The Rif War

One of the lesser known 20th century wars gets an Alternate History

Review: Sky People

A Polish Zero?

The Poles develop a fast, maneuverable fighter comparable to the Japanese Zero in the late 1930s.  

Point Of Divergence is an amateur press magazine and also a forum for discussing AH and AH-related ideas.  Here is my comment section.

Sung to the tune of “The Knee bones connected to the thigh bone”:

The Rif War’s connected to the Spanish Civil War.
The Spanish Civil War’s connected to the Second World War.
The second World War’s connected to the Cold War.
Now hear the sound of them guns.

Ok.  I'm a writer, not a song writer.  Some question naturally arise from that atrocious little ditty: What was the Rif war?  How was it connected to the Spanish Civil War?  How was that connected to World War II?   Since this is an alternate history group,  I’ll illustrate the connections by a set of alternate history scenarios that lead to different Spanish Civil Wars, which in turn lead to very different World War IIs.  For this issue I'll focus mostly on the background, but I'll develop some alternatives from this in future issues.

What actually happened: The Rif War was a rebellion of Berber tribes of the Rif--the mountainous interior of northern Morocco--against Spanish rule in the early 1920s.  Morocco was one of the last pieces of Africa to be divvied up by the European powers.  It ended up divided into a small Spanish-ruled chunk in the north, and a much larger French-ruled chunk to the south.
    As in much of Africa, the lines drawn on a map in Europe did not immediately lead to European rule on the ground.  The French didn’t effectively control parts of their area of Morocco until the 1930s, over twenty years after they were officially awarded control.  Spain didn’t really attempt to control the mountains of Spanish Morocco until just after World War I.  When they did try to gain control, they did so in a particularly brutal fashion.  Bad idea.  The local tribes were among the most effective tribal warriors in the world.  European soldiers that had been both places claimed that they were second only to the Pathans of Afghanistan and the tribal territories of Pakistan in terms of fighting ability.  The Pathans have still not been conquered or effectively controlled by outsiders, and are probably harboring Bin Laden and crew as I write this.
    In any case, the tribes of Spanish Morocco put up with the Spanish for a short time, then rebelled very effectively in the early 1920s.  The Spanish suffered a series of defeats that were in the same class as the one the Italians suffered in their first invasion of Ethiopia in the 1890s.  The defeats in the Rif war led to a military coup in Spain itself, with Primo de Rivera taking over.  He decided to pull Spanish troops out of the interior of Spanish Morocco and into more defendable areas on the coast.  At some point in the rebellion, Wrangel, the white Russian general offered to help the Spanish, in an effort to keep his exiled army intact.  He was turned down. 
    The tribes of the Rif were free of Spanish rule for the time being.  The most effective leaders of the rebellion, Abd el-Krim was European-educated, and understood that the war wasn’t over just yet.   He decided that in order to make their victory permanent the tribes needed a trained army in addition to tribal warriors and a formal government with a flag, ambassadors and all of the other accoutrements.   The rebels had a great deal of captured Spanish equipment, and they managed to equip and train a small but apparently rather effective Rif army of approximately 5000 men. 
    At this point the French colonial administration in Morocco became concerned.  A rebellion in Spanish Morocco wasn’t a bad thing to the French.  As a matter of fact they considered it kind of natural payback for the fact that the Spanish had looked the other way while German agents tried to stir up trouble in French Morocco during World War I.  While a rebellion wasn’t a problem for the French, a full-blown independent Rif republic definitely was a problem.  The French moved troops into areas of French Morocco bordering the Rif that had previously been outside of French control.  That threatened the rebellion militarily while cutting off trade routes for vital commodities, including food.
    The leaders of the Rif rebellion didn’t want to take on France as well as Spain, but they didn’t have a lot of choice.  The tribes struck before the French could consolidate their control, and won several impressive victories.  The French sacked their long-time colonial administrator and brought in Marshall Petain, the man who later led the Vichy regime, along with a French army large enough to decisively defeat the rebellion.  With the French in the war, the Spanish redoubled their efforts.  They staged one of the largest amphibious landings by a European power in the early twentieth century against a strategic site controlled by the Rif tribes, and used mustard gas against them.  Franco, the same guy that later led the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War, came ashore on a white horse in an attention-getting but somewhat risky gesture.
    The Rif tribes fought well, but they had little chance against two European powers.  To make their problems worse, some of the tribes were fighting for autonomy from all outside control, and they didn’t see the nascent Rif government as being much different from the Spanish.  Several major tribes had their own agendas and worked for them at the expense of the rebellion as a whole.  Some of the Rif tribes put up a good fight, but ultimately the rebellion failed.  Abd el-Krim surrendered to the French on very generous terms and lived as a rather pampered prisoner for the next 35 years.  By May 1926 the rebellion was over. 
    The Spanish army continued to maintain a large army in the Rif, and recruited some of the fiercest of the local warriors into it.  That army made up the core of Nationalist power in the Spanish Civil War starting in 1936.  The Spanish Civil War, in turn, set the stage for World War II.  The Germans trained their reviving Luftwaffe there, refining their aerial tactics and ability to deliver ground support.  They gained three years of war-fighting experience that their opponents at the beginning of World War II didn’t have. 
    The Soviets and the Italians also gained experience in the Spanish Civil War, but the Italians committed too much of their limited economic resources to the war, and essentially drained themselves economically, which was a major factor in their poor showing during World War II.  The Soviets got a lot of military experience, but then squandered much of it by purging officers that had been involved in the war.  They did get a major economic boost by conning the Spanish Republicans into giving them the bulk of the Spanish gold reserves.  The Spanish had amassed one of the largest gold reserves in Europe by trading with both sides during World War I, and that stockpile ended up helping the Soviets buy equipment for their industrialization efforts.  In return, the Spanish Republicans got military odds and ends that for the most part the Soviets didn’t need—captured Turkish rifles and artillery from the late 1800s for example, along with a few newer weapons that the Soviets wanted to test out.

What might have happened?  A white Russian army in Morocco sound fascinating, but I'll leave that for another issue.  For now I'll look at more likely alternatives.  Well, the Rif rebellion had essentially lost as soon as the French decided to intervene.  The Rif tribes could probably have held their own against Spain pretty much indefinitely.  Two European powers were just too much for them to handle.  The key then would be to keep the French out of the war.   The only way I could see that happening would be if the French had more pressing obligations elsewhere at the point where the Rif War became a threat to them.  How could that have happened?  I have a couple of ideas in mind, and I'll get to them in the next part.
    In the meantime, think about the Alternate History potential here.  At the very least the Rif war put General Franco one lucky bullet away from an early end to his career, with enormous consequences, which I explore in an earlier scenario.  I think we can do even more than that with the Rif War, and we'll try to do it next issue.

Revised version: Posted on Feb 3, 2012.

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