Galicia and World War II

The cannons of the Monte de San Pedro in A Coruña, with their 38 km scope, allowed the sure use of the Galician ports of Ferrol and A Coruña on the part of the Nazi Germany

The participation of Galicia in the World War II was marked by its location in front of behind the back of the Atlantic.^[1] The World War II was a conflict armed to global level that lasted since 1939 at 1945. In spite of the Spanish neutrality, the war also affected the country due to his strategic location. The tungsten excractes of mines as the Mines of San Fins was used for the nazi bellicose industry. The extraction and transport of the mineral carried out it lid companies, as the Finance and Industrial Corporation (Galician: Sociedade Financeira e Industrial).^[2]

Hundreds of Galicians traveled to fight with the Germans in the Eastern Front, in the Blue Division, on another side, former republican combatants fought with the allies, many of them being confined in fields of concentration.

Tungsten

The raw materials had a basic paper in the Second World War, especially those used in the bellicose industry, one of them was the tungsten, which was used to armor armament. Before the war, the main producers were China (36%), Burma (17%) and United States of America (11%). Because of that, in the event of war Germany difficult access to these countries, for which it decided to look for it in Europe, would have Spain and Portugal where the only producers were. Galicia had almost 70% of the Spanish mineral, for which it converted in the main center of extraction.

Year	Quantity (t)	Value in millions of pesetas
1939	76	0,755
1949	563	6,985
1941	156	3,623
1942	159	18,751
1943	1396	241,054
1944	2502	406,455
1945	1662	246,221

Lorenz beam

Radius of scope of the signal of the Arneiro Towers.

In 1939, Spain handed some lands over to Germany in Arneiro in the municipality of Cospeito, where the Germanics built an aerial of a hundred and twelve meters of one high, that canalized the communications of the Fleet and of the nazi Aviation, with a radius of a thousand miles. The station, besides for the main aerial, was formed by two repeating lower and auxiliary buildings.^[3] It formed part of the German net, together with the one lifted in Seville and different another distributed on the part of Europe, which did a total of nineteen. Due to the importance of the aerial, the allies got to plan a mission for his sabotage. Then, it did finally not get to be carried out, since Spain itself talked about a theoretically neutral country and, besides, the English and Americans ended up using also the signal of the tower.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

See also

• Spain and World War II

References

1. Un estudio constata la relevancia de Galicia en la II Guerra Mundial. (Spanish)
2. HISMA, ROWAK y SOFINDUS, las empresas pantalla alemanas (Spanish)
3. Características de la Estación Sonne Consol de Lugo
4. Submarinos
5. Los radiofaros Consol (Elektra-Sonne)
6. El servicio móvil aeronaútico en España
7. Sonne Consol
8. El sistema Sonne en Galicia