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In Reply to: Re: More from the Giancarlo weekend posted by Mart on April 26, 2000 at 22:59:44:
I'm not sure I would say that the Franco government "betrayed" the Nazis. After the Civil War, Spain was physically and financially exhausted -- and only tenuously united. What could Spain offer the Nazis? Sending Spanish troops abroad was dangerous since they might be needed internally to put down rebellion. Spain did not have oil, which was the principal natural resource the Nazis lacked. The spanish navy was small and was aligned with the Loyalist faction.
What Spain did supply were submarine bases for the U-Boats operating in the mediterranean and off the straits of Gibraltar in the Atlantic. I lived in the Spanish city of Cartagena in the late 1950s. The city, on the southeast coast of Spain (well away from the British stronghold of Gibraltar) was the headquarters of the Spanish Navy and had an excellent. athough small by modern standards, natural harbor, surrounded by rocky hills that were topped with forts. Blasted out of the rock at the base of one of the hills were two submarine pens that had been built for the U-Boats. At the base of an 800' rocky hill, they were invulnerable to aerial attack. I know about them because the US Navy had taken them over in the 1950s and converted them to bunker fuel storage for the US 7th Fleet, which operated in the Mediterranean. I think the Spanish also had facilities for U-Boat resupply in the Atlantic port city of Vigo, just north of the Portugese border.The Spanish paid some price for their quasi alliance with the Germans. They were isolated from the post-war European community. The US government for Cold War military reasons made friends with the Franco government, even though it was not a part of NATO. The US had a large Strategic Air Command bomber base at Torrejon, outside of Madrid, and a large naval air base at Rota, near Cadiz and the Straits of Gibraltar. The smaller installation at Cartagena was for fuel supply and there was a second ammunition dump. These were really a form of payment-in-kind for the Spanish government in exchange for what the US really wanted, which was the SAC base at Torrejon and the Navy base at Rota.
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Follow Ups
- Re: More from the Giancarlo weekend -- Spain and the Nazis - Bruce from DC 08:19:28 04/27/00 (0)
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