Axis Spain

Spain Joins the Axis - Part 3

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What Has Happened So Far: Spain enters World War II on the Axis side in mid-June, trying to pick up some loot from the defeated French and from the British. That changes the dynamics of the early part of the war quite a bit.

The Spanish entry into the war has several negatives for the Axis. The Spanish navy is no match for the British navy, and the long Atlantic coastline of Spain is vulnerable, as the British prove by bombarding it. The Spanish Canary Islands and Spanish Sahara are vulnerable to British attack, and are strategically valuable. They would make excellent anti-submarine bases if the British can capture them.

Also, the Spanish economy is a basket case after 3 years of civil war. Some people on the losing side of that civil war (the Republicans) still want a rematch, though most of them are just tired of war. The Spanish government will need to keep an eye on the home front, especially if the economy goes bad or if the war goes badly for Spain.

The Spanish economy does add some important natural resources to the Axis. Spain isn't quite as devoid of natural resources as Italy. At the same time, it makes some Axis shortages of natural resources worse. Spain is a net importer of food and very dependent on the outside world for oil.

The Spanish army is experienced from the three-year civil war that ended in early 1939, but not very well equipped. They have a lot of mid-1930s-era Italian Fiat CR-32 fighter biplanes, along with a few early model Me-109s and 58 Heinkel 111 bombers, along with some captured Soviet planes from the Republican airforce. Most of the Soviet planes are useless due to lack of spare parts. Spain is license-building more Fiat CR-32s in spite of their obsolescence.

The Spanish tank force is composed mostly of Italian tankettes. They do have some Panzer 1s—some of them adapted locally to take a 20 millimeter gun instead of the normal machine guns. Potentially Spain's best tanks are a little over 100 Soviet T-26s captured from the Republicans. Those tanks are somewhat limited in practice due to a shortage of spare parts. Spain has a couple of locally developed light tank prototypes with 45 millimeter guns as the main armament (the Verdeja series tanks),but nothing in production.

Historically, the Spanish planned to build 1000 Verdeja 1's starting in 1940, but economic difficulties kept them from it. They kept designing more advanced versions of the series into the 1950s, but never produced more than a handful of any of the designs

The Spanish army has a fair amount of artillery, though the quality is uneven and the mixed origins of the guns complicates ammunition supply. A little over half of the artillery was supplied by Italy, somewhat less than half by Germany, and the rest consists of captured Republican artillery. The Republican artillery is for the most part nearly useless. The Soviets supplied the Republicans with artillery by cleaning the obsolete and few of a kind out of their arsenal—including artillery captured from the Turks back in the late 1800s.

Spanish small arms are the same mixed bag—over half Italian, with a considerable amount of German material, and a large, but often useless stockpile of ex-Spanish Republican small arms.

The Spanish navy had six cruisers, twenty-three destroyers, four submarines, and quite a few smaller ships. Spanish shipyards were capable of building fair-sized warships, though not in large quantities.

Spain had some ability to build weapons of its own. Besides ship-building and license-building of the CR-32, during the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish Republicans set up workshops to make small arms, artillery and ammunition. They intended to eventually expand to building tanks and aircraft. The civil war ended before they got tank and airplane production going, but they did develop some ability to make spare parts for existing tanks and planes. Those workshops were captured by the Nationalists, though not necessarily in working order.

Overall, the Spanish armed forces are somewhat more poorly equipped than the Italians when they enter the world war. On the other hand they are for the most part experienced fighters, and some of the tribesmen recruited from the Rif area of Spanish Morocco are among the best non-European soldiers in the world. The Spanish army won't have a lot of offensive punch but they will fight hard.

On the positive side for the Axis, Spain holds both sides of the entrance from the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. The British hold Gibraltar, but weakly. Spain can make it very difficult to resupply Gibraltar. They can probably eventually take it with German and Italian help, essentially sealing off the western Mediterranean from the Allies.

In Axis hands, the Canary Islands and Spanish Sahara will make shipping around Africa much more difficult. German planes and submarines in the Canary Islands would be able to dominate a rather large chunk of the Atlantic.

Also on the positive side for the Axis, the British threat to Spain and the Canary Islands gives Mussolini a hobby in the summer of 1940. Historically, Italy spent most of the summer building up for a planned invasion of Yugoslavia projected for late summer or early fall of 1940. Historically Germany put a stop to that little bit of foolishness, but the Italians then invaded Greece later in the year, at the worst possible time of the year, with inadequate time to prepare, and after having demobilized 500,000 troops for the fall harvest. In this scenario the Italian commitments to Spain preempt the Italian buildup in the Balkans, though it doesn't keep Mussolini from constantly changing his focus and making Italian military planning even more chaotic than it already was.

The Course of the War: Historically, after France fell the Germans spent much of July waiting for Britain to sue for peace. They did make some preparations to invade Britain, but those preparations were slow and tentative. Britain was vulnerable to a German invasion, but it got stronger fast. British aircraft production was hitting its stride now, and the defeated and disorganized troops evacuated from Dunkirk were being rearmed and reorganized. The US sent 500,000 rifles, and around 900 artillery pieces to speed up the process.

Spain's entry into the war does several things: It makes the British shipping crisis more severe. The Mediterranean is no longer a practical route even for emergency shipments as Spanish, Italian and German forces build up along both sides of the western entrance. Ships entering the Mediterranean face a gauntlet of planes, mostly Spanish and Italian at first, but also including some German. They also face heavy artillery from both shores, plus Spanish efforts to mine areas outside of the range of their guns.

With Gibraltar under siege and unable to build up an offensive capability, the Italians are able to concentrate on British forces in Egypt, and the British fleet operating from Egypt. That makes and already difficult British task in the eastern Mediterranean even more difficult.

How does Spain's entry affect the Battle of Britain? Defending Spain, and especially the Canary Islands is somewhat of a drain on the Germans, and in exactly the areas they are the weakest—naval power and sealift logistics.

On the other hand, the British attacks on Spain and their threat to the Canary Islands points out to Hitler the necessity of mounting at least a serious threat to invade Britain, if for no other reason than to keep British forces tied down while the Spanish, Germans and Italians built up their defenses in Spain and the Canary Islands. Preparations for Sea Lion move into high gear sooner than they did historically.

The fact that the Canary Islands are a potential place of refuge makes German surface raiders bolder. It also gives German U-boats an additional place to run to and eventually resupply.

By the second week in July 1940, the Germans are focused on parallel efforts to take Gibraltar, to make the Canary Islands secure and to either take Britain or intimidate it into surrendering.

Of the three efforts, the one against Gibraltar is by far the smallest, but it advances more quickly than the others. The main German problem is the logistics of supplying a couple of divisions across most of Spain, with its inadequate rail system and non-standard rail gauge. Once the German troops are in place, the British simply don't have enough men to defend Gibraltar, and in spite of the great natural defenses most of Gibraltar falls in early August 1940, though a few British troops hold out deep in the interior of the rock.

The Battle of Britain relegates the efforts of both sides in the Canary Islands to a sideshow. The Spanish and Italians are still building up their airforces in the area, but as the Italians proved historically in early fighting in the eastern Mediterranean, Italian equipment and training simply wasn't good enough to pose a major threat to the Royal Navy. By early August, a small contingent of German fighters and bombers are operating out of the Canary Islands, having flown there along a chain of bases across Spain, Morocco, and the Spanish Sahara. German submarines are operating around the islands.

The Germans start the air part of the Battle of Britain about three weeks earlier than they did historically, mainly because Hitler wasted less time dithering about it due to the British threat to the Canary Islands.

The Spanish Government wants German equipment, but they are far less happy to see German troops in Spain and in the Canary Islands. The Spanish ask for more modern German planes and tanks. Historically, Spain built Me109s and Heinkel 111s under license later in the war. In this situation those planes are needed more urgently and the German sell Spain a few dozen of each, along with licenses to build them. It will take a while for the Spanish to get them into production, and the rate will inevitably be low given Spain's small industrial base. Spain will be dependent on Germany for arms to some extent even if they do an excellent job at mass production.

The Germans also pass along a hundred captured ex-French R35 tanks and a few more Soviet T26s that had been impounded in France after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Neither of those tanks are particularly useful due to lack of spare parts, but the Germans are too short of tanks themselves to give much more at the moment.

The loss of Gibraltar is a major political blow to the British. The Japanese become more aggressive and threatening in the Far East. Iraqi nationalists begin to see an opportunity for real independence. The Turks, who have never been quite reconciled to the loss of their former province of Mosul in what is now Iraq, eye that province hungrily. It also makes Malta much more difficult to defend, and if that falls it will add to the impression of British weakness, of an empire being dismantled piece-by-piece.

The Soviets look at what they see as a nearly defunct British Empire and toy with the idea of grabbing a share alongside the Fascist powers. Stalin knows that any such alliance would be tactical only, but he weighs whether the added territory would offset the disadvantages of having the British knocked completely out of the war and freeing additional Axis forces for an eventual attack on the Soviets.

So, we've got an earlier start to the Battle of Britain, more pressure on British shipping, and a dangerous perception of British weakness. There is also another factor in this situation: Britain is running out of hard currency to buy food and weapons. Historically they ran completely out of money in early 1941, and were only able to carry on the war with the help of the US Lend-Lease program. Anything that costs the British additional money moves the time of British "bankruptcy" forward a little. That doesn't matter too much unless it gets pushed forward enough that the US isn't politically ready to do Lend Lease yet. In that case, things could get very interesting.

Where do you think this is going to go? Do we see an actual German attempt to invade Britain? Does Britain survive and invade the Canary Islands? Are the British able to hand the Italians the defeats in North Africa that they were able to historically? Hopefully we'll start to see next issue.

Posted on Feb 3, 2012.

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