The Spanish Franco fascist regime was established with the support of German and Italian fascists, and as a fascist regime, the Franco dictatorship could abandon its neutrality and throw itself into the arms of the Nazis at any time, but until the end of World War II, the Spanish government remained neutral.
Franco
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On September 1, 1939, Nazi German troops suddenly launched an attack on Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the Second World War broke out in full swing. The outbreak of World War II was orchestrated by the imperialist reactionary forces to compete for world hegemony and to redivide the world.
At that time, more than 80% of the world's population was involved in the war in 61 countries. Military operations are carried out in the territories and naval theatres of 40 countries and in the oceanic theatres.
Europe, on the other hand, was the main battlefield in the early days of the war, and in the vast land of Europe, scenes of war can be seen everywhere. However, Spain was an exception, and during this period, Spain was alone in the war, and was largely undisturbed by the smoke of war.
Francis Franco was the ruler of Spain at the time. On July 18, 1936, francis Franco, the leader of the Spanish Tulletres, launched an armed rebellion. After a civil war, he occupied the capital Madrid on March 28, 1938, establishing a dictatorship.
In the process, Franco received strong support from Hitler and Mussolini. However, in World War II, Spain unexpectedly remained neutral.
Because he did not board the "thief ship", Franco's dictatorship lasted for a full 30 years after the war, until he finally died of illness.
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What is the reason for Spain's neutrality? Is the dictator "peace-loving", or is he "able to pinch and calculate" and know that the axis is defeated? After the war, many scholars conducted in-depth research on this.
It is generally believed that the reason why Spain did not participate in the war at that time was because the political and economic conditions in Spain at that time were not allowed. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Spain's civil war had just ended, economically, the means of production and subsistence were scarce, the national economy was on the verge of collapse and was in ruins; politically, the republicans, monarchs and other left-wing blocs in the country still retained political power that could not be ignored, and they could overthrow Franco's dictatorship at any time.
Poster of Franco announcing the complete victory of the Spanish Civil War [1939]
Therefore, if he wants to stand firm on his own feet, Franco does not dare to act rashly, but wants to find a way to stabilize the situation, resolutely exclude dissidents politically, vigorously develop the national economy economically, and improve the people's living standards.
Others believe that Spain was suspicious of german and Italian victories, feared British retaliation after defeat, and that Spain had a long sea line vulnerable to attack, with the British possession of Gibraltar in the south. In the absence of absolute certainty of victory, Spain did not dare to rush into the war.
When Germany and Spain met in October 1940, the Battle of Great Britain was in its third phase, and although Hitler advocated victory, Franco believed that Britain had not lost.
When Hitler wrote to Franco in February 1941, the British army in the North African theater had just wiped out illy's army of 10 divisions in Libya, so it is no wonder that Franco's reply was delayed.
Another view is that Spain did not enter the war because of the political advantage that its special geographical location gave it. The Strait of Gibraltar has been a place of contention since ancient times, so after the war began, both the Allies and Germany and Italy actively sought Spain to join their camp.
Britain, in order to relieve Spain's urgent needs, sent a batch of food from Argentina to help them, and agreed to provide Spain with a loan of 2 million pounds to allow it to import certain embargoed industrial raw materials from allies.
In early 1941, the United States also gave Spain $1.5 million worth of food and drug aid on behalf of the Red Cross. Subsequently, the U.S. Congress, at the behest of President Roosevelt, passed a bill agreeing to loosen the control of American businessmen over Spain's oil exports.
Germany and Italy, on the other hand, gave Franco strong support as early as the beginning of his political establishment. In May 1940, Italy announced that it would reduce the debt owed by Spain from 700,000 lira to 500,000 lira. Germany continued to send guns, machinery and precision weapons to Spain. Hitler even promised Franco that after the war he had longed for the Strait of Gibraltar, he would transfer to him.
It was the temptations of the interests of the warring parties that prevented Franco from deciding which side to turn to. And the warring sides cannot force each other, for fear of backfire and push Franco towards the other side. Franco himself realized in his dealings with the warring sides that if Spain fell to either side and joined the battle, the consequences would be unimaginable, and it would directly reduce Spain to the forefront of the war and suffer the ruthless devastation of the war. For Spain, the best strategy is to be left and right, to be exquisite, no one to offend, and to maintain a neutral position.
In addition, there is the view that Franco wants to use his neutral position to trade with the warring sides. In a secret German-Western agreement signed in 1939, Spain promised to import beef and grain from South America for Germany. In May 1940, Spain signed a three-year food cooperation program with Italy, pledging to provide the necessary food. By 1942, the focus of The german-Western trade had shifted from food to war-necessary mineral resources. Spain is rich in high-quality iron ore, and Germany also imports zinc, lead, mercury, fluorite, lapis lazuli, mica, cork and wool, as well as, most importantly, tungsten sand. Beginning in early 1942, Britain and the United States began to jointly buy out all of Spain's tungsten ore production, and the price soared from $75 per ton to $16,800. Throughout the war, Portugal exported tungsten ore to both sides until June 1944, when the Allies landed in France, and stopped exporting materials to Germany. The Franco government used its neutral position to trade with the warring sides and made a lot of profits.
It is also argued that Spain's neutrality was the result of Franco's personal political views, which advocated only opposition to the Soviet Union and had no intention of being an enemy of any Western country, and it was this ideology that prompted him to maintain a neutral position during the war.
During World War II, Spain sent the Blue Division to join the war against the Soviet Union
During the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union gave franco's opposition strong support; after Franco came to power, the Soviet Union remained in touch with the party he supported. Therefore, Franco believed that if the Western countries were hostile to each other, they could only lose both sides, and the Soviet Union would reap the benefits. The enemy of the West should be the Soviet Union and not other countries. Therefore, he only regarded the Soviet Union as his enemy.
In June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Franco organized a "Blue Army" of about 10,000 people to fight hitler. In response to this move by Spain, Franco particularly stressed that the "Blue Army" only showed Spain's consistent position of resisting the Soviet Union, and did not mean that Spain was participating in axis combat.