Nationalist Spain Forces

kurtbj · Post by **kurtbj** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 7:05 pm

I've just started an online game with a friend and for the first time ever I've decided to use NAtionalist Spain to simulate the Blue Division. The date we are playing is Sept 1943. I'm quite happy with their performance so far in the battle BUT my question is..when I purchased my forces I had no armour units available to buy, I ended up going to the German lists and picking a couple of light tanks from there. Why don't the Spanish Forces have armour?

Probably some simple answer that I missed in my ignorance. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

john g · Post by **john g** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 7:21 pm

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kurt:
Why don't the Spanish Forces have armour?

Did they field any tank units during the war? The oob has tank units 36-40 and 46-49.

Wasn/t the Blue an infantry div? Why did you need to buy Spanish tanks for them? In the USSR, any tanks in support of the Blue would likely have been German. I don't know of any tank production in Spain in the 40's, their tanks would have been what was left over from the Civil War, PzI's and the like.
thanks, John.

Rune Iversen · Post by **Rune Iversen** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 7:37 pm

Originally posted by Kurt:
I've just started an online game with a friend and for the first time ever I've decided to use NAtionalist Spain to simulate the Blue Division. The date we are playing is Sept 1943. I'm quite happy with their performance so far in the battle BUT my question is..when I purchased my forces I had no armour units available to buy, I ended up going to the German lists and picking a couple of light tanks from there. Why don't the Spanish Forces have armour?
Probably some simple answer that I missed in my ignorance. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Well, if you want to simulate the spanish "Azul" (blue) division, you should just pick an all infantry force from the german OOB.
This division was an infantry division (no tanks whatsoever).
Furthermore it was armed and formed as a standard german inf. division.

The naswer to the question of when Spanish forces are available is equally simple.
Since the civil war ended in 1939, and no Spanish forces (apart from the aforementioned division) took part in WW2, it is quite resonable that they are not available as combatants, which may account for the strange availability dates for some of the spanish equipment.

kurtbj · Post by **kurtbj** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 7:37 pm

Thanks for the reply. I didn't expect any Spanish tanks to be available but I thought that the Division might have had a small number of german production armoured vehicles available to them. From the OOB it seems that I didn't. I have no problem with that just wanted to check whether that was the reason or not. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Mikimoto · Post by **Mikimoto** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 8:04 pm

Hello.

the "División Azul" did not had organic tanks, halftracks or other armoured vehicles. Was organized along German style (as First Wave infantry Division) and was supported in combat sometimes by german armoured forces. The correct oob is the Nationalist Spain.

Late in 43, the Division returned to Spain. A core force of diehart anticomunist and falangists remained, losing spanish citizenship, serving in the Waffen-ss. The unit was named "Unidad Ezquerrra", as his commanders name. They fighted in the east the rest of the war. The unit Ezquerra was one of the last units that fighted to the last in the rubble of Berlin in 1945. This is why the Oob lasts until the end of 45 as División Azul.

Thanks.

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Thu Nov 01, 2001 1:34 am

I have this great book, " Hitlers Spanish Legion" and it is interesting that they were initially using civilian cars for the officers, AND for towing their 37mm ATG's!!!!

Mikimoto · Post by **Mikimoto** » Thu Nov 01, 2001 2:00 am

Originally posted by Warhorse:
I have this great book, " Hitlers Spanish Legion" and it is interesting that they were initially using civilian cars for the officers, AND for towing their 37mm ATG's!!!!

Hi Mike.

Yes, you are right. Well, it seems improvisation was (is?) the Spanish way of doing things. Another good example was the "Compañía de Esquiadores" (Elite recon/ski company) equipped almost entirely with russian automatic weapons (ppsh41 mainly) and even uniforms!

But the Spanish secret weapon in Russian was a very big pair of XXXs... not a joke, not kidding. It was an enormous self-sacrifize mentality and love for valiant (a suicide tendence?) doings.

Redleg · Post by **Redleg** » Thu Nov 01, 2001 11:16 pm

Actually, the 250th Blue division was reorganized, trained, equipped, and uniformed in standard wehrmacht fashion.

The independent-minded soldatos of the "Blue" exasperated their German trainers no end.

Finally, the Blue had to foot march from Poland to their positions on the russian front. I forget the exact distance, but it was a road march to end all road marches.

So, for scenario design purposes, it is best to use German rifle units with leaders given Spanish names. I did this by purchasing a bunch of spanish units to get the names and then deleted them from the buy menu when finished.

The history of the Spanish Blue division is truly remarkable and well worth the time to read. Not real easy to find detailed information however.