Why didn't Spain join World War One? (Short Animated Documentary)

in world war one both sides tried to recruit other nations to join them and tip the balance in their favor the ottomans the italians and the romanians being some of those enticed into joining the conflict yet spain a country of 20 million people at the time managed to stay neutral throughout the entire thing and given that both sides were trying to bribe up new allies why did spain sit it out why did spain stay neutral in the first world war before getting specific it's important to know that as of 1914 spain wasn't having a good time its economy was sluggish it had barely industrialized it was deeply divided internally and militarily things were worse just before the war the spanish had suffered military humiliation in morocco when they tried to expand their influence there in 1909 they did manage to defeat the rebelling moroccans eventually but that wasn't until after numerous defeats in the sending of tens of thousands of troops to morocco to defeat one twentieth of their number and so when franz ferdinand visited sarajevo to try his hand at being assassinated it wasn't long until world war one was well on its way spain immediately declared its neutrality and wanted nothing to do with the war and the overriding reason was simple it felt that it had nothing to gain the previous spanish-american war had taught spain that warfare was painful even if the fighting stayed away from the homeland and for many the potential gains weren't even that great if they joined the central powers then spain could have potentially gained gibraltar or something but that would involve spain having to go toe-to-toe with the well-equipped and well-trained anton troops and given the previous disaster in morocco spain wasn't ready for that and if spain had joined the anton then it may have been able to gain some possessions in africa or potentially in the pacific but the benefits would have been little and there was the potential for retaliation furthermore spain had no quarrel with germany or austria-hungary nor did it have any feelings of kinship towards serbia or belgium which gave them no reason to join and even if the government had wanted to pick a side and ignored the risks there was the second reason they didn't join political instability spain's people were extremely divided between the assassination of the archduke and the signing of the treaty of versailles spain had nine governments headed by four different prime ministers each had preferences towards the ontart or the central powers but all of them preferred neutrality for the third reason spain stayed out of the war cash being neutral meant that you could sell stuff to both sides and spain did very well for itself doing just that it sold food and raw materials to the untaunted chemicals and textiles to the central powers the influx of money saw spain's industrialization speed up and spain's gold reserves increased massively and the fourth reason was that nobody else wanted spain to join the central power was wanted in neutral spain which could be used for espionage and some trade and the anton wanted spain to stay out of the war since they didn't want to share any of the potential spoils in africa with them and thus neutrality was a simple risk-free option but there were some issues germany sank spanish shipping which led to prime minister alvaro de are getting fired when he tried to denounce germany for it and spain was also threatened with invasion by the anton when german troops fled into spanish guinea and they didn't do much about it of course spain managed to maneuver through these issues and stay neutral throughout the war and you would assume that the massive influx of money into spain would make the lives of spaniards better but you would be wrong workers saw no wage rises which led to more and more of them turning to anarchism or socialism to help and when it became clear to farmers that it was much more profitable to sell food to italy or france than it was to the spanish there were food shortages too and so it won't surprise you that even though spain avoided the horrors of world war one it entered the post-war world an even more divided nation but that was a problem for another time i hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching with a special thanks to my patrons james bissonette kelly moneymaker corso wolfe adam stalter jerry lamdin jordan longley rod d martin lion hockey gustav swan spencer lightfoot captain cydog winston k wood boogery wiggly marvin castle aaron the white words about books podcast commun yoon matthew shipley maxon flutio alex schwinn maggie patzkowski marcus asner the mug whopper corey turner anthony beckett coppertone spinning three plates charles the first ben evanson and scottish trekkie

Channel: History Matters

Views: 1,700,612

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Id: aTmWcarPmOY

Length: 3min 44sec (224 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022