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During World War II, the Spanish State under Francisco Franco espoused neutrality as its official wartime policy. This neutrality wavered at times, and "strict neutrality" gave way to "non-belligerence" after the Fall of France in June 1940.
The Spanish question (Spanish: Cuestión Española) was the set of geopolitical and diplomatic circumstances that marked the relationship between Spain and the United Nations between 1945 and 1955, centred on the UN's refusal to admit Spain to the organization due to Francoist Spain's sympathy for the Axis powers, defeated in World War II.
The neutral powers were countries that remained neutral during World War II.Some of these countries had large colonies abroad or had great economic power. Spain had just been through its civil war, which ended on 1 April 1939 (five months prior to the invasion of Poland)—a war that involved several countries that subsequently participated in World War II.
Francoist Spain remained officially neutral during World War II but maintained close political and economic ties to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy throughout the period of the Holocaust. Before the war, Francisco Franco had taken power in Spain at the head of a coalition of fascist, monarchist, and conservative political factions in the Spanish ...
The 250th Infantry Division (German: 250. Infanterie-Division), better known as the Blue Division (Spanish: División Azul, German: Blaue Division), was a unit of volunteers from Francoist Spain operating from 1941 to 1943 within the German Army (Heer) on the Eastern Front during World War II.
Spain continued to be able to obtain valuable German goods, including military equipment, as part of payment for Spanish raw materials, [175] and traded wolfram with Germany until August 1944 when the Germans withdrew from the Spanish frontier. [165] Spanish neutrality during World War II was publicly acknowledged by leading Allied statesmen. [176]
In the opening weeks of 1941, unsuccessful efforts were made by the ambassadors in Berlin and Rome to encourage the Spanish government to change its stance. 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.
[150] [151] [152] However, the Spanish government, put off by the German-Soviet cooperation in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, [153] ultimately declined open membership in the Axis Powers and maintained neutrality in World War II, although Spanish volunteers were allowed to fight for the Axis cause as part of the German 250th ...