In WW2 the likes of Spain, Portugal and Switzerland remained neutral, how could these countries stay neutral?
What stopped the Axis powers from invading these countries to add to their countries?
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Spain and Portugal would mean going through France.
Switzerland would be tough terrain and cost troops.
You have to figure every time you invade a new country that country joins your enemy. That is generally bad so it was only done if the purpose was to outflank or gather resources.
I can answer for the Swiss.
A shit ton of guns, bombs strapped to bridges and artillery aimed at roads. If Hitler wanted in he had to fight for it, and these are mountain men with resolve to protect their homeland.
Switzerland made sure to stay neutral by force, not by asking nicely.
‘Neutral’ just means not engaged in active conflict. Neutral countries are still trade partners and can be diplomatic allies. Neutral countries are necessary trade partners in war, because the countries you’re fighting against and their allies have presumably stopped trading with you. Attacking neutral countries not only is a waste of resources, but it also provokes other neutral countries to seek the protection of the opposing side in the war, and now you’ve gone from a reduced selection of trade partners to zero trade partners.
> What stopped the Axis powers from invading these countries to add to their countries?
Their interest, it didn’t have much to do with neutrality… Neutrality just means the state doesn’t pick a side to support, it doesn’t mean ‘I won’t let a side invade me’. That’s why Germany happily invaded Belgium in WW1 and the whole of the Benelux in WW2. The reason they didn’t invade Switzerland was that it wouldn’t help them much, and Spain was more or less an ally anyway (their government being helped into power with Germany’s support, look up The Guernica for example).
I think one aspect overlooked in the other replies about countries like The Netherlands is that they thanked their existence to the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna, which also determined these states to be neutral. Thus it wasn’t just that they ‘could afford’ to be neutral, is that they were expected to be.
>What stopped the Axis powers from invading these countries to add to their countries?
Nazi Germany had plans for an invasion of Switzerland—Operation Tannenbaum—but they were continually pushed back until they were cancelled following D-Day. The reason isn’t entirely clear, but the leading theory among historians is the costs of an alpine war outweighed the strategic benefits of conquering Switzerland.
When a country stays neutral, it’s betting that everyone else is too busy to be bothered invading them. For Switzerland, a heavily armed mountain country with nothing valuable, or Spain, a vast, war torn country, it’s a pain to invade with not much incentive. When you’re fighting a world war, you’re going to think twice before increasing the military and economic burden you’re under.
Nothing stopped either side from invading neutral countries. Denmark declared neutrality in both world wars. In WWI it worked, Denmark was not interesting enough to invade. In WWII the nazis needed Denmark as a stepping stone to Norway, and took Denmark with little resistance.
The issue with your question is that your premise is wrong: you’re assuming that the axis wanted to invade and conquer countries, but the whole war was about defeating the UK.
There was no reason to attack Spain for example because Spain was neutral, so it did not pose a threat, nor did it have natural ressources.
Here’s a quick recap of WW2 in Europe: Germany invades Poland to take back land lost in WW1 hoping that the UK and France will not intervene. UK declares war. Because the UK is impossible to invade, Germany adopts a strategy to starve out the UK until they give up (battle of Atlantic begins), and ignores France hoping that France will seek negotiations without conflict (the phoney war, where neither French nor Germans wanted to be the first to shoot despite officially being at war). Poland is defeated, Hitler initiates peace talks but the Allies refuse. Thus, invasion of France begins.
In the North, UK and France try to cut off shipments of iron from Sweden to Germany, and plan to occupy Norway and Denmark. Germany basically undercuts them by invading both Denmark and Norway, preventing the Allies from doing so, and simultaneously protecting their shipping.
Back to France, the French army is powerful and well protected by the Maginot line, fortifications along the border. Germany invades Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg in order to bypass the fortifications. With the French army being busy and losing, Italy declares war in order to seize back territories that France had conquered in the past. France gets divided into three, two zones being occupied by Germany and Italy, and the last being autonomous. UK declares war on France to seize their fleet and colonies to help with the war against Germany. With France defeated, Hitler once again asked for peace but the UK refuses. Battle of Britain begins. Fearing what’s happening, the US start preparing for war.
The UK receives a lot of shipping through the Mediterranean. To cut off their supplies and hopefully force them to peace, Italy tries to seize the Suez Canal (but ultimately fail). To protect their oil coming from the Balkans, Germany joins Italy in invading Greece in order to prevent a British invasion.
In Yugoslavia, the British execute a coup d’etat, and Germany immediately invades to prevent the British from attack through there.
In the Middle East, Germany are the ones trying to execute coup d’etat in order to cut off Allie oil supplies. They succeed in Syria, but fail in Iraq.
The Soviet Union, seeing Germany busy on all fronts, and therefore weak, starts building up for an invasion. With the UK refusing all demands for peace, Hitler fears that the Soviet Union has made a deal to join the war on the Allies side (that, plus communism = scary). They initially try to make a pact with the SU, but couldn’t reach an accord, so Germany invades in the hope of undercutting the Soviets, believe that if they wait, the Soviets will be too strong. They were right about that, and ultimately loss and the rest of the war is Germany being defeated everywhere.
As you can see, there was never any random conquests just for the sake of it. The UK was too powerful for a direct invasion, and Germany was too powerful for a direct invasion, and France was too powerful for a direct invasion, therefore the war was fought elsewhere always in the hope of cutting off supplies and forcing the enemy to accept peace. Spain and Switzerland served no purpose and thus were left alone.
The Pacific, on the other hand, was admittedly a whole other mess.
There’s various ways to remain neutral in a conflict but often times they’re not always as morally sound as they may sound. In the case of Europe for example being neutral often meant getting chummy with the germans, or at the very least letting them through your country with no resistance which meant another country would get a rude awakening when they found the germans at their borders unopposed.
But there’s also the case of countries whose strategical importance was limited or irrelevant so wasting the resources to occupy them was unecessary.
Spain wasn’t neutral in WW2 they had a civil war and the winning side was funded by nazis so while not being as active in fighting they were def on the nazis side
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