Memo to Britain and Spain- Grow up

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I assume you mean with nuclear missiles. Short of that they have no military capability to stop the Spanish army from just waltzing in.

Have you ever seen Gibraltar? There's a practical reason why it was never retaken by Spain- it's as good an example of a natural fortress as you'll see. Even to a modern army, it would be an almighty bugger to recapture.

[SlowwHand]

I'd like to go to Israel and see Jerusalem and Masada. Your comment about natural fortress made me think of Masada and on and on.

[Alexander's Horse]

Hitler was a fool not to take Gibraltar. He could have blocked the Western Mediterranean and achieved the same result as taking the Suez canal.

Franco was reluctant but Hitler found him exasperating and didn't persist. Hitler prematurely turned on Russia instead and sealed his fate.

The German Navy favoured a Mediterranean strategy to knock Britain out the war. If you wargame it, Germany usually wins WWII following the Mediterranean strategy.

[kentonio]

As underfunded as the British Armed Forces might be, the Spanish Armed Forces are ****tier. But yes, there's not much they could do to actually keep Gibraltar if Spain wanted to use military force.

By 'underfunded' I assume you mean the 4th highest military funding on the planet, right?

[Alexander's Horse]

What really irks Spain is the reason Britain won't give Gibraltar back is it remains a highly strategic piece of real estate and Spain isn't trusted to control it by the major western naval powers. It isn't a petty dispute.

[Dinner]

Hitler was a fool not to take Gibraltar. He could have blocked the Western Mediterranean and achieved the same result as taking the Suez canal.

Franco was reluctant but Hitler found him exasperating and didn't persist. Hitler prematurely turned on Russia instead and sealed his fate.

The German Navy favoured a Mediterranean strategy to knock Britain out the war. If you wargame it, Germany usually wins WWII following the Mediterranean strategy.

In Hearts of Iron 3 taking Gibraltor and Suez are always the first things any Italian player does as it heads off an Allied invasion of Italy. Even as Germany (and the useless AI playing Italy) you invade Yugoslavia to get ports on the med then immediately invade Spain (to take Gibraltor and launch an invasion of Egypt from Italian North Africa. Resource wise there isn't much there and, yes, it's kind of a distraction from preparing for war against the USSR but it does mean you don't have to worry about the allies taking southern Europe while you're fighting the red menace.

[MikeH]

Why are the Spanish whining about a rock they gave up in a treaty 300 years ago?

Bad economy at home, politicians looking for distractions.

[Alexander's Horse]

Moby, Hearts of Iron is one simulation I was thinking of.

The big contrast is with Britain which was a master of peripheral strategies which built to a decisive campaign. They did something similar to Napoleon with the peninsular war and Mediterranean naval campaign culminating in Trafalgar.

The mediterranean proved the springboard two years later for the assault on Europe. Churchill was obsessed with holding on to it with this in mind, not just imperial considerations as the Americans always suspected.

[molly bloom]

Why are the Spanish whining about a rock they gave up in a treaty 300 years ago?

Because they're still hanging on to two pieces of Morocco, one of which they got from Portugal. Sssshhhh, don't let on..... maybe the rest of the world apart from Morocco won't notice.

[molly bloom]

Franco was reluctant but Hitler found him exasperating and didn't persist.

To be fair, he was busy having Spanish people shot and tortured. Also, he did save some Jews. So he wasn't all bad, just mostly.

[molly bloom]

Also enjoying Reg Collider's spectacular ignorance on the subject...

Credit where credit is due, definitely.

[Dr Strangelove]

What really irks Spain is the reason Britain won't give Gibraltar back is it remains a highly strategic piece of real estate and Spain isn't trusted to control it by the major western naval powers. It isn't a petty dispute.

If Britain gave Gibraltar back to Spain who the freakin' H would take Gibraltar from them?

The real reason the British won't give Gibraltar back is that there are a bunch of Brits living there and the British don't want to entrust them to the care of the Spanish because they still think of the Spanish the way Basil Fawlty thought of Manuel.

[kentonio]

because they still think of the Spanish the way Basil Fawlty thought of Manuel.

Which is pretty accurate all things considered.

[Hauldren Collider]

Have you ever seen Gibraltar? There's a practical reason why it was never retaken by Spain- it's as good an example of a natural fortress as you'll see. Even to a modern army, it would be an almighty bugger to recapture.

Maybe a bugger to recapture intact. The place is tiny. You could flatten it with artillery in hours and the troops at Gibraltar could do **** all to stop you.

I'm willing to bet a US expeditionary force would have it inside of 24 hours if you parked a gator freighter nearby. The Spanish probably wouldn't even take that long since they wouldn't have to waste time with boats. I realize it has a lot of natural defenses. Those defenses don't mean much when you're willing to blow the place sky-high in order to capture it.

This is all academic because as Doc Strangelove points out the reason the brits don't want to give it up is not the strategic value, it's the fact that there are other brits living there. The strategic value doesn't matter so much. Spain and Britain are both in NATO. If one or the other started getting warlike toward the other, a difficult state of affairs to fathom in today's world, we'd start throwing our weight around until the two of them STFU.

[MikeH]

BTW - When AH says the major western naval powers won't trust Spain to look after it, he obviously means the US want us to control it rather than Spain. We do what we're told (mostly) and let you use our facilities a lot more readily than other NATO members.
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