simply, attack the French and British in the Middle East and thus forcing the 8th Army to send troops over there and thus weaken Rommels opposition in North Africa. or, send troops at the Kaukasus and attack the Russians from behind and cut of their supply line through Persia (Iran)
Longer-term, Germany gains another weak ally, like Italy, that at best will distract the Allies for a while, or at worst will require the commitment of German forces to save them. Or they could even follow tradition (Italy, Finland, Hungary, etc) and switch sides.
but if they are a weak country then germany doesn't have to fear much when it changes side. unlike italy, Turkey is far away from the Reich.
Finland fought against the Soviet Union from June 25th 1941 to September 4th 1944. That appears to make her a German ally. From 27th September 1944 to late April 1945, Finland (under pressure from the Allies, mainly the Soviet Union) fought against German forces in Lapland Ref: http://hkkk.fi/~yrjola/war/finland/summary.html Tom
It's a pet peeve of Christian that Finland and Germany were never formal allies during World War II, they just happened to be fighting a common enemy but they didn't even really cooperate much.
I don't think Turkey would have been as weak as Italy, sure they were not quite as technologically advanced as the Italians but they had more resources and would surely have been a lot more motivated to fight than the Italians had they joined. They could have provided Germany with an enormous boost in manpower and much needed raw materials as iron, steel and even oil. I really don't think Turkey ever seriously considered joining the Axis, but if they had? I'm sure the war would have lasted longer, much longer even.
Manpower means nothing if your equipment stinks. Look at the Hungarian contribution to WW2. Sure they would have been extra cannon fodder, but any country can only take so much of getting pounded. And they did not have a decent industrial core ready to start producing damn good equipment that was just coming off the drawing boards. End result? Turkey gets smashed, probably mostly by the USSR, with limited British involvement. Germany either sends Turkey equipment, thus weakening itself, or abandons them.
That is not quite true. Turkey had a growing industry initiated by the politics of Mustafa Kemal already producing large quantities of machinery, a helping hand from German engineers could fast turned this into an effective armament industry.
Ricky 's .....Longer-term, Germany gains another weak ally, like Italy, that at best will distract the Allies for a while, or at worst will require the commitment of German forces to save them. Or they could even follow tradition (Italy, Finland, Hungary, etc) and switch sides. It looks good , the turks with mustapha kemal would be serious opponents tough under equiped , and germany had an habit of not being too generous with supplying allied forces mustapha kemal , like franco was an intelligent man , he had fought with von sanders , believed , rightly than germany was a true friend of islam as against the evil English , he also could read the bottom line , his turkey did not need that war and probably could not afford it , so he did the best thing like franco , played both sides without intending to comit to anything .
Mustafa Kemal died in 1938, Turkey was led by Ismet Inönü during WWII. But in the spirit of Atatürk as a secular and modern state.
Didn't Hungry import a lot of it's equipment ? Probably because of its inability to produce equipment in both quality and large numbers.
Hungary's equipment was (mostly) crud. Their training was crud. Although included i the initial invasion of Russia they were removed from the front line by the Germans, as they were frankly poor. They did receive a load of equipment from Germany, that doubtless would have been better used in German, or even Romanian*, hands. Having said that, Hungary provided a fair amount of cannon fodder that helped stop the Soviet advances, and prevented the Germans from being too thin on the ground, so they can't be written off quite that easily. * The Germans were overall very happy with the performance of their Romanian allies
I don't know if the hungarian equipment was any good , in late 42 their gear as far as tanks , A.T. guns , and planes was frankly obsolete . more to the point , germans officers weren't very impressed with the caliber of their officers corps , same situation with the romanians ,with the often mentionned exception of a guy name Laskar . the russians army intelligence thought than the germans allied were underequiped ,badly led , with atrocious morale and prone to surrender after a token resistance . the only brothers in arms worth anything to the germans were the foreign Waffen SS , hiwis and the finns , wich were just as badly equiped though not actually under german high command . . .
