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Germany's Military Strategy And Spain In World War II
Germany's Military Strategy And Spain In World War II Author:Charles B. Burdick In February 1945, Adolf Hitler gave his own analysis of one of the reasons for Germany's defeat in World War II, saying". . . we ought to have attacked Gibraltar in the summer of 1940, immediately after the defeat of France." While no baffles actually took place on the Iberian peninsula, German preparation in that area was elaborate and extensiv... more »e.
This book details the successive German plans for the Spanish campaigns, and the mili¬tary and diplomatic problems that attended their preparation. The plans "Felix" and "Isabella" in 1940 41 were for a full scale assault on Gibraltar. By 1942, however, the demands of the Russian campaign and the preparations for the still proposed invasion of England had spread available German forces so thinly that the German command was forced to scale down the plans for Spain to a defensive concept. The continued reluctance of Francisco Franco to enter into a military alliance frustrated German plans, and by 1943 the final "Nurnberg" plan envisioned a last ditch de¬fense in the Pyrenees.
The research for this book has been almost entirely in primary sources official German, American, and British records, diaries, and letters. The author's extensive personal inter¬views in 1965 with Generals Halder, Blumen¬tritt, Mikosch, and Warlimont, and with Admirals Donitz, Puttkamer, and Ruge, among others, furnished insights into the per¬sonalities of the German commanders as well as valuable information on German strategy. A tour of the Gibraltar area with General Hubert Lanz, the military commander as¬signed to the campaigns that never came to pass, also provided data that had never been recorded.
The photographs have never been published before, and the maps were specially drawn to illustrate the major plans. The ex¬tensive footnotes provide many interesting sidelights and much background material on the German Spanish relationship.« less