Why didn't Spain join the Axis after the Spanish Civil War? Germany certainly helped Franco out quite a bit...

Why didn't Spain join the Axis after the Spanish Civil War? Germany certainly helped Franco out quite a bit, it seems odd that he wouldn't repay the favor. Was Spain simply too exhausted and ruined after the Civil War to participate in WWII? Or did Franco see that Hitler was dead set on starting a war he couldn't win?

Franco wasn't so Dumb as others dictators.

Nazi Germany's Pagan LARPing and anti-Semitism was too much, even for Franco. He was so horrified after learning of the Final Solution that he immediately reversed restrictions on Jewish immigration and Spain wound up saving tens of thousands of Jews.

Spain hadn't even started to recover from the Civil War by the time WWII started.

I've heard a bit about this. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I read somewhere that after Franco's rise to power, Hitler sent Nazi scientists to measure the skulls of Spaniards or something and declared that they were Aryans or something. Franco and the other Spaniards looked at this as being extremely bizarre and probably autistic. Mussolini felt the same way about Hitler, he thought he was a bit of a spaz. Basically Hitler ruined fascism forever by being such a fucking weirdo obsessed with mythology.

Pretty much. I must admit that I admire the ideas Primo de Rivera laid out in his writings. He also more or less predicted that the Nazis' rebelling against everyone and everything would ultimately be their undoing.

Can you give me a link to his writings online?

Really? I guess I'm not too familiar with him but I've always heard that de Rivera was a pretty shit-tier political leader, and that his theories on fascism were pretty nonsensical. I've heard good things about some of the Italian fascist theories, though I have yet to actually read any of their works.

its probably true. Nazism was fascism+ belief in a racial ethnostate. The others such as Mussolini, Franco and Horthy were all kind of left scratching their heads Hitlers strange beliefs based upon 19th century pseudoscience and atlantian myths.

Franco died of natural causes in 1970.

Mousolini was executed in 1945.

Franco made the right call.

Both, but also because Portugal had remained neutral

1975*

Spain was ruined after the civil war and that played a big part in him choosing to not go to war. But Franco understood how the war was going and regularly would switch his foreign advisors for pro German or pro British depending on how the war went. Franco was simply more interested in neutrality, he was being fed British bribe money and also kept the Germans of his back by making more demands every time he met with Hitler. Simply put Franco was only interested in formal neutrality, he did a volunteer division to the eastern front as he did see the USSR as an enemy but was careful to ensure this division never fought Britian and America so to avoid they wouldn't declare war on him. Franco was smart to avoid ww2 and mostly interested in staying neutral, there's very few scenarios I can see with him joining the axis. Also Franco and Hitler did not get along at all, they hated each other.

>Also Franco and Hitler did not get along at all, they hated each other.
This is true of almost every other ally he had in the war. Mussolini hated him, Mannerheim didn't really like him, the Japanese didn't like him and felt he was pushing them into a war they couldn't win, Franco didn't like him, Szalasi (Hungary) didn't like him. Shit, post-Barbarossa, his own fucking generals hated his guts. Kinda makes me wonder how he rose to power and accumulated such a cult following when even the people that shared his ideology couldn't stand the guy.

Hitler is the perfect example of why autistic people shouldn't be allowed to lead countries. Imagine what an amazing place Germany would have been if literally anyone but him or his sperglord butt-buddy Himmler had been the leader of the NSDAP.

I thought Mussolini hated him at first but grew to like him

I think Mussolini only grew to like him after Italy started getting BTFO and he needed his help to avoid being captured

Id like someone who saved my ass and pulled me out of Rome before getting executed by my own people as well

Franco realized the country wasn't ready for another after just finishing its own civil war, so he made outrageous demands like all of Morocco he knew Hitler wouldn't agree to for fear of alienating the collaborationist French government

Because leaders of countries were actually a smart people compared to average day plebian

>Why didn't Spain join the Axis after the Spanish Civil War

1. Spain was devastated and was in no position to get involved
2. Franco wasn't really ideologically aligned with Hitler or Mussolini, he was more of an old school traditionalist whereas Germany was all about muh new order and whatnot.

Germany and Italy helped because they preferred a right-wing Spain to a left-wing Spain, that's really about it.

Pretty sure while Hitler was probably the most shocking and autistic of the group, they all held pretty similar beliefs. I mean eugenics was huge back then particularly with the intellectuals that influenced Adolf, Musso & Franco.

So many people just don't fucking get Franco. Franco was like a modern day Don Quijote.He was a sickly weak manlet that was obsessed about old values and the monarchy.
When he tried to join the army they laughed at his ass but with his sheer power of will he became a war heroe and became the youngest general in Europe since Napoleon.
He saw democracy as weak.Anything outside of a monarchy was a total abomination.He loathed atheists,masons and in general non catholics.
He never wanted to rule Spain to begin with.Mola and Sanjurgo died and he was the last man standing from the coup. And once he took power he planned on restaurating the monarchy but he saw Juan as an extremelly progressive person so he chose to groom his son to replace him.
He didn't like ruling.He loathed Madrid and went to Ferrol every chance he got.Despite ruling Spain for 30 years he didn't have a single corruption scandal. He saw himself as a patch and he expected Juan Carlos to be an absolute monarch just like he was.He took succession seriously and that is why he dished the carlist candidate.
On the other hand you have Mussolini a socialist,fedora tipper that hated catholicism and created a cult around his persona. And Hitler a person that decided to put war resources on genociding jews, the lider of a party full of nordic larpers, a vegetarian and a drug addict.
Franco loathed them both as he loathed Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. Because those people were just left wing nationalist and by left wing I mean any movement derived from the French revolution.
He was a person with XVIII century values which saw foral law and the monarchy as the pilars of politics.He would have only allied himself with Hitler if he had won the war the same he did with the US.

>Why didn't Spain join the Axis after the Spanish Civil War?

Spain had nothing of value to contribute. They were still recovering from a civil war, you know.

> Spain was in no position to help anyway
Here's a question, besides the whole German expansion for "breathing room" thing. What would have happened if instead of launching the war when they did, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain spend just a couple extra years rebuilding/building up and if the Soviets decided to invade Europe would they not be seen as defenders of Europe rather than aggressors?

Wouldn't everybody turn against the Communists? Or was the politics that set in stone that they would have fought the Axis and destroyed them no matter what they did?

>If the soviets decided to invade
The problem is there's very little evidence of Soviet intentions to invade Europe.

Germany didn't expect the UK and France to declare war on them after annexing Danzing.He thought they would just ignore him like they had been doing before.And Japan needed oil so they would have gone to war either way

Besides their amasing at the borders (or do you think they only did that because of their agreement with Hitler to split the country they were about to invade?), surely Stalin's intention was always global communism and not just taking the Balkans etc? Or was that restricted to Trotsky & Lenin?

Why would Stalin invade Europe. He wasn't an internationalist nor a retard.

Remember that Franco wasn't an absolute dictator at that time he was the head of a right coalition.He had Basque separatists to think about, carlists who wouldn't hesitate to replace him with their king, the Falange were co opted by him but weren't his biggest fans. He really only had the military and old school bosses and industrialists for support.

They invaded Finland,the Baltics and Poland.Isn't that enough evidence to you? lmao

The Nazis were too radical to survive in a prolonged peace. This doesn't necessarily mean that they'd be doomed, but they'd have to adapt, and autocratic regimes are shit when it comes to adaption.

Spain was pretty shit before the war, just imagine after it

>He had Basque separatists to think about
No he didn't.ETA was nonexistant at the time.He had to worry about caquis and little else as Carlists only had support in Navarra and Alava and they calmed the fuck down after he gave them the fueros back

...

The Soviet Union invaded Finland and the Baltic countries, they invaded Poland, and it stands to reason that they likely would have tried something in the Balkans before taking on the big powers in Europe. I'll remind you that the explicit goal of Comintern was to "spread the Revolution" throughout the world, by force if necessary.

>He wasn't an internationalist
What? "Comintern" was literally "Communism International." The Soviet Union had already been bullying a bunch of literally whos in northern Asia, and then moved on to fringe European countries that he thought he could annex without anyone giving much of a shit (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). He was just as bad as Hitler when it came to gobbling up shit, the only difference is that no one seemed to care because he wasn't doing it to white people (yet).

You know how in Victoria II you can annex territory in Asia and/or Africa and nobody cares, but if you start picking on countries in Europe, suddenly everybody flips there shit and 10 different countries declare war on you at once? It's kinda like that.

Yeah and it's OP as fuck. I gobbled up all of Africa as Germany and nobody fucking cared, then used it as a massive powerhouse to crank out soldiers and ships and fucking Blitzkrieg'd all of Europe in the year 1880.

This.

This was because Stalin wanted the USSR to have borders as close as possible to those of the old Russian Empire as he saw them as ideal to protect the Soviet heartland. He invaded those for practical reasons to annex them into the USSR, not to set up independent communist governments. The main reason he invaded Finland was because he wanted to push the border back from Leningrad as it was literally about 20 miles away from it. Leningrad was one of the most important cities in the USSR and Stalin didn't want it that close to the Finnish border. Trotsky was the one who believed in spreading the Revolution all over the world, Stalin adhered to Bukharin's idea of building socialism in one country believing that eventually other countries would follow by example.

Stalin was a very "socialism in one nation" guy, but at the same time, he was building up his military machine to deal with the Nazis, whom he saw pretty realistically as a threat to his rule. The Soviet-German part of World War Two was the only theatre that was more or less inevitable, due to the extreme ideological incapability of the enemies. The only question was who was gonna backstab who first.

>being a literal Stalin apologist

Wew lad, we're reaching levels of "college-age socialist that has no idea what he's talking about" I didn't think were possible before

>Finland
>Poland
>Baltic countries
All defined as part of the Soviet sphere of influence in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Stalin was unlikely to pick a fight with a country like Germany unless they were on the verge of collapse.

>autistic drug addict declares war on everybody in the western hemisphere
>allies with an island that is declaring war on everybody in the eastern hemisphere
yeah what could possibly go wrong

But most of the "college-age socialists" hate Stalin and say he wasn't real communism.

>due to the extreme ideological incapability of the enemies

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were the same cake with different icing. Both had forced labor and concentration camps. Both had mass deportations of "undesirable" populations. Both had a secret police apparatus in place to quell dissent. Both had extreme restrictions on the press, and a cult of personalty built around "The Leader." The only real difference is that one spoke German whereas the other spoke Russian.

>Invading those doesn't count as proof of his aggression because he said he was going to do it on a piece of paper first!
Top fucking kek
They say that about absolutely every communist in existence when you point out what an utter piece of shit they were.

> Hitler just wanted room for his volk, that was rightful German clay
> Stalin just wanted room for his revolution, that was rightful Russian clay
They're all a bunch of grubs to be honest.

I'm not apologizing for Stalin you fucking retard. I'm challenging the retarded idea that Stalin's invasion of territory that Hitler literally allowed him to fucking have is indicative of the idea that "Stalin was about to invade every industrialized power in Europe even though his army was just defeated by a bunch of reindeer herders on skis." You have no idea what you're fucking talking about.

>Stalin wanted the USSR to have borders as close as possible to those of the old Russian Empire as he saw them as ideal to protect the Soviet heartland.

Did it occur to him that Russia would already have those borders if he hadn't helped destroy the aforementioned Russian empire?

Not saying he wasn't aggressive, just that the Germans approving of him being so was a large part of why he expanded and he was far too cautious of attacking Germany itself.

Why would he want to live under the old Russian Empire? Everyone hated it and wanted it gone since it was a backwater shithole kept together by a bunch of cucks with guns who thought the Tsar was a godlike figure.

Stalin in the 1930s was in the process of rebuilding the Red Army into the largest and most capable fighting force in Europe. Wars like Finland and Poland served only as a proving grounds for new equipment they were developing, and his treaties with Germany were simply a way to buy time for the officer and NCO corps to be replaced after the Purge and to hopefully get more materiel like the T-34s and SVT-38/40s to be produced before war. Did he plan on "conquering Europe?" I don't really know. But the fact that he conquered and essentially annexed (politically and ideologically if not literally) all of Eastern Europe after WWII proves that he was an opportunist. If he believed the Red Army was capable of defeating Germany and the rest of Western Europe, he absolutely would have made the first move. It simply wasn't, at the time, but by the end of WWII it was, and that's why he dropped the Iron Curtain.

>Did it occur to him that Russia would already have those borders if he hadn't helped destroy the aforementioned Russian empire?
I wasn’t aware that Stalin led Russia in WWI and negotiated Brest-Litovsk.

Just because they used the same means doesn't mean they agree with the same ends.
One saw the world through the lens of class struggle, the other through racial struggle; both were irreconcilable.

Why would he want to live in the Soviet Union? Everyone hated it and wanted it gone since it was a backwater shithole kept together by a bunch of cucks with guns who thought that Stalin was a godlike figure.

>Soviet Union
>backwater shithole
Except you're wrong retard. The Soviets educated the population, industrialized the country and made it a spacefaring superpower in 30 years. Much more than that lazy faggot Tsar Cuckolas could ever hope to accomplish.

He does remind you of a typical Mafia bruiser, a strong man ready to take his opportunities from Lenin's death, the prelude to WW2 and his post WW2 actions.

Actually, Russia was being industrialized by the 1900s. Were they backwards compared to Germany and UK? Yes, but had they not stopped industrializing, they would have become a economic super power.
Ironically, the Soviets slowed down industrialization after murdering millions of people when they were all about industrializing

>t. kulak

Your stupid leftyshit memes don't work over here. Debate or GTFO.

Stalin was an expansionist but a cautious one. Taking over a bunch of small, weak countries, once he had a guarantee the only country that could realistically stop him wouldn't intervene, sure. But war with Germany was another matter, he didn't want a fight he could actually lose.

I'm the original guy, disregard the kulakposter. The Russian Empire was developing, yes, but at pretty slow pace despite the rapid growth achieved by Witte's reforms. The population was still almost entirely functionally illiterate and the army was pretty outdated and ineffective. The conditions in these factories were even more horrendous than most others in Europe, and the disconnectedness of the government from the people and the opulence the Tsar lived in while this went on was not making the Russian people very sympathetic to him. Revolutionary ideas spread quickly through the ranks of these pissed off, angry people. I'm not even a tankie or a commie or anything, and I'm not saying Stalin did nothing wrong, but the Russian Empire died for a reason.

>Wars like Finland and Poland served only as a proving grounds for new equipment they were developing
*purges army*
*executes defected ex-communist soldier who swims to the soviet side with a warning that german invasion was imminent*
*ignores german massing of troops at the border*
*ignores intelligent services warning of german intentions*
makes me think...

Yeah he was much much dumber

Had he helped the axis they would have prolly won the war

No, they would not have. Taking Gibraltar would be incredibly costly for the Spanish and wouldn't fuck Britain over that much since Egypt could still be resupplied and reinforced through Suez. The Spanish Army would be virtually worthless to the Axis since they were depleted from the Civil War and the food and materiel required by them would be more trouble than it was worth. Additionally, it'd give the Allies a gigantic coastline to land on and they'd be cut to pieces by the US and British Armies and probably be an even easier fight than the Italian Campaign. Plus, you'd probably have a shit-ton of Republican rebels ready to help the Allies overthrow Franco and toss out the Krauts. It'd be a shitshow for the Axis and end up draining more German troops from the Eastern Front to garrison Spain. Franco would end up getting the Mussolini treatment at the end of it all. Franco was smart and avoided getting involved with Hitler's autistic fantasies. The Axis were doomed from the start.

Spain was devastated after the Civil War, it was depending on food aid from Argentina.

The Spanish population was exhausted and didn't have the stomach for more war, not to mention that they had nothing to offer to Hitler, just more coastline to defend from an Allied landing.

Hitler was shit, but Franco was also shit. Monarchy, reactionarism is a failure. Original Falangism, before Franco's bastardized version, would've saved Spain. Either them or the Stalinist faction of the Republicans. The only thing Franco ever did right was his foreign policy, otherwise he was completely shit on internal policy and is the reason why we have Catalonian problems now. Oh, and even worse, he appointed a fucking Bourbon. A. fucking. Bourbon.

Yeah USSR was taking back old Russian territory. Ideologies aren't the end all be all to policy, unless you're an autismo like Hitler who based his foreign policy on his ideology, and surprise surprise, he ended up having the entirety of Europe against him. USSR wouldn't have gotten half of Europe if Hitler didn't practically hand it to them.

This.

I don't really disagree with your point but if like to point out that the USSR still best Finland in the winter war.

Salazar would have likely joined the Allies securing enough coastline and ports and manpower for an allied invasion to quickly overthrow an exhausted regime that still had enemies in its own country and depended on buying Sudaca grains.

>Original Falangism
Autocracy caused a massive economic slowdown,
> before Franco's bastardized version, would've saved Spain.
No it wouldn't. Falangism was dumb >Either them or the Stalinist faction of the Republicans.
Dumb as fuck statement
>The only thing Franco ever did right was his foreign policy, otherwise he was completely shit on internal policy and is the reason why we have Catalonian problems now.
Lol nope. Catalans were actually more pro-Spain after Franco. Go and read about Companys. The constitution was aproved by 90% of the catalan census 40 years later
> Oh, and even worse, he appointed a fucking Bourbon. A. fucking. Bourbon.
> Le memes
You are really fucking dumb user

In the one reunion they both had, Hitler said that anyone would be crazy to accept Franco as an ally. It seems the spaniard wanted all french north Africa or something like that in exchange for sending some help in the war.

Original Falangism wasn't involved with Franco's dictatorship at all. It had to do with national syndicalism rather than reactionary monarchism. I can tell you're a dumb ancap cuck though.

Didn't Hitler speak well of the republican clique during at least one occasion? He lashed out Franco for aligning himself with aristocrats and the high clergy and said that the lefty republicans could be easily converted into national-socialists (if I remember correctly).

Mussolini explicitly stated that Italian Jews were Italian and would be treated as such, he literally didn't give a fuck about meme-tier eugenics and only wanted to make I T A L I A avanti again