Leaving aside the political issues, invading Spain would have been a bad idea for geographical reasons. The point of the invasion was to get to Germany. It was impossible to invade Germany directly, so we invaded France as a stepping stone to Germany. If we had invaded Spain, we would have had to use it as a stepping stone into France before we could go into Germany. The territory we would have had to cross is full of mountains and rivers and would have cost a lot of time and casualties. And the northern coast of Spain is about three times as far from England as Normandy is and ships and planes traveling there would have been exposed to German attacks from the French coast.
Which is what I was trying to point out. When I talk about “the Spaniards” taking exception to tanks rolling through our farms, I don’t mean Franco’s government… I mean people like my Carlista relatives, or my cousins’ Gudari ones, who kept gramps’ old trabuco in good working order - and who had just spent four years shooting at each other with weaponry much more modern than the trabucos.
Establishing the beachhead directly in Southern France, I see as a viable option. But why punish yourself with worse terrain than you need to? The terrain north of the Pyrinees is quite flat; the terrain south of them is quite rugged for several hundred miles. Add local hostiles (who wouldn’t give a dog’s fart why you were there, only that you were bringing guns without being invited) and it doesn’t sound to me like a good idea at all.
Not wishing to detract from the gist of your post (with which I am in agreement), but it’s actually much more than three times as far.
Portsmouth to Normandy is a straight shot of ~100 miles, and although not all of the Normandy invasion had those endpoints, it’s a reasonable guideline. Map of the invasion routes is here. It’s a short enough distance that “go/no go” decisions could be made based on the weather (remember, “D-Day” was originally set for June 5 but delayed due to weather). Going all the way to Spain, there’s a much higher chance of bad weather at some point in the voyage.
Plymouth to San Sebastian / Donostia, Spain (which would have been the logical invasion route in the OP’s scenario) is closer to 600 miles one-way, by the time one has steered well clear of the Germans in Brittany. All in all, a logistical nightmare, and that’s even before one considers the wisdom of making unnecessary enemies of Nava’s compatriots; about the only way I could see getting onto the Basque coast – without major repercussions – would have been to negotiate with (pre-ETA) Basque separatists, with a post-war separate homeland being a condition of safe passage from a landing site into France [and don’t even think about double-crossing the Basques…]. That would almost certainly have precipitated a second Civil War in Spain.
I would love a cite for Churchill’s serious interest (per Quartz) in a landing via Portugal. The Portuguese, although officially neutral (and supplying both sides with strategic materials such as tungsten), would probably not have resisted an Allied landing (at least not to the extent that Franco’s Spain would have), but Porto to Paris is about 1000 miles, at the end of which one would have one very tired, overextended army even under the best-case scenario.
Much of the success of the Normandy landings and their aftermath was due to the brilliance of the logistical planning (and implementation). IMHO, the quartermasters would have been the first to veto a push to Germany via the Iberian peninsula.
As other people have said, and you say with your own words, this is unsupportable. Norway was under German occupation.
There is a difference between considering every possible option, which is expected and legitimate, and developing those options into full-scale working plans, and actually carrying out those plans. As far as I can see nothing relating to a true neutral country, which Norway obviously wasn’t, ever made it even to stage 2.
Yes, Churchill considered every option including extremely stupid ones. I’m sure the Americans did as well. That is not the same thing as implementing those options as official goverment policy.
This is just silly. Relations between countries are governed by a series of treaties and unspoken assumptions and they are taken very seriously. As an example, the use of poison gas in WWI made everyone agree not to use it in WWII, at least by the Allies, and it is still a bogeyman to excuse action. The sanctity of neutral countries was observed throughout WWII and the U.S. made loud claims to neutrality and what that meant before it got involved in WWII.
Of course wars are often cruel and total and stupid. Here’s a brief summary of WWI.
One side does something stupid. The other side does something colossally stupid. The first side does something abysmally colossally stupid. The other side does something horrendously abysmally colossally stupid. The first side does something staggeringly horrendously abysmally colossally stupid. The other side does something brain-damagingly staggeringly horrendously abysmally colossally stupid. The war ends.
That’s why there are rules to international war. That’s why there is a Geneva Convention. War is too damaging not to have some checks on it. Those checks are taken seriously, even if certain people think they can get away with a little something extra. Total war is not the same as ruleless war.
Exapno – how does the Soviet-British invasion of Iran fit into your thesis?
Yopu just plain won’t read the posts will you? Norway did not come under German occupation until April 9, 1940. The allies had plans to invade before that date, while Norway was still “a true neutral country”. I have given you the cite** twice **now.
No, your quote merely says that the “Allies had plans.” Nothing about what those plans were or how seriously they were being pursued or into which stage of my typology they would fall. You don’t even bother to provide a link.
Here’s some actual context with an actual link.
Any use of Noway as a strategic point would have been more of an alliance with a friendly neighbor against an aggressor than the equivalent of the German invasion.
Context is everything. Don’t drop a supposed “fact” and presume that it has any meaning in isolation.
“To Churchill, it seemed that that new developments offered a good occasion to the Allies to strike, with the pretext to help Finland, the side of Germany. In one note on December 16 he returned to sustain with strength his project, listing all the elements in favor of such war action. He was aware that with every probability it would have pushed the Germans to invade Scandinavia, but in that writing he affirmed: “We have more to earn that to lose from a German attack against Norway and Sweden.” It was a cynical reasoning, absolutely deprived of scruples toward the destiny of the Scandinavian people. The Cabinet was still opposed to the violation of the Norwegian neutrality and preferred to abstain from sanctioning the immediate realization of the plan of Churchill. However, they authorized the Head Quarter of the army to elaborate a plan for a possible “military landing in Narvik”, terminal of the railroad that connected the Norwegian coast to the iron layers of Gallivare, in Sweden, and to Finland…In the first days of February it was gathered the Allied Supreme Council of War in Paris, with the presence of Chamberlain and Churchill. During this reunion the plans related to the preparation of an Expedition Corp constituted from two English divisions and from an almost equivalent French contingent, denominated “Help to Finland” were decided. With the purpose to reduce the danger of a direct clash with Russia, these troops would have had to be “camouflaged as voluntaries.” The principal objective was to make sure the control of the layers of Gallivare; only a part of the allied forces had to bring help to the Finns. It was established that the operation would have started at the beginning of March: the landing of the troops would have happened at Narvik…Churchill pushed for an immediate action, but without success. On March 12, during a reunion, the English Cabinet decided to widen the operations of landing to the harbors of Trondheim and Bergen, still maintaining Narvik as principal target. The military operations had to depart the following week, more precisely on day 20. But the allied projects went in smoke for the surrender of Finland to Russia on March 13: the pretext for an intervention in Scandinavia vanished. Other problem was the fall of Daladier and his substitution from Paul Reynaud. He was spokesman of the opinion public French that demanded an offensive politics and rapid actions; as first action of government, he went to London and he solicited the immediate realization of the Norwegian project. The English government accepted the point of view of the ally and decided the immediate action; but, as it had happened in the case of Poland, it acted without reflecting. It was established that Norwegian waters would have been mined on April 5, and that the first contingent of troops had to sail towards Narvik three days later, on day 8.”
wiki
Norwegian campaign - Wikipedia
"*Churchill was a strong agitator for attacking and occupying Norway, because he wanted the battles and fighting moved away from Britain and France to avoid devastation of their territory, as in the last war. He saw the way into Germany from the north.
It was agreed to utilize Churchill’s naval mining offense, Operation Wilfred, designed to remove the sanctuary of the Leads and force transport ships into international waters where the Royal Navy could engage and destroy them. Accompanying this would be Plan R4, an operation where, upon almost certain German counteraction to Operation Wilfred, the Allies would then proceed to occupy Trondheim and Bergen, and destroy the Sola airfield."*
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/70-7_02.htm
“Since the beginning of the war Allied expectations with respect to Norway had developed almost exactly along the lines predicted by Raeder; however, the devising of practical means for realizing these expectations had been quite another matter. In mid-September Winston Churchill had presented his Plan CATHERINE, which involved sending naval forces through the straits leading into the Baltic Sea to gain control of those waters and to stop the Swedish ore traffic. Although CATHERINE was rejected as too dangerous and no other plan was devised, the Allies, influenced by the widely held thesis that Germany did not have the resources to sustain a long war, continued to regard Norway, and Narvik in particular, as their most promising strategic objective”
Let me requote one line again “Churchill was a strong agitator for attacking and occupying Norway…”
Your argument is incorrect. There are and were more than one example of supposedly “noble” Allied powers willing to invade “neutral” territory. You’re out on a limb, it’s totally sawed off, and you should gracefully pull the rip cord and let the parachute waft you down, rather than insisting upon lighting the branch below you and going down in flames. 
As for the original post, I think we can seriously let the concept lie; it’s been beaten upon enough. The original poster has admitted he didn’t take into account the significance of fighting up over the Pyranees. In addition, it’s obvious he didn’t consider the issue of supply lines, because even if the allies had landed on the north coast of spain (by the way, have you ever looked at that coast?? it’s not exactly a flat expanse of friendly beaches…) and immediately turned left and headed for France, you have to keep the supply lines open, and it’s a good bet that Spain would have done it’s best to keep them closed.
Without taking anything away from Operation Fortitude’s success, I would add that another reason the Atlantic Wall wasn’t effectively manned was that Gerd von Rundstedt had authority over Erwin Rommel.
Rommel believed the Wall could best be defended by keeping units forward – especially armor – to hit the Allies while they were at the point of maximum disorganization, difficulty, and vulnerability: as they waded ashore. In effect, the troops and tanks would make the obstacles and fortifications more effective, and vice-versa, to exploit the synergy.
Rundstedt, an aging commander (69) who had had success earlier in the war, believed in the older German theory of maintaining a large mobile armored reserve. He planned to let the battle develop with the armor held back, so it would be both intact and not committed, and then hurl it at the strategic point when it became obvious.
This had worked when Germany was ascendant, particularly when the Luftwaffe had ruled the skies. It would not work in 1944 in France. Rommel, who had faced Allied air superiority in Africa, knew he’d be unable to move large armored reserves at will, under unrelenting Allied air attack – which is part of why he wanted them deployed forward.
Rundstedt largely won the argument, having rank, and (despite an attempt by Hitler to split the Panzer divisions between the two commanders) the armor was held in reserve or unable to get permission to move on D-Day.
When the day came, the Allies had far greater than air “superiority” – the term “air supremacy” was coined to describe such situations. 12,000 Allied attack aircraft sortied with the invasion fleet and were met by, according to most accounts, TWO Luftwaffe fighters.
Over the critical “buildup” period before the Allies broke out of the beachhead, Allied aircraft, particularly fighter-bombers, ranged far and wide over the area immediately outside the beachhead, and the German armored reserve was (as Rommel had predicted) destroyed or driven into hiding. Going from memory, one division commander reported losing 200 tanks and having only 20 left over the course of moving only a few miles the first day of the battle.
And thus the Atlantic Wall was undermanned and poorly defended.
Sailboat
Some more reading at Wikipedia (Operation Overlord - Wikipedia) and Miltiary History Online (
MilitaryHistoryOnline.com)
In fairness to the intelligence of the allied officers who actually planned the Normandy iunvasion, I suspect that had they decided to invade Spain, they would have used North Africa as their base of operations, not the Channel ports.
They’d have to move supplies back and forth between those two area, then. Which has its own problems and might not be any shorter.
Good grief, did you read all the way through DrDeth’s cites? What about the lines:
and
What about the part he didn’t quote like:
I can Google too:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/robertm/norge/political_prelude.html
As I keep saying, plans were considered. I also keep saying that those plans were never seriously implemented. And that there was huge opposition to plans to invade neutral territory even though the dire circumstances kept tempting them. These people were human. They didn’t live entirely on principle. But the principles were there and were strong motivators of behavior.
Why? If the plan had been to go through Spain, I would have expected them to build up North Africa, not Britain. If they HAD decided to move only from the South, they could have simply put nothing but USAAF and some Navy matériel in Britain and concentrated entirely on North Africa.
I suppose we should be Truely grateful nobody ever suggested invading Scotland. With strawmen at that. 
Certainly there were practical differences between the consequences of seizing the Azores and, say, running a few battleships up the Tagos and starting to shell Lisbon. And Salazar would no doubt have grumblingly acquiesced - after all, he caved in on housing Allied air bases on the islands immediately thereafter.
But, as far as respecting the principle of neutrality goes, international law didn’t distinguish which bits of a sovereign state you might invade. Those who wanted to abide by it thus didn’t get to pick and choose which bits might or might not count. Hence the opposition to the proposal.