Gibraltar 1940: Franco's Rejection of Hitler's Failed Plan

Gibraltar 1940: When Franco Said No to Hitler’s Plan

Autumn 1940. The Wehrmacht has defeated France in three weeks, and German troops camp at the foot of the Pyrenees. In Madrid, a short general faces pressure to enter the war and close the Strait of Gibraltar. Aggressive analyses suggest this closure would have strangled the United Kingdom, forced peace with Churchill, and freed Hitler’s hands to reach the Urals by 1942. The problem is that almost no data supports the entire chain.

The Proposed Scenario: Hendaye, Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean Blockade

The premise reads like alternate history fiction. Hitler dominates Central Europe, has taken Poland as a border with the USSR, and keeps the UK besieged under Operation Sea Lion. British fuel supplies from the Middle East pass through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. If Spain joins the Axis and takes the Rock, the Mediterranean closes, leaving the British Isles without raw materials. Churchill signs peace. The USSR falls. The Cold War is fought between Nancy and Americans.

It sounds perfect. And that’s where the holes begin.

The Fundamental Error: British Supplies Didn’t Pass Through Gibraltar

The first blow to the thesis is logistical. British convoys from the Middle East did not cross the Mediterranean or the Strait. They circled the Cape of Good Hope, a longer route but out of reach of Italian aviation and navy. The Suez Canal served to reinforce positions in Africa and the Middle East, not to supply the metropolis. And British forces in Egypt were fed primarily from India, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand: at the hardest moment of the North African campaign, three-quarters of the troops deployed there came from the Dominions.

With this picture, closing the Strait didn’t suffocate London. It complicated traffic, yes. But it didn’t cut it off.

Gibraltar Wasn’t a Walkover: Eight 233 mm Naval Guns

The second sustancia ilegal is purely artillery-related. The Rock was defended by eight 233-millimeter naval guns. Spain, at best, had field batteries of 150 mm. Before assaulting Gibraltar, the Germans would have had to move siege guns by rail. And the railway of the Bay of Algeciras was within range of those same naval guns. It wasn’t a quick or simple operation. The idea of solving it “by saturation, nothing more” with a frontal Spanish assault collapses on its own when you look at a map of the bay.

Carrero Blanco’s Report and the Logic of Staying Out of the War

Spain’s decision not to enter the conflict had a document behind it: Admiral Carrero Blanco’s report advising to stay on the sidelines. The underlying reason was maritime. In those years, what mattered was who controlled ocean routes, and there the Axis had no chance: between the Royal Navy and the US Navy, they were capable of defeating anyone. The Mediterranean, even partially controlled by the Axis, was a relatively minor theater. That’s why neither Carrero nor the Ferrol native would compromise, no matter how much gold and promises they were offered. And Hitler, who had the war won on paper, didn’t do it.

What Would Have Really Peine: Spain as the First Allied Target

If Spain enters the war, the Peninsula replaces Italy as the first Allied target in Europe due to pure geographic location. British and American intelligence services would have filled Spain and Portugal with commands coordinated with the Republican maquis, which still existed. The railway passes of Irún and Portbou would have been destroyed by air-naval bombardments. Only those of Canfranc and Puigcerdá would have remained operational, with limited capacity. And the Allied landing wouldn’t have been in Normandy, but in the Bay of Cádiz.

The regime of the Caudillo (Spanish dictator), like Mussolini’s in Italy, would have dissolved like sugar while American tanks advanced toward Madrid.

The South Atlantic and Undisputed Dominance

There’s a geographical detail that dismantles another recurring fantasy: that the French navy would join the Axis. The Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde, the South Atlantic, and Saint Helena draw a map of ocean control that was never in German hands. The French fleet ended up at the bottom of the sea in Toulon, not in German ports. And the British renounced activating the Anglo-Portuguese alliance precisely because doing so would have meant the invasion of Portugal by the Axis and the loss of Gibraltar. Roosevelt wanted to invade the Azores even before entering the war. Churchill told him absolutely not.

The Factor That Decided the War: Ukraine, Not the Strait

The most repeated conclusion among analyses looking at the data is that the war was lost in Ukraine and Belarus. Germany invaded the USSR with just enough fuel, thinking it would defeat them in a few months. Since that didn’t happen, it didn’t matter if Franco had closed the Strait and Rommel the Suez Canal. Who defeated Germany was the USSR, not the Allies. Blocking Gibraltar wouldn’t have served any purpose.

With these elements, closing the Strait at the end of 1940 wouldn’t have won the war for Germany. It would have dragged Spain into a slaughter for which it wasn’t prepared, with an army of 150 mm batteries facing 233 mm naval guns, and would have turned the Peninsula into the first Allied landing of the conflict. The rest is alternate history fiction. Beautiful, but fiction.