushed by Washington and accepted by Churchill until the rest of the cabinet, led by Eden, talked him out of it. Respecting neutrality was an extremely strong argument, but violating it if the circumstances demanded wasn’t unthinkable.
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You cannot equate, then or now, the notion of taking island territory for a supply base and the full invasion of a neutral country by an army. Show me a serious proposal for a full invasion of a neutral country and I will declare myself wrong. This is not the same.

32

The Allies never considered landing anywhere that was not within fighter range of large airbases. This means that southern Spain would have been a possibility (putting aside that you are now two or three times as far from Berlin than if you had landed in northern France) but not northern. In reality only the Pas de Calais and Normandy were considered. Calais was closer to Paris and Berlin, had better beaches, and a major port, but was better fortified and the Dieppe landing (1942) had convinced the Allies that attacking a major port was a bad idea. So Normandy it was.

33

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
You cannot equate, then or now, the notion of taking island territory for a supply base and the full invasion of a neutral country by an army. Show me a serious proposal for a full invasion of a neutral country and I will declare myself wrong. This is not the same.
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Churchill seriously considered invading Norway. Cite is above. That would be a “full invasion of a neutral country”.

34

No, that would be a “full invasion of an occupied country.” Just like France.

35

[QUOTE=panamajack]
Did you mean Cobra here? Overlord was already launched much earlier, as you pointed out.
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My less than eloquently expressed point had intended to indicate that Dragoon, using troops and resources already in the Mediterranean to attack France, permitted the planning and build-up in the UK for Overlord. I do not recall the exact date that they began to seriously plan for Dragoon, but I’m pretty sure it was prior to June 7, 1944. By assigning Dragoon to its own army groups, rather than trying to wedge everyone into Spain, separate plans and resources could be devoted to Overlord.

36

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
However, history shows rather conclusively that countries doing things are are plainly wrong suffer for their acts . . . It is likely that the prestige of the U.S. would never have survived the war if it had done something so stupid.
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As stupid as Dresden? As the Doolittle raids? And earler, as stupid as Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill, and Sherman’s oh-so-euphemistic “march to the sea” (otherwise known as “starve the civilian population and burn down their houses”)? And on the other side of the Atlantic, as stupid as, oh, let’s say the ENTIRE BRITISH EMPIRE?

Don’t forget, if American generals didn’t invent the concept of total war, guys like Sherman sure did go at it with unprecedented gusto.And it was the British who did the same with the concept of “concentration camp” (in the Boer wars). And both Allies prospered greatly as a result of doing things that were plainly wrong.

Oh, and re: lebensraum and ethnic cleasing–ask the Cherokees what they think about that one.

This isn’t to draw a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Nazis, but it does seem to put lie to your assertion that there’s a moral law governing the acts of nations and visiting a mystic retribution on transgressors.

37

To add to all the above reasons, maintaining a beachhead and conducting a massive ground war across an Ocean against an enemy as sophisticated as you requires massive logistics. Best to keep that landing point as close to a home plate as you can.

38

And the larger point, of course, is that I don’t think with such a history behind them–and given their own current actions elsewhere at the time–I don’t think the allies would have blinked much at going through Spain if it would have given them a leg up in beating Hitler. Plainly, though, it wouldn’t have for all the excellent reasons other posters have given above–geography, terrain, lack of air cover, and so on.

And silenus–who is talking about occupation of an entire country? That certainly wasn’t in my OP. If anything, Churchill’s real-life plans for Norway were far more ambitious than what I was suggesting for Spain.

39

[QUOTE=silenus]
No, that would be a “full invasion of an occupied country.” Just like France.
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Before the Germans invaded. wiki: *“Norway also attempted to claim neutrality during World War II, but was invaded by German forces on April 9, 1940. The Allies also had plans to invade Norway, in order to take advantage of her strategically important Atlantic coast, but were thwarted by the German operation”.
*

Read my longer post above in full, OK?

40

[QUOTE=Koxinga]
And silenus–who is talking about occupation of an entire country? That certainly wasn’t in my OP. If anything, Churchill’s real-life plans for Norway were far more ambitious than what I was suggesting for Spain.
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Koxinga, I’m one of those who talked about occupying an entire country. As I stated above: I do not believe that Franco would have been able to see an Allied invasion of any portion of Spanish territory as anything but a direct, and immediate threat to his regieme. With that background, I believe that any invasion of any part of Spain by the Allies would have been attacked in such force that the only way to reduce the attacks would be to force a regieme change on Spain - whether that would have been the original Allied plan, or not.

And the recent history of Spain, at that time, would have meant that any such invasion would spawn guerrilla action all through the Iberian penninsula. Check out Nava’s other points in post #12, again. Not just the one you vented your spleen on. Both sides from the Spanish Civil War would have had, AIUI, a great deal of animosity towards the Allied nations. Which would have had the practical effect of making the recruiting guerrillas a relatively easy proposition.