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Franco answered negatively to another request from Hitler to join the war that was received on 6 February citing the precarious state of Spain's economy and army. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told Hitler that in his opinion, "Franco has no intention of ever joining the war". In February 1941, the OKW advised the naval high ...
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".
At Hitler's request, Franco also met privately with Italian leader Benito Mussolini in Bordighera, Italy on 12 February 1941. [13] Hitler hoped that Mussolini could persuade Franco to enter the war. However, Mussolini was not interested in Franco's help after the series of defeats his forces had recently suffered in North Africa and the Balkans.
The Spanish conflict lasted three years and was a smaller-scale prelude to the world war which broke out in 1939. Nazi support for General Franco was motivated by several factors, including as a distraction from Hitler's central European strategy, and the creation of a Spanish state friendly to Germany to threaten France. It further provided an ...
In September 1939, World War II began. Franco had received important support from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during the Spanish Civil War, and he had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. He made pro-Axis speeches, [162] while offering various kinds of support to Italy and Germany. His spokesman Antonio Tovar commented at a Paris conference ...
He was actively supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the Civil War and Franco sympathised with many aspects of Nazism, especially its anti-communism. There was a small community of Jews in Spain and a larger one in Spanish Morocco ; however, the practical restrictions imposed in the aftermath of the Civil War made it increasingly ...
Despite Allied protests, Franco aided the Axis Powers by sending the Blue Division to the Soviet Union and seizing Tangier in 1940. Franco was a guilty party, with Hitler and Mussolini, in the conspiracy to wage war against those countries that later banded together as the United Nations.
On the division of French African colonies, between the Spanish and Italian governments, Hitler refused to provide any official promises during the war, fearful of losing the support of Vichy France. However, the cession of French Tunisia and French Djibouti to the Italians was considered inevitable in the future.