History WorldWarII / TheNeutralNations

-->--'''Sir Ronald Campbell''', British Ambassador in Lisbon, November 1943[[note]] He didn't know, as we do now, that Franco stayed out of the war because he was aware of the weakness of Spain's trade-dependent economy - Joining the war would have cut her off from her supplies of food and raw materials in the Americas. Even when Germany seemed to be doing very well (in late 1940, when she had yet to try to exterminate the Soviets and US involvement seemed unlikely) Franco still refused to join the Axis because of this. [[/note]]

A number of countries nominally joined the Allies near the end of the war, but remained strongly neutral most of the war. Particularly notable among them were UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} and UsefulNotes/{{Argentina}}.

One country that insisted on its neutrality too strongly and suffered for it was UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}. The ruler of Iran, Shah Reza, refused demands by the British that he round up German nationals in his country whom British claimed were secret agents working against Allies' interests, e.g. British-owned oilfields in Iran. The Shah insisted that they were not (he was probably right, but history is murky on this front, with contradictory claims from different sources). British also suspected that the Shah sympathized with the Nazis, or, at least Germans (again, a murky and contentious point). Tired of the Shah's uncooperativeness and taking no chances after German-supported revolt in Iraq, a de facto British colony, the British, along with Soviets, decided to invade Iran in 1941 without a declaration of war, depose the Shah (he was replaced by his more pliant and pro-Western son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi), and run the country as a sort of joint colony under military occupation. While considered a great success at this time, this would have [[UsefulNotes/{{IranianRevolution}} long term consequences]] decades later.

One country that insisted on its neutrality too strongly and suffered for it was UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}. The ruler of Iran, Shah Reza, refused demands by the British that he round up German nationals in his country whom British claimed were secret agents working against Allies' interests, e.g. British-owned oilfields in Iran. The Shah insisted that they were not (he was probably right, but history is murky on this front, with contradictory claims from different sources). British also suspected that the Shah sympathized with the Nazis, or, at least Germans (again, a murky and contentious point). Tired of the Shah's uncooperativeness, the British, along with Soviets, decided to invade Iran without a declaration of war, depose the Shah (he was replaced by his more pliant and pro-Western son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi), and run the country as a sort of joint colony under military occupation. While considered a great success at this time, this would have [[UsefulNotes/{{IranianRevolution}} long term consequences]] decades later.

One country that insisted on its neutrality too strongly and suffered for it was UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}. The ruler of Iran, Shah Reza, refused demands by the British that he round up German nationals in his country whom British claimed were secret agents working against Allies' interests, e.g. British-owned oilfields in Iran. The Shah insisted that they were not (he was probably right, but history is murky on this front, with contradictory claims from different sources). British also suspected that the Shah sympathized with the Nazis, or, at least Germans (again, a murky and contentious point). Tired of the Shah's uncooperativeness, the British, along with Soviets, decided to invade Iran without further warning, depose the Shah (he was replaced by his more pliant and more pro-Western son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi), and run the country as a sort of joint colony under military occupation. While considered a great success at this time, this would have [[UsefulNotes/{{IranianRevolution}} long term consequences]] decades later.

[[UsefulNotes/AntonioDeOliveiraSalazar Antonio de Oliveira Salazar]], Prime Minister of Portugal, while remaining on friendly terms with the Axis powers, knew two things:

With this in mind, Portugal first signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with Francoist Spain in March 1939, and, a month later, refused the invitation of the Italian Ambassador to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, an alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan. A year later, Spain and Portugal signed an additional protocol to the Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression which also became known as the Iberian Pact. Basically, the Iberian Pact committed the two countries to defend the Iberian Peninsula against any power that attacked either country and helped to ensure Iberian neutrality in the event of a general European war. Needless to say, this protocol was protested against by Hitler.[[note]]It's also noteworthy that Salazar privately hated Hitler.[[/note]] At almost the same time, Portugal had ensured the evacuation of 2,000 [[UsefulNotes/{{Gibraltar}} Gibraltarians]] to the Madeira Island, some of which lived in the island for the rest of their lives and married Portuguese people.

Tibet benefited from the turmoil of China's concurrent [[UsefulNotes/ChineseCivilWar civil war]] and fight with Japan (and the fact that technically no nation even recognized it ''existed'' as an independent nation).[[note]]The [[UsefulNotes/Taiwan ROC]] claimed rule over Tibet as the successor government to the Qing Dynasty, but had no ''de facto'' control over the region[[/note]]

However, the main part of Spain's involvement in the war was through volunteers. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Franco agreed, after much diplomatic pressure, to send some manpower to do civilian warwork and volunteers to fight against the Allies. Hence, the Blue Division was sent. The Blue Division was trained in Germany and served, with distinction, in assisting the deaths of half a million Soviet civilians in the Siege of Leningrad. Notably, in February 1943 General Infantes' 6,000 Spanish troops held up as many as 30,000 Soviet troops for a day - sadly, these were attacking under the cover of a flawed artillery barrage and with insufficient direct-fire assets (tanks, self-propelled artillery). By holding out until German SS and Army reinforcements arrived, the Spaniards thwarted the ''Polar Star'' offensive to lift the siege. In October 1943, with the German Army under severe pressure in the central-western Ukraine and another winter offensive looming in Army Group North's sector, the bulk of the Blue Division left for home (ostensibly as a result of Anglo-American diplomatic pressure) leaving a token force until March 1944. In all, about 45,000 Spanish served with Army Group North, mostly committed volunteers, and around 4,500 died. The Soviets' desire for revenge against Franco - for contributing as much as a twentieth of the force that killed several hundred thousand Soviet citizens - was frustrated at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 wherein Stalin's attempt to make an Allied invasion of Spain the conference's first order of business was category rejected by Harry Truman and Winston Churchill. War weary and unwilling to continue the conflict, Truman and Churchill persuaded Stalin to instead settle for a full trade embargo against Spain.