The Truth About NATO Pt. 2
Meetings, Meetings and more Meetings.
This is part two of my series on NATO, read part one before you start with this one. We left off on part one talking about West Germany’s admission into NATO, we’re going to pick up where we left off.
Spain
During WW2 Spain was a neutral country, so they provided the Nazis with “volunteers” to help them fight.
What? Yeah.
During the Spanish civil war, Germany would provide aid to then rebel General Francisco Franco. The Germans hit the jackpot, Franco won the war and became the ruler of Spain. These moves would later become huge issues for Spain because the Nazis lost WW2. After the war Spain would be politically and economically isolated from everyone. The US wanted to deploy strategic bombers in a network of bases in peninsular Spain to counter soviet threats in the Mediterranean. Spain was thirsty for economic and political support, it was a match made in heaven. The US gave hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Spain and used soft power to gain favor. Spain would then go through an economic boom.
After Francisco Franco died, Spain would go towards democracy and officially joining NATO on 30 May 1982. A vote was held in 1986 on whether to stay in NATO or not and the Spanish people overwhelmingly voted to stay.
Sources: Outline Plan Of Operations With Respect To Spain, NATO member countries, Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, The Deployment of U.S. Military Assistance to Franco’s Spain, US Educational Foreign Policy Toward Authoritarian Spain in the Cold War
After Spain was admitted, no new country joined NATO until after the fall of the Soviet Union.