Yes or No Germans take Gibralter

An attack on Gibralter would have required the cooperation of Spain to be successful. I think the effort would have been better spent on Malta.

 

Well if the Germans had concentrated on Gibraltar and left Malta to the Italians the distraction of having Gibraltar attacked might have let the Italians take Malta. On the other hand since the British were reading the German's mail and not the Italians they may have been better off on their own.

 

If the Germans could reach Gibralter it is doomed. They could simply pull a "Sevastpol" on it. They could have brought in heavy siege artillery like the 54cm Karl mortars or the 80cm Gustav railway gun and pounded the place into submission. Most of the British defenses are only lightly protected from such heavy bombardment.
After that all the Germans need do is wait for the food to run out and the British are doomed.

 

Ok,this i believe is the most feasable,there is a big chunk of whatif and personalities involved would probably spoil any plan but its possible.

1.Vichy altough technically nuetral would allow the germans to use morrocco,the vichy are mad at the british for sinking their fleet,if after june 1941 they would be mad over syria and madagascar as well.I dont think the vichy are strong enough to stand up to germany.

2.Spain again is funny,there isnt just one way that it could play out,
Chances are that if there was a heavy sustained bombardment of gibralter over a few day the spainish would pull back from the border with gibralter,after all it isnt their war.
Parachutists dropping in on top of the rock is probably out of the question,german parachutes are poor and you cant land during an airraid or bombardment anyway.
Also there are a lot of port facilities in and around the area of cadiz,the germans in norway used trojen horses,there is no reason to think they wont use the same ploy again,theres your heavy equipment right there.just 50 miles away.

As for the politics there is no doubt that a german emmisary will be with franco at the time of any irregularities.
All the german emmisary has to do is persuade franco to order his troops not to fire,how could the british construe nonaction as an act of war?
britain will want to avoid war with spain as much as spain would want to avoid war with england.
Also for franco to pull out his toy gun and start shooting indians he has to know which are the bad guys,deceptions dont have to work in the long run,just a 24 hour grace period is needed,,then people can sit down and reassess the situation.

And thats not including concessions germany would be willing to make to vichy or spain.

 

Plus if there was artillery and airfields in morrocco it wouldnt be too hard to blockade gibralter.
Stick some subs at the staights and youre laughing.

 

More likely they would pull a "Singapore" rather than a "Sevastopol" AFAIK there are no fresh water sources in Gibraltar itself so water is much more likely to run out before food especially if the British station a large force there. But a siege needs a German presence within artillery range in mainland Spain or Spannish Marocco just across the straits, French Marocco may serve as a staging base but is too far away for a close siege. Also while trasporting super heavy artillery, and it's bulky ammo, over the Spannish railnet is relatively simple, shipping it across to Africa is not.

 

Franco kept Hitler at a distance when the war began, but finally agreed that if Hitler could defeat the UK, then he would allow them access to Gibraltar. Hitler was unwilling to give him the trade guarantees he wanted. The trade was key to his position, since Spain got allot of its most important trade from the allies.

 

In a light hearted aside if the Germans had invaded Gibraltar would they have been able to retain their equipment.
I have visited Gibraltar twice . On the first occassion the famous apes stole my expensive camera, on the second a pair of very good binoculars. The amount of time GB forces have been on the Rock these apes must have stolen a veritable arsenal .
The image of an ape wearing a German helmet, a Lieca Camera and on the loose with a variety of small arms will not go away.

 

The Kriegsmarine in no way had the capability of landing troops on Gibraltar.

The German paratroops and supporting transports were decimated at Crete. If the Germans tried a para drop in Gibraltar BEFORE Crete, then I would say they'd not have had the resources to invade Crete.

If a para drop in Gibraltar had been successful, I can think of a dozen or more heavy ships of the RN that would pretty much keep the place useless as a base for the Germans starting on day one. So not much chance for the Luftwaffe to settle in with Stuka's and Ju-88's for antishipping. Keeping U-Boats tethered to the Rock would not have been productive. Just makes ASW that much easier for the RN.

If the Germans tried an attack through Spain (likely to succeed), they would have been in range of any Battleships the RN wanted to put in play to make their lives miserable during their attack. Unlike the Japanese bombardment of Guadalcanal, the British had plenty of time to thoroughly map out the Rock in great detail for fire support missions.

 

There was no oil in north-africa,the nearest beying in Irak;the Uk did not use the Mediterranean from june 1940 to june 1943 ,their live-string was the connection with the USA and fot the Germans to use Gibraltar as a U-Boatbase would demand more U-Boats ,otherwise more in Gibraltar =less elsewhere.The disadvantages of operation Felix were bigger than the advantages.About Torch:the allies could have landed in Spain,if Spain was no more neutral..

 

Very true, the British Merchant Marine allowed Britain the conscious choice to import pretty much anything from anywhere, and unlike Germany (a major oil/grain/raw mateial have-not), was not forced to pursue large scale synthetic oil production, although there was a minor indigenous "shale oil" industry in Canada.

By comparison, British oil imports in 1939 were as follows:

46.2% - Caribbean - mainly Venezuela, but includes Trinidad and Mexico
30.8% - Middle East - Persia (Iran), & Iraq
19.2% - US
(the rest came from Rumania)

With Italy entering into the war in mid-1940, and the Central Med. a war zone, middle east oil became more expensive since it had to be shipped around the Cape. In consequence by 1942, no middle east oil was sent to the home islands, both Persian and Iraqi oil production/refining was scaled back short term (civil unrest didn't help), and that which was produced was used "in house", i.e. the MTO, plus some sent to India, especially after the loss of the Far East oil producers; NEI, Burma, Borneo and Malaya to the Japanese. So this is the picture by 1942:

60.0% - US,
40.0% - Trinidad, Venezuela and Mexico
(Rumanian oil purchases stopped in 1940, but they had accounted for only 4.2% of British imports that year)

By 1944, 79% of Britain's oil imports would be from the US; 21% from the Caribbean, as they were cheaper. The Suez Canal have been of no import to the UK for supplying the home islands (they had been shipping over 90% of all goods around the Cape since the opening days of the war), since Italy was holding Ethiopia and "air-patrolling" the southern entrance to Suez only warships and supply ships for the troops in Egypt used the canal, the UK didn't receive any substantial percentage of their oil from their holdings in the mid-east after 1940.

The British Isles themselves got most of their oil and petro-products from the US, still the world's leading oil exporter at the moment. The US supplied (from our own fields) nearly 75% of all the oil and its products used by ALL the western allies in the entire war. Note how very different the petro-world was then!

The Persian Gulf was not nearly as significant an oil producer in WWII as it is now. In 1939, the US accounted for 60.4% of GLOPAL PETROLEUM PRODUCTION, and Latin America another 15.3%, so more than three quarters of the world's petroleum production was in the New World (Western Hemisphere).

The USSR accounted for the largest single chunk of the remaining production, 10.6% (at that time).

Iraq & Persia (Iran) accounted for 5.4%.
the NEI (Dutch East Indies) 2.7%.
Romania 2.4%.
the British Empire (Malaysia, Burma, and British Borneo) 2.0%.

The Arabian and North African oil fields had not yet been found nor developed. UK imports of petroleum early in the war were running around 11-12 million metric tons. About half of this could be satisfied from Empire sources alone (Persia, Iraq, Malaysia, Burma, and British Borneo, as far as I know.) After June, 1940, they surely could get as much as they wanted of the NEI production (with the Dutch nation occupied), which could have covered the rest of the Commonwealth states and Dominions in the Pacific. But the US is a lot closer to the home islands, and they could get high quality refined product from there as well, so they probably got as much as they could afford from the US.

The British had been sending between 85 and 90% of their commercial shipping around the "Horn of Africa" since the outbreak of war, both to and from their dominions and commonwealth partners in the Pacific area. That Suez canal connection was most generally used for military shipments to the troops in Egypt and the RN in the Med., but the Levant area and eastern Mediterranean islands could be as easily supplied through the protectorates of Syria, Persia (Iran), and Iraq.

The UK also had cordite production plants for propellant established in Persia, India, Egypt, Pakistan, and Australia. If Gibraltar or Malta had fallen they wouldn’t need to be supplied as they were historically, and that was the bulk of the material shipped through the Straits of Gibraltar. If no Malta or Gibraltar to supply, it would be no loss to the RN in the eastern Mediterranean, and the German supply across the Med. would still be in jeopardy from intercepted "Ultra" messages and air attack from British held positions in the eastern Levant, as they were historically.

The loss of either Gibraltar or Malta would have been another blow to the British ego, just as the loss of the Suez would have been. Just as the loss of Greece and Crete were ego insults, but of little military import.

 

Brndirt 1:thank you very much for these figures ;I was thinking in that direction,but had nothing specific .For the figures of the oil imports of 1939 the reason was maybe that the UK could pay the M E oil in £ and the oil from the USA had to be paid in $ and the British government had a lot of shares of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company .An other point is that the Germans had to deliver the oil for the Italian navy .

 

I think saying the german paratroopers were decimated at crete is over stated,they did manage to kick a force over 4 times bigger than them off the island.
Also i'm not sure fire support from the RN would have been that effective,much of the fighting would have been much too close quarter.Plus the RN would have been hit hard before any attack took place.

There was actually oil in libya but nobody knew about it.

 

Ardito Desio, an Italian geologist and explorer, found some oil in Libya while drilling for water in 1938 but the war stopped all further research. AFAIK the "official" discovery in 1958/59 was partly based on his geological maps.

Ardito Desio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also the "tiger" convoy that carried replacement tanks for 8th Army trough the Med was not a completely isolated episode though most stuff went the long way round Africa and Suez.

 

Off-course,you are right,but my point was that in 1940 there was no real possibility to get oil from Nort Africa (thus Lybia ) and the distance from Tripoli to the oil fields in Irak beying some 4OOO km (2500 miles ) .......

 

As a funny co-inky-dink the oil discovered in Texas was originally found when they were drilling for water as well. Those wells were capped off since "oil" wasn't of much worth at the time.

Those fields were re-opened later of course when oil was a "desired" commodity. Most of those from Midland TX. west are of that sort, originally failed water wells.

 

It is highly unlikely that the Germans would be able to take Gibraltar.

 

I .- Any one should read the Admiral John Henry Godfrey papers (Project janus. Janus: The Papers of Admiral John Henry Godfrey) And look for Juan March. They bribed the main Franco´s General to ensure the Spain's neutrality in IIWW. 13 million $.

When the germans asked to clandestinely refuell their u - booats in the spanish port, Franco answer was to offer the Juan March´s companys. The german regret the offer, they lost many u -booat in WW I , that J March clandestinely refuelled ... and gave the data and the position of the meeting to the Royal Navy.


II .- Tarifa: 36º 0'1' 85 '' N - º 36' W. And there were Coastal Artillery (Wickers 381 mm , 152'4) Shouthern than Gibraltar.

 

Great post some very good information.