new info on Franco and Churchill in WWII?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4944902.ece
It's possible, there were all sorts of schemes going on in that dark year, but I would tend to err on the side of caution. First of all, I seem to remember some statistics regarding America supplying a lot of food to Spain and how this would have been cut off should they have openly attacked Britain. Another factor is that the Spanish army, frankly, sucked. It's sucked for several hundred years, in fact, and the civil war had not exactly left the country in great fortune. Like other supposed and public "neutrals", (Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland), Spain WAS pro nazi - how could it not be; but didn't want to expend any more effort than it had to, especially when such effort might involve serious consequences, (like an American invasion in 1944). Franco was smart, and thus stayed in power, (much to my disgust). I might note that in addition to his contributions to the nazi cause listed in the article, he also sent a division to help fight the Russians, the "Blue Division". So much for Mr. Neutrality.
On the other hand, Britain had much better relations with fascists than our modern historians grant them. Right up until September of '39, the British were much more afraid of Stalin than Hitler and often ignored the latter or even helped him if they thought it would thwart the former, (one must dig deep to ferret out this information, it is not popular...). During the Spanish Civil War, Gibraltor would alert Franco to Russian supply ship movements to the Republicans so that his German and Italian allies could locate and bomb them. You see, "blowback" didn't start with Afghanistan. History is quite interesting...
It's possible, there were all sorts of schemes going on in that dark year, but I would tend to err on the side of caution. First of all, I seem to remember some statistics regarding America supplying a lot of food to Spain and how this would have been cut off should they have openly attacked Britain. Another factor is that the Spanish army, frankly, sucked. It's sucked for several hundred years, in fact, and the civil war had not exactly left the country in great fortune. Like other supposed and public "neutrals", (Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland), Spain WAS pro nazi - how could it not be; but didn't want to expend any more effort than it had to, especially when such effort might involve serious consequences, (like an American invasion in 1944). Franco was smart, and thus stayed in power, (much to my disgust). I might note that in addition to his contributions to the nazi cause listed in the article, he also sent a division to help fight the Russians, the "Blue Division". So much for Mr. Neutrality.
On the other hand, Britain had much better relations with fascists than our modern historians grant them. Right up until September of '39, the British were much more afraid of Stalin than Hitler and often ignored the latter or even helped him if they thought it would thwart the former, (one must dig deep to ferret out this information, it is not popular...). During the Spanish Civil War, Gibraltor would alert Franco to Russian supply ship movements to the Republicans so that his German and Italian allies could locate and bomb them. You see, "blowback" didn't start with Afghanistan. History is quite interesting...
posted by mendip at
5:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home