The importance of the Spanish civil war

Agree with Volga, no need for name calling. Gets us no where. Volga like the rest of us is obviously aware of the general directions of ww2 and has as much right to his theories as all of us. Take folk down with facts by all means but lets not get into insulting each other. The thread is an interesting one.

 

Sources of that, please?

I didn't wanted to accuse you of ignorance, My apologies .

The main aportation of the Spanish Civil war to the Italian war effort should have been the lessons they didn’t took from the Guadalajara Battle: They weren’t able to fight a “modern” war.

Battle of Guadalajara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I belive you would enjoy to read this (google traslation of an spanish traslation of an original english conference )

About the IMPLICATIONS OF THE ITALIAN INTERVENTION

We could look the Italian suplies to Franco in Spanish civil War:

Fighters: FIAT CR32.



And 12 Fiat G 50.



BOMBERS:

Savoia SM 81



And S M 79



Tanks: Fiat Ansaldo tankettes



Artillery: From WW I, as simple as this.

My question is What the italians could have done with more of these obsolete weapons?

Probably the 7500 trucks that Mussos send to Spain were the most harmful effort for him.

This thread is about the option of invade Turkey you gave. I think the members have read a lot about WWII.

If Hitler´s go shouth…

 

I was a Panzerblitzer as well. Great way to waste time instead of cutting the grass....

 

What oil and how are they going to get it back to Europe?

And how do you propose the Germans do this?

Really? What makes you think so?

And that makes it correct?

Or not.

 

Without a Turkish invasion, Southern Front revolved around Gibraltar and Malta...but only for the Axis. Allied shipping was routed the 'long way round', (Cape of Good Hope, Suez, Egypt). But for the Axis effort, Gibraltar and Malta meant no allied interference with their own supply effort.

Invasion of Turkey after Greece and before Russia would have solved all of these problems, (Oil, logistics back to Germany, holding Russia in place) in one stroke. Further, why invade Russia in 1941? This scenario could easily have occurred with a general invasion of Russia in 1942. As well, we may safely assume that Russia will NOT pre-empt, given the attitude of Stalin, so Germany gets to pick their moment in Russia with leisure, and another front to launch the invasion from. Turkish military eas even more antiqued than the Italians, with no airpower to speak of and naval support not much better either....anyway, it certainly used to work in "Third Reich", designed by none other than JOHN PRADOS, a man well known for hiss theoretical work with design of tactical concept manuals for the military...

Look, instead of relying on the rest of us to come up with the goods, why don't you contribute to this debate, other than in "Monty Python" fashion with endless rounds of "Yes it is, no it isn't"

Is this the right room for an argument?

Sorry efestos....and to all others. Debate is just that, but some find old fashioned debate an affront. To my mind, it's the only way we learn anything, by swapping ideas....biofeedback. I welcome all comments, but destructive comments are not debating......("An argument is a collected series of statements intended to establish a proposition...it's not just saying No it isn't...Yes it is!.......")

 

I thought this has been discussed here to the death? There was no oil in the Middle East in this time frame. The oil wells which we know of now were not tapped back in 41'. Ironically, the Italians sat on oil in Ethiopia. Lot of good that did them.

Lets not even begin to discuss how this oil would find its way back to Germany...

 

Sloniki...Good morning

My understanding of oil and the middle East revolves not around the ability to transport it, (something control of the Dardenelles would fix), but rather on British treaties in the area and their creation of the modern state of Iraq.

Knowledge of oil in the region was, in fact a very closely guarded secret. One must remember that the Grand Fleet were converting to oil fired ships, rather than coal fired. Securing a good supply of oil suddenly became a strategic necessity for the English, hence their interest in the region and their seemingly 'wasteful sideshow' operations to push the Ottomans out.

Prior to 1914, oil wasn't really much of a strategic commodity. The economic prize of the day was coal.

Were this not the case, how can you justfy the descision of a country that relied on it's fleet to impose it's foreign policy to convert to oil?

 

As for the Maltese falling quickly, this is not speculation.

Since interest is waning, I'm not going to bother posting sources for that one, not unless specifically requested anyhow.

 

Hello Volga,

Yes, I understand this. What I fail to grasp is how the conquest of Turkey and the rest of the Middle East would relieve Germany of their oil shortage. As far as im concerned the oil might as well have been waiting for the Germans in a lake and all they had to do was scoop it up, but getting it back to Germany was the issue. So whats the point of going south if there is no way to get the oil back to Germany even if the Germans were aware of it existence?

 

I realise communications in the Mid-East were noot that crash hot, but surely something could have been done. Germany had little trouble mobilizing construction labour, and with a pronounced lack of opposition in the area, communications may well have been established quite quickley....

In any case, lets just thank sweet christ they didn't do this, for the sake of Russia as much as anything. An early 1942 start to Barbarossa, with a powerful German 'gruppe' right on the doorstep of Baku doesn't even bear thinking about...

 

It was Lybia, in the Med, very near from Italy,
What about IRAK? and Barheim? see this link : 30´s oil in middle east

I'm not sure but I belive the Germans known these contracts.


May be the way to send all that oil to Germany:

Port Aqaba (Red sea) - Suez - (Marseille , Genoa, Venice, Black Sea - Denubio - Rhin) It shouldn´t be so difficult to repair and improve the old railways to Aqaba. Or create new pipelines. (It wasn't so easy: 5 years to bui8ld the pipeline to med From Saudi Arabia).


I still believe it was impossible for Adolf to win that war: Germany had 14% world industries against, 45% USA, 14% England, 14,5% Soviet Union.

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Agreed on the last point. Germany's only hope for victory lay in cracking each Allied country in Europe one by one, defeat in detail, and pushing their morale to the point where surrender came from governments, not from a military source.

1942 was the crucial year for the quick victory, and with the passing of that year, Germany was getting weaker, whereas the Allies were getting stronger.

Yet, had Stalin decided to back his fellow dictatorship, I really can't see how the Allies could have done it. Or, ignoring the Soviets altogether to concentrate their resources would also have made a German victory more than possible.

Lets thank providence that Hitler was a gambler, and that Stalin's regime had a vice-like grip on the Soviet people that turned to furious indignation at the audacity of Barbarossa. It's the only thing we have to thank Stalin for.

Good onya Uncle Joe!

 

After the Munich agreement none should pact whit Adolf.

JAJAJAAJA, actually Hitler should have launched FELIX and not only for Gibraltar!!!! I've read about this in Paul Preston's "FRANCO " but I've no idea of the value of the Spanish's Tungsten exports. Or ist Just Propaganda?

 

Efestos;
OK I am starting with the Beevor account and this will not be the last. I met a Spanish Lady on campus back in the 80s and we got into a conversation about all that. She was unabashedly Pro Franco-something way UN PC in that most PC of places. It was her contention that the Republican cause would have gone the way of the Kerensky government should they have prevailed, and that the Nation was much better off-in the long run-under Franco. Interesting-but I will be doing my own reading.
JeffinMNUSA

 

Well, that is partly true. While the financial crisis in many western countries was starting to get better by 1936, countries such as France and Britain were still suffering from great instability inside their respective governments: Britain had huge social problems with the forces of Irish Secession, and France had massive riots from both the Extreme Right and the Extreme Left which gained power in 1936 under Léon Blum.

Originally, the countries of Europe had signed a pact of non-involvement with regards to the Spanish Civil War, with France, Britain, USSR, Germany, and Italy signing it. The problem is that the USSR, Germany, and Italy had all illicitly broken the pact and started to send in material and financial aid to Spain.

It is still argued over today about whether or not Germany and Italy were there just to test their WW2 weaponry, but personally I believe that Germany and Italy both had vested interest in keeping the Spanish gov't friendly so that they may prove useful against both France and Great Britain (remember Gibraltar and most of the Mediterrean Sea was controlled by the British)

 

Only true FDR haters will hold that position. The Great Depression was still going merrily along all over the place, Japan was probably the most effected but largely unknown in the west. It was FDR's advisers and the Republican Party (which he was trying to get to work with him) who had him "draw back on" Federal Spending. It was this policy which extended the Great "Depression", into the Roosevelt Recession.

The Roosevelt Recession is the name historians have given to the economic downturn of 1937-38, when FDR attempted to balance the budget by sharply cutting federal spending. In early 1937, production and profits had returned to their pre-Depression levels, although unemployment remained high. Responding to pressure from his advisors to rein in deficits, Roosevelt reduced the labor rolls of the Works Progress Administration and halted nearly all of the New Deal’s public works projects. Over the next year, unemployment rose 5% and manufacturing output fell by a terrifying 37%, returning the country to 1934 levels. (underline and bold mine)

Goto:

Will fiscal responsibilimania cause another Roosevelt Recession? : COMBAT!

 

1) Question :What were the social problems with the forces of Irish secession in Britain ?
2)Saying that the extreme left gained power in France in 1936,is,IMHO,very much exagerated .

 

Germany would not obtain a "quick victory" in 1942, even if captured the Baku oil fields (don't ask me how they would do this). And probably the Soviets would set fire in the whole thing before the Germans arrived, which would render them useless for years. Even doing this, the Germans would still face Soviet resistence for a good time, and even if they defeated the Soviets, this would not meant the war would be won by them. The air war would still be decisively lost by Germany, D-Day and/or any other invasion in the continent would proceed, and Germany would be nuked if still be creating problems in '45.

Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze, page 400:

Germany's strategic dilemma in the summer of 1940 was not merelyhow to defeat Britain. The problem was how to neutralize Britain beforeAmerica could intervene decisively on its side. Unleashing the U-boatsagainst the Anglo-American umbilical cord was certainly the most directapproach to this problem. But it was not quick-acting and it was thestrategy that bore the highest risk of bringing down upon Germany thefull weight of American power

Page 403 of the same book:

Alarmed by Germany's bid to overturnthe balance of power in Europe, the Roosevelt administration, backedby a bi-partisan majority in Congress, took urgent steps to transformthe United States into the pre-eminent military superpower that itremains today. The sequence of events was rapid. On 16 May 1940,three days after Kleist's Panzer Group A had broken through on river Maas, President Roosevelt put before Congress the proposal toconstruct the world's largest military-industrial complex, a manufactur-ing base capable of supplying the United States with no less than 50,000aircraft per year. Roosevelt picked this number out of the air and itwas unclear how it would be put into practice. But he made his point.The Luftwaffe and the RAF, even in their wildest moments, had neverconceived of aircraft production on this scale. 'Fifty thousand per year'was less a planning target than a statement of American industrialsupremacy. Only a few weeks later, Congress approved the Two OceansNavy Expansion Act, which laid the foundations for the vast carrier-fleets with which the United States still projects force into every cornerof the globe. There followed over the summer the unprecedented intro-duction of a peacetime draft, designed to raise a trained force of 1.4 million men. By 1941, America, a nation still at peace, was produc-ing almost as much weaponry as either Germany or Britain and wasdoing so whilst at the same time enjoying the first sustained increase incivilian consumption since the late 1920s. What was ominous from the German point of view was that thisenormous accumulation of force was ultimately directed across theAtlantic, in support of Britain and its war against Hitler. Britain'swillingness to go on resisting Germany depended critically on theassumption that the United States would provide it with massive materialaid. At first, of course, Britain would have to pay. Britain, unlike Ger-many, was not bankrupt. In 1939 it was still a large internationalcreditor with foreign assets estimated at c. $5 billion (15-20 billionReichsmarks), enough to match an entire year of German armamentsoutput with purchases from abroad. But to defeat Germany, Britainwould clearly need far more. The premise of British strategy wastherefore, as Churchill put it to Roosevelt, that Britain would pay for asmuch as it could, but that 'when we can pay no more you will give usthe stuff all the same'. Perhaps not surprisingly, Roosevelt did not replyto this bold statement of British dependence. The tortured politics of World War I war debts were still fresh in the memory. Britain was tobe driven to the point of financial exhaustion before Congress openedthe floodgates of lend-lease in the spring of 1941. London, therefore,had every reason to be nervous. But Churchill's gamble was clearlybased on a fundamentally correct strategic assessment. Roosevelt hadhad his heart set on a major American contribution to the air effort

Page 668:

By any reasonable estimation, Hitler's declaration of war on theUnited States sealed the fate of Germany. The economic and militaryforces arrayed against the Third Reich by early 1942 were overwhelm-ing. As we have shown, this fatalistic view was shared by all those mostclosely involved with the management of the German war effort up tothe Moscow crisis. Udet of the Luftwaffe, Fromm of the army, Thomasof the Wehrmacht high command, Todt in the Armaments Ministry,Canaris in intelligence, Rohland and his colleagues in the Ruhr, all cameto the same conclusion. All these men had thrown in their lot. But they were not ignorant of the basic trends of earlytwentieth-century history. They were as convinced as the vast majorityof their contemporaries of the pivotal importance of the United Stateseconomy. None of them doubted that once American industrial capacitywas mobilized - and they were fully aware of the measures that hadalready been taken in 1940 and 1941 - Germany's situation would beworse than that of 1918.

Such references let clear the German economical situation, and how the Germans were unable to defeat Britain, and much less Britain and the US together, without pillage the Soviet resources and wait some years to adjust it's industry (hey, that already makes a Germany victory highly unlikely!). If Germany tried to take the British domains in the Middle East, it would lack the necessary infrastructure, and would still need to keep very large troop contingents in it's Eastern borders to counter a possible Soviet attack. And even in an unlikely scenario were Germany obtains such resouces, they would not be enough to confront neither the US or the British, and much less a possible Soviet enemy, that would be MUCH stronger in such reality.

As for the Soviet resistance in the wartime: Hitler expected a very quick campaign against the Soviets. His goal was to destroy the Red Army in the border military districts, and conclude the campaign in some 3 months. The risk of such operation was tremendous, and a fail couldn't happen. Unfornately for him, it happened, and it happened by German incompetence. Lack of understanding of the Soviet potential was the main reason. And while the Soviets certainly had their momments of fear, today we can see the Germans were unable to achive their military objectives. After the Soviets kicked the Germans away from their capital, the risk of a moral colapse by Stalin was unlikely. And was even more unlikely because there was no sense in just give all the economic rich regions of the country to Hitler just to save human life (actually he already had most of them). Stalin was not the kind of people you would expect this, and anyway there would be no sense, because the Nazi genocide in the Soviet population was already know by the people in the Politburo, and without Ukraine the country would starve. The only way would be fight as long as possible. A good morale boost was the US and Britain were also in the war against Germany, and were supplying the USSR with everything it needed, so the Soviets had every reason to persevere despite their serious situation.

 

Reading through this thread only now and just have to comment to you:

Offer a silent blessing to your Mr Parker, for I spent one beautiful Spring day in the New York Public Library reading (or trying to read) (Marx) Leinin -"On Imperialism".
No, not forien affairs: rather banks takin over national economies. Ugh! Forever lost, one fine day.

 

... they've killed a lot of people in the process... (and returning to the thread) .... including many thousands of spaniards during the SCW. The way that, still today, the PCE and PSOE state they fought for democracy, with oustanding propaganda success, should be subject of study.

Must say the other side was equally evil. Both sides feed the increasing paranoia of the other side: The SCW is a good example of how relatively few extremists brought disaster to a country despite the bulk of the population just wanted peace.