Croatian Podlanvic (Chief) Ante Pavelic and Benito Mussolini review an honour guard on the occasion of Italy's recognition of the Croatian state.  Pavelic, a long-time agitator for the creation of a Croatian state, owed his position as prime minister and dictator to Hitler and Mussolini.  However, the credibility of the Croatian state was seriously undermined by Italy's insistence (countenanced by Germany) on annexing significant coastal territories of Croata which it had been "promised" as a victor in WW1 (never delivered, owing to the hostility of another victor, Serbia/Yugoslavia).  This "Croatian issue" was a serious bone of contention between Italy and Croatia up to the fall of Mussolini in 1943. In practice, Pavelic's government found itself helpless to prevent the erosion of authority a the hands of the Germans, in particular, towards the end of the war.  Best regards, JR.

Pavelic and Mussolini review the troops.

Triumphant Norwegian soldiers atop a JU 87 after the German capitulation in 1945.

JU 87 in Norway

Francisco Franco (left) and his patron (later cheerleader and minister) José Milan Astray.  Milan Astray was the founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion.  Unlike the French equivalent, this force was "recruited" more or less exclusively from Spanish citizens.  In the main, they were condemned criminals and similarly inclined reprobates.  Their intended function was to control Spain's turbulent North African territories.  The Legion, in its early days, was itself kept under control by means of iron discipline, enforced from the top down by Milan himself.  He, mind you, led from the front in the complicated Rif War, in which many officers who subsequently served the Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War earned their spurs.  Foremost among them was the modest-seeming, reactionary protégé of Milan, Francisco Franco.

Strangely enough, that iron discipline inspired general devotion to Milan, and to Franco, among the ranks of the Legion.  Along with the equally devoted Moorish forces, they followed Milan and Franco into the Spanish Civil War, operating at a level of brutality consistent with their North African experience.  Not that the other side were any less brutal, given the chance.  That was some civil war ... Best regards, JR.