Why didn't Spain join the Axis in WWII?

Because generally speaking, Franco was a retardedly short-sighted moron. Had he allowed the Wehrmacht to take Gibraltar and cut off the british + allowed the Luftwaffe to use spanish airspace for resupplying Rommels' troops, the war would have been over before 1943

point being their beliefs were similar enough that they could be bros

I'll give him this though, he did try to broker a separate peace between the western allies and the axis in 1943. But then in 1944 he did another heelface turn and gave the axis the finger completely. What an idiot really

Having similar beliefs doesn't male you bros, or else Stalin and Tito would be bros. Nixon also separated China from Russia.

The issue is geopolitics, not similar beliefs. This is why the U.S. and Israel both adore Saudi Arabia.

their similar beliefs shaped the geopolitical circumstances they were responding to which ultimately pushed them together

Obviously not, since it didn't "push" Franco with them, and lead to the Grand Council of Fascists deposing Mussolini.

In retrospect, Mussolini gained nothing from his alliance with Hitler, and had nothing to gain, unless it was averting an invasion from Hitler, but really that wasn't likely.

Italian Fascism was more authoritarian than totalitarian imo

spains situation was different obviously they had just fought a civil war and again the similarities between mussolini and hitler's ideologies made their alliance natural had spain not been in such dire circumstances i think they would likely have fought for the axis

Why are you so fixated on ideology? Of the three, only Hitler had some transnational concern, the Aryan race.

He seems pretty smart since his state survived wwii and he stayed in power

>Had he allowed the Wehrmacht to take Gibraltar and cut off the british + allowed the Luftwaffe to use spanish airspace for resupplying Rommels' troops, the war would have been over before 1943

You have no idea what you're talking about. Please educate yourself, at least briefly, before making insane comments like that.

dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a348413.pdf

Most of Rommel's supply problems came not from British action, but the simple problem of trying to project force all the way from Tripoli hundreds of kilometers where there are no railroads. The entirety of British resupply except for two runs to Malta, were done through Suez, which Spain cannot disrupt. The Luftwaffe cannot make an impact east of Tripoli from bases in Spain ,their planes are simply too short ranged.

It wouldn't have even had a decisive impact on the North African theater, let alone the larger war.

Mussolini completely jumped the gun and thought Britain was out in 1940. Jumping into the war would at least secure him a place at the peace conference, and help him reign in Hitler and grab some loot for himself.

And then of course, it turns out Britain was in it for the long haul.

>The Luftwaffe cannot make an impact east of Tripoli from bases in Spain
Ha. More like Algiers.

overseas latin territories, deflationary atlantic buffer as a third party to europe-america

First off, Algeria is Vichy territory, not Spanish, and giving it to Spain is likely to cause trouble with Vichy, and say, have their fleet sail off to join the Brits.

Secondly, it's a bit over a thousand kilometers from Algiers to Tripoli, and futher besides if you want to make it worth a damn in the war effort. So pretty much none of your inventory can do a damn thing from there. Plus, plane formations are enormous guzzlers of fuel and supplies, and the big bottleneck in North Africa is your transport capacity, not overall supplies. Ideally, you want planes out of North Africa to be helping out in NA, but again, Spain's participation for that is irrelevant.

>thank's for the bomber runs, we'll manage from here

Franco obviously made the right decision. So we can all see who is the moron here.

Because the Moor fears the Lusophone

You misunderstand.
I am saying that the Luftwaffe Taking off from Spain cannot even make it as far as Tripoli. They could, at best, be reaching Algiers.

Why would Franco want to get into WWII? Think about the cost in money and lives and the risk. Franco isn't going to wager that with nothing to gain.

>allowed the Luftwaffe to use spanish airspace for resupplying Rommels' troops,
Why though?

>short sighted
>Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany got BTFO in the 40s, whilst Francoist Spain survived until the fucking 1970s

>be Franco
>have seated yourself as the ruler of Spain, but at the expense of alienating the left-leaning population from yourself, who would rush to any form of excuse for a Civil war part two
>country is also on the brink of famine and needs heavy infrastructure works for your army to be able to tour the country and hold it together
>"lol lemme just join this war real quick, just to strain the country some more, send the army out of the country so the leftists are free to do their uprising, ans basically make the whole country hate me for seeking land grabs when I should be worrying about how many people are dying from famine"

Seems about right?

Franco's Spain was still exhausted from the Spanish Civil War, with not much in the way of a well-resourced army after 3 years of fighting and over 500,000 dead.

The Population was simply not going to stomach another 4 years of war and possibly 1 million+ more dead, so Franco stayed out to focus on repairing the damage that was already done to Spain.

If ifs and buts were candies and nuts, we would have a merry Christmas.

Oh, yes. But reaching Algiers would have very little impact on a war mostly fought in Libya. They could have made the Torch landings much rougher, but with Spain in the war, I doubt it would be attempted, and the allies would strike somewhere else.

You nailed it.

Franco apparently had just enough common sense to not do something insanely stupid.

>Nixon also separated China from Russia.
Kruschev did that when he said Stalin was shit and Mao got butthurt as fuck about it
>Muh revisionism

dude don't you get it history is a video game

Why the fuck did it take this long to get the obvious answer?

Mussolini was bro with the allies before Ethiopia tho. Ideology was by no means the reason for ww2 alliances.

by and large Veeky Forums is pretty stupid.

The first and second replies are also correct.

i havent read the rest of the thread.

there are stories in my family of making soup with a leather belt and some potato peels

>The entirety of British resupply except for two runs to Malta, were done through Suez,

This is utter bollocks.

Our supplies weren't coming from India, the weapons and ammunition and food were being manufactured/grown in Britain and said through the strait of Gibralter. Suez? You silly git.

because they just had a war.

No, they were being sent around Africa and up through suez, what to avoid Italian patrols.

hello eternal anglo, shilling another thread I see

Because Chamberlain and the French were fucking K.EKS and Mussolini saw this and figured if he stuck by Hitler they could get away with anything.