Prime Minister Carlos García: An Axis Spain ATL

[NotDavidSoslan]

I used to make similar timelines in AH.com before leaving definitely, and hope to continue this style on this site. Since I called quits there due to the criticism and moving of a timeline where OSL was successful (and my tendency to often take criticism or disagreement as a personal offense) guarantee the Axis will lose the war, just two years later.

Early life of Carlos García (1881–1899)


Carlos Garcia in 1894, at the age of 13

Carlos Perez García y Alejandro, the far right dictator of Spain between 1923 and 1947, was born in Fuentenava de Jábaga, itself located in the traditional region of Castile, on 17 March 1881. He belonged to the aristocratic Alejandro family, which was the biggest landowner in present-day Cuenca province, and part of a drinking, whoring and horse-loving aristocracy that ruled over one of the most starved and downtrodden agricultural classes in Europe.

His father, José Alejandro (1836–1910), was a general in the Spanish Army, who led troops in combat against the Carlist rebels in the 1870s war, and subsequently became a major friend and ally of kings Amadeo II and Alfonso XII. José Alejandro was a martinet who frequently appeared drunk in the village streets and had several illegitimate children; he beat up his wife and sons several times.

Carlos, named after Habsburg Emperor Charles V, was the second of José Alejandro's five legitimate children, and historians believe the physical abuse he suffered from his father shaped his authoritarian and violent character. As he grew older, he found comfort in reading about the history of Spain's imperial conquests in the 16th century, one of his father's few serious interests, and his rethorical style based itself on restoring the glories of the early modern period. Another characteristic García inherited was a contempt for the Carlists, whom he regarded as idealistic simpletons who wanted to return to a form of government that had already passed.

Garcia was homeschooled until age twelve, when his mother moved with him to the larger city of Cuenca, while José Alejandro stayed in the village. There, Garcia rejected the ethos of the class he belonged to, instead focusing on reading military history, collecting rocks, and helping his family. In 1895, Garcia was enlisted as a cadet in the Spanish Army, which fully entering it in 1899, one year after the defeat against the United States caused him to interest himself in politics as a far-right, modernizing and centralizing nationalist.

Carlos Garcia's military career (1899–1923)


Garcia took part in the 1911 Kert Campaign, playing a key role in the Spanish victory.

Garcia became an infantryman who was repeatedly posted in mainland Spain, and the Canaries and Annobon; in the latter, he developed a racist view of Spain's remaining colonial subjects, whom he saw as unintelligent and barbarous, unlike the 16th-century Spanish conquistadors.

During Catalonia's Tragic Week of 1909, Carlos Garcia solidified his nationalist and authoritarian views, calling the Jacobin and anarchist strikers "Masonic Socialists" and unsuccessfully urging the king to violently put the strike down; during the Garcian era (1923–1947), strikes became illegal in Spain.

Garcia advocated for the military doctrine of the furious infantry assault, allowing his career to progress steadily. But what gave him attention was his role in the 1911 campaign against North African tribes: by then a major in the Spanish Army, he skillfully used mountain artillery and manhunting to destroy the rebels, capture or kill their leaders, and cut off their support. He also told military doctors to treat the illnesses of local civilians, predating "hearts and minds" campaigns of later insurgencies.

Thus, Garcia was promoted to a lieutenant colonel in 1913, colonel in 1916, and brigadier in 1920.

After 1918, post-World War I economic difficulties heightened social unrest in Spain. The Cortes under the constitutional monarchy seemed to have no solution to Spain's unemployment, labor strikes, and poverty. In 1921, the Spanish army suffered a major defeat in Morocco at the Battle of Annual, which discredited the military's North African policies, and Garcia came to support a gradual withdrawal from the region.

By 1923, deputies of the Cortes called for an investigation into the responsibility of King Alfonso XIII and the armed forces for the debacle. Rumors of corruption in the army became rampant, with Spaniards increasingly seeing Garcia as one of the few good officers.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Garcia sent an infantry brigade from Cuenca and towards Madrid, where they surrounded the Cortes. Alfonso XIII, wishing to avoid a civil war, named him Prime Minister on 26 June 1923, shortly before midnight.

García formed a military junta composed of himself, Miguel Primo de Rivera, a Navy admiral, and the commander of the Gendarmerie. The following day, he gave a speech from Madrid's central square, announcing:

"Spaniards! The Military Junta has taken over the Spanish Government, on the King's request. Fifty years of treason, decline and suffering brought by liberalism are on the way out; instead, Spain will become a great nation, akin to the glories under kings Carlos and Felipe, and the slogans of our patriotic government will be Dios, Patria y Rey. A century of glory and restoration awaits us... ¡Viva España!"

At the time, he was 42 years old, and Primo de Rivera was nearly a decade older. The two were close partners, until the military junta was disbanded in 1927 and Garcia became sole Prime Minister. Primo de Rivera was relegated to Minister of War.

The García Era lasted until 1947, when Madrid was captured by the Allies, and the dictator fled into exile in Argentina; he died in Buenos Aires in 1956.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Carlos García consolidates his power (1923–1927)


In 1925, García implemented an eight-hour workday and paid leave for injured workers.

After becoming Prime Minister, García received charte blanque from Alfonso XIII to take all measures necessary to restore Spanish power and end corruption. The Prime Minister did so by putting all political parties in "indefinite recess" and later declaring an one-party state, creating a rural militia to enforce government policy, banning Catalan and Basque dances and censoring their newspapers, arresting socialists and syndicalists en masse and, in March 1924, shutting down El Ateneo, Spain's most prestigious political and literary club; it only reopened in 1931, after becoming an echo chamber of García's supporters. However, the Prime Minister also sought to modernize the Spanish economy, and turn the country into an industrial power. He created a Ministry of Labour, made local unions state-controlled, implemented a progressive income tax, nationalised major industries, and later went on to implement workers' rights and benefits, such as an eight-hour workday, paid leave for injured workers, a ban on industrial child labour and night work for women, subsidies to childcare, and the replacement of Parliament with a corporatist chamber, with representation for employees and employers. From 1926 onwards, several hydroelectric dams and power lines were built, and railways nationalised.

Spain implemented high tariffs on foreign products, in order to protect its national businesses and expand industry. Trade was gradually reoriented towards Italy and Spain's former Latin American colonies, and Spanish-owned businesses received government subsidies.

The price for these changes was high, as left-wing and separatist movements were highly repressed by the Spanish police, and the government sought to eradicate Basque, Catalan and Galician identities by 1940.

Bullfighting and flamenco were promoted as authentically Spanish by García's administration.

He modernized the Spanish Army, buying tanks and artillery from Italy, expanding the Air Force, and launching a violent "pacification" campaign against the Riffian tribes that saw civilians being sent to concentration camps, the use of chemical weapons, and indiscriminate reprisals by the Spanish. By 1927, the war was over, and since those brutal tactics were covered up by the dictatorship, the Spanish people were happy that decades of warfare were over.

García took advantage of this to ask the king to disband the Military Junta, and formally make Spain an one-party state by establishing the Spanish National Union (Unión Nacional Española, UNE), a nationalist, authoritarian and anti-communist party modeled after the Italian Fascists, containing paramilitary, women's and youth wings, and making widespread use of propaganda such as motion pictures, magazines and radio. These tactics ensured his capricious control over Spain until the end of WWII.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

75 of the seats in the Cortes were reserved for various interest groups, such as guilds, the military, and the traditional nobility.

Under this system, the UNE won 100% of the vote and 350 seats in 1932 and 1937.

The UNE was officially founded on 5 January 1927, as the only legal political party in Spain. It claimed to support Spanish nationalism and Catholicism and to oppose Communism and Freemasonry, and contained women's (Feminine Section), youth (Spanish Legion) and paramilitary (National Volunteer Corps) wings. By 1930, the UNE had local offices in virtually every Spanish settlement, and was also represented in colonies and the Spanish diaspora.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Premiership of Carlos García (1927–1932, domestic policy)


In 1927, García got authorization from the King to change Spain's flag and coat of arms, with the new version remaining in effect for 20 years. The stealing of the Carlist motto led to a revolt in 1933.

After the formal implementation of a far-right authoritarian regime, García continued his earlier policies of economic development and political repression. In January 1928, a state-owned oil company, with a monopoly on the production and refinement of oil, was estabilished, and the government started giving land grants to military officers, often veterans of the Spanish-American and North African wars, considerably helping the economy, while the Madrid subway, draining of swamps and large-scale paving of roads were implemented.

The Spanish government implemented restrictions that negatively affected nomadic communities of Spain, such as the Gitanos, and cracked down on homosexuality and prostitution in order to enforce its vision of a Catholic society. On 20 April 1929, an urban police force was founded in order to enforce the government's dictates in urban areas.

In January 1930, months after the stock market crash, revolts broke out in Catalonia and Galicia, Spain's two most industrialized regions, organized by the CNT-FAI, which was illegal and harshly persecuted by the secret police. The Spanish authorities violently put the riots down, sentenced many rioters and separatists to hard labour on state-owned factories, and decreed each profession could only have one union, to be controlled by the Ministry of Labour. Alfonso XIII rewarded García for crushing the riots by promoting him to captain general.

At the same time, the depression caused García to double down on economic nationalism and workers' rights – imposing a minimum wage on privately-owned businesses, giving workers the right to vacation, providing cheap credit for farmers, and using deficit spending to pay for this.

Mining, oil extraction and heavy industry operations were expanded during the 1930s, when Spain's economy saw considerable growth and urbanisation.

In 1931, García decreed the forceful conversion of animist and Muslim colonial subjects to Catholicism, a policy historians assert was mostly unsuccessful due to the difficulty to assert control over the Sahara desert and jungles of Rio Muni.

In 1932, the UNE won another unopposed election, albeit with lower turnout, and José Sanjurjo became Minister of Defense.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Slide 3 should say 10 and 17 February.

On 20 February, the Spanish government passed laws banning professions from having more than one union, and making all legal unions controlled by the Ministerio del Trabajo.

After the Enerada, most Spaniards continued to accept the government as a necessary evil, and there were virtually no revolts against the far-right dictatorship, until the WWII partisans who rose up during the Iberian Theatre and played a key role in the Allied victory.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Premiership of Carlos García (1927–1932, foreign policy)


In 1931, Spain bought 15 Vickers 6-Ton tanks from Britain. They formed the basis for a design widely used by the country during WWII.

Spanish-Italian ties continued to expand during the period. On 8 October 1929, a twenty-year treaty of cooperation between the two fascist kingdoms was signed. García was a personal friend of Benito Mussolini and Italo Balbo.

However, Spain was also on good terms with Britain, as shown by the purchase of 18 Vickers tanks in 1931 and continued trade between the two countries. It was only after 1936 when their relations worsened due to Spanish irredentism over Gibraltar.

As the Great Depression weakened democracy worldwide, the Kingdom of Spain served as a model for other dictatorships in Latin America, such as the regimes of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil.

After Smoot-Hawley broke the world economy, Spanish industrial protectionism continued, eventually evolving into a policy of autarky, with high barriers on trade with most countries other than Italy, Britain and the Latin American states.

In 1930, a Spanish nationalist party was established in Puerto Rico, followed by Cuba one year later. These parties represented Spanish immigrants, and were ordered not to involve themselves in the domestic politics of Cuba and the United States, although the Union Nacional Puertoriqueña began to cooperate with the Puerto Rican independence movement and rally against "Yankee cosmopolitans" in its newspaper El patriota.

After 1932, the Spanish Armed Forces were expanded and improved, and the country's foreign policy became more aggressive.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The election was held on 16 April 1932, and turnout was lower than in the previous election, due to the Great Depression and significant unrest from anarchists and Carlists.

The Carlists were furious that García had stolen their slogan "Dios, Patria y Rey" and made it one of Spain's national mottos alongside Plus ultra. They frequently staged marches and boycotts against the UNE government, which evolved into an outright rebellion in April 1933.

The CNT-FAI had already revolted in 1931, but declined after the revolt was crushed, and their activity was significantly reduced by growing workers' rights and police repression. They only returned in force during the Iberian Front of World War II.

In 1937, the UNE won the general election unanimously with 93.64% of turnout. The next general election was held in 1949, and won by the PSOE.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The Carlists had almost no armored vehicles or artillery, leaving them defenseless when the Spanish forces launched major offensives against them.

By 20 May 1933, the Spanish military started regrouping and preparing to defeat the Carlists by force. Throughout the following month, they managed to prevent the Carlists from making major gains before begining the offensive phase, which ended with their defeat in two months.

García had been a Spanish and Catholic nationalist since 1898, but, as a military man who valued technology and scientific progress, he always disliked Carlism for its traditionalist and anti-modern character, and disliked it from the start, persecuting Carlists after 1927 just like any opposition group, and banning them from joining his UNE single party.

After the rebellion was crushed, martial law remained in effect, and the Spanish government and National Corps of Volunteers militia carried out a purge of Carlists that resulted in over 5,000 deaths and 25,000 arrests. This had the effect of weakening the Spanish military during the Second World War, as much money was spent keeping its loyalty and preventing dissent instead of modernizing material and equipment.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Premiership of Carlos García (1932–1937, domestic policy)


In 1933, Garcia's administration passed the Workingman's Bill of Rights (Ley de Direitos Obreros), guaranteeing the right to vacations, rural retirement paid sick leave, and siestas, among other things.

By the time the Carlists revolted, Spain had developed a decent industrial base, especially in Catalonia and Galicia, and García sought to continue expanding it in order to prepare Spain for a war against Britain and France. In October 1932, he introduced the Second National Development Plan (Segundo Plano Nacional de Desarrolo), which focused on building dams, bridges and airports, expanding automobile ownership, and codifying workers' rights into law, which was done the following year, with the Workingman's Bill of Rights.

As Spain grew industrially, Garcia's ego followed this growth, and he began a cult of personality, with portraits of himself alongside King Alfonso XIII filling the streets in public occasions, and he calling himself "Caudillo" and "El Jefe". García increasingly clashed with the King, calling his involvement with pornography "blasphemy against Spain" and planning to abolish the monarchy as soon as a war started.

Spain continued to face the Great Depression until at least 1936; there was high unemployment and poverty, as well as deflation, especially due to Garcia's support of fiat money. This was solved by deficit spending, a military buildup and the installation of industrial complexes such as an oil refinery in Pamplona and steel mill in Bilbao, designed by Krupp.

The Spanish secret police, the PVDE (Policia de Vigilanza e Defensa del Estado), and the UNE's paramilitary wing CNV (Cuerpo Nacional de Voluntarios), continued to crack down on opposition, ranging from anarcho-syndicalists on the left to Carlists on the right, and perfected their techniques, using interrogation, torture and infiltration to destroy any opposition against the government.

Spaniards tolerated these actions, especially as the economy recovered from its underdevelopment and the worldwide crisis, and the rethoric grew increasingly bellicose against neighboring nations.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Premiership of André García (1932–1937, foreign policy)

After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Spanish-German relations were considerably strenghtened.

From 1933 onwards, Spain developed strong ties with the authoritarian regimes in its former colonies Guatemala, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. García's regime serged as both an ideological inspiration and geopolitical ally to these countries, unsuccessfully seeking to counterbalance the influence of the United States.

After Hitler rose to power in Germany, Spain immediately obtained an ally and partner, with the two countries being allies for fourteen years afterwards. Spanish irredentism regarding Morocco, Gibraltar and French Vasconia was not threatening to Lebensraum, and Spanish agriculture was potentially helpful to Germany, whose population exceeded the capacity of farmers to feed it. In 1934, García and Hitler signed a trade treaty, and German firms were sent to Spain to work on projects such a major steel factory in Bilbao.

Spanish relations with Fascist Italy continued strong as well. From 1932 to 1937, all Spanish military branches received Italian equipment, and the racist García later spoke out in defense of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia.

Relations with the Portuguese Estado Novo, on the other hand, were less cordial, due to Salazar being an authoritarian conservative and the Spanish regime's designs on Olivença. During most of the time period, they were chilly at best; Portugal accused Spain of supporting the National Syndicalists (claims that are disputed), and increasingly turned to Britain for defense. Portugal would later be occupied by Spain during WWII, eventually being liberated in 1946.

By 1934, García and his military officers knew there would be a new world conflict, and predicted the rapidly industrializing Spain would align itself with Germany. In order to prepare for the storm, he ordered a naval buildup and several submarines, destroyers and cruisers, while building an arms industry and buying tanks and aircraft from Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia. However, much of this money went into keeping the military loyal and politically reliable, weakening the Armed Forces.

Around that time, a crash course between Spain and Britain and France was already evident, but it took until the Munich crisis (a militarizing Spain made appeasement sound even more appealing) for this to be obvious.

The 1942 and 1947 general elections were not held due to World War II.

By that time, García's dictatorship had shifted from fascism in all but name to a more conventional right-wing dictatorship, as the powers of the UNE militia and youth wings were reduced until they were disconnected from the party altogether, and mandatory party membership to serve in ministries and the civil service was abolished.

The fascist ideologues in ministries related to the economy and infrastructure were also replaced with technocrats, in order to prepare the country for war. However, the UNE remained the only legal party in Spain until Madrid fell to the Allied Powers.

The first postwar Spanish election was won by the PSOE, which defeated the main right-wing party by a landslide, and formed a majority government backed by the ERC.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Spanish military and foreign policy in the buildup to war (1937–1939)


In 1938, the CETME Model A infantry rifle entered service with the Spanish Army, becoming standard issue by 1942.

As world relations became increasingly tense due to the aggressive foreign policy of the Axis powers, Spain began to side with them, pulling away from France and Britain and becoming increasingly bellicose towards these countries. On 28 August 1939, Spain formally made territorial claims towards Gibraltar, Roussillon and Basque-speaking French lands, and ratified the Anti-Comintern Pact.

Spain also developed an enmity towards revolutionary Mexico under Lázaro Cardenas. Seized documents from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs have proven that the National Synarchist Union was directly supported and inspired by the García dictatorship through its regional allies.

By 1939, Spain was an arms exporter, having sold small arms and other equipment to the militaries of the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and El Salvador. After Pearl Harbor, the United States threatened to invade these countries and overthrow their dictators if they did not distance themselves from Spain, leading to a foreign policy shift by the power-hungry tyrants.

That same year, Spanish military industry began to focus on military production at the expense of the civilian and consumer goods it had focused on. The production and importation of automobiles and civilian radios was cut back and replaced with trucks, military bridges and weapons, whether licensed or indigenously designed. Spain also launched a military buildup in Andalusia and northern Morocco.

There were attempts from the British and French governments to prevent war. Shortly after the Munich conference, Chamberlain met with García and King Alfonso XIII in Madrid, offering a nonaggression pact and negotiations towards a condominium over Gibraltar by 1942. Spanish extremists strongly objected to the latter proposal, as did some in the British government (such as Churchill), and it was dropped; however, a nonaggression pact was actually signed, only to be violated in November 1940, with the Spanish invasion of Gibraltar that resulted in the Mediterranean becoming Mare Nostrum.

The French, by contrast, began negotiations to transfer Morocco from French to Spanish suzerainty, as well as the end of exclaves in the two countries' borders. These efforts were cut short by the outbreak of war in September 1939.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Diehard imperialists in Britain, such as Winston Churchill, also opposed the condominium, not necessarily due to opposing appeasement, but primary because it would mean giving up on a key military outpost.



On 29 June, the idea was officially dropped by the British Foreign Office.

During the negotiations with Britain, the Spanish military buildup was publicly toned down, and the militarization of the economy temporarily canceled, but, after the war, it was discovered that military parades were simply held indoors and not photographed or filmed, and Spain had simply ceased to make arms purchases.

It was only in August 1939, when a new war was obvious, that García, Sanjurjo and Franco definitely put Spain on the path to becoming a war economy, and Anglophiles were purged from the Spanish government and military.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

General Franco sent 3 mountain warfare divisions to invade the Roussillon through Catalonia, while Sanjurjo commanded the 2 divisions in the Basque front.

On 14 June 1940, García used his control over the Spanish Army to overthrow the monarchy and put Alfonso XIII under house arrest (he died several months later) in a palace coup. Later that day, he proclaimed himself Head of State of Spain and the Generalissimo of the Spanish Armed Forces, thus directly overseeing the war effort.

Spanish Air Force BF-109 and various Fiat fighters flew over the skies of southern France, escorting also Italian-designed bombers who attacked cities such as Pau and Perpignan, as well as French troop gatherings and fighting dozens of French interceptors along the way.

During the nine days of the battle, Spanish pilots scored 18 air kills, and French ones 5.

Spain only used tanks in the Basque and Equatorial fronts, as the Atlas and Pyrenees mountains were unsuited for maneuver warfare. The designs were T-38, Panzer II, L3/33 and Panzer III and L3/33, respectively.

After occupying Morocco, the Spanish forces deposed the 280 year-old Alaouite dynasty and replaced it with a military occupation government ran by a Spanish general as governor-general. The abolition of the two monarchies was one of several major mistakes made by Spain during the war.

On 26 June, the Spanish government proclaimed its direct annexation of the occupied territories, with the exception of Morocco, which remained *de jure* a protectorate. The annexations were overturned after the war, and France and Portugal took several disputed territories.

The invasion of France was followed by the occupations of Portugal and Gibraltar, making the Mediterranean an Axis lake.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The Spanish invasion force had 150 tanks of various models, and was backed by 89 combat aircraft. On the other hand, Portugal only had a few dozen tanks (several of whom were the very obsolete Renault FT) and an outdated and smaller air force, making the Spanish conquest and occupation swift.

Salazar shot himself in the chest on 16 August 1940, in order to avoid being captured and possibly executed by the invaders. This was the first time since 1808 Portugal was occupied by a foreign power, and, as in Morocco, a Spanish general was chosen to militarily occupy the country.

After Portugal was occupied, Brazil under Vargas started definitely shifting away from Germany and Spain and towards the United States, since Brazilian foreign policy had traditionally been loyal towards Portugal, and both of their authoritarian regimes were named Estado Novo.

The Free Portugal Government (Governo do Portugal Livre) was led by Américo Tomás from Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, and immediately allowed the British to set up military bases there, thus continuing the war from overseas.

The Portuguese Resistance was highly active throughout the occupation, carrying acts of sabotage and disobedience against the Spanish occupation, and it made Spain direct much of its resources towards maintaining the occupation instead of other fronts. Thus, it was mostly successful.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Roughly 50% of the Axis forces invading Gibraltar were Spanish, 45% were German, and 5% were Italian.

The Germans and Spanish were the most important actors in the siege, with Italy's role being mostly limited to naval and air combat.

As Royal Navy had been the strongest in the world for over a century, the British originally outnumbered the Axis invaders in terms of warships, although ten of them were lost and six damaged, with the rest (mostly heavier warships such as cruisers and destroyers) sailing towards Trinidad.

Spain only used Panzer III and IV tanks during the siege, in order to destroy the fortifications in Gibraltar, which had already taken significant damage from Axis bombing.

After capturing Gibraltar, the Spanish formally annexed it and started repairing the base for future use by their allies. However, the subsequent captures of Malta and Egypt west of the Suez made the base lose most of its strategic value, and it was returned to Britain after the war.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

By the time Operation Tirpitz was launched, Malta's naval and coastal defenses had been mostly wiped out, allowing the landing to succeed in two weeks.

The use of the Fallschirmjäger in the Battle of Malta was the first large-scale use of airborne forces in warfare, and many others followed.

Spain, which was preoccupied with enforcing its occupations of Portugal and Morocco, did not participate in the battle, and they mostly withdrew from the war until Allied forces landed in Galicia.

Virtually all Maltese Jews were killed during the Holocaust, as happened with the Jewish population in Gibraltar and Portugal.

In the North African front, Rommel captured Cairo [date TBD], which caused King Farouk to join the Axis and launch an anti-British uprising. However, the Axis forces were stopped at Suez, which was one of their first major defeats.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Along with Stalingrad, the Battle of Ismailia was a major turning point in the war, and the British began to push back.

The native Egyptian Army was weak and rapidly defeated along with the Afrika Korps. On 18 January 1944, Farouk fled to Italy, where Ismail the Magnificent had gone after his overthrow, by airplane, and his cousin was installed by the Allies as King of Egypt, subsequently carrying out several important reforms.

On 3 October 1944 (a secret date unknown to Axis forces), Operation Torch was launched as an amphibious landing in Spanish Morocco and Vichy French Algeria (Vichy France was never occupied by the Allies). In the span of almost one year, the Germans, Italians, French and Spaniards were pushed back on both fronts, until being trapped at the Tunisian-Algerian border and surrendering.

Postwar, Farouk emerged as an icon of Egyptian nationalism, especially among the military who had fought for him. Although he never returned to the country, he remained popular among Axis sympathizers.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The Canary Islands were occupied by Britain in July 1940, and later used as a launching pad for the March 1945 amphibious landing in the Algarve.

In southern Portugal, Allied troops fought alongside Free Portuguese forces, liberating most of the occupied country by July 1946. On 29 July 1946, a Provisional Government of Free Portugal (Governo Provisório do Portugal Livre) was implemented, led by Américo Tomás.

Adolf Hitler, by then a moribund and delusional man, committed suicide on 21 April 1947, the day after his 58th birthday (some historians argue he had forgotten it), and left the leadership of Germany to Heinrich Himmler, who was one of the few loyal Nazis left. However, Berlin was fully captured by the Red Army on 29 April, with the remaining Nazi leadership being tried at Nuremberg.

Austria and Yugoslavia also came under Soviet occupation, and the rule of pro-Soviet communists, effectively placing all of Central Europe in the Soviet Bloc. There was considerable anti-communist resistance, but it was put down by 1955.

Back on topic, Llívia was fully annexed by France, thus abolishing the centuries-old enclaves in the French-Spanish border, and France annexed Rio Muni to Gabon, while Portugal took Fernando Pó and Annobon, and French Morocco annexed the antebellum Spanish territories.

In October 1947, 66% Spaniards voted to restore the monarchy, as Alfonso XIII had tried to keep Spain out of war and clashed with Carlos García afterwards.

On 26 April 1947, the 66 year-old García was smuggled to Buenos Aires through ratlines, and lived anonymously in Patagonia (speculation about his fate nowithstanding) until his death in 1956.

After the war, Portugal became a dominant-party state led by Tomás' National People's Action, a right-wing and national conservative party which won all elections held in the country between 1948 and 1968.