Hi,

I often go for a med campaign and lately has to defend as CW against a med'41.
But that is not the subject, here we are discussing on historical matters.

On a historic point of view, adolf did not ask spain to enter the war, but only
to give limited access in order to seize gibraltar, i.e. a sort of FTC ability
to enter spain.
Franco knows that it will lead him to war as wallies will stop to help its
economy, thus making him dependant on adolf's will. Anyway the wallies would
have make him pay for this after the war.

On a Franco point of view, staying neutral, having economic links with germany
while gaining economic help from USA to stay neutral was the best path.
On a german point of view, beteween attacking a "rich" country, russia, which
has plenty of oil and other rares materials, and attacking spain, a country with
economic problems and few ressources which will in any case cooperate with it,
the debate is over...
In WiF, spain ressources are IMHO somewhat overestimated, whereas the ressources
in russia are a bit underestimated, or rather estimated after the burning land
russian policy.
One example underestimated in WiF, food. Spain has to import food after the
civil war, whereas ukrain was producing a lot.

Do not forget that in wif we "know" what will happen, instead, historically,
adolf and all germans head where considering the US just as a "grille pain"
producer. If you aim for conquest, and think that CW will be obliged to make
peace sooner than later, what is the best? attacking spain which will be
separated from the main country by a dominated france? Or annex vast part of
russia, which is connected to your main country, and where there is already
germanic people living (the volgé's german for example) ?

WiF has been balanced to other several interesting strategies, which is great
for a game, but historically, attacking spain was not very interesting...

Bye ,
Hubert




________________________________
De : Herbert Gratz <herbert.gratz@...>
À : wifdiscussion@yahoogroups.com
Envoyé le : Mardi, 13 Janvier 2009, 18h33mn 45s
Objet : Antw: Re : Re : [wifdiscussion] Hitler attacking SPAIN (not Franco)...


Have you ever played an attack by GE against Spain in WiF?
That's why Franco would've succumbed to pressure.
Or if not, swiftly conquered.
And you are quite right that AH wanted to get stuck into RU asap which
is in all likelyhood why he didn't consider pursuing a Med strategy.
However, in WiF we are allowed to look at different strategies which he
could've pursued albeit that a Barbarossa 41 was always more likely.

>>> IA-211-BZ <IA211@yahoo. fr> 13.01.2009 11:38 >>>
Hi,

About Franco, why are you sure that he will abandon neutrality under
threat?
Pyrenes are not easy to attack... And accepting franco's demands on
french morocco will certainly have led to the french fleet becoming free
french. Conquering spain means losses, troops garisonning the country,
and an economic burden as the country was badly damaged by the civil
war. Letting spain neutral means a way to import some products through
the country, but also making the allied pay for the country neutrality.
The only interest was to take gibraltar to limit CW ability to go on the
med. (note germany used spanish port to base several duty ship which
helped german subs to refuel and so on.) But having the rock did not
means to be able to block the straits immediately. Gibraltar has a lot
of gun, an harbour, air facilities, but also minefields to block the
strait. it will require a lot of work to repair all of this as the CW
will have destroyed all of this when collapsing.

In addition, the lebensraum is on the east.

Historically, napoleon did not intend to conquer russia, he only wanted
to oblige the tsar to stop helping coalitions against him and put the
continental embargo on force to oblige england to sue for peace.
Taking the capital worked well for the other europeans countries in
this matter. If you read some books about this, you will know that
napoleon was hoping for peace and maintain french conquest, not for
annexing russia.

Hitler wanted to annex big part of russia.

In addition, 1941 was the best moment for an attack, the russians
forces were still disorganized by the purges, and were moving their
defense line to their new frontier. They canibalized their old defense
line to build the new.
Several exaamples, when barbarossa starts, most of their new KV-1 and
KV-2 were just entering commission and did not even have ammunitions.
There was also plans to improve their airbase alert system, which will
have prevented the massive killing on the first barbarossa day. Their
mecanized force were training, and so on.
One year later the russian army will have be more rough. On the
opposite, the wermacht was nearly at the top. They got the winter to
create and train new troops, their soldier did not suffered heavy losses
and so were well trained and experienced, etc...

Morover, he had to use the whermacht, if not he will have be obliged to
allow some of the soldiers to go back on industrial duty, etc...

The clash between hitler and stalin was unavoidable. ..

bye
hubert

____________ _________ _________ __
De : jagdtiger14 <jagdtiger14@ yahoo.com>
À : wifdiscussion@ yahoogroups. com
Envoyé le : Lundi, 12 Janvier 2009, 18h02mn 34s
Objet : Re: Re : [wifdiscussion] Hitler attacking SPAIN (not
Franco)...

Hubert,

How could Hitler(or Napy) think that he could defeat Russia if he
could not even take care of Spain? I think under threat immediately
after the fall of Paris, Franco would have allowed Hitler in and
ended up aligning with Germany anyway (including the facist
government of Portugal). In 1940, Britain was in no condition to
threaten Germany anywhere...the Brits left Dunkirk without their
equipment and had to breakout their surplus WWI rifles. It would
have been Britain facing the nasty partisans.

USSR was not a threat at least into Summer of '41 and probably
would not have been well after as well. This would have given
Germany the chance to close the Med and take the Mideast. Obviously
it was a big m
istake for Germany to invade USSR. It would have been
better to defend in depth in Poland(ie Kesselring in Italy minus the
MTN's). Facing a hugely defended eastern front, when would Stalin
have gone to war with Hitler?

I think Portugal still needs to be tweeked better in WiF...more
than the GAR they are now getting...even if it is a-historical.

C

--- In wifdiscussion@ yahoogroups. com, IA-211-BZ <IA211@...> wrote:
>
> Another point,
>
> Hitler was a fan of napoleon (he went to paris and see his tomb),
and he carefully analyse its russian campaign.
> One of the mistakes his analyses shows up (on his mind) was the
spanish campaign, with all its partisans, and the difficulties tod
efend against the CW fleet this huge coast, etc...
>
> Why attacking someone you have rather good relations while a big
threat is on your back?
>
> Bye
> Hubert
>
>
>
>
> ____________ _________ _________ __
> De : Wendell <wifwendell@ ...>
> À : wifdiscussion@ yahoogroups. com
> Envoyé le : Lundi, 12 Janvier 2009, 2h28mn 22s
> Objet : RE: [wifdiscussion] Hitler attacking SPAIN (not Franco)...
>
>
> Needn't be a Republican coup as you said, Hakon. I'm not trying to
make a point about Spanish politics circa 1940-41 (I'm no expert) so
much as saying that unexpected things happened that turned the
situation around abruptly, and I am on balance OK with an Axis DOW
on Spain.
>
> And for that matter, I wouldn't have put it past Hitler to declare
was on Franco Spain if he was sufficiently angered/convinced of the
need. He was pretty good at finding excuses to do things he
considered expedient even if it completely reversed everything he
had ever said earlier. Just look at the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
>
> You don't need to look to far to find excuses for seemingly
irrational German behavior in the WW2 era. In fact, few WIF players
are as irrational at playing Germany as Hitler was.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Wendell
>
> Håkon Fløystad <hakon.floystad@ nor.sas.com> wrote:
> > Well... to me, Axis attacking Spain can be wifzen-ed that a
> > pro-Allied coup took effect and Hitler went in. Not a
> > stretch, considering that happened in Yugoslavia, much to the
> > detriment of Barbarossa.
>
> Do you honestly think that the situation in France right after the
Civil War would make it even remotely possible that the Republican
forces could really claim power just by a Coup d'Etat? Or do you
think it's Franco's officers that would make this coup?
>
> If you are right about that, I really need to read more about
Spanish domestic politics from this era.
>
> Cheers
> Hakon
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