Gibraltar
Gibraltar and Evacuation
When the war broke out in September 1939 it was thought by military experts and politicians that Gibraltar, like in the case during the First World War, was not going to be in the font line of hostilities. However, by May 1940 when Italy entered the war on the German side, it became clear that the war scenario was going to be very different to that of the First World War and that Gibraltar would have to play a major role. Given this, the British Government ordered the evacuation of women, children, the elderly and infirm to French Morocco. The main reason for this was that Gibraltar had to be converted in a fully-fledged fortress, which Hitler was planning to capture with Spanish assistance and if he had succeeded it would have changed completely the outcome of the Second World War.
