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Franco contacted Hitler directly. [43] German ministers were split on whether to support the Nationalists, and possibly become embroiled in a European war as a result. [43] Ultimately Hitler decided to support the Nationalists on 25 or 26 July, but was still wary of provoking a Europe-wide war. [3] [44]
[11]: 21 [8]: 55 The generals' coup d'état failed, but the rebellious army, known as the Nationalists, controlled a large part of Spain; the Spanish Civil War had started. Franco, one of the coup's leaders, [19] and his Nationalist army won the Spanish Civil War in 1939. Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years until his death in 1975. [19]
Hitler did not wish to disturb his relations with the Vichy French regime. The only concrete result was the signing of a secret agreement under which Franco was committed to entering the war at a date of his own choosing, and Hitler gave only vague guarantees that Spain would receive "territories in Africa".
On 19 June 1940, Franco pressed along a message to Hitler saying he wanted to enter the war, but Hitler was annoyed at Franco's demand for the French colony of Cameroon, which had been German before World War I, and which Hitler was planning on taking back. [6] Hitler and Franco during Meeting at Hendaye (23 October 1940).
Franco ensured that Spain was neutral at the start of World War II but seriously contemplated joining the conflict as a German ally in the aftermath of the Fall of France in 1940. He met Adolf Hitler on 23–24 October 1940 but was unable to gain promises that Spain would gain colonial territories from France in North Africa because Hitler ...
A coordinating office for international Die Spinne operations was established in Madrid by Skorzeny under the control of Francisco Franco, [17] whose victory in the Spanish Civil War had been aided by economic and military support from Hitler and Mussolini.
More significantly, the Holocaust of the European Jews, the extermination of millions of Poles, the Action T4 killing of the disabled, and the Porajmos of the Romani are the most notable war crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. Not all of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and similar mass atrocities were war crimes.
Franco had received material support in the civil war from both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the fascist rulers of Germany and Italy, but when World War II broke out in September 1939, he cited the exhausted state of his country in maintaining a position of neutrality. [10]