Foreign relations of Nazi Germany

In the early part of World War II, Germany's foreign relations with Spain heavily revolved around propaganda efforts. These efforts were geared mainly at having Spain enter the war on the side of the axis powers. Spain had close ties with Nazi Germany since it gave aid both militarily and financially in the Spanish Civil war that occurred four years before World War II that installed Francisco Franco as an autocrat of Spain.[4] Germany facilitated this rise of Franco due to its lust for Spanish economic institutions and mineral mines, which would be necessary for a pre-war military buildup; a strategic move in foreign relations that allowed Germany to both have a close European ally and an established industrial center.[4] With Germany engaged in a Europe wide military conflict, it looked to Spain to become a close military ally of the Reich. To make this goal a reality, Nazi Germany sent Hans Josef Lazar to Spain to head the country's pro-Nazi regime propaganda efforts.[5] As the war progressed, Germany started to shift its aims of recruiting Spain to become one of the Axis powers to have it as a neutral power that could supply Germany with the resources it needed to fuel its militaristic ambitions.[5] In February of 1942, Spain and Germany signed the Spanish-German Secret Protocol, which solidified this new stance of Spanish neutrality between the two countries.[5] With this latest secret protocol in place, Lazar began gearing Nazi propaganda towards supporting the Franco regime to create political stability within Spain and solidify Nazi ties to the Spanish leadership to ensure the continued support of the German war effort.[5] Lazar was instructed by Berlin to portray critical messages in Nazi propaganda during the war, the first being that Germany had the right to wage war due to the allies blaming Germany solely for the cause of World War I and secondly, portraying Great Britain in a negative light.[5]

In January 1942, with a sharp increase in Allied propaganda being funneled into Spain, the German government proposed the Große plan, which aimed at taking this allied propaganda and misconstruing it to portray pro-Nazi messages.[5] The Große plan was mostly successful until 1944. When Germany started to falter in its war performance, Spanish news agencies began to print less and less pro-German propaganda within their publications. This downward trend of printing pro-Nazi propaganda would continue to the end of World War II, making the Große Plan an inadequate long-term solution for German Propaganda efforts.

Even though print propaganda in Spain was not employed very much after 1944, Germany's other objective for Spain was influencing pro-German sentiment in Latin America. To do this, Germany undertook the construction of radio towers within Spain that could transmit to Latin American countries in hopes of fostering pro-Nazi sentiment.[5] These radio stations attempted to support the Nazis covertly, but it did not take long for observers to uncover the German bias in its messaging.[5] In sum, however, these radio stations were useful in disseminating German propaganda to Latin America, but Latin American listeners were not perceptive to this pro-Nazi propaganda.

The Third Reich considered Latin America to belong to the sphere of influence of the United States.[6] During the Second World War, Nazi Germany's central foreign policy towards Latin American countries was to maintain neutrality. .[6]

Nazi German government representatives cultivated ties with the Muslim religious leaders in the early 1940s, such as Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Hardline Muslim clerics such as al-Husseini endorsed Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish agenda and pogroms, and actively sought to recruit the Muslims of Bosnia and Eastern Europe for Nazi German military forces. Reza Shah Pahlavi, the second-last Shah of Iran harbored pro-Nazi sympathies, but Nazi Germany was unable to prevent Britain and Soviet Russia from taking control of his regime and overthrowing him in 1941.

As part of their campaign to weaken the British Empire, Nazi Germany expressed support for hardline Indian revolutionaries seeking India's independence. Although the Indian National Congress and other Indian political organizations opposed Nazi Germany or preserved neutrality, revolutionaries under Subhas Chandra Bose openly sought Germany's backing. Bose escaped from prison to deliver a speech from Berlin. With German and Japanese backing, Bose formed the Provisional Government of Free India and the Indian National Army to fight British forces occupying India. As a result, India allowed the war to wage on.