It is late 1940 or early 1941.

Diplomatic efforts by the Third Reich are successful, and Spain, Turkey, or both become active members of the Axis Powers (i.e., belligerents).

What effect does Spain joining the Axis have on the campaign in North Africa and/or the Battle of the Atlantic?

What effect does Turkey joining the Axis have on the German invasion of Russia?

Discuss either or both questions.

Have fun.

Just conjecture of course, but Spain would have been knocked out of the war pretty quickly most likely.  They would have closed the straights at Gibraltar and Gibraltar would have been besieged and possibly fallen but we still would have invaded North Africa.  Might have come up from farther south than we did but we had a plan to deal with Spain if they entered the war on the Axis side.  For Torch, we had forces designated to deal with the Spanish forces in Morocco should they decide to intervene and we also would have owned them in a sea battle to reopen the Straits of Gibraltar.  We would have had a tough time of it with German aircraft being based in Spain and Morocco but we still would have been successful.  Probably would have made landings farther south on the African west coast but we would have opened the sea LOC's through Gibraltar as well.  

It was a good move to go through North Africa rather than attack France directly.  Bled off some of the German forces and more importantly, it bloodied the Americans and gave us valuable combat experience without must risk.  

Turkey, I dunno.  Don't know much about them.  Looking at the map, the Germans probably would have taken the Suez canal and the Persian oil fields like they wanted.  Taken the Suez and the oil would have hurt the Brits tremendously but I doubt it would have knocked them out of the war.  We still had lots of oil to ship over.  

Don't know how Turkey's involvement would have affected the war with the Soviets.

don't think it would of changed anything

My thought is that it might have made it easier for Germany to seize the Baku Oil Fields in the Caucasus if Turkey had joined the war on their side, which would have caused major strategic headaches for the Russians.

I don't know.

Spain, I don't know.

I just think it is an interesting question.

The Germans would have been able to move through Spain and take Gibraltar.  The Mediterranean would have been sealed off.  


Egypt would have been effectively cut off.  All of North Africa captured by the Germans and thence into Palestine, Iraq, Iran with the help of the Turks.




The war would have certainly been different.  Prolonged for sure.


 

Turkey joining in early 1941 gives the Nazis help in the Balkans and Greece.  Perhaps Hitler doesn't make the fateful Spring detour and gets it on earlier with the Russians, maybe getting the knock out blow in before the fateful winter of 1941-1942.  

Adolf Hitler making diplomatic overtures to the Arab world:

Here he meets with Haj Amin Al-Husseini, a prominent Arab nationalist (and anti-Zionist) of the era.

Spain was still ravaged from the Civil War. There is little way they could have acted as anything more than a speed bump,. Turkey as a launching point into the Caucasus and Middle Eastern oil fields could have been a problem, but not insurmountable.

Iran was promptly occupied by the British and Russians to quash any ideas they had about assisting the Germans. The same could have been done in Turkey if they started getting too cozy.

True, but La Coruna would have made a nice U-Boat base for the Germans.

All Spain had to do was permit a couple of German divisions in to capture Gibraltar.  That would close off the Med to the British.  Malta would be even more vulnerable and isolated.  

Turkey would not drive south to capture Vichy Syria nor would it threaten Iraq (though it would have to station troops there to defend its border from the British).  Its main concern would be Russia as they do share a common border.  Thus it would be up to Italy and Germany to drive the British out of North Africa and to capture the Suez to secure the Med. for itself.

The British did just fine with essentially no use of the Med route until 1943, would not by itself have changed much - the use of Spain and the Canary islands for the Uboats would have been far more serious.  Both the Turkish and Spanish armies in 1941-45 were in extremely bad shape and honestly, Torch landing in the Iberian Peninsula would have been a walkover.  Given the amount of Allied and Soviet troops stationed in the Middle East Turkey wouldn't have been able to do much offensively, and again, would have required German troops to actually defend it.  That said, timing is everything.  A Spanish entry in late 1940 would have been catastrophic for the Allied sea routes.  Turkey, if they joined in the Summer of 1942 might have distracted the USSR enough for Stalingrad to fall, but even that is not certain (the Russians had a LOT of reserves by then).  If they joined in 1941, it's highly unlikely they could have accomplished much given the terrain on the Soviet Border and large number of troops stationed there.  The Germans certainly didn't have the ability to substantially aid either country.

What the Germans should have done was staring them right in the face. Have Spain act as a benevolent neutral in the same way the US was aiding Britain. Set up factories in Spain for co production of armaments, and spanish ports be made available for repairs and shore leave. The spanish  aviation and shipbuilding industries would get tech transfers and a % of the production to improve their own capabilities. The Germans would get a strategic industrial reserve that was militarily and politically untouchable.

And after a year or two of co-production if Spain did enter the war, Gilbraltar becomes untenable and Britain is forced to withdraw. The Kriegsmarine  gets bases on the Iberian peninsula to disperse its fleet out of range of most UK based bombers, and closer to the atlantic shipping lanes.

As far as Turkey goes, I don`t see them jumping in after what happened to the Ottoman Empire in WW  I. The only plus to the Axis powers is closing the Dardanelles for the duration. The # of Murmansk convoys were decreased  after July 43 after the capture of Sicily and the Italian Armistice because the Med was cleared for the warm water route through the Dardanelles. At that point, anyone with any strategic sense would realize jumping in on the German side was not a good move.

Nothing personal, but this idea is ludicrous.  The Spanish infrastructure was almost nonexistent in 1939, there were literally zero modern machine tools in the entire country and virtually no skilled workers.  Spain had no way to protect her ports (or the ships in them) from air or sea attack, and the Spanish army was, simply, not prepared to fight again.  It had few heavy weapons, few (and obsolete) aircraft and a huge coast to protect.  As for politically untouchable, apparently you're not paying attention to the fact that Great Britain literally attacked her own Allies to keep their ships, ports and airfields out of German hands - as well actually launching an invasion of neutral Norway that ironically was beat to the punch by the Germans.  Historically, the Allies also invaded both Iraq and Iran, occupied Iceland and had plans well underway to invade Sweden and bomb the USSR that were only called off due to some minor inconveniences in France.  Finally, basing surface ships in Spain makes little sense, for the same reasons that the KM withdrew all their major ships from French ports and in fact based only a handful for a short time in the first place- vulnerability, lack of repair capability and logistical concerns.  Also, in case you don't have a map handy, most shipping from North America passes closer to France than Spain.  While shipments too and from India and Africa would be affected, that wasn't Britain's lifeline.  

Also, AFAIK, no Allied war material transited the Dardanelles until early 1945 (when Turkey actually joined the Allies), long after there was any real need to do so.  Some German shipping did use the Dardanelles, but for the most part Turkey was pretty clearly not going to compromise their neutrality unless the war was all but over.

Nothing personal, but this idea is ludicrous.  The Spanish infrastructure was almost nonexistent in 1939, there were literally zero modern machine tools in the entire country and virtually no skilled workers.  Spain had no way to protect her ports (or the ships in them) from air or sea attack, and the Spanish army was, simply, not prepared to fight again.  It had few heavy weapons, few (and obsolete) aircraft and a huge coast to protect.  As for politically untouchable, apparently you're not paying attention to the fact that Great Britain literally attacked her own Allies to keep their ships, ports and airfields out of German hands - as well actually launching an invasion of neutral Norway that ironically was beat to the punch by the Germans.  Historically, the Allies also invaded both Iraq and Iran, occupied Iceland and had plans well underway to invade Sweden and bomb the USSR that were only called off due to some minor inconveniences in France.  Finally, basing surface ships in Spain makes little sense, for the same reasons that the KM withdrew all their major ships from French ports and in fact based only a handful for a short time in the first place- vulnerability, lack of repair capability and logistical concerns.  Also, in case you don't have a map handy, most shipping from North America passes closer to France than Spain.  While shipments too and from India and Africa would be affected, that wasn't Britain's lifeline.  




Not a crazy idea at all. If Albert Speer could increase German war production while Germany was being bombed incessantly from the air, using a lot of concentration camp slave labor, I wonder what he could have accomplished with Spain as a secure rear area. After all he was able to build V2s in underground factories using slave labor. I have no doubt he could have set up even a limited amount of production in Spain.

As far as shipping material through the Dardanelles, I don`t know how much transited the straits. It was definitely one of the reasons the Allies invaded Sicily instead of Sardinia as well as reopening the Med to Allied shipping to the CBI and Far Eastern theaters.

Why do you think Spain would be secure in any sense of the word? Even with Spain not joining the war, the Allies prepared plans to invade it if for some reason Torch wasn't necessary.  Given their actions in Syria and Iraq, the idea that Spain would somehow not be attacked is silly.  Obviously, the Germans could have set up some production in Spain, but nothing significant (Spain for example had most of its power generation destroyed by the civil war and it's railway system was in tatters).  Basically, Spain offers unskilled workers that have to be supplied entirely by Germany - while no doubt there was some minor tasks they could be used for, in 1939 Spain had, essentially, no industry or infrastructure to build on.  I fail to see any possible way that shipping factories to Spain is more efficient than using foreign labor in Germany.  

No Allied material officially went through the Dardanelles for effectively all of WW2.  A very small amount did arrive in mid 1945, but that isn't really significant at all and probably was counterproductive.  Yes the Allies invaded Sicily partially to re-open the Med (and also because no where else made any sense at all) but if Spain had joined the Axis before then, as mentioned above, the Allies had fully prepared plans for the invasion of Spain instead of North Africa.  Basically, the Allies would have gotten a land campaign against Germany with even longer and more exposed supply routes than the Germans had to deal with in Italy, terrain that is (marginally, I concede) more amenable to mechanized warfare, and as a bonus, once they reach the Pyrenees, the option to invade France overland simultaneously with Overlord.

Invading Spain made no military sense from the Allied point of view, except to protect Gilbraltar. I don`t think any allied general would want to slog across Spain and then have to cross the Pyrennes. I have never read about any contingency plan to invade Spain. Where have you seen that? Invading the northern spanish coast puts you in spitting distance of the U Boat and Luftwaffe bases on France`s Atlantic coast. Spain`s Atlantic coast is fairly small, and the Mediterranean coast again places you in easy reach of Axis naval and air bases. Having an neutral with relatively easy access to occupied  Europe probably served allied intelligence interests far better.  After Oran and occupying French Syria, and Iraq and Iran, I don`t think the Allies wanted to antagonize any other neutrals. After all, ultimately neutral Portugal allowed the allies to use air bases in the Azores to safeguard allied shipping and hunt U Boats.

I thought the whole point of Operation Torch was to put Rommel in a strategic pincer, and keep the free french in the war and well as  give the US Army combat experience. Plus it was much more difflcult for the Germans to counter attack the Atlantic coast landings the US Navy carried out.

Spain may have been an economic basket case, but I still  think it could have been useful to the Axis war effort. I think an organized effort by Germany would have stood up some critical industries fairly quickly over a year or two, and Britain would have been reluctant to attack Spain and possibly bring it into the war on the Axis side, just as Germany studiously avoided provoking the US even though we were blatantly violating international law by supplying the British. The problem was Hitler didn`t have that strategic vision. Franco was much more a strategic realist than Hitler. And with Admiral Canaris of the Abwhehr( whom Franco trusted) subverting German policy, Spain was certain to remain neutral after Barbarossa kicked off and the US entered the war. Both Canaris and Franco came to the conclusion that Germany was going to lose. It was just a question of when.

I think if Hitler had held off invading the Soviet Union for a year and made better diplomatic  and military moves with Britain, he could have forced Churchill to come to terms.